is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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I had students put your flyer in all the bathroom stalls.
Ugh. Now I have to move! Moving is not fun. And so I have slipped into a delicious vat of avoidance behavior. (The avoidance seems to involve eating lots of ice cream and cooking elaborate new dishes.) However, after putting it off for way too long, today I am dying my hair. (Not so delicious, and downright odiferous.) Right now I am sitting on the couch with my hair looking totally batshit crazy wrapped up in tinfoil strands and sticking out all over the place. Soon things on my head will look much better than they have for some time now. Perhaps then I�ll be ready to pack boxes. It is currently not fully possible for me to understand the causal relations involved in my motivations.
Ugh. All that packing and contacting movers and getting quotes and figuring out what to keep and what to sell or donate, and how to go about all that.
Also, Hans Blix is not doing well. Last night he tried to jump onto the couch and missed. Then he seemed to think that was my fault. He�s weak and pathetic, even though he seems to have gained some weight. I have a call in to the vet, awaiting a response.
Regarding The Thirteen Senses, I�m currently thinking that the last album The Invitation was a bit better than the new one, Contact, or at least more consistently good. Still deciding. When I wrote about the first album, my main concern was that it was caught in the battle between good and evil which we might also name the tension between Radiohead and Coldplay (with Radiohead standing for the forces of good, and Coldplay for the evil of darkness, even though its darkness is light, aka light rock). Well, this new Thirteen Senses album is produced by one of the Coldplay guys, so what can you do? It is tainted.
(Cut to hilarious moment in North Beach pizzeria when I'm telling Caroleen and Jeff that "Coldplay is the band liked by guys who think they are sensitive but aren't." Caroleen: [laughing hysterically]. Jeff: [looking crestfallen] "Um, I kind of like Coldplay.")
(Jeff, as always, is the exception.)
Anyway. The Thirteen Senses. There are some excellent songs on the new album. And the way it begins is so perfect that I can almost forgive its stumblings. The first song, title track, begins as a simple piano riff that then becomes a dramatic multi-instrumental version then pauses, then the vocals, �If only there was time to say it all/ I�d say it all. / If only, if the sound that I made/ said it all�.�� followed by some more crazy musical dramatics and ah-ah-ahs. Sure, I�m basically being manipulated by this approach at music, beckoned to feel something, but, hell, who cares. I find Will South�s melodies compelling, and often his lyrics are really good too.
The next two songs are good too, and then there is some stumbling, and some other good songs, and some less than memorable moments. All in all I�d say I�ve already had my $15 worth of pleasure in this album (ha! as if money measured such things, but then again we live in a society that beckons us to value our pleasures according to their monetary "value".... let us resist that regime, but also let us be mindful that CDs cost money), and I�m sure I�ll listen to it many, many more times, so no regrets.
New topic: Richard has reminded me�and for that, and for him, I am thankful!�that yesterday was the 10-year anniversary of the day we met, in the meeting of the Educational Improvement Grant Program when we were both delegates to the Graduate Assembly at UC Berkeley. Ha. What dorks we were! Are! If we had been the reproducing kind, we had in our hands the perfectly dumb story to tell (and bore) grandchildren about how we met. Which reminds me. I met Gus at an election party full of professors at a liberal arts college. Which just goes to show you that you never know which strange events and occurrences will change your life in some way.
In other news, this anecdote just popped into my head. Here at QB I work with a really nice and well-intentioned though sometimes bumbling woman. For some reason she and I have a particularly fraught relationship that goes like this: every time she says she�ll do something for me, it gets messed up. Often that means really messed up. It�s crazy. But my time here is ending, and it has been a good, good time. Anyway, a small and funny example of the bumbling concerns when she wrote me an email updating me on the progress of getting student interns to post posters about my Symposium all over campus. She wrote this email:
�I had students put your flyer in all the bathroom stalls.�
Perfectly straightforward, and a good strategy, publicity-wise. Except that she sent it to someone else on campus who shares some of the letters in my name. HA! So this other woman, who apparently has a fairly high-powered job here, gets that message, out of nowhere. And then my sometimes-bumbling co-worker receives a really confused message back, from a woman wondering what the hell is being said about her in all the QB bathroom stalls!
As your friendly neighborhood nickel might say, "O! the joy!".
12:27 p.m. - May 02, 2007
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