is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Funny Levinas. Cake and Soup. Rocking Verizon!
Funny Levinas. Cake and Soup. Rocking Verizon!
Sometimes Levinas is very funny. But his kind of funny is the kind of funny that not that many people find funny. For instance: �Since Heidegger we are in the habit of considering the world as an ensemble of tools�. In turning on a bathroom switch we open up the entire ontological problem.� [Me laughing.] �One can think that authentic time is originally an ecstasis, yet one buys oneself a watch.� [Chortle!] �The multiplicity of unique subjects, entities immediately empirically encountered, would proceed from this universal self-consciousness of the Mind: bits of dust collected by its movement or drops of sweat glistening on its forehead because of the labor of the negative it will have accomplished.� [Oh! That�s rich!] And etc.
However there are other kinds of Levinasian humor. The kind that requires interpretation and dorkiness combined. As you might guess, those sorts of jokes are the ones that please me the most. And one of my most favoritist students made one such joke in class the other day. First, a short bit of background:
Levinas often uses the metaphor of giving the bread from out of your mouth to the �other� as a way of characterizing the demands of ethics. Like: �passive to the point of becoming an inspiration, that is, alterity in the same, the trope of the body animated by the soul, psyche in the form of a hand that gives even the bread taken from its own mouth.� Or: �one has to first enjoy one's bread, not in order to have the merit of giving it, but in order to give it with one's heart, to give oneself in giving it.� Or: �But giving has meaning only as a tearing away from oneself despite oneself. . . . And to be torn from oneself despite oneself has meaning only as a being-torn-from the complacency in oneself characteristic of enjoyment, snatching the bread from one's mouth. Only a subject that eats can be for-the-other.� Sure that all sounds strange and crazy and possibly unreasonable as a demand, but it makes sense within the complicated universe of Levinas� thought. Let�s just say for now that he isn�t actually asking you to take the bread out of your mouth. The point is closer to being: sometimes justice requires not only that you give what you can afford to live without, but also what you need for yourself. Or, self-interest is not and could not be the animating principle of all human relations. Anyway, I made that yummy chocolate tart for my students this week, and as we were eating it during the break halfway through our 2.5 hour class, aforementioned student said, mouth full of tart, in mouth-is-full voice, �hey, does anyone need this tart from out of my mouth?�
Soon thereafter there were numerous jokes about who should get the last piece of the tart.
Today I made a very yummy soup and also a TASTY new cake. Tomorrow there is a meeting of my faculty seminar, and we�ll be discussing Levinas, subjectivity, pain, torture and killing, and, well, reading Levinas is torturous already, and I�m the one who chose all these readings, so I thought I should probably offer some cake along with all that. It�s a traditional egg-whites-only white butter cake with a bit of cinnamon, cocoa powder, and almond and vanilla extracts added to give it a spicy flavor. And it is moist and fluffy and fantastic.
I also made a very tasty soup of leeks, celery, broccoli, spinach, rice and peas. If you want to make it for yourself, basically start with some butter and olive oil in a stock pot. Saut� two thinly sliced leeks and two chopped stalks of celery for awhile with some ground red pepper, then add a head of chopped broccoli florets, two or three handfuls of fresh spinach, some frozen peas, and 3 or 4 tablespoons of rice (remember, rice grows, especially in soup) along with four cups of any stock you like, or 4 cups water and 1.5 cubes of Knorr Vegetable bouillion. Bring it to a boil and then let it simmer it for a half an hour or so. Add some salt and pepper, and squeeze some lemon in there, and it is time for dinner, my friend.
And, finally, now that I�ve had my six months of Verizon-sponsored terror, I am now ROCKING Verizon. Not only did I get the huge cash refund for all those months of their indifference to their very bad service to me. I learned some things. Basically, Verizon has lots of services. It�s just that they won�t actually offer them to you unless what they�re offering costs more money than you�re already paying. I think they are actually trained to be this way, which is sad for everyone. But. If you want something, you just have to keep asking for it. Don�t think that just because you�ve asked once, you�ve been given the answer. It has been unbelievable to me last year and this year how freaking expensive it is to have a telephone in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. I mean, in California I got the most basic service and my bill was never more than $20. Today I made two calls about billing (annoying, because you have to call two separate divisions to talk about billing for online versus telephone service, but whatev). The first one was to online Verizon. Yes, they have applied my refund. And I got them to reveal to me that there is a package that allows me to pay $29.99 per month for DSL instead of $37.95 for the very same service. There is also a possibility of paying $14.95 for a very very slow version of DSL, but since the DSL I have is often frustratingly slow, and I do use DSL constantly, much more often than I use the telephone, I decided to go for the $30 version.
My second call was to the phone part of Verizon. When I first got here I got the plan where you pay $45 flat fee and all your local and long distance calls are covered. But let�s face it. Jill doesn�t make that many phone calls. And when she does make long distance phone calls, it�s often on her cellphone anyway. For instance she often talks to David-from-LA when she is walking home from teaching on Tuesday nights at 10pm. And yes, when she talks to David-from-LA, she refers to herself in the third person. It�s her thing.
Anyway, I called Verizon a couple of months ago and asked about cheaper packages and after many many questions got my package lowered to $27.95. But with all the taxes and stuff it was always more like $40. TOO MUCH MONEY. So today I called and said, look, what is your cheapest possible phone service. TELL ME NOW. I kept asking, �Is that the cheapest one? Is there nothing cheaper?� And starting next month I am paying $16 per month including taxes. If I make more than 25 local calls in a month I�ll have to pay extra (that will never happen). Everything else is a toll call, but I can handle that. Problem solved.
I also scheduled doctor appointments for August, and then I even got A LOT of work done today. It�s like some extra hours were added for me or something. Even though I watched two hours of television in the middle of the day. And I didn�t even wake up early. Mysterious.
However, I did intend to start my two on-deck art projects, one for Gene, and one for a friend with an upcoming birthday. That didn�t happen today.
One last thing. One of my fellow web-journalers, who is, I should declare, a HUGE fan of Hans Blix (TCNTUNWI), and would probably always choose Blix�s side in a fight, posted this, dedicated to my last journal entry about Blix�s psycatic break.
12:14 a.m. - April 07, 2006
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