I Shake My Fist at Cruel Fate

I am presently stuck in the Seattle Airport on a disatrous trip. I was left on the tarmac for an hour and a half yesterday at LAX before we were sent back to the gate for a maintenance/paperwork issue. This caused me to be late into Seattle missing my connecting flight to Walla Walla on the only flight in to such a small airport. I could not get rerouted to Pasco, Yakima, or Pendleton before the next morning. The airline scheduled me to arrive on the first plane into Walla Walla Saturday morning and put me in a hotel in Seattle. I got up at 7am and went to Sea-Tac airport for my flight. The new plane was delayed and then the flight was outright canceled with it's own maintenance problem. Presently, I am scheduled to depart at 2:25 to arrive in Walla Walla on a different plane at 3:25. I am wearing the same clothes and the same disposable contacts because I don't have access to my checked bag. I've effectively yelled at 4 different customer service desks, but cannot get additional compensation until I fight with the national customer service center that won't open till Tuesday after the holiday. I'm getting hammered and am ordering the most expensive food in the Sea-Tac airport for lunch to maximize the vouchers. I think I'll get the wild alder plank salmon before my flight. My daughter has been heartbroken by this loss of a day on my "3-day weeekend" - there will be hell to pay! Have a good weekend, I'll try to salvage mine!

An Abyss of Emptiness on Valentine's Day

On that most oppressive of all days, V-Day, I was actually required to attend a lecture on Byzantine iconography given by one of the world's foremost experts on Saint Valentinus. Walking back I found it amusing how much the modern concept of V-day is so superficially detached from the historical context of it's origin. As I watched with horror the ritual rush of couples and flowers trying to make something of the scourge of expectation that is V-day, I reconfirmed my position that love is usually a self-deluded falsehood of conditioned brain chemical responses that allow spiritually grotesque (and often physically grotesque) people to find each other appealing. There are exceptions, but they are more rare than most people think. Unfortunately, modern concepts of love are usually driven by self-serving needs to feel desired or special, rather than any selfless disposition toward the other party. It is akin to spiritual prostitution. On every V-day, the level of desperation in the air by people trying to tangibly confirm their ideas of love can be seen as comically tragic. I find this neediness weak and pathetic, people need to learn to cleanse their souls in the pit of despair and loneliness in order to truly find themselves and become a self-contained whole. On the real side of the emotion, I am about to fly back to Oregon today to spend the weekend with my daughter. I will be looking forward to a completely lovely 3 day weekend! Until next week, be well!

Food Coma after a Large Dinner

After a prominent guest speaker today, I was able to gorge myself on a dinner of very high quality at the faculty center (usually no grad student rifraff allowed). As a poor grad student, the opportunity for a free dinner invitation is always welcome. However, this evening offered especially appealing group conversation over drinks and appetizers, followed by a full menu of quality cuisine options and first rate bottles of vino. All the Byzantinists and Late Antiquity people went with a variety of elegantly prepared fish dishes consistent with the prominent Christian iconography associated with fish. The guest speaker actually made a light-hearted comment on the choice similarities reflecting areas of study. Maybe her assessment had something to it as reflected by the conspicuous contrast with the arrival of my dish. A couple hours before, I had just delivered my preliminary paper topic outline to this group. The outline emphasized the importance of gladiatorial games and spectacles in reinforcing Roman imperial order with the executions of Christians in the arena (I also was able to do it without getting bogged down in the quagmire that is Foucault). True to form, the arrival of my succulently juicy medium rare prime-rib dinner confirmed the bloodlust and brutality of my particular area of historical inquiry. In any case, this delicious dinner was followed by a most excellent dessert of the tiramisu variety and more vino. I hadn't eaten a quality meal in quite a while - it was good to gorge myself in true Roman fashion. Now I must lay around in a worthless fashion for a bit. Fine!

A Witness to Job Search Carnage

I'm feeling a bit better after going to the doctor to get checked out physically. Apparently, my respiratory system is somewhat compromised due to chronic air-flow restriction. The situation may require sinus surgery at some point, but other medications will be tried first. I have had some relief with what they tried this week. The situation could be congenital, but it is conspicuous that a majority of my old military unit suffered severe respiratory ailments that forced a great many out on medical disability. We were collectively exposed, without proper equipment, to some nasty stuff that neither our government nor Saddam himself would own up to. The mysterious "fire" that supposedly destroyed the stacks of medical records my unit submitted upon our return to Georgia leaves the situation conveniently ambiguous. Some of my records have been whitewashed to the point that I am shown on a flight from Rota, Spain to Kuwait City then I disappear until I miraculously reappear in Rome months later in preparation for a flight back through Ireland to Hunter Army Air Field in Savannah, Georgia. According to the omniscient federal bureaucracy, I dropped off the planet for awhile despite the existence of archived CBS news footage of me behind 'Slick Willy' Clinton on a platform, an off-camera interview with Connie Chung, and a mild personal confrontation with Clinton's press secretary at the time Dee Dee Myers. This is the specific reason for my personal animosity toward the Clinton political machine. Bill was personable, but his public statements to my unit and the things he briefly said to me about our status turned out to be politically expedient lies. Hillary will function in much the same way with the remnants of this same corrupt machine. Maybe Obama can prevail, but I have my doubts it would be allowed to happen by the party hierarchy. With respect to my politically convenient disappearance from the planet, I guess I must have had access to somekind of intra-dimensional rift in the space-time continuum that allowed me to be nowhere and somewhere at the same time. In any case, my body has remained more resistant to what I was exposed to than most of my comrades, and I guess I'm obstinate enough that it takes quite a bit to kill me off. Maybe, I'm becoming too cranky to die in my old age!
On a side note: I witnessed one of Princeton's top grad students in Classics come to UCLA and try to compete for a job opening. He delivered his presentation and was summarily destroyed by a barrage of questions and attacks, some fair and some not so fair. These attacks left his argument a gutted corpse on the side of the road. I've never seen anything quite so brutal in academia. It was good to see a willingness to to tear down the vacuous pretentiousness that often comes out of the Ivy League, as confirmed by my adviser who did get his PhD from Princeton (of course - C exhibits none of the traits of Ivy corruption). However, this presentation wasn't quite as bad as what this inquisition made it out to be. The candidate was a finalist in this process and did not exude any signs of pretentiousness like what I had seen from Harvard's top-grad a couple of years ago during Oregon's hiring process in Classics. Oregon actually made a tenure offer for an inferior presentation and was turned down when the Harvard grad took a better offer. Once again, institutional repuation trumped intellectual production. The candidate I saw this week was actually better and has no chance at all. I'll be well prepared by the faculty here, but I am not looking forward to losing my secondary adviser next year while she teaches at Oxford for a year. She'll be back to help me in my third year by the time I have to face these same inquisitors, but the preparation is very oppressive. I guess I'll continue to stick to Friedrich's maxim of "that which does not kill you, makes you stronger!" - but it remains daunting. I often feel over my head. I'm off to workout while I have air flow after taking my meds. That is all!

Wiping Off the Filth of Political Participation

I still harbor bitter feelings of hypocrisy that have left me tainted due to my recent electoral participation. My sheer disgust at the electoral dynamics of this country's party system has been magnified by the staggering simplicity and intellectual vacuousness of the media coverage surrounding this circus of lies. The inherent fallacy and blind ideology of party politics is confounding. Political ideology is an abyss of falsehood, from which nothing good can emerge.
"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected."
I consider the present administration to be possibly the worst in the history of this nation (and for me it has absolutely nothing to do with Iraq), necessitating a significant change of trajectory to counteract the damage that has been done to the nation and it's position in the world. I find it disconcerting that McCain could survive and preserve his personal sense of duty and honor as a POW for six years in the Hanoi Hilton - yet he has allowed himself to be corrupted by participation in the electoral cycle of the last 8 years. He has devolved into a cranky old man who has proven willing to sacrifice his personal ideals and sense of independence on the false altar associated with the oppressive legacy of the Reagan theocracy. Six years of captivity and torture could not break the man, but political participation and proximity to this conservative heresy did : absolutely disgusting!
Hillary is completely soulless and is not even a real person, but a caricature of an actual person. My personal dialogue with Bill Clinton at least let me know he was somewhat genuine despite his slick southern style and egomaniacal tendencies. Everything about Hillary is fake - from the selective employment of her contrived southern drawl and cackling shrill laugh that hurts my ears, to her equivocating positions that constantly test the political winds. She is a complete embodiment of the 20 year scourge of polarized Washington politics - that mass of maggots that presently feed on the decaying carcass of this nation. A Bush - Clinton - Bush - Clinton dynastic progression would represent the darkest era in this nation's history, although publicly exposing the oligarchic nature behind the facade of modern democracy would be comically tragic in an entertaining way. But the masses are too stupid to know the difference anyway:
"Men are ruled, at this minute by the clock, by liars who refuse them news, and by fools who cannot govern."
The other alternative being support for the cult of personality that has emerged around Obama. The optimism surrounding this development does have the potential to move the country away from the stasis brought about by twenty years of increasing polarization, but the policy issues are very vague and this type of movement is probably to dependent on the unrealistic idealism of the worthless youth of this nation. My time in classrooms leaves me pessimistic that such a lazy, spoiled, entitled, and ignorant group can affect anything. Maybe if voting happened through an X-Box, text message, or at the end of the keg-line! Modern youth are lazy and stupid - devoid of any analytical capacity, while the old are senile and cranky - blindly clinging to the nationalistic, theocratic, or progressive fallacies of a bygone age. Both groups are too easily led by the mindless soundbites and shallow political analysis of the corporate media dominated by the false gods of religious dogma, materialism, and political correctness.

Alas, such feelings are not new:

"O god of earth and altar
bow down and hear our cry
our earthly rulers falter
our people drift and die
walls of gold entomb us
the swords of songs divine
take not thy thunder from us
take away our pride"

It is with much reluctance that I announce my candidacy for benevolent tyrant to replace the corrupted facade of democracy we now live in. Your write in support is much appreciated!

Destruction and Rebirth in the Cesspool of Life

Excuse my somewhat foul mood today, but people are scum! I have cultivated the art of optimistic depression to a highly evolved level while refusing to submit in any way to the oppressiveness of this veil of tears. Sometimes I trudge forward in life simply so I can defiantly give the finger to the cesspool that is humanity. Life in urban areas tends to reinforce my disgust for people and contempt for social order as most people are a waste of oxygen. My apologies to those of you who still cling to the false gods of tolerance and goodness with respect to the human condition as a whole, the world just doesn't work that way -nor will it ever. Transformation and destruction are inevitable: visions of any form of stabilized lasting social order, whether in the form of utopian pipe-dreams or reactionary oppression, are just delusional ways for people to shoot rays of sunshine up their ass. The filth that is life in the city exemplifies this, it will only get worse as population pressure increases.
Despite my inherent rage toward society and life in general, I have learned to appreciate and enjoy the transitory good times and select people that make this confined existence tolerable. As such, I felt it necessary to comment on KFR's latest blog in this forum as opposed to his comments section in order to directly address the UO cohort in general. Sorry to hear about KFR's rent, but such is life in Cali. I know exactly how KFR feels in terms of cohort dynamics. Although, some of you probably don't realize how much had already changed by last year as things were drastically restructured in a department undergoing a form of identity crisis. It had a very different feel to it - adrift without a viable sense of direction or cohesion. Most of the newer people were incredibly lame. The nature of the admissions process was altering the target group in negative ways. KFR's cohort year, and a few fabulous individuals that followed in later years, provided a unique constellation of good times which cruel fate deemed necessary to crush in the relentless onslaught of life's waves of transformation, destruction, and misery. It has been my experience that anything good or worthwhile in life will always be either destroyed, stolen, or corrupted in the most vile and unforgiving of ways. Despite this, I stand defiant in the knowledge new opportunities for transient happiness purified in the blood of the preceding carnage will always arise. Revel in the hedonistic pleasures of life until the next wave of destruction hits, then once again struggle out of this ocean of filth to warm yourself under the rays of sun. All states are transitory!
On a side-note of pure hypocrisy, I went against my better nature and temporarily suspended my opposition toward participation in the political process in order to vote by mail in the California primary. Because the present system is still too powerful to be overthrown at this time and the level of decay has not yet reached a state that will allow me to assemble my hordes, I will temporarily allow this exception in an attempt to mitigate the level of evil perpetuated by this government. Unfortunately, this participation in such a corrupted political system has left me feeling every bit as dirty and hungover as the morning after a drunken one-night stand when you're trying to escape out the door without being trapped into a situation you know you'll regret. Have a nice day! Sorry for the magnitude of today's pessimism - it will pass.

Sleep Deprivation in the Rain

The rain has returned and I'm hoping it enhances my ability to sleep tonight. My sleep cycle has been particularly disrupted lately due to some kind of nerve irritation (hopefully temporary!) in my hip and back injuries. I have been forcing workouts to try to manipulate my knotted muscle groups, but things continue to linger in ways that detract from sleep. Even when I drift off, I don't feel rested when I wake up. Hopefully, these things will pass soon. I'm off to a departmental grad student meeting tonight with free drinks and pizza. Maybe I can kill some of the pain with drinks and sleep well tonight. I guess I should probably translate some Greek before I go, although it might look a bit more understandable after some drinks. Maybe I'll actually meet some interesting people tonight, but the dynamics in a department so large remain somewhat specialized and isolating thus far. I'm trying to get my new digital camera up and running sometime in the next few weeks, although I'm a pretty lazy photog.