the end of the world is nigh
happy dead (or is he?) jebus day! i hope you found lots of eggs.
i've just flown in from germany, and boy are my arms tired! (hahahah!!! gold does not tarnsish, my friends!) i spent most of my time in
Rüthen, birgit's home town. we took a couple of side trips to visit friends and do other things (hamburg, luebeck, timmendorfer strand, detmold, and bonn were also in my path). i had a nice time.
one thing i did was pop in on the friedrich ebert stifftung (a foundation for the furtherance of studies into socialism / social democracy). i needed to buy a couple of books (which i didn't get) but the lady i dealt with loaded me down with twenty-odd other free ones, so that was nice.
now for the bad news: i was the spokesman for u.s. foreign policy (move over colin towell). if you ever hear anyone say that european criticism of the u.s. is confined to the pointy-headed-intellectual set, say "horsefeathers!" answers to variations on the question of "what the fuck?" were demanded of me by a housewife, a retired road builder, three current construction workers, two office workers, and a carpenter (and several point-headed intellectuals for good measure). see my earlier post about how i'm bloody sick and tired of having my country's politics being the number one topic of conversation everywhere i go. in a moment of exasperation i advocated the reading of the book of "revelations" for a primer in the rationale behind the u.s. policy around the world. . .
by the way (and related to this topic only because i saw it on the flight over), watch "a.i." if you haven't already. an astonishing and wonderful film, that.
i just had a heated telephone conversation about politics with my mother, and it has set me to thinking . . .
i was, as they say in the south, "raised right". my parents taught me all of the general things: respect, courtesy, generosity, forgiveness, politeness, etc. my mother added a special spice to the mix, however: combativeness. i mean combativeness in a good way. my mother (and, in his own, rather quiet way, my father) taught me to stand up for what was right (or at least what i perceived as right). by the time i got a brain (junior high, more or less) i had come to understand that it was the definition of nobility to criticize or resist things that were wrong.
one reaps what one sews, of course. now and then i have big political arguments with my folks (my father and i had one particularly nasty one that resulted in our not speaking for a few weeks), but on the whole i think we (my parents and i) agree that some things are worth fighting over.
generally, by the way, i can bring them around to my side. they both voted for nader in the last election, for example. they created a monster! heheh
i love my parents. i hope you can love your's.
Carlton recently mused over what pink floyd called his "possible pasts". i shall do the same, in the spirit of comraderie . . .
staying in my hometown (bessemer, alabama) never crossed my mind and never has. i suppose i would go back to the area if a good job opened up, but that's about it.
i very nearly never went to hattiesburg (home of USM, see the "my old school" link). i almost attended berry college in rome, georgia (i had filled out the housing forms). i almost almost (alternatively) attended the university of the south in sewanee, tennessee. had i gone to berry, i have no idea what would have become of me. had i gone to sewanee i would be even deeper in debt than i am now and would have likely had a much more significant problem with alcohol than i do now (and would possibly have developed a drug problem, based on the experiences of people i know who went there). had i succeeded in graduating from sewanee, however, i would likely have had a more prestigious grad school track (if i chose grad school).
at usm, on the other hand, i got a fine education and made fine friends (several of whom i continue to connect with). i also went to germany on exchange, which led to my meeting birgit, which led to my two years living in germany, which furthered my relationship with birgit, which is now approaching its eighth year . . . net win, i figure.
i very nearly stayed in germany to work on my ph.d. i would be no closer to completion now, but i would have had less teaching experience and would possibly never have learned how much i love teaching. i would have, instead, become an academic. as it stands now, i'm not so high on academics.
had i stayed in germany instead of coming back to the u.s., i would have missed out on several pleasant friendships. of course, german universities are essentially free, so debt wouldn't have been a problem . . .
who knows? i've done what i've done. i've had a generally pleasant life. i'm relatively content. there are things i wish i'd done slightly differently, but most of that has to do with me being lazy.
today in class i was explaining NATO to my students. i argued that one could view the origins of NATO two ways (not necessarily as one or the other of these, however): first, NATO was an alliance designed to defend non-communist european states from communist aggression (the official line); second, NATO was an alliance designed to keep non-communist european states firmly in the US orbit. i further argued that some states (italy, w. germany, turkey, and greece, for example) were clearly in "danger" of becoming communist at various times, while britain and france were important due to their potential and habit of acting independently. i said, in this connection, that after ww2 the US needed only to say "jump" and the british would ask "how high?"
i refined that moments later to say that the british, in fact, were very conscious of their former status as world power and were therefore less than inclined to respond well to an order to jump. instead, NATO was a forum in which the US could suggest that jumping was needed, and the british would then have the polite cover of being able to "voluntarily" show off how high they could go. how fitting, then, that i should come home from school to read that
Britain will send 1,700 troops to Afghanistan!
what did shakespeare (through john of gaunt) say? ah, yes . . . "this land of such dear souls, this dear dear land, dear for her reputation through the world, is now leas'd out, -- i die pronouncing it, -- like to a tenement or a pelting farm. . . ." (king richard II, act 2, scene 1)
france, by the way, has generally refrained from jumping. vive les pieds lourde!
since i'm getting whipped in the ncaa tournament office pool, i think i'll focus on
GLOBAL MARCH MADNESS! (this is one of the funniest things i've seen in a while: watch for #5 seed Microsoft in the South bracket)
today i drove down to charleston with sara (my roommate). she had to go down to do something with the social work people (her m.a. field). among other things, we went to a ceremony in the capital building for the declaration that march was "social work month" in the state of west virginia. before the ceremony i was standing and reading a pamphlet about the legislature and someone walked up to me and said "hello! how are you?" in a few split seconds i thought "who here could possibly know me?" then i looked up and saw the person speaking to me and thought "who is this guy? he knows me, i recognize him, but who is he? ok, play it off . . ." and just as i put out my hand to return the greeting it dawned on me: it was the governor! hehehe
one of the biggest problems with 19th and early 20th century german nationalism (other than the general silliness of nationalism) was that it tried to conceive of all germans as being, essentially, alike. as has been proven time and again, however,
Austria is not germany. austria is very much its own country and austrians are very much their own people. keep your eye on austria.
while reading the link, remember this list of some prominent austrians: falco, arnold schwartzeneggar, kurt waldheim, mozart, hitler, gustav klimt, emperor maximillian of mexico, and arnold schoenberg (metternich, mr realpolitik, was from the rheinland of germany).
scott just showed me a photo of the oklahoma city bombing memorial and it caused me to think about new york's thing . . .
albert speer, in his plan for "germania" (the redesign of berlin as world capital during the third reich) was really big on the idea of shafts of light reaching the heavens. it occurs to me that, with the twin towers shafts (huh huh! he said "shafts"!) the terrorists have NOT one: the NAZIS have! jeez.
the useless former governor of pennsylvania, Tom "Dubyah Really Likes Me!" Ridge, has
unveiled a color -coded alert system to help us . . . do something, i guess. there are many pretty colors involved. here is the official breakdown of the colors and their meanings:
GREEN: danger is sound asleep -- think of forests (see Penn's sylvania); think of vulcan blood (calm and logical); think of tom green (silly, insignificant, forgettable); think of Green Acres (and that cute little pig); think of money (spend spend spend)
BLUE: danger has been awakened -- think of bombay sapphire gin (and the resulting illness); think of vida blue (and baseball's balance between tension and relaxation); think of marlene "the blue angel" dietrich (so sexy, so threatning, so ambiguous)
YELLOW: danger is afoot -- think of when you have a full bladder; think of the flashing caution lights at intersections; think of that insipid song from "ferris bueller's day off" and the impending return of cameron's father to discover his destroyed car; think of jaundice
ORANGE: danger is right behind you! -- put yourself in the place of James II of England (and the impending "glorious revolution"); think of the dutch national soccer team (which will win this year's world cup); think of fozzy bear (who will ruin tonight's show somehow); think of syracuse choking in every important athletic event
RED: danger is beating up your grandma while you struggle to recover from the knock on the head it gave you when it was behind you -- think of the commies (if you are old enough) and shout "wolverines!"; think of coughing up blood / blood in your urine / blood in your stool; think of the philadelphia flyers; think of lucille ball
the good people at fox television have brought us a new show: "the american embassy". it is set in london, and focusses on a young woman who is a mix between ally mcbeal and briget jones. i don't know much about how things work in london . . .
but i am currently drinking my miller high life from a stein with "american embassy -- bonn, germany" embossed on it. you know how the movie "gosford park" is supposed to be a clever look at the "downstairs" of english society? this new show is a look at the "upstairs" of the u.s. embassy system, and i worked for two years downstairs at the compound of the biggest embassy in the world (before drawdown). from my downstairs perspective, this show looks bad.
you see, the characters are all attractive and appealing (surprise!). i met "bob", the spouse of the woman in charge of taxes for all americans living or working in europe: he was retired army intelligence and a really fun guy (so, one appealing person). i also met "mary", the wife of one of the junior consular officers (she was appealing AND attractive). that's it. the rest of the employees of the embassy (all hundreds of them and their spouses) were (variously) boorish, self-important, provincial, snotty, incompetent, rude, helpless, spoiled, and lazy.
one thing about the show IS spot on: the employees know very little about the country hosting them, and care less (and the show is set in BRITAIN!). ask yourself these questions: if a show seeking to glamorize the state department would keep the provincialism in the portrait, does this mean that the truth is worse? if the truth is worse, is it a surprise that the u.s. does rather poorly at diplomacy? isn't it scary that it doesn't surprise you?
in case you haven't guessed, my experience in bonn taught me that i'd rather put on a pecker and go peck shit with the chickens than work for the state department. but i'm not bitter.
oh dear!
Shelley has reminded me that i have forgotten the anniversary of her wedding with scott. sigh. i can remember the number of explosive charges the british planted underneath the messines ridge (near ypres, belgium) in 1917; i can remember my old license plate number; i can remember vivid details of the day i met scott and the day i met shelley . . . i can't remember their anniversary!!! (and i was a participant in the ceremony!)
what is wrong with me?
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO SHELLEY AND SCOTT! LONG MAY YOU REIGN!
here is one of many reasons to visit me in west virginia:
Seneca Rocks. i hiked up to the top today, and my legs are tired.
i have nothing of import to say, so i'll say this: three times star trek has addressed the notion of a deep space probe coming back to haunt humaninty . . . . in the original series episode called "the changeling"; in the film "the motion picture"; and in the film "the voyage home". i realize it is probably just a plot device, but could it be something more . . .
scott has tried mightily to help me understand what the big damned deal is about poetry. he HAS convinced me that wordsworth was important beyond the salons. but i still don't care for poetry. it just doesn't get me off.
tonight in class we watched "big jim mclain" (which is so bad i won't even bother to link it) starring john wayne. suffice it to say that the duke was commie-hunting in this film.
for the discussion section i contrived a future in which rap/hip hop music had been determined to be a cancer on american society and so it's fans needed to be rooted out. i then (suddenly) put a student on "the stand" about her connection with hip hop. she opted for the "tell the truth approach", after which i told her that she was ruined UNLESS she named the names of those who had attended the 1997 beastie boys concert in secaucus, new jersey with her. (i had the other students murmur and whisper every time she gave an answer). i think i got the point across about the red scare (and similar scares): you can't win!
i'm watching
GUILTY BY SUSPICION for my movie class. i wonder, dear readers, what it would take to get you to be a rat . . . (i'll say if you will)
the following
Fraud Warning has been issued in regard to my investment opportunity. sigh.
thanks to my investment opportunity, i am now hit number five in a
Google Search for "south africa department of mining"!
i finally watched
"the princess and the warrior" (aka "der krieger und die kaiserin"). it is by the director of "run lola run" (aka "lola rennt"). it is a very nice film. i preferred "lola", but i like this too. a few things of note:
the director (tom tykwer) and lead actress (franka potente) are sweet on each other. tykwer is from wuppertal, germany. "the princess and the warrior" is set and (mostly) filmed in wuppertal. birgit (my girlfriend) lived in wuppertal for two and a half years. the suspension railway in wuppertal (featured in the film) is the only one of its kind and is 100 years old (and has only had one fatal accident). friedrich engels was from what is now a part of wuppertal (barmen).
by the way "der krieger und die kaiserin" would be better translated as "the warrior and the empress" and "lola rennt" would be better translated as "lola races". fyi.
also by the way: franka potente was in "blow" with ray liotta, who was in "cop land" with sylvester stallone, who was in "assassins" with antonio banderas, who was in "philadelphia" with tom hanks, who was in "apollo 13" with kevin bacon.
while grading midterm exams i learned that, as a result of the building of the transcontinental rairload, kansas gained 150 million settlers. you learn something new every day.
just when i was ready to give up on the possibility of making a fortune, i get this email . . .
STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL & URGENT
Dear Sir,
I am Mr.Joseph M. Tejala, a native of Cape Town in South Africa and I am an Executive Accountant with the South Africa Department of Mining & Natural Resources. First and foremost, I apologized using this medium to reach you for a transaction/business of this magnitude, but this is due to Confidentiality and prompt access reposed on this medium. Be informed that a member of the South Africa Export Promotion Council (SEPC) who was at the Government delegation to your country during a trade exhibition gave your enviable credentials/particulars to me. I have decided to seek a confidential co-operation with you in the execution of the deal described Hereunder for the benefit of all parties and hope you will keep it as a top secret because of the nature of this transaction.
Within the Department of Mining & Natural Resources where I work as an Executive Accountant and with the cooperation of four other top officials, we have in our possession as overdue payment bills totaling Twenty-one Million, Five Hundred Thousand US. Dollars ($21,500,000.) which we want to transfer abroad with the assistance and cooperation of a foreign company/individual to receive the said fund on our behalf or a reliable foreign non-company account to receive such funds. More so, we are handicapped in the circumstances, as the South Africa Civil Service Code of Conduct does not allow us to operate offshore account hence your importance in the whole transaction.
This amount $21.5m represents the balance of the total contract value executed on behalf of my Department by a foreign contracting firm, which we the officials over-invoiced deliberately. Though the actual contract cost have been paid to the original contractor, leaving the balance in the tune of the said amount which we have in principles gotten approval to remit by Key tested Telegraphic Transfer (K.T.T) to any foreign bank account you will provide by filing in an
application through the Ministry of Justice here in South Africa for the transfer of rights and privileges of the former contractor to you. I have the authority of my partners involved to propose that should you be willing to assist us in the transaction, your share of the sum will be 30% of the $21.5
million, 60% for us and 10% for taxation and miscellaneous expenses. The business itself is 100% safe, on your part provided you treat it with utmost secrecy and confidentiality. Also your area of specialization is not a hindrance to the successful execution of this transaction. I have reposed my confidence in you and hope that you will not disappoint me.
Endeavor to contact me immediately through my e- mail:
to confirm whether or not you are interested in this deal. If you are not, it will enable me scout for another foreign partner to carry out this deal.
I want to assure you that my partners and myself are in a position to make the payment of this claim possible provided you can give us a very strong Assurance and guarantee that our share will be secured and please, remember to treat this matter very confidential , because we will not comprehend with any form of exposure as we are still in active Government Service .Once again, remember that time is of great essence in this transaction. I wait in anticipation of your fullest co-operation.
Yours faithfully,
Joe M.Tejala
------------------------------
although it pains me to betray the trust mr tejala has placed in me, i must analyze this message.
just for fun, let us assume it is real. this means that mr tejala has just given away an illegal scheme to a total stranger. i would be a fool to trust him because of that.
and if i suppose it to be an honest mistake? perhaps he knows something about a high roller with my name? then he and his partners (they trust him) are idiots for confusing me with the real target.
i'm sure it is a scam, though. this forces me to wonder who in their right mind would fall for it. should i be flattered that he is impressed by my credentials? WHAT CREDENTIALS? a master's degree in history? my massive debts? my record collection? i would have to be living in delusio-land to fall for this for a second!
it is a sweet deal though . . . over seven million dollars for ME! and all i have to do is give them my bank account number . . . . (where IS that number?)
jeez.
so
SWITZERLAND has decided to join the u.n. . . . i can't imagine what difference it will make. sigh.
(read the link, by the way: it's HI larious!)
shelley just passed along the touching story of how she met scott.
what she may not know is that when scott got back to mississippi from london, he had loads of things to say about the wonderful woman he hung out with there! then, in the spring of 1994, he and i were sitting on our porch wondering what to do for grad school. we had missed all of the important deadlines for money, and i hit upon the idea that my parents were oklahoma residents. so i called for info on o.u. and o.s.u. neither of them looked good for me, but scott liked the looks of o.s.u.'s department of english (and a certain member of their ph.d. program . . . hehe) and the rest is in shelley's story!
except that, when scott and i drove to stillwater to check the place out, we had lunch with shelley. later, to scott, i commented favorably on a portion of her anatomy (i don't normally do things like that, but i wanted to try to make scott blush).
while reading
Has the US lost its way? in the Observer, i remembered something that happened to me last november. . .
i was in taxco, mexico (a small silver mining town) with birgit and her cousin. we had been speaking german with one another (two germans, one american: i lost) and birgit had been speaking spanish on behalf of the cousin and me with a little old shopkeeper lady. the lady was very friendly and made it clear that she loved having "friends" from around the world by showing us her album of memories (postcards, letters, etc). after a while she found out that i was american (she had assumed i was german to that point) and her demeanor changed. she put both hands on my shoulders, looked up at me with sad eyes, and in broken english said "stop bombing, please".
i have been asked to defend various aspects of the u.s. and its culture on numerous occaisions. i've experienced variations on the taxco incident in england, scotland, france, spain, belgium, austria, switzerland, the netherlands, germany, poland, and the czech republic. i've experienced this from natives of the above countries and also from turks, filippinos, kurds, iranians, kenyans, liberians, italians, hungarians, australians, south africans, norwegians, canadians, estonians, and palestinians. sometimes the people i deal with in these situations are friendly, like the woman in taxco, and sometimes they are hostile and demanding. sometimes i am able to pleasantly shock the questioner by agreeing with them and sometimes i frighten them by being even more angry about u.s. politics, culture, and policy than they are. sometimes, when they are unfair or incorrect (and this is, unfortuantely, rare) in their critique, i try to correct them or defend against their accusations.
i'm bloody sick and tired of it.
why does my home country (and so many of my fellow citizens) seem to beg to be despised? why do americans (who are notoriously wrapped up in being liked by their fellow americans) seem so unconcerned with being liked by people in other countries (or at least not hated)?
it just dawned on me that i rarely say anything cheery on here (but i would note, in my own defense, my recent mention of the show i saw). if anyone reading this does not know me they might think i was a curmudgeon. i swear i'm not! honest! i'm really very happy and easily-amused.
sooo. . . a few of my favorite things: i love music and baseball and food and alcohol and travel and star trek and nudity and pinball and e.r. and my roommates and my friends and teaching and my family and my computer and my car and the forrest and hills and movies and my girlfriend and honesty and the lord of the rings and books and cigarettes and my shoes and . . .
as he mentioned,
scott and i were discussing some scary stuff.
consider this: hindu/muslim violence in western india could boil to the point of making it a pakistani/indian war.
sleep well!
i'm rereading
Faces of the Enemy by Sam Keen. it is an excellent study of propaganda through the ages.
in it he uses the phrase "warfare state". i love that! it is so perfect at describing the u.s. (and some other countries) at least since the start of the cold war. i live in a warfare state which is forced to constantly seek out / manufacture enemies (or welcome real ones, who have similar needs). like the aztecs' constant struggle to appease the sun, our modern warfare state has to march or die.
TWO UPDATES
ONE -- i confronted the newest plagiarist today. i really enjoy this stuff far too much (i must have been an inquisitor in a past life). basically, as they turned in the midterm exam each student got an essay in return, except mr x. he got a note which said i need to talk to him and that he should hang around. he did. we went to my office and i gave him my standard spiel (which is very effective).
i told him that, since i have graded hundreds upon hundreds of pages of student writing, i have a acquired a bit of an eye for what is standard student material. when i see something that varies from the norm, it sets off alarm bells. i then asked him if he could imagine what about his essay set off alarm bells for me . . . he shrugged his shoulders and said that he had know idea what it was about his paper that might raise suspicions. i sighed (it is a very effective sigh), opened my desk drawer, and revealed the evidence of his wrongdoing. [young people must do jaw excercises these days: it is amazing how far they can get their jaws to drop! same goes for the eyes: if his eyes had gotten any wider he could have seen the back of his head.] what the chump did not realize (they never do) is that his response to my question had determined whether he would simply fail the essay or the entire course. a bit of contrition would have saved him.
so i explained that there was paperwork i needed to do regarding his case and that he would hear from me soon. goodbye! then i began a slow but sinister laugh which eventually echoed throughout the monongahela river valley.
TWO -- i have now gotten the whole story from the perpetrator of the anti-german comment. it turns out that, around a month ago, he was in the coffee shop right next to campus (he often is). the place was full and he could not get a table. the german students meet there on mondays (this was a monday). he then raged aloud (as is his wont: he is an office mate of mine and has anger and volume control problems) that he "forgot it was fucking nazi day."
he thought no more about it (not being a thoughtful person) until this week, when the wheels of social justice finally rolled into the department. it seems that one of the germans present at the time of his outburst had (quite rightly) protested to her chair and to the office of social justice and to the owner of the coffee house. our department has now informed my colleague that he is to write a formal letter of contrition to all concerned or risk disciplinary action.
the rich irony in all of this is that my colleague was recently awarded the "teaching graduate student of the year" title (and related financial bonus). he was NOT given this award because he is the best teacher (or even a good one). i know this because our bosses do not observe our teaching at all. instead, they give this award to one of the most senior grad teachers as a way of rewarding longevity (i guess). last year i was put up for it by one of the junior faculty (who didn't understand the politics behind it). i had my nomination withdrawn, however, because another colleague of mine was, in my mind, genuinely the better teacher and more deserving (he won, too).
the current winner has a long history of verbally abusing his students. i know this because of a friend who worked in advising (unattached to the department) and fielded complaints about him. so it is rich that he might have his award withdrawn due to a public manifestation of what he has been doing in the classroom for four years! ehehheheh. karma may not be instant, but is gonna get you!
