Well, I'm not sure how it's come to this so early in the quarter, but I have once again come to a "light reading" phase.
Essentially, every quarter or so, I end up rereading children's and/or other easy books. I just get too exhausted to read any general fiction. Our book club is reading a book about Japanese Internment right now, and I just can't see having the energy to put up with feeling sad for it. I know it will make me cry, so I am avoiding it :| How's that for politically unsavvy?
Usually, I reread Howl's Moving Castle, Me Talk Pretty One Day, both of Alan Alda's autobios, Transformation (Carol Berg one), and a few others. I am rereading a romance (le gasp!) ... or I guess I was-- I finished it again today. A Japanese romance/supernatural book called Be With You (don't feel like clicking the flag at the top to write the Japanese title right now).
Anyway, so I'm trying to find some other Japanese romances. Or light books in general. Am reading Voyage of the Dawn Treader for December's book club, which is, yes, a Narnia book. I also am happy that Bryson's In a Sunburned Country is our January book, as that is another rereader during stressful times.
Anyway, let me know what other books are good! Nothing too emotional or complicated. Funny, light romance, children's- let's hear 'em!
Monday, October 25, 2010
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Crazy Weekend
And not in a "we drove to Tiajuana and don't remember what happened after that" way. More in a "was so busy I had a headache the whole time" way.
Friday was GRE studying (last minute) and book club.
Saturday was GRE taking plus midterm grading plus a play (hurrah for Albee).
Sunday was finishing of midterm grading, Emmy watching, semi-cooking, essay reading, homework posting, book for school reading madness.
So much to be done! I wish I could post something more interesting. Did decent on my GRE, definitely better than last time. Midterms were a trip-- kids didn't know what The Holocaust was v.v
At least the Holidays are coming up. As in, Halloween, Thanksgiving, my Bday, and the Christmas. I am excited to have Christmas with Emmy :) Plus, we may be going to Disney World early next year. That would be super lovely, I think. Want to go to Hogwarts Land or Harry Potter Land or whatever it is called.
Anyway, the Emmy was definitely a highlight for this weekend. We still haven't made it through all of Elmo in Grouchland, but I am learning the first three songs pretty well. Mandy Patinkin is a riot! :D
Friday was GRE studying (last minute) and book club.
Saturday was GRE taking plus midterm grading plus a play (hurrah for Albee).
Sunday was finishing of midterm grading, Emmy watching, semi-cooking, essay reading, homework posting, book for school reading madness.
So much to be done! I wish I could post something more interesting. Did decent on my GRE, definitely better than last time. Midterms were a trip-- kids didn't know what The Holocaust was v.v
At least the Holidays are coming up. As in, Halloween, Thanksgiving, my Bday, and the Christmas. I am excited to have Christmas with Emmy :) Plus, we may be going to Disney World early next year. That would be super lovely, I think. Want to go to Hogwarts Land or Harry Potter Land or whatever it is called.
Anyway, the Emmy was definitely a highlight for this weekend. We still haven't made it through all of Elmo in Grouchland, but I am learning the first three songs pretty well. Mandy Patinkin is a riot! :D
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Stressed Out!
There you have it, I am stressed out. And really, I am too busy to post anything, thus the lame-o post I did IN CLASS (which was a class assignment thing, and for which we were given about 5 minutes). Lordy, I need to get my writing sample together so I can mail it in and have it ready for workshopping and editing at the Writing Center tomorrow.
The "final final" college list has shifted YET AGAIN. UCSB Lit program required a GRE subject test, which means they super look at that shit. It shouldn't be important, and it is important to me that it not be important :)
Also, I have noticed that I seem to curse more the tired-er I am. Oh noes!
In any case, I am getting together two writing samples (got to total 25 pages together for one program, so I'm doing one ten page and one fifteen page). Have my CV more or less together. GRE is Saturday. Then I have to do my statement of purposes. Apps. themselves should probably be done this Sunday come to think of it-- get my letters of recommendation "official requests" out with a few months before they're due. Oy!
A few other things to get together. My MFA writing samples, for one. Have some poetry editing to do. I should probably send my edits to J as well, who is my advisor. Also, I think I need to do some research statements, and a few random other stuff. Need to do a general statement about having a disability and it affecting GRE scores. Ugh.
Plus, I need to update my capstone proposal, write an autoethnographic paper, do another auto paper on the GRE, get some more poetry written toward my chapbook, and do more than one collab project, because I really just can't say no to a good collab.
Shoot, I also need to call all the admissions counselors for the programs to see if they have any suggestions. Ugh, putting it off 'til next week. Then, if I find out the GRE is important and my score is uber crap, I can end up not applying. Bother.
So anyway, I am stressed.
The "final final" college list has shifted YET AGAIN. UCSB Lit program required a GRE subject test, which means they super look at that shit. It shouldn't be important, and it is important to me that it not be important :)
Also, I have noticed that I seem to curse more the tired-er I am. Oh noes!
In any case, I am getting together two writing samples (got to total 25 pages together for one program, so I'm doing one ten page and one fifteen page). Have my CV more or less together. GRE is Saturday. Then I have to do my statement of purposes. Apps. themselves should probably be done this Sunday come to think of it-- get my letters of recommendation "official requests" out with a few months before they're due. Oy!
A few other things to get together. My MFA writing samples, for one. Have some poetry editing to do. I should probably send my edits to J as well, who is my advisor. Also, I think I need to do some research statements, and a few random other stuff. Need to do a general statement about having a disability and it affecting GRE scores. Ugh.
Plus, I need to update my capstone proposal, write an autoethnographic paper, do another auto paper on the GRE, get some more poetry written toward my chapbook, and do more than one collab project, because I really just can't say no to a good collab.
Shoot, I also need to call all the admissions counselors for the programs to see if they have any suggestions. Ugh, putting it off 'til next week. Then, if I find out the GRE is important and my score is uber crap, I can end up not applying. Bother.
So anyway, I am stressed.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
In-Class Writing
Prompt
Argue that:
Consumers have control over the images that fashion their lives. Consumers take commodities and reshape them to give them their own meaning. Social values drive economic values and choices. We have agency.
If social values did not drive economic values, there would be no organic food movement. People value their bodies, so use of products, however highly publicized, go down as we know the ramifications they have on bodies in the long run. For example, we now know that smoking cigarettes can lead to lung cancer, emphysema, and other lung diseases, yet the opposite was believed sixty years ago. While the effects of consuming GMFs remain debatable/not 100% determined yet, the question of it possibly being terrible for you effects the way populations view nonorganic foods.
--cheers?
Argue that:
Consumers have control over the images that fashion their lives. Consumers take commodities and reshape them to give them their own meaning. Social values drive economic values and choices. We have agency.
If social values did not drive economic values, there would be no organic food movement. People value their bodies, so use of products, however highly publicized, go down as we know the ramifications they have on bodies in the long run. For example, we now know that smoking cigarettes can lead to lung cancer, emphysema, and other lung diseases, yet the opposite was believed sixty years ago. While the effects of consuming GMFs remain debatable/not 100% determined yet, the question of it possibly being terrible for you effects the way populations view nonorganic foods.
--cheers?
Final Final List
A few added progs. from my advisors (I decided to repost, since my one reader wasn't looking back at the old post to see if it changed ^^*)
University of Washington Seattle:
Comp. Lit. (PhD)
English (PhD)
Geography (PhD)
Women's Studies (PhD)
Washington State U:
American Studies (PhD)
UCSD:
Writing (MFA)
Literature (PhD)
CalArts:
Writing (MFA)
University of San Francisco:
Writing (MFA)
University of British Columbia:
Women's and Gender Studies (PhD)
University of Oregon:
Comp. Lit. (PhD)
English (PhD)
Philosophy (PhD)
UC Berkeley:
English (PhD)
San Francisco State:
Creative Writing (MFA)
UC Davis:
Cultural Studies (PhD)
University of Washington Seattle:
Comp. Lit. (PhD)
English (PhD)
Geography (PhD)
Women's Studies (PhD)
Washington State U:
American Studies (PhD)
UCSD:
Writing (MFA)
Literature (PhD)
CalArts:
Writing (MFA)
University of San Francisco:
Writing (MFA)
University of British Columbia:
Women's and Gender Studies (PhD)
University of Oregon:
Comp. Lit. (PhD)
English (PhD)
Philosophy (PhD)
UC Berkeley:
English (PhD)
San Francisco State:
Creative Writing (MFA)
UC Davis:
Cultural Studies (PhD)
Monday, October 18, 2010
hmm...
I can't think of anything to write about today, but I'm trying to do a post a day for a while, if I can. Yet, I think if I force myself to write something tonight, it will end up being about TV. And then you will judge me!
I am reading Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others, and am pretty irritated by her, to be perfectly honest. She definitely has some interesting points, but she elevates photography so much over other art/creation forms that I keep getting annoyed. Is it any surprise that she is a photographer? Plus, she keeps mentioning these photographs, but none of them were included in the book-- what the heck? I don't want to look them up, because they are all war and torture images, but I feel like I should know what she is talking about.
And, if she is so sure that these things can't be expressed in words, why the devil did she write essays about them rather than including the photographs themselves? It is like she directly countered herself through her methodology!
I don't mean to say that I find words more powerful than photographs- I just think that we see so much more than we read (and we read a lot), that we become apathetic to powerful images. Sontag argues against this in the case of religious iconography for the truly spiritual- but what the devil does she mean by that? I have a crucifix on my wall, and I mostly just see it in my peripheral- I don't even think of it as a man being tortured (much less the son of God being tortured). You have to focus on it to feel something, if at all.
Bother, but this is a boring post. And it really belongs on my pain blog. I suppose I'll do a longer posting there once I've finished the book.
I am reading Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others, and am pretty irritated by her, to be perfectly honest. She definitely has some interesting points, but she elevates photography so much over other art/creation forms that I keep getting annoyed. Is it any surprise that she is a photographer? Plus, she keeps mentioning these photographs, but none of them were included in the book-- what the heck? I don't want to look them up, because they are all war and torture images, but I feel like I should know what she is talking about.
And, if she is so sure that these things can't be expressed in words, why the devil did she write essays about them rather than including the photographs themselves? It is like she directly countered herself through her methodology!
I don't mean to say that I find words more powerful than photographs- I just think that we see so much more than we read (and we read a lot), that we become apathetic to powerful images. Sontag argues against this in the case of religious iconography for the truly spiritual- but what the devil does she mean by that? I have a crucifix on my wall, and I mostly just see it in my peripheral- I don't even think of it as a man being tortured (much less the son of God being tortured). You have to focus on it to feel something, if at all.
Bother, but this is a boring post. And it really belongs on my pain blog. I suppose I'll do a longer posting there once I've finished the book.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
boring books
What is it with profs assigning boring ass books lately? I'm sorry, but at this point, the Human Rights: Politics & Practice book I'm reading along with the class I'm TAing for is seeming pretty damn interesting. Which is saying a lot, on account of reading the human rights text is all review-- I know all of this already, it's just seeing what the students should know for their responses.
So, the first week of school, I read the lovely lovely Ananya Roy's Poverty Capital. Now, Roy was a wonderful speaker-- I had the distinct pleasuring of hearing her lecture on her book just after I read the text. I understand her point in throwing so many different stories about microfinance at the reader, making us recognize that there is no one microfinance narrative and all, but the whole thing was quite overwhelming. So many numbers, statistics, in short, DATA. Oh my! For a qualitative researcher (and poet), the whole book was just a headache waiting to migraine-ify.
Not to say that I didn't get quite a lot out of it. I certainly learned a lot, it's just that it was hard to take everything in. I'm sure I also lost quite a bit!
Then came this weekend's reading, which was DuPuis' Nature's Perfect Food, a book about... wait for it... milk. You may be surprised to learn that milk isn't half as interesting as it sounds. I might then add that milk sounds not a bit interesting to me, so you can imagine how exciting this weekend was. The only time I got really excited was when I found out that the chemicals used to produce strawberries are extremely toxic, and that it is widely agreed upon that nobody ought eat nonorganic strawberries. Oh noes! They don't sell organic strawberries at my grocery store! Where the devil can I procure these sweet-lipped beauties? (wait, that sounded a bit like the opening to a romance that wants to be a porno).
Thank goodness that book is over. But still I am reading yet another book for the human rights class I'm TAing for, which sounds interesting, as it's about a woman who does human rights work in Brazil. Unfortunately, at page 40, she has pretty much just gone around being horny and never getting laid. It's all quite boring. I'm quite curious when this is actually going to teach me something. It is literally the most boring of the three very boring books I've listed. The book is called Dance Lest We All Fall Down, but, despite the lovely title, it is agonizing! I'm hoping it will pick up when she starts doing activist work of some kind. Or maybe she'll actually get laid as opposed to just drooling over random men and occasionally kissing them (before promptly leaving the country).
Anyway, I'm hoping to get the readings for HR done tonight, so I can focus on Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others tomorrow. Oooh, now there is a page turner! I will write more on it when I actually... you know... read it... In the mean time, wish me luck with Dance...! ¡Ay carajo!
So, the first week of school, I read the lovely lovely Ananya Roy's Poverty Capital. Now, Roy was a wonderful speaker-- I had the distinct pleasuring of hearing her lecture on her book just after I read the text. I understand her point in throwing so many different stories about microfinance at the reader, making us recognize that there is no one microfinance narrative and all, but the whole thing was quite overwhelming. So many numbers, statistics, in short, DATA. Oh my! For a qualitative researcher (and poet), the whole book was just a headache waiting to migraine-ify.
Not to say that I didn't get quite a lot out of it. I certainly learned a lot, it's just that it was hard to take everything in. I'm sure I also lost quite a bit!
Then came this weekend's reading, which was DuPuis' Nature's Perfect Food, a book about... wait for it... milk. You may be surprised to learn that milk isn't half as interesting as it sounds. I might then add that milk sounds not a bit interesting to me, so you can imagine how exciting this weekend was. The only time I got really excited was when I found out that the chemicals used to produce strawberries are extremely toxic, and that it is widely agreed upon that nobody ought eat nonorganic strawberries. Oh noes! They don't sell organic strawberries at my grocery store! Where the devil can I procure these sweet-lipped beauties? (wait, that sounded a bit like the opening to a romance that wants to be a porno).
Thank goodness that book is over. But still I am reading yet another book for the human rights class I'm TAing for, which sounds interesting, as it's about a woman who does human rights work in Brazil. Unfortunately, at page 40, she has pretty much just gone around being horny and never getting laid. It's all quite boring. I'm quite curious when this is actually going to teach me something. It is literally the most boring of the three very boring books I've listed. The book is called Dance Lest We All Fall Down, but, despite the lovely title, it is agonizing! I'm hoping it will pick up when she starts doing activist work of some kind. Or maybe she'll actually get laid as opposed to just drooling over random men and occasionally kissing them (before promptly leaving the country).
Anyway, I'm hoping to get the readings for HR done tonight, so I can focus on Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others tomorrow. Oooh, now there is a page turner! I will write more on it when I actually... you know... read it... In the mean time, wish me luck with Dance...! ¡Ay carajo!
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