department of homeland stupidity

Edit: Hoaxed, hax0red, whatever. A true shame, in some ways, but the story is a fake. oh well.This is crazy. Absolutely fucking ape-shit. Article here. Summary: A Dartmouth senior requested via Inter Library Loan a Chinese language copy of Mao's Little Red Book for a history class on Communinsm. Upshot: a visit from two agents from Homeland Security, as the student's record included significant time abroad.

Inter Library Loan. Academics, depending upon their institution, have to wheedle and cajole books out of the system, and you're telling me the Feds are farking monitoring it? Maybe they could make the process more effective, instead. And maybe they could not feel threatened by a bloody cultural/historical artifact. Communism falls under their watchlist? That's unbelievably wrong. McCarthy would have loved to have the technology and off-the-constitution powers these guys have. I can't even write a particularly coherent post I'm so shocked. So I'm going to go dig through some boxes and see if I can find the Little Red Lighter that a friend brought me back from China. Of the crack-lighter variety, it plays "Mao's Song" in a tinny electronic voice every time it's used. And then back to my MLA paper.

open stacks

All admit it - I'm lame. Or a geek. Or whatever. Yesterday I worked in a library here in the Big City with Open Stacks. Gasp. It's been a long time since I've had that particular, not-to-be-underrated luxury. My primary libraries in the UK were non-circulating request libraries, and the public library I've been hobbling along with is similiarly closed-stacks. Yet, joy of joys, I needed Journal of Pedantic Minutiae (34:1), and the public library provided me with one-day access to heaven. Not only that, I suspect there's almost nobody working in my field (well, there aren't that many of us, and my sub-field is sufficiently obscure to ensure the core of what I'm looking for is always available) at said library, because Everything was on the shelf. And hadn't been checked out in years. A 10 hour day in the stacks, happily surrounded by sloping and sliding piles of books by the end of the day. Not that I got any writing done for the upcoming paper, but damn, I feel like my brain works again. Priceless. Even better, it occurred to me to ask a friend who very generously has dragged out a master's degree in Philosophy over an ungodly amount of time while he works full time as a lawyer if I might avail myself of his student privileges. Rarely have I been so pleased to damage my back while lugging 8 large, heavy volumes back to my private den of academic iniquity through 14 degree weather. Hmm. Procrastination over, I'm back to work. But surrounded by a pleasant semi-circle of useful books...

snow mostly gone; panic attack too

Well, the snow has been gritted, shoveled, rained, walked, ploughed, and otherwise summarily dismissed by the inhabitants of this fine metropolis. Shame, really. And it wasn't a proper panic attack, more of what one would call a "wobbly" in the UK. So the snow's mostly gone, and last night's wobbly, as well. I'm facing an alarming amount of work between now and the end of the month, what with the MLA paper to write, the freelance pay-the-bills-and-help-friends gig (full time) for 2 weeks, the freelance pay-the-bills-and-help-a-friend gig (part time, ongoing), the freelance pay-the-bills gig (project), and, oh yeah, bloody preparing for interviews. "I found reading the Art of War at the time strangely soothing," said my tenured friend. Hmmph. I'm wondering how such lovely sentiments as, "If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant," are going to help in my interviews. I struggle to imagine sitting in a hotel room pretending to be weak, striving to irritate the interviewers. More coffee. More snow would be nice, as well.

snow

I've woken up to snow today. Not that much, really, but enough to make the trees and the sidewalks and the fire escape railing outside of my window white. Perhaps it's because i'm a west coast transplant, but there's something so profoundly wonderful about this white stuff that falls from the sky. Don't even have to pay for a lift ticket to see it.

He's A Whore

One,I haven't listened to Big Black in far too long. Two, the right place called with the right interview offer. It ain't wrapped up yet, by a long shot, but being the fame-whore job-whore whore-whore that I am, bring it. No offense intended to whores, by the way, as I abuse the noun: I have no idea, and couldn't and can't. But they called, and my mind is willing to entertain anything, while my beliefs and politics are struggling a bit with the just-add-water for-sale sign. Hmmm.