Back from Berkeley

Tired and cranky.

Lisa's response to my recent posting is well worth reading, and it points in the direction I was kind of sort of heading, which is this: we hear all the time about how 'pro-life' women, women who choose not to have an abortion, are making "the moral choice." But I would counter that all women who are faced with this wrenching decision are making a moral choice. That is, I think all women are confronted with a cruel and difficult decision as to the nature of the greater good, and that the choice to have the abortion is often--almost always--as much a moral choice as the decision not to.

Let me see if I can explain. It seems to me that, as I said before, "pro-life" is idiotically oversimplifying/distracting from a complicated issue. For one thing, no "pro-life" person really is. Nobody's "pro-life"--presumably, these people are "pro-human-life." (I know it seems I'm once again playing trivial semantics, but bear with me, I am actually going somewhere with this.) I mean, "pro-lifers" aren't opposed to, say, the prescribing of anti-biotics or weeding one's garden. I bet most of them aren't even vegan. So "life" ain't the issue. So, OK: what' s so special about human life--what distinguishes it from all other forms of life that causes it to be sacrosanct? Here, I think that fundamentalists and atheists are actually in agreement: our possession of reason. Clearly, when God said that He was going to make us in His image, the "image" He was talking about was His mind--His ability to reason, muse, contemplate both action and consequence, perform abstraction and metonymy, etc. That's what distinguishes us from even the smartest of other animals--our reason. (Please don't tell me that He meant that we were going to look like Him--that's just...I mean, does that mean God has an appendix? Or is it just the outer self we resemble--in which case, God has an anus? Call me perverse for thinking such thoughts, but I only do so to point out that the metaphysical really needs to transcend such vulgarity. Point being: He's not an old man with a beard sitting on golden throne in the clouds. Just let that go, OK?) OK, so what the pro-lifers really are is pro-reason--it is reason that makes life precious--hell, they even let this vital point slip in the fiasco of Ms. Schiavo when they struggled desperately to prove via that damn balloon footage that there was still a mind in there and that therefore her life was worth saving. The point is--look, let's do a little reductio ad absurdum.

You know that whole "living head in a jar" cliche that extends all the way back to movie classics like The Brain That Wouldn't Die and They Saved Hitler's Brain to TV classics like Futurama? OK, now let's get one of those heads in a jar and put it next to one of those zombies from the Night of the Living Dead knock-offs, one that has taken a shot gun to the head and had it blown off completely but is still wandering around 'alive.' (It has to be a Romero knock-off, of course, because in Romero's films, "Kill the brain, and you kill the ghoul." We need one of those Return of the Living Dead-type films when nothing save total vaporization kills the damn thing. God damn but I'm a geek.) Point is, we've got this living body without a head, and a living head without a body. Kill the former, and you might be charged with something, but it probably wouldn't be murder--this is why people are allowed to pull the plug on the truly brain-dead. Kill the latter, and it's definitely murder. The brain and its ability to reason make all the difference.

So preventing the creation of reason is really the point, isn't it? But if reason is only incipient, then it doesn't exist. If it doesn't exist, then what we have is life without the quality that makes human life meaningful. Granted, it is the possibility of human life, but it isn't--yet--human. Of course, we then get into the messy question of "does a baby reason, and if not, why not kill them too?" Well, having been trapped next to a screaming one on a plane recently, I'm willing to discuss that option, but no, I get your point. My counter-point would be that a foetus--when it is a foetus and not a zygote or an embryo--is a blank slate/canvas, upon which the building blocks of reason are beginning to be imprinted. So perhaps we could discuss that issue--and indeed, reputable physicians will not perform abortions past a certain point. So I don't think there's much contention there, really.

So if abortion itself is, as I've argued, is morally neutral (since what is terminated is neither reasoning nor even close, and therefore not human, its destruction is neither evil nor good) then upon what basis can a woman make a morally positive--even virtuous--decision to have one? Well, we can always start with the unholy trinity of "Rape, Incest, and Life/Health of the Mother."

"Life of the Mother" is of course the easiest. If the choice is between killing a person and killing the potential for a person, it's a no-brainer, and anyone--anyone--on the "pro-life" side who forbids abortion on these terms is not "pro-life"--they're just lunatic and frankly evil fanatics and they truly can f*** off and die.

"Rape" is trickier, but actually pretty straightforward once you think it through. We're talking about a completely involuntary pregnancy--never mind the utterly devastating trauma of the event itself--and so we're talking about a person being forced to submit involutarily to the bodily service of another. That's the textbook definition of slavery, folks, and it's not cool, not even for a finite--9 month--period of time. Even if the embryo is a person (which it isn't) and needs the mother to submit in order to live, it's still slavery. If we can't drag women off the street to, say, harvest their kidneys and bone marrow--without which people will die, to be sure--then we can't force them to yield up their wombs just because somebody else needs them. Sorry, doesn't work that way. Forcing a raped woman to carry the child to term is slavery, and there's no such thing as "slavery in a good cause." So, that.

"Incest" puzzles me a bit. I assume it's mentioned in the same breath as the others on the assumption that the incest in question is sexual abuse--but wouldn't that make it Rape? Or are we just trying to avoid the kind of reproduction that produces the Kid On The Porch With The Banjo In Deliverance? Just asking. I mean, a brother and a sister who are voluntarily lovers and want to have a kid is weird--gross, perhaps--but I don't see how Incest in and of itself is grounds for a 'moral' abortion. I need some clarification here, is what I'm saying.

Then there's "Health Of The Mother." Florence King (smart lady, very conservative but a cynic, so you have to kind of respect her) points out that this label can be construed so widely--"She might feel bad about herself and that would be injurious to her mental health"--as to represent no standard at all. Perhaps. It's tough--but it all comes back around to the question of who gets to decide and why. (The answer to the first one is The Woman In Question--possibly, possibly in conjunction with her doctor--that's always been my fall-back position on abortion, by the way: the only people who should have a say in the matter are the women who undergo them--or not--and the physicians who perform them--or not. Everyone else is largely unaffected by the consequences of enforced pregnancy, and thus their position is questionable at best, save for the sigh-inducing inevitability of comparing the practice to the Holocaust and the refusal of 'unconcerned citizens' to intervene when they should have. Which brings us back again to the question of whether the embryo is the same as a thinking, reasoning human being, which, I say, it isn't. But that ain't gonna convince those who think that when God told Jeremiah that He "knew [him] in the womb," that that meant that J. was a person from conception. Except of course that wouldn't God have known him even before that--that as one who knows that which is fated, He knew Jeremiah as an inevitability rather than as a person-in-embryonic-form? Omniscience independent of space and time really does render questionable the whole issue of 'we're human the second the sperm hits the egg because God says so' theory. Long parenthetical digression, this.)

I'm not done with this issue, but I'll post this and continue to muse...

I Continue To Suck

Yeah, I know, it really is beginning to look as though I have to rethink this whole "keeping a blog" thing, if this is how I'm going to be about it. Blogs are like sharks, in that overused simile: they either move forward, or die. Mine seems to be sinking, largely as a result of distraction--I have this symposium in Berkeley this weekend and I don't like to travel, since travelling, especially by plane, means handing control of your life over to people who hate you because their jobs have crushed their spirits by forcing them to deal with the public all day, and I don't like Berkeley much (which is no slur against the place itself--I think it's perfectly cool to dislike a city or a country or what have you--so long as you don't live there. The number of people I've had to listen to over my life who b*tch about L.A. is just ridiculous, and those of us who rather like the place all have the same impulse, which is to deliver a quick, painful cuff to the head and say "Then, leave, you whiny f***! If everybody who b*tched about L.A. would just leave, the city would suddenly be traffic-free and friendly and easy-going, like it was back in the 70s. The fact that L.A. 'sucks' is your fault, you malcontent a**hole! So leave, and solve your problem and ours!" Similarly, I think I should be allowed to dislike Berkeley--which frankly seems designed to make you feel bad about yourself for not being poor, politically angry, and dressed in various forms of hemp--so long as I don't inflict my p*ssing and moaning on those who rather like it there.) Bottom line: I don't want to do this, and I gotta. Dammit.

I am still thinking about the abortion thing, though. Mostly I'm planning on trying to explain why I'm 'pro-choice'--if only because 'pro-choice' actually comes close to describing the political position of the group who claims that title. 'Pro-life' does not. I mean, isn't everybody--suicides and homicidal maniacs and repulsive goths excepted--'pro-life'? And what does 'the culture of life' mean? Isn't all culture predicated on the existence of life? And the claim that 'abortion is murder' is catchy, but completely erronious--"murder" is a legal term, not a moral one, defined as "the unlawful taking of a human life." "Unlawful." Not "evil," which is what the slogan is intended to convey. Better to call abortion "butchery" or "monstrous"--or heck, "evil." But murder it ain't, just as it ain't 'genocide,' since no 'race' or ethnic group is the target of abortion. Etymologically, I think the folks who want abortion to be legal win out over those who don't. But that's really neither here nor there. It's a question of conflicting moralities, isn't it? The morality of the mind versus the morality of the soul. Which is a tough choice. I mean, I'm a rationalist--I believe that erring on the side of objective certainty is almost always better than erring on the side of 'faith'--'the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen' (Heb. 11:1)--but it's tough, as I say. The fact is, for all the hypocrites on the side of those who oppose abortion ("I had my abortion, and now I don't want you to have one, since, you know, I won't have to worry about getting pregnant again!" "I'm a man, and therefore completely immune to pregnancy, and I therefore have no problem condemning it out of hand!") there are those on the 'choice' side who treat it with cavalier indifference, retroactive birth-control and nothing more. And to be cavalier about reproduction--well, that unnerves me a bit. I believe women should have the choice, but I believe that with every choice comes the responsibility of making that choice carefully, thoughtfully. "Life" in and of itself is not precious, really--but it's the only means we have to exist, and existence matters. So to cheapen existence by treating abortion with affectless libertinism--I don't know, that's a problem for me. But then, I'm a guy, so what the hell do I know?

As you can see, I'm not entirely cogent yet on the subject. More ruminations will follow.

After I get back from (G*d-dammit!) Berkeley...Oh, and I should probably have something to say about the last Star Wars movie, but that'll have to wait until I actually see the damn thing. As I've said before: miles to go before I sleep...

Finished the Paper

So I'm done with the Freud/Aeschylus paper and can now, after an appropriate period of intellectual rest (24 hrs. or so) return to paying attention you, devoted reader. More patience. I am still here. And I'm thinking about tackling abortion as an issue, so, you know, that'll probably be worth coming back for...

Coy Bullsh*t and a Public Service Message

I really shouldn't go around recommending other blogs, since the appeal of mine is so limited that I'd be foolish to encourage people to seek their edification and amusement elsewhere (simpering, self-deprecating shrug, the kind that just makes you want to punch the praise-trolling bastard--in this case, me--right in the face 'til he bleeds out the ears), but that said, for all of you ridiculous, sad, deluded, pathetic, did I mention sad?, obsessed Star Wars folks out there (like me), this blog is genuinely witty and well-written, a combination of intelligent analysis of the Lucasian universe and just a plain hoot to read: http://darthside.blogspot.com/

Go, read, you'll thank me. Actually, you won't thank me, because you'll be gone, never to return. Although if you read the talkbacks, you might come back, if only to assure yourself that you're not one of those people.

Oh, and on a sick, misogynist whim this morning, I Googled the combination of "anne coulter" and "f*cking b*tch"--and, much to my complete lack of surprise, a healthy--though not overwhelming--number of links revealed themselves. To be fair, I then Googled "anne coulter" and "totally right" and got at least twice the number of links. The difference is that in almost all of the first search results, "anne coulter" was, in fact, the "f*cking b*tch" in question.* In the second search, only one--that I could find by my cursory glancing--referred to her as being "totally right"; the rest tended to contain statements like "You're totally right--Anne Coulter is a f*cking b*tch." I'm not sure if this proves anything. But it was a fun way for me to procrastinate from having to write my symposium paper on Freud's Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego and its relevance to the dilemma of heroism versus democracy in Aeschylus's Oresteia. Can you blame me for putting that off? I thought not.

*These included a highly disturbing sexual fantasy involving the rape and humiliation of Ms. Coulter, in which, under the sobriquet in question, she was encouraged to "take it all." I'm no fan, but that's just wrong.

No Excuses

Really, none. One should be more consistent about posting, especially if one wants to maintain some kind of equally consistent readership. At least twice a week and preferably three--I mean, I suppose I could turn this into one of those "here's what I did today" blogs, but aren't those kind of...ummm...well...OK, see, it's not that I don't admire the arrogance of the mindset that thinks "the minutiae of my day are, by virtue of the fact that they are the result of my existence, fascinating and important enough to share with the world at large"--I mean, that's hard-core self-delusional hubris, of which I am quite the fan. (I know, you're expecting me to make a Paris Hilton joke here--or even a Princess Di or Jackie O gag if I'm feeling particularly outre, but see, the thing about those horrible, irrelevant people is that they didn't make themselves famous--fame was offered to them by a soulless market of star-f*ckers, and they signed up for a triple helping. So sure, I fantasize about a world in which such people--people famous for being famous--accidentally fill their porcelain bath-tub with radioactive waste and bubble meltingly into unrecognizable pools of semi-toxic sludge. But I don't blame them. The fate I wish on those who shove them in my face is much, much more graphic, and not suitable for family viewing. But enough of this tangent.) But we don't want that kind of blog, because that kind of blog, wellllll...sucks. There, I said it. At least, mine would suck, because I'm a prig and a neurotic and so 'variety' is about as appealing an element in my life as 'taking a shot to the sack with a pipe-wrench.' I'm all about structure. Patterns. Habit. It's my comfort and my refuge. And as narrative, it is incredibly, astoudingly dull. So be glad you are spared this.

But as I say: No excuses. The point is, I should post more often. But 'often' is the amount of time I find myself with either little to say--I mean, how often can one find an amusing variation on the theme of 'the degree to which the Bush administration insults/poisons my intelligence/soul'? (Although John Bolton's inevitable post at the U.N. has been a source of much bridge-of-the-nose-pinching, I admit. Someone on 'Air America' posited that the reason for the appointments of people like Bolton at the U.N. and Wolfowitz at the World Bank is that the Bush folks want these men to undermine--and if possible, destroy--these institutions. Which, frankly, is the least scary explanation I can think of. A much, much worse one is that Bush & Co. actually think that these ethically aborted freaks are 'the best men for the job.') (I'd also like to point out the eerie prescience of my last post, as Bush, immediately afterwards, went off to Europe and tried to make himself look good by bashing FDR. Gotta love that. We've moved beyond the evolutionarily-challenged men of power comparing themselves to the great men of the past--Dan Quayle endlessly comparing his experience as a Senator to that of JFK--to such knuckle-dragging throwbacks degrading them. Nice. Oh, but wait. Bush doesn't believe in evolution. Fair enough. He's not a throwback. He's a Child of Cain.) But I seem to be proving my point, which is--it's never going to end, and it's eventually going to get boring. "Bush sucks" gets old just as fast as "Bush is swell"--witness the fact that Dennis Miller just got cancelled from his nightly administration of neo-con fellatio to the Executive Branch of the government. Sigh. Dennis Miller. Used to just...idolize him. Really. A hero. And then...it's like the feeling the housewife must have when the police show up at the front door one morning and tell her that her husband is in custody and they need to start digging in the crawlspace for the bodies of all the hookers that went missing during his "road trips." But, as always, I digress.

So I'm occasionally stumped for content that measures up to the effort it takes to type it out, and frankly I don't want y'all coming here and finding crap. So I'll try to find my anger a bit more frequently, but in the meantime, just relax in the knowledge that my silence is sparing you the reading of drivel. Honest.

Still Tired, But In A Different Way

So I was watching Warm Springs, the HBO-produced biopic on FDR, covering the Sunrise at Campabello months/years following his contraction of polio. And it really is a lovely film, focusing quite squarely on the personal/emotional aspects of Roosevelt's life during a period of absolute horror, rather than on the political issues that so dominate one's consideration of his character otherwise. And pairing this film--at which, I confess, I wept quite pathetically and cathartically--with the four-hour documentary The History Channel just did on his life, I'm continually awed by this man. FDR was my first "favorite president," and I think, push coming to shove, he still is. Though I'm much more a Wilsonian personality myself, I have to think about what Roosevelt accomplished--and what he overcame in order to accomplish those things--and I just think about how we as a nation--no, make that, we as a world dodged a major f***ing bullet when this man was confronted with the prospect of World War II.

Was he flawless? Hell no, but the most interesting and admirable men/women never are--read Plutarch's biographies of Julius Caesar, Alcibiades, Cicero, and Cato the Younger for proof. He cheated on a loving wife--bad form, though his behavior towards her afterwards, and the marriage of profound, loving (though never again romantic) friendship they were able to forge speaks to redeeming qualities on his part. (Not to mention hers, God knows.) He refused to spend his political capital on cracking down on the institutionalized bigotry of the South; a failure of humanity? Perhaps--but then, his time at Warm Springs (deep in the heart of Georgia) no doubt taught him just how monstrously ingrained the bigotry of that part of the country was, and as the brilliant politician he was--master of the realm defined by 'the art of the possible'--he knew, probably with bitter regret, that he would spending his much-needed political capital on a hopeless cause. Johnson, after all, another master politician, had to wait until the 60s--until King and Parks and Evers and their ilk had given their blood to the cause and the TV cameras had shown the country the firehoses and the police dogs and the time had finally come, when Brown v. Board of Education had finally undone the damage of Plessy v. Ferguson--before he could force through the Civil Rights Act. FDR failed the Southern blacks of his time, but perhaps it could be argued that History failed them first, and there's no fighting History when it's really determined to win. Then there's the whole 'packing the Supreme Court' thing--ugly act of executive tyranny that it was, and thank God he got his one major political beat-down for it. (Can you imagine if he'd succeeded, what subsequent presidents--Nixon, Bush-under-Rove would have done with it? One shudders.) And the internment camps for Japanese-American citizens were definitely not cool--a brutally callous act of paranoid racism. (Though, not to exonerate, if I had to choose between this form of internment, and doing time as a political undesirable under the Nazis--or under Stalin--or being a prisoner of war under the Japanese military--oh, I'd be on the first bus to Tule Lake lickety-split.) So there are marks in the 'minus' column, as there always must be. He wasn't a saint.

But when you stop and think about Pearl Harbor, and how utterly and completely f***ed we could have been. When you think about how Roosevelt warily and (given how he would have lost a bit for re-election if the isolationist public had known his true intentions about getting involved) wisely kept us out of the war for as long as he could--but carefully and often secretly sustained the European Allies as a bulwark against Hitler's evil--when you think about the fact that as Commander in Chief he waged a two-front-war, and won--when you think about the New Deal and the WPA and Social Security and the citizen-oriented government he created that Bush is trying so hard to uncreate. A country that emerged from the war as "the good guys"--we were the heroes of the war--we beat the Nazis and stood between a world of freedom and the forces of communist totalitarianism. And when you think that he did all this despite a physical condition that could easily have shunted him into the dim rooms of a mansion, hidden from the world, brooding on suicide. When you think of all this. And there are still people who think that Reagan was the greatest 20th century American President. Dear God. Dear, dear God. Go watch Warm Springs, and you realize that all other 20th century presidents are complete and total p**sies in comparison. Reagan--that pretty boy actor--would have broken like a china-doll under the emotional burden that FDR had to carry.

We were unbe-f***ing-lievably lucky. Imagine someone else in those shoes--someone lesser. Imagine a country in which Lincoln wasn't there for the outbreak of civil war--and think about how the reconciliation of the nation all went to s**t when Lincoln was assassinated and that loser Johnson took over. And you can see, can't you, how history is so often a question of whether the great man is in the right place to save the world. And now think about 9/11. And where 9/11 has lead us--into a stupid and irrelevant war on an unrelated country (ruled by a nasty dictator, yes, but one who had nothing to do with the attack--it's as if we decided to go to war with South Africa after the Japanese attacked. "But apartheid is evil! What are you, racist???" Well, no, just--I don't know--I have this desire for decisions for 'defensive' war to be based on the identity of the initial attackers. Call me wacky.) We continue to coddle and kow-tow to the vicious rulers of, oh, I don't know, Saudi Arabia, where most of the hijackers were from, and of Pakistan, where Osama's most likely hiding out. We continue to sell our debt to places like China--possibly the top contender for the world-wide contest of "the most wonderful people ruled by the most evil government"--though I'm starting, without too much hyperbole, to wonder if we might be in the running for that title. You see Bush holding hands--literally--with a man who sanctions the stoning of women and you just have to think...how did it come to this? How did we go from FDR to...this wretch who embraces villainy because there's a buck in it and a sop for his contributors?

Yeah, yeah, FDR overlooked Stalin's evil--especially since Stalin's evil tended to take the form of rendering the Soviet Union a much weaker foe in the post-war years--killing all the smart people and the good generals and the heroic soldiers is not the way to win the clash of the super-powers, Joseph--but he did it to defeat a greater threat, and he made damn sure we got the bomb first, just so dear old 'Uncle Joe' would be in no position to push his ideology where it wasn't wanted (though the concessions at Yalta might have been a bit much--Roosevelt's deathly illness compromised his genius there, I think.) But Bush has always been in bed with the Saudis--with all of the Middle Eastern tyrants--because they're the ones who keep him in oil money. It's never been about beating terrorism, it's never been about 'what's good for America'--not for him, not for Cheney, not for any of them. It's been about 'what's profitable for me, and the guys I hang out with at the Billionaire Boys Club. Money talks, and bulls*** walks, and I can buy all the votes I need, so why shouldn't I look out for Number One?'

FDR led us to great things--to a country that stood as history's most powerful democracy. Kennedy led us into space and to the moon--a first great step towards our inevitable future in the universe. Johnson stood against the forces of poverty and racism and stared them down. Where are the great achievements proposed by the leaders of today? Bush had a huge budget surplus, and after 9/11, a world ready to befriend and aid our nation. Did he stand up and say, "We will no longer submit ourselves to the tyranny of foreign oil. The terrorists hide behind oil money--we will, as a nation, pledge ourselves to be free of our self-destructive dependency on that flimsy shield in 10 years. Period. General Motors, get cracking--if you need government money to build a really efficient electrical car, we'll pony up." "Enough with people dying of cancer. We're the most technologically advanced nation, with friends in the innovative nations of Japan, France, etc.--We're going to spend and spend and work and work until we find a cure. The end." "Hundreds of thousands of children die every year from cheaply treatable illnesses--most of them due to dehydration. We can cure them for pennies a life. We will. And if it costs a bit, f*** it--we're the good guys." "Sex slavery ends now." "The drug policy of this government has ruined our inner cities and enriched evil men abroad. No more." He could have. He had the chance. We could have gone forth into the world and reclaimed our--dare I say it?--glory. But that would have demanded a great man. And Bush?--oh please. I don't think he's decent--I don't think he's prudent--I don't think he has a scrap of compassion (hell, neither did FDR until polio knocked him off his perch and into the real world of suffering and struggle. But it did--and one look at Bush's thoughtless grin tells you that he doesn't know the meaning of the word 'suffer'--and probably can't spell it on the first try. OK, that was cheap and ad hominem, but dammit, I'm pissed.) And maybe you don't need any of those qualities to be a 'great leader'--hell, look at Henry VIII, or Hannibal (the Carthaginian, not the cannibal-psychiatrist.) But those are the qualities his defenders proffer as his virtues--that he's a good, down-home Christian country boy who wants a clean-living America on which Jesus smiles and where we can all buy the SUVs we really want and pay no taxes for anything because we're Americans so shouldn't it all be free?

At 9/11, we had a moment--like Pearl Harbor--like the Kennedy assassination--when we were shocked out of our smug complacency and were ready to be lead to great things. And instead, Bush has simply told us that that smug complacency is the great thing, and that we need a lot more of it. And, since that's so much easier to buy into than the idea that we ought to do something with our lives, we buy it. Oh, and alienate the rest of the world in the process--so much for being the good guys.

My wife asked me, as we watched Warm Springs, whether I thought that we could ever elect a man with a severe disability like that today. I said no, but that it wasn't the disability that would have kept FDR out of office. It was his greatness. We don't want heroes anymore. Heroes challenge us, force us to get off the couch and into the world. Heroes put us through the effort it takes to achieve greatness. We don't want greatness. We want George W. Bush. And that means that we're the ones with the disability. And that thought...makes me very, very tired indeed.

So...Tired...

Still not enough energy to put together a coherent ramble, much less diatribe. Been lifting heavy things and carrying them long distances--distances that seem longer and longer with each trip--to a vehicle, then driving said vehicle through what seems to be inevitably terrible traffic, only to arrive at my destination (which is a wonderful place, really, truly--it's just...stairs...oh so many stairs...third-floor garret...heavy heavy things...so heavy...) and carry said heavy objects up said stairs and have to pause half-way through and wonder whether maybe just living quietly on the streets isn't a preferable alternative...and then go to bed in aching pain with the antithesis-of-comforting thought that I get to do it again tomorrow. But I'm done with that part. Now I just have to unpack...something I still don't care enough to do, really...(I'm overusing the ellipses this post, aren't I? I'm sorry, I meant 'Aren't I...?') Anyhoo, all this physical and time-consuming misery is happening RIGHT WHEN I have a fresh stack of papers to grade RIGHT AWAY, and I have to write a 20-page paper for a symposium I'm going to at the end of the month, and I also have to revise another essay by the end of the month--though I shouldn't b*tch about this, because I'm revising it for...wait for it...publication. Yes, I'm going to be published. In a real literary journal. With pages and a shiny cover and everything! That is seriously cool and even more seriously important, since getting published, I'm told by those in the know, is the real factor in getting hired...Sure hope so! So anyway, while I love you all, I'm very busy and very very very very very very very very very tired--so tired, in fact, that I meant to type 'very' for several more pages, but I just got exhausted and figured, 'f*** it'--yes, I'm compromising my artistic vision out of exhaustion, that's how tired I am. So please continue to hold, your call will be answered in the order it was received...(Had to end with an ellipse, didn't I?) (Oh, but wait--I just--f***.)