rocket to nowhere

• I passed. #fb #
• What do you suppose appropriate content for a footnote is? #
• The fat one cries because he wants food, because he wants out, because he's orange. #
• I don't know why my automated new blog post tweet is leaving out the link. Anyone? #
• Dreamt I was driving down dirty, green-lit hospital corridors under the streets of Chicago. #fb #
• Harley-Davidson stickers on mini-vans . . . #
• @Colter_Burkey Na Ferkel? Wie geht's? Lernst Du noch Deutsch? #
• Wario Stadium with Ryan!!! #

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Here is some incisive and insightful commentary from WFMU’s Doug Shulkind on the recent Kanye West imbroglio (a subject I never once thought this blahg would broach):

The entire event seemed preconceived: The staging appeared blocked; the camera angles locked in; the Hollywood happy-ending scripted as if drawn up on a lunch napkin at Spago. Even more telling is that all involved had so much to gain: Kanye re-upped his bad-boy bona fides; Taylor got boosted into the pop-star stratosphere; Beyoncé cemented her status as the #1 one-name überdiva. Of course the increasingly irrelevant music biz profited most of all.

Set piece or not, what’s truly disturbing about this third-rate melodrama is how the roles played by its three principals conjure those familiar old racist paradigms: 1) Angry black man; 2) innocent white ingenue (menaced by angry black man); 3) benevolent black mama (who cuts the black man down to size, reassuring the white power structure).

The detestable irony in all this is the unwitting involvement of President Obama, whose “jackass” comment only served to legitimize these standard-issue racial stereotypes. Is it any surprise that his off-the-record utterance was leaked? How better to cut our African-American-in-Chief down to size.

The whole thing was a trap. The extent to which we as a collective culture lock-stepped so willingly into its steel teeth suggests that that there are still many more miles to cover in the backwoods of the American soul before coming home for some steaming post-racial porridge.

• Yes, I'll wait an hour for Sunday brunch! #
• final edits and beginning to feel . . . ill? no, just tired. seriously. #fb #
• Will I feel a sense of relief when I hand these f***ing things in or am I going to have to wait to find out if I passed? #fb #
• Handing 3 copies each of four exams to a really very nice person should be more cathartic than it was. Let the waiting begin! #
• Stoneham, CO, is the place to be on a Monday night. Or was before I left. #
• Am just now feeling the tremendous exhaustion (and useless rising anger). #fb #
• Is garnishing a Gardenburger with lettuce and tomato redundant? #
• Watching Vertigo. Kim Novak jumped in the bay and didn't lose her shoes. #
• I have awakened with one hell of a sore throat. This is how useless anger translates itself. #fb #
• Tired of the "discourse." #
• Craving a burger. #fb #
• @tierack Using what? in reply to tierack #
• If I eat a burger and begin to feel better, will it have been purely psychosomatic?#fb #
• This is some kind of seriously ridiculous. I mean really. #fb #

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• If I use the word "interesting" one more time . . . #
• 2 basically done. 2 almost done. Today is Wednesday. Slow and steady wins the race. Something. Something. Something else. #
• @cornelln I think people who are offended by the word "retarded" will be offended by any use of it. But you're right. in reply to cornelln #
• except for one final read-through, which I will perform tomorrow . . . #

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• Having slept in, I now need some eggs. I wish bacon were an option. Guess I'll substitute ibuprofen. #fb #
• I feel the same way about The Novel and Modernism: far too large to actually grasp. Whitman is appropriate here: I contain multitudes. #
• Rereading my notes on Molloy and wondering how I managed to take so many notes on Walser before actually doing so. #
• If there is one question I dread, to which I have never been able to invent a satisfactory reply, it is the question what am I doing.Beckett #
• Link to previous: http://bit.ly/77ijn #
• @tierack You should try to have more LOLS . . . in reply to tierack #
• Dear Lev Grossman: Learn the difference between plot and story. Then learn the difference between difficult and boring. http://is.gd/2K9cu #
• I've been so busy that these days off (before the shit storm tornado) feel . . . not . . . right. #fb #
• Oh my, *that* was a nap. #
• Couldn't get to sleep, but couldn't sleep in as I soon have an appointment to get beaten with oak leaves. #
• beaten and overheated and doused with cold water in the end #
• Getting ready to finish reading W. G. Sebald's introduction to Susan Bernofsky's translation of Robert Wasler's _The Tanners_. #
• Sebald's 7 pictures of Walser are themselves an essay. #

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