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Dec. 12th, 2001 04:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lapsedmodernistthis week is another neverending stretch.
monday i got done with about 60% of my work so went to galapagos with charlie and mateo to hear the plantains. (sample lyric "we're the plantains, it means nothing in particular, we're the plantains, we're gonna get you perpendicular"). of course half the obies in the city showed up. the performance was preceded by a poetry reading (and i use poetry in the loosest sense of the word possible). first reader was a hippie spouting something horrible with horrible earnestness. then there was a "tortured" artist who was wailing about blood and gunpowder in the asscrack, meanwhile his cronies were creating a visual prop by taping another guy to his chair and putting "eat my art" stickers over his mouth and eyes. he kept trying to smoke although his mouth was taped up, and he kept coughing, which was good because then at least we had an excuse to laugh. then charlie and i won a pitcher of beer in a trivia contest
(sample question: 30% of population of greenpoint and williamsburgh are
a) convinced that daisy bombs will bring joy and happinness to people of afghanistan
b) under 18
c) under investigation under the new anti-terrorism laws
d) eaters)
so alcohol really alleviated the pain of this reading, but not so much the pain of the "performance art" atmosphere that was going on which basically consisted of an aural assault by a feedback through an amp into a mike and an alarm clock on every table that was going.
obies all over the place. matt showed up with some friend named keats, and the following conversation ensued:
charlie (upon introduction to keats): oh, like the poet?
keats: which poet?
it was pretty priceless.
and today i went to the departmental chrismas party which featured thematic "ethnic" food including raw meat--an ethiopian meal, i guess that everyone eyed but few tried. was talking to barney about how science fiction really has a lot of anthropological subtext, which is an idea i really like--so orson scott card's "speaker for the dead" is pure anthro, and if i ever teach a 101 class i will assign "tigana" as extra-credit in the postcolonial history unit. the plot (the king/sorcerer demolishes a land and casts a spell so that no one except its denizens remembers its name--you've got memory, erasure, diaspora and all sorts of shit in there)
okay, must study more.
monday i got done with about 60% of my work so went to galapagos with charlie and mateo to hear the plantains. (sample lyric "we're the plantains, it means nothing in particular, we're the plantains, we're gonna get you perpendicular"). of course half the obies in the city showed up. the performance was preceded by a poetry reading (and i use poetry in the loosest sense of the word possible). first reader was a hippie spouting something horrible with horrible earnestness. then there was a "tortured" artist who was wailing about blood and gunpowder in the asscrack, meanwhile his cronies were creating a visual prop by taping another guy to his chair and putting "eat my art" stickers over his mouth and eyes. he kept trying to smoke although his mouth was taped up, and he kept coughing, which was good because then at least we had an excuse to laugh. then charlie and i won a pitcher of beer in a trivia contest
(sample question: 30% of population of greenpoint and williamsburgh are
a) convinced that daisy bombs will bring joy and happinness to people of afghanistan
b) under 18
c) under investigation under the new anti-terrorism laws
d) eaters)
so alcohol really alleviated the pain of this reading, but not so much the pain of the "performance art" atmosphere that was going on which basically consisted of an aural assault by a feedback through an amp into a mike and an alarm clock on every table that was going.
obies all over the place. matt showed up with some friend named keats, and the following conversation ensued:
charlie (upon introduction to keats): oh, like the poet?
keats: which poet?
it was pretty priceless.
and today i went to the departmental chrismas party which featured thematic "ethnic" food including raw meat--an ethiopian meal, i guess that everyone eyed but few tried. was talking to barney about how science fiction really has a lot of anthropological subtext, which is an idea i really like--so orson scott card's "speaker for the dead" is pure anthro, and if i ever teach a 101 class i will assign "tigana" as extra-credit in the postcolonial history unit. the plot (the king/sorcerer demolishes a land and casts a spell so that no one except its denizens remembers its name--you've got memory, erasure, diaspora and all sorts of shit in there)
okay, must study more.
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the inanity will never stop
Date: 2001-12-13 01:50 pm (UTC)sounds like quite the outing.
i have been mia i'm not sure why. i keep falling asleep on the couch at early hours and accidentally sleeping for like 12 hours. i have a final tonight which i am not ready for, and then my classes are done til next semester. yeehaw. the keats thing, my word, priceless indeed. i'm in the office reading your entry, and i just busted out laughing. same with your description of the performance art. i'll probably be online after class with some beers, celebrating its end. i never read tigana. perhaps i'll pick it up and give it a go so that i'm a step ahead of anthro 101. ;P
*streeeetch*
almost time to go home and cram.
i've been roleplaying all day. its going to be hard to switch modes into circuits. i'm afraid i'll answer a question by casting a spell and dodging an attack.
yipes.
Re: the inanity will never stop
i think someone placed a curse on me so that this paper that i am doing will never, ever end.
i keep thinking of this quite from Buffy when she says: "Well, on the bright side the world might get sucked into hell, and then I won't have to take the finals ...or maybe I'll be taking them forever"
i actually called you last night because i wanted to brainstorm a bit about mocumentary as a genre and what it can do in the larger discourse of documentary (esp. ethnographic) but alas you were not there.
oooh, you'd love Tigana. it's sort of high fantasy but with lots of historical stuff (loosely based on 15th-c. Italy, I believe) and it is just SO GOOD. it's my favorite fantasy book after Lord of the Rings. the guy who wrote it is named guy gavriel kay, definitely definitely read it. (he was the guy who wrote the trilogy that i know i told you about because he weaves arthurian myth in it)
btw i was rereading some oscar wilde fairy tales to unwind the other day and i realized that the whole cutting off the shadow thing in "hard-boiled wonderland" was actually done before in an oscar wilde story "the fisherman and his soul" which was pretty interesting. i wonder if it was an intentional allusion or not.