Acephalous

News of Absolutely No Interest to Academics Who Read or Write Blogs; or, Really, When I Say "Uninteresting" I Mean It

Deep in the heart of Irvine an index finger hovers over the "Submit" button on the MLA's online Special Session proposal page.  He owes it to her and him and him to press it.  But he can't. 

Scott: Must . . . press . . . submit.

Scott's Nagging Fears: Don't do it!  It's not perfect yet.

Scott's Beleaguered Practical Side: The deadline's tomorrow!

Scott's Nagging Fears: Press that button and it's over.  No more revision.  There's always tomorrow.

Scott's Beleaguered Practical Side: There certainly is.  But Scott should spend it finishing his chapter, not agonizing over the parallelism of a clause in his proposal.

Scott's Nagging Fears: But they will hate him for his faulty parallelism!  They will laugh unto tears and without cessation for months until they die painful dehydrated deaths!

Scott's Beleaguered Practical Side: No, they won't.

Scott's Nagging Fears: Yes, they will.

Scott's Beleaguered Practical Side: No.  They won't!

Scott's Nagging Fears: Yes.  They will!

Scott's Beleaguered Practical Side: NO THEY WON'T!

Scott's Nagging Fears: YES THEY WILL!

Scott: Will you two zip it already?  I'm going to hit send. 

Scott's Nagging Fears: No, you won't.

Scott: Yes, I will.

Scott's Nagging Fears: No.  You won't!

Scott: Yes.  I will!

Scott's Nagging Fears: NO YOU WON'T!

Scott: YES I WILL! (presses "Submit")  Ha!

Scott's Nagging Fears: You're gonna regret that.

Scott: Maybe . . . but wait until word gets out about this panel.  It will be the talk of the blogosphere for hours. 

Scott's Beleaguered Practical Side: You tell 'em!

Scott: No one will have anything else to talk about.  They'll all wish they could be in Philadelphia next December!  They'll go out of their way to make sure they're there for THE GREATEST EVENT IN BLOGOSPHERIC HISTORY.

Scott's Beleaguered Practical Side: Yeah!

Scott: Yeah!

Scott's Nagging Fears: Like this changes anything.  They all still hate you . . .

Can Someone Explain This To Me? [UPDATED!] [AND AGAIN!]

I normally avoid writing about such trivial stuff, but in addition to garden variety exhaustion I'm now running a fever.  So the little things are getting to me.  Like spam whose intention I can't fathom.  I understand penis-enlargement spam.  Plays off insecurities.  Contains links to penis-enlargement pills.  Makes sense. 

Weight-loss spam?  Makes sense.

Car insurance spam?  Makes sense.

"Beaver in disloyalty kisses the drizzle's price" spam? 

"Beaver in disloyalty kisses the drizzle's price" is all the email says.  That's it.  No link.  Nothing.  There's a point to the pointless of "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."  Why would someone named "point man" want me to know what happens to those who are "beaver" in their disloyalty?  Why would somone who is want to kiss "the drizzle's price"?  Who is The Drizzle?  What is his price?  Do I only have to pay to kiss it if I'm beaver in disloyalty?   Or is "kissing the drizzle's price" a euphemism for the dire fate of those who are beaver in their disloyalty? 

Maybe this is some sort of test. 

Maybe "point man" wants to know whether I'm beaver in disloyalty. 

Maybe this post proves that I am.

Maybe it proves that I'm not.

Hard to tell.

[UPDATE: Since posting this I have received another email--this one from "morgan bridges" who wants me to know more about "fanaticism dry cleaners."  What more?  "Bash and nobody glimmers in the bridle of the creator."]

[UPDATE II: Now "harriot trent" informs me of "my raise."  In the interest of fun I will render it in free verse form:

shift. 
flap unwanted
unmoved
in the animated disruption.
lip to!

the quietness drifts heroic,
too residual to adjourn,
to subscribe
to a lantern of estimation.

the merry-go-round
of influenza punctures
all odd-jobs.

catnap contentment,
the soap opera errand.

the sigh to commemorate
what was Catholic,
as the octopi gather verification
to vandalize the "v" with illumination.

I'm tempted to say that "harriot trent" is really Rich winding me up.  Some of that's too evocative to be truly random.]

A Xenobiological Romance, Part II

Tuesday night the Little Womedievalist and I celebrated the end of Winter Quarter by rewatching War of the Worlds.   Of course it's not the best film out there, but it enabled us to mock thetans mercilessly.  (Let me tell you: we need the enabling.)  The film, we thought, would be exactly the sort of thing we needed to establish a sound boundary between the Winter quarter which ended on Monday and the Spring quarter which begins on . . . Monday. 

Can you smell the panic in the air?  Because I'm emenating it as I once "emenated" sweat at baseball clinics held on astroturf in humid Louisiana summers.  (By "humid" I mean "precipitationish days in which the periwinkle sky contained nary a puff of cloud yet made one feel end-of-a-marathon wet the moment one stepped from air conditioned bliss.") 

Check below the fold for my initial reaction to the film.  (Far fewer of you read me then.  I was but a babe.)  While lacking historicist oomph of my typical diatribe, it still bears some relation to yesterday's objections.  (I remember wanting to edit some grammatical infelicity from it earlier.  Only I can't find it now.  First person to point it out wins Recognition For Being the First Person to Point It Out . . . and a yellow ribbon.) 

The usual caveat attached to things I wrote before yesterday applies here:

If I say anything stupid it's only because I wasn't that bright and haven't read widely enough yet.  All of which is only to say that my new theories about the film and novel will be expounded upon in the comments tomorrow.  I can't see to put two sentences which aren't about S.W. Mitchell together tonight. 

It's a personal failing.  I understand.

There Is Unattractive . . .

. . . and then there is Nicolaus Copernicus.  He breathes nuance into the word fug—Hey!  Did you see that?  I swear I saw him crack a smile.  Look at him now!  You can tell he wants to laugh.  Why's he suppressing a smile?  And—Wait!  What's he looking at now?  What's he spy over your right shoulder?  Breathe deep and whatever you do don't turn around.  Your ol' pal Nic' is winding you up is all.  There's nothing there. 

Maybe you shouldn't have called him ugly.   That was really uncalled for.  Don't try to pin this on me!  You earned your fate my friend.  He didn't want this to happen to you. He thought you liked him.   Thought the two of you could hang out and discover important stuff together.  But you blew it.  Talking about him behind his back.  You should know better.  Doesn't matter now though.  Nothing you can do.  Now you're the one with the behind-his-back problems. 

Ironic isn't it?   

Unconscious Heliocentrism; or, The Bayou of Cultural Literacy

In the course of "Spate Heech" conversation, Rodney dropped this bombshell:

But let me try to trip Scott up anyway, just for the fun of it! I think he does believe in the unconscious, even if he doesn't realize it (and especially if the latter is true, how much the better evidence for the unconscious itself?). I believe this to be true because The Best Quotation in the History of Everything means little if the quote doesn't carry more weight in its very presence than it carries in its proportionality to the rest of S. Weir Mitchell's writing. Such is the acuteness of Laura's question: "If you have read through reams & reams of this writer and only found this one remark that fits your profile, isn't that kind of a slender peg?" Well, of course it's not a slender peg, but only because its presence (singular though it seems) reveals that Mitchell was preoccupied by Lamarck, which is a way of saying that unconsciously Lamarck was "in Mitchell's head." This is one of the significances of "The Writer's Mark".

Laura's question did flummox me.  (So much so I tried and failed to answer it twice.  Since the third time is by definition the charm, this will be my definitive answer.  Unless it isn't.)  But Mitchell'd articulated an opinion in absolute concord with the structure of thought whose existence I take inductive pains to document in my chapter.  To see expressed in plain English undeniable proof of what I had I reasoned from Mitchell's not unsubstantial corpus brought joy to my heart and bounce to my step.  Why? 

Here is where Rodney intervenes.  He claims that what I found amounts to Mitchell's unconscious adoption of Lamarckian thought.  A fine asseveration, that is, but not quite correct.  Mitchell was not "unconscious" of his Lamarckian influence in the psychoanalytic sense.  He was "unconscious" of them in the same way many literary critics are "unconscious" of the influence of Copernicus on their astronomical thought: it is unacknowledged—perhaps even unacknowledgeable—not unconscious.  An unacknowledged intellectual debt which takes the form of a cultural assumption differs from an unconscious belief in that it isn't unconscious so much as unthought.

It lives beneath the bayous of cultural literacy.  In the thick muck among the crawdads and the nutria.  Anyone who wants to find it can . . . only most choose not to.  In this case most have chosen not to.  "Social Darwinism" suffices for them.

Because they want it to it so desperately . . .

. . . so desperately they'll see it even if it ain't there.

And it ain't.  Don't believe me?

Buy my dissertation.

From me.

It'll cost you a little less than a hybrid.

But imagine the pain you'll be saving me.  You can't count that in dollars. 

Only I can.

Tour the Web in Style!

The conversation about "Spate Heech" continues at Rodney's, Pepperell's, Jodi's and Hysterical Blackness' respectives places.  Proof positive that the Internet works.  That should silence all you doubters.

This snark-inspired conversation only improves with age . . . even if it is the source of the "Scott's not funny" meme responsible for torpedoing my Koufax campaign. 

Ken's post deserves 1) more attention and 2) a response.  Now that I'm finished with this quarter and have a whopping four days off I intend on writing one.

It's not like I didn't already like Michael.  Only now I like him that much more.  If only there were some way I could take advantage of his celebrity . . .

Thirteen Things One Ought Not To Do On A Final Paper

1. Turn in two pages of clearly deficient work and eight blank ones in order to establish the basis for your change-of-grade appeal.
2. Definitively prove that you've attended a grand total of three classes by writing the single most wrong-headed paragraph I've ever read.
3. Decide that "seven to ten pages" means "four unfathomably foul ones."
4. Pretend to have read what was required of you while admonishing Janet Malcolm for criticizing Truman Capote's In Cold Blood in her book about Joe McGinnis' Fatal Vision
5. Cite a blurb from the back cover of The Perfect Storm.
6. Misattribute it to the author.
7. Misspell the author's name.
8. And the title of the book.
9. And the word "and."
10. As "nads."
11. Neglected to have been written your essay in English which resembling language.
12. Not bothering to be edited what you turn up to a instructor that will graded your papers.
13. Beg me to award you an "A" despite having committed seven of the aforementioned unmentionables.

No actual students were harmed in the mocking of this post.  Any resemblence to students alive, dead or dead drunk in some shameful  Panama City hovel  is either stated or implied.

A Gift

Because you're special:  a gift.

[WARNING: The gift is large and contains pornography, er, pornographers.  New ones.  And a solo one too.]

Edited on 26 March 2006 at 11:02 AM to reflect Scott's discontent with his parody of Neko Case's "sledge of tectonic fever"-type lyricism on Fox Confessor Brings the Flood.

Saturday Self-Indulgence II: This Time It's Still Personal

• Earlier today I mentioned a panel on academic blogging for the 2006 MLA was in the works . . . and that it would star three of the most prominent bloggers out there.  (And me!)  The emails poured in: "Who who who who who who who?"
• That conversation with the sensational comments is still going strong . . . or would be had I any intellectual wherewithal tonight.  Tomorrow!
• An email entitled "URGENT!!!" just arrived.  [someone else] wants to know "Who who who who who who who?"  Didn't I just cover this?
• Every grant and fellowship application must be postmarked by midnight April 10^th or the applicant will be strung up and pelted with cranberries.  Why is that?
• What so I'm an asshole now because I haven't answered your email of forty-five seconds ago?  You really want to know who who who who who who who?  Lionel Ritchie. 
• Adam thinks he's so funny.  Well . . .  he is.  Usually.  Side-splittingly.  Only tonight he's wrong.  (In baseball though he'd be batting .700 and that ain't too shabby.)  [EDIT: Maybe Adam isn't wrong.  But he really oughta be.]
• What do you mean you don't believe me? But but but I sounded so sincere.  You want to know who who who who who who who else?  Mandy Patikin. 
• Last night The Little Womedievalist—she's the looker in the goofy hat next to some goofy fool she shouldn't even admit to knowing—and I had so few brain cells firing we watched this thing.  It had little plot and what it did have was mind-numbingly episodic.  The acting was excrutiatingly actorly.    The transitions audibly clunked.  Thankfully we have this to look forward to tonight.  All hail bow-hunting!
• He is too still famous.  He was on that show.  No he didn't sing . . . but yes somewhere deep down and unforgivably corny I wish he had. 
• When The Littlewomedievalist and I watched The Village Thurdsay night I kept thinking (and, yes, saying)  "This is exactly like Octavia Butler's book Clay's Ark."  So last night Insomnia and I re-read Clay's Ark and came to a consensus: I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about.  The whole night he kept looking at me with his what-the-fuck-are-you-talking-about eyes.  I shrugged my shoulders and professed idiocy.  'Cause really . . . those two couldn't be more different.   
• Stop hounding me already.  I can only check my email ever so often.  Fine.  I give up.  The other three people on the panel are WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU AND WHAT YOU DOING IN MY OFFICE?!?   IS THAT A KNIFE!?!  WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO WITH THAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

On Grading; or, I Don't Want It All & I Certainly Don't Want It All Now

Oh the endless unrevised sentences of highly motivated and easily panicked students who during finals week—which seems like it should be possessive but which I believe to be adjectival, in that the word "finals" in its plural form modifies the word "week" in its nominal—neglect such simple things as common sense and reasonable sentence length in a desperate (but ultimately futile) attempt to stuff every last thought they have about this, that or the other topic into a single sentence for fear that, if they do not, the person responsible for grading their final essay—be he a lowly T.A. like myself or a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist like Barry Siegel—will decide that since the entirety of their thinking about this, that or the other was not contained within a single sentence that the aforementioned highly motivated and obviously outrageously caffeinated students will fail this class, lose their scholarship, be forced to attend community college while working 70 hour weeks at In-N-Out Burger and thus never amount to anything in life because they decided that thoughts must be contained in sentences much like they are contained in minds—that is, completely and wholly—with nothing pertaining to the thought they have corralled into the sentence being allowed to exist outside it lest their instructors (myself and Barry) mistake their decision to end a sentence with a desire to end all thought per se and embrace the life they have worked so hard for so long to escape, which they desperately do not want to do but which their instructors (Barry and I) never really think about when we read their essays since we are more concerned with other, more important, matters like whether a student knows how to end a sentence.

Hello? Is There Anybody In There?

No. 

However I did post something relatively substantial elsewhere this evening.  Check it out if you're at all interested in evolutionary minutiae. 

If you're not 1) I don't know why you read my blog and 2) you may be interested in this artifact recovered from the depths of Gmail's spam folder.

Yes, that is Adam's review of the Clarke shortlist.  According to his email, he "thought [he] was being all soft and cuddly," whereas everyone else thought he was being "Nasty . . . And not in a Christina Agulera way."  (He's already confessed his eternal shame at not being able to spell Her Holiness' name.  However, I suspect that's the very error which relegated him to the spam folder in the first place.)

I'll respond to the exceptional comments I've received on yesterday's post tomorrow.  I'd respond tonight, but after a day of grading and a night of revising half of an essay I wrote weeks ago and am still incredibly unsatisfied with, I fear I'd catch some of the grumpiness going around. 

Spate Heech or Honest Mistake?

On his show this morning, Dave Lenihan attempted to list Condleezza Rice's qualifications for NFL Commissioner:

She's been chancellor of Stanford.  She's got the patent resume of somebody that has serious skill.  She loves football. She's African-American, which would kind of be a big coon.  A big coon. Oh my God.  I am totally, totally, totally, totally, totally sorry for that. [.wma]

The link to the audio on The St. Louis Post-Dispatch warns potential listeners of  the clip's "offensive language."  People were certainly offended by it.  KTRS station manager Tim Dorsey fired Lenihan a scant twenty minutes after his self-described "slip of the tongue."  According to Dorsey, Lenihan's "slip"

was a most unfortunate racial slur.  There can be no excuse for what was said.  Dave Lenihan has been let go.  There is enough hate.  We certainly are not going to fan those flames.  That is not what we're about.

St. Louis' NAACP chapter president, Harold Crumpton, called Dorsey seeking an explanation.  Dorsey explained that Lenihan had already been fired.  Crumpton sounded pleased, noting that "coon" is a word "intended to inflame passions . . . like the 'n word.'"  I emphasize the word "intended" because the intention is there only in a general sense.  It fails to account for the specific context of this utterance. 

His unfortunate "slip" immediately follows a conversation in which Lenihan agrees with a caller who said she'd make a "fantastic President."  He accidentally calls her a "coon" while trying to refer to the "coup" her ascension to NFL Commissioner would be.  I grant you that the word "coup" immediately following the phrase "she's African-American" reeks of tokenism.  But to claim that he "intended to inflame passions" by praising her qualifications for both the office of President of the United States and the Commissioner of the National Football League irks me. 

This kind of unintentionally offensive comment differs from those which result from unacknowledged privilege.  Lenihan's language isn't "unintended" in the "I'm unaware of the structural inequalities inherent in contemporary America" so much as the "I tripped over my tongue and out came what sounded like a racial epithet" way.  (Unless you believe that in praising Rice he intended to denigrate all African-Americans.  One could argue that Rice fits into the old "one of the good ones" mold and that Lenihan did intend to belittle the majority of African-Americans.  None of the talking heads I've watched have forwarded that argument though.)   

Perhaps I sympathize with Lenihan because I also 1) relish speaking in public and 2) frequently trip over my own tongue.  I often swap the initial consonant of consecutive words.  Some times I catch myself doing it; others only come to my attention when I realize I'm staring at a room of students desperately trying to suppress laughter.  One of my more memorable flubs occured at a prospective graduate student party a few years back.  A couple of current graduate students malingered around the punch bowl discussing the Dixie Chicks' then-recent banishment from mainstream country radio.  As a prospective approached one of the department's "ambassadors" said something funny:

Prospective:  What's so funny?

Ambassador #1:  Um . . . something about Derrida.

Prospective:  Seriously?

Ambassador #2:  Of course.  Why?  Is that intimidating?

Prospective: (obviously intimidated)  'Course not.

Scott:  We weren't laughing at a Derridean joke.

Ambassador #1:  Shut up!  He thinks we're smart!

Prospective:  What was so funny then?

Scott:  Promise not to think less of us?  Alright then.  You know how the chicks eat dicks . . .

Everyone:  WHAT?!?

See my point?  After a moment's explanation everyone ceased loathing and resumed laughing at me.  Now normally when I switch initial consonant sounds the result only resembles English.  I'll stop pading grapers, bean lack and slift off to deep for a couple of seconds.  Or maybe I'll kalk into the witchen, pash a wear and spare into stace for a minute or two.  Point being these slips rarely make sense. 

I'm not saying Lenihan slipped like this.  But from the sound of it his slip was no more intentional than mine.  Short of granting the existence of a psychoanalytic unconscious which reveals itself through such slips, I can't see how someone would ascribe ill-intention to them.  However there are times when they may be the product of conscious thought interfering with articulation:

I can imagine racially charged situations in which I'd be very conscious about my language selection; for example, if I were teaching Faulkner's Light in August and I were discussing his introduction of "new figures" who challenge the easy classification of race in the South.  I could imagine myself worried that I'd invert those initial consonant sounds that I might do so incidentally.  Of course I'd use the awkward silence which followed to initiate a discussion of why I was hypersensitive in the first place and how that anxiety is precisely what Faulkner's work hopes to engender &c. 

Now I don't know whether Lenihan deserved the second chance my students would no doubt grant me.  I do know that this firing will become ammunition for rightwing radio to denounce "political correctness" ad nauseam. 

Why Intelligent Women Invariably Have a Narrow Pelvis; or, S.W. Mitchell Week Continues

This morning Mary Ann asked "What's up with the part [of the S.W. Mitchell's Quote of Quotes] that says 'over brain-work tends to contract [a woman's] pelvis.'"  Mary Ann, luckily you challenged this continent's foremost expert in Mitchellana (Mitchellalia?) to answer a question about ol' S.W. and his roundaboutly sexist theory of anatomical development in educated women. 

I say "roundaboutly" not because his ideas weren't retrograde—they certainly were—but because they were encompassed by his general theory that all Americans were unhealthily overworked.  In Wear and Tear, or Hints for the Overworked, Mitchell argued that the rise in nervous disorders among the educated classes could be directly attributed to the combination of a sedentary lifestyle, untreated "mental fatigue" and poor working conditions.  He prescribed the infamous "rest cure" to as many men as women; his reputation suffers because one of the woman it failed to "cure" wrote such a forceful account of its failure.

Not to defend Mitchell, but even by Gilman's own account, the "rest cure" worked.  In "Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper," she wrote Mitchell "put [her] to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still-good physique responded so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the matter with [her]."  Condemnations of Mitchell don't actually address the merits of his "rest cure" but his suggestion that Gilman "live as domestic a life as far as possible," "have but two hours' intellectual life a day," and "never touch a pen, brush or pencil again."  Those recommendations are consonant with Mitchell's treatment of patients with severe nervous disorders.  They are not general recommendations for women who seek intellectual stimulation, as three waves of feminist scholarship on Gilman have held. 

Women suffer, however, from "physiological limitations" which should limit such stimulation.  In "When College Is Hurtful to a Girl," Mitchell argues that

women at college work harder than men; out of their eagerness arise disregard of physiological limitations, the tendency to shirk play and exercise for study, the cutting short of meal leisure, and the robbing of sleep to add to the hours of the day.

Men don't have this problem because they are "foolish," "profligate" and love to "waste time."  Their weakness of character makes them better suited for intellectual labor because they're averse to it.  Because "the man yearns for exercise" he is less likely than his female compatriot to push himself past his "physiological limitations."  I balk at that notion as much as the next denizen of the 21st Century.  However, to return to Mary's question about why "over brain-work tends to contract a woman's pelvis," the reason for this isn't biological so much as social:

Women have to adhere to a strict (and constricting) standard of dress.  Too many hours spent in feminine attire at a desk curve the spine and narrow the pelvis.  Mitchell, ever the man of his moment, never advocated a change in female dress.  Instead he recommended fewer hours before a desk engaging in a practice known to cause nervous distress.  All of which is only to say:

Contra his reputation among literary scholars, Mitchell wasn't that kind of sexist.  He firmly believed in heteronormative relations and that women should consider themselves mothers above all else; but he was no biological essentialist.  One thing which irks me about much of the advocacy criticism I read is that, while correct in a general sense, all the specifics miss the mark. 

Was Mitchell a sexist?  Certainly.  Was he a sexist in the way contemporary critics define 19th Century sexism?  Certainly not.  That hasn't prevented contemporary critics from shoehorning him in there anyway.  As an historicist I'm not satisfied with presentist indictments followed by high-handed dismissals.  It's not enough to know that he was sexist. 

One should strive to know exactly what kind of sexist he was.

Koufax Awards: Finalist

Vote Team Acephalous for "Most Humorous Post." 

"Didn't I already do that?"

Yes, you did.  But that was for the semi-finals.  Now that I'm a finalist, you'll need to do it again.

"Why would I do that?"

First, because  you're my friend.  My best friend. 

Second, because the more attention this little blog gets the better the chance that this will happen again.  'Cause I'm clearly only in this for the money.

"Well, why haven't you responded to my detailed and worthy of a substantial response and/or been reading/commenting on my blog lately you favor-asking fiend?"

I already explained why.  I'm beyond busy at the moment.  Or have you not noticed that all my posts seem to be about Silar Weir Mitchell lately?  I will become a human being again shortly.

Name! That! Fear!

In the comments to the previous post, N. Pepperell and I have been sharing the irrational fears swirling around our respective dissertations.  Mine:

I needed some piece of evidence to prove to the literalists—including the one who keeps me tossing and turning night after night, whispering endlessly about how I'm making all this up—that, well, that I'm not making this all up.

Pepperell's:

My recurrent problem is that, after the initial excitement of finally piecing something together, I tend to become really paranoid that I've just "discovered" something that everyone already knows, but no one is writing about, because they think it's all terribly obvious and only a very dull person wouldn't see it immediately.

Both fears are so constituitive of graduate student life as to deserve proper names.  Only I don't feel so clever tonight.  (Seven hours of student conferences do dull a mind good.)  I'd appreciate you christening them something clever.  Don't worry about taking responsibility for the credit.  I have it covered. 

Also, this list is far from exhaustive.  Feel free to profess other common fears irrational in nature and paralyzing in effect.  I aim to be the graduate student source for all that bumpifies in the diurnal transverse occupying the sequential yet interstitial moments after becoming-soporific but before Corvus americanus' crowification shatters the stillness of our shared, slumbering dawn.

The Best Quotation in the History of Everything: Why Intelligent Women Shouldn't Reproduce (Circa 1900)

[To all thems I owe 1) an email, 2) a theoretical justification for historicism or 3) an update on the state of the Valve's publishing enterprise . . . I apologize.  I will reconnect with y'all on the other side of this chapter.]

Those of you who don't keep close eye on my progress may be confused by my vehement assertion that the following quotation is the Best Quotation in the History of Everything: "I have sometimes been led to think that over brain-work tends not only to stunt the body and to contract the pelvis, but, by the law of evolution, to develop bigger headed offspring, or at least offspring with heads relatively disproportioned to the pelvis of the mother." 

"That's sorta awesome Scott," y'all say, "But, um, why?"

Because Silas Weir Mitchell wrote it.  For months now I've been digging through vast pastures of Mitchell's prose in search of direct evidence of his Lamarckian tendencies.  Until yesterday I had found nothing.  Because I've read his prose and poetry and scientific disquisitions, I knew him to be a Lamarckian . . . only I couldn't prove it.  I had to rely on induction and forceful interpretation to establish his indebtedness to Lamarck.  I knew I had him pegged but couldn't be certain others wouldn't tilt their heads quizzically when they read my chapter.  Now I'm certain they won't.  When hiring committees read my writing sample they'll know I'm not peddling nonsense. 

I caught Mitchell red-handed.  He is a Lamarckian.  There is no other evolutionary model popular at the time which assumes that an increase in the intelligence of a mother 1)  increases the size of said mother's brain, which 2) increases the diameter of said mother's head, which 3) she passes on to her children, thereby 4) increasing the diameter of her baby's brain-pan and 5) the likelihood of a difficult birth. 

More succinctly:

I win. 

Now will somebody give me a cookie already?

Women + Education = Death or Other People Have It Easy

[To be posted on the Valve sometime tomorrow so Clancy's excellent post remains front and center.]

Last May I noted the existence of articles in other disciplines which consist entirely of the research required by ours.  As I said then: "How did someone else publish my background research as a scholarly article?"  Today I ran across another example of this distressing phenonemon: "The Neurologic Content of S. Weir Mitchell's Fiction [pdf]."

According to the abstract, the "objective" of this article—published in the 14 February 2006 issue of Neurology—is "to assess the extent that references to neurologic topics were present in Mitchell's fiction, whether these neurologic references reflected Mitchell's scientific interests and contributions, and whether his fictional accounts of neurologic topics would precede those in his scientific writings."  Fair enough.  Their method?  "The authors read Silas Weir Mitchell's novels and short stories."  Despite the fact that poetry "lends itself less to neurologic reference than does prose . . . for completeness, [the authors] read this poetry and provide a brief comment on its neurologic content."

I agree that the best way of assessing the extent to which something appears in a body of literature is to read that body of literature.  But how are these neurologists
going to read it?  Will they analyze the developmental patterns of characters in Mitchell's novels and corollate them to contemporary neurological theory?  Will they document the structural relation of particular plots to specific neurological stimuli like the stressors of the white-collar world and the Civil War?  Or will they count?

I think you know the answer ah-ah-ah-ah.  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, "seventeen of the twenty-seven fictional works contained neurologic references" ah-ah-ah-ah.  One, two, three, four, five . . . fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three, fifty-four, "fifty-five of seventy-nine references were brief" ah-ah-ah-ah. 

Their conclusion?

"The majority of Mitchell's fictional works contained references to neurologic topics but most contained brief references" ah-ah-ah-ah.   This isn't to say the article's devoid of evaluative criticism: "Mitchell's novels were known for their dramatic flair."  He "was a prolific writer of both science and fiction" whose "novels were well regarded in his day."  He "also had a life-long interest in snake venom." 

What importance their dry tallying has for the medical community escapes me.  But theirs is "the only study to [their] knowledge that has systematically reviewed Mitchell's novels and short stories, detailed his neurologic citations in this fiction, and discussed these with reference to his interests and contributions as a neurologist."  What a cunning use of flags!  I now have imperial claims to unseat. 

No worries. 

This afternoon I found the Greatest Quotation in the History of Everything.  It reads: "I have sometimes been led to think that over brain-work tends not only to stunt the body and to contract the pelvis, but, by the law of evolution, to develop bigger headed offspring, or at least offspring with heads relatively disproportioned to the pelvis of the mother." 

Explanation tomorrow, because I tried to explain it tonight but couldn't contain my glee . . . which has nothing to do with the politics of that quotation.  It is validation of my cental hunch expressed in a particularly pernicious way.  More later.  I'm celebrating good times tonight ah-ah-ah-ah . . . I mean come on!

A Day In The Life, Brought to You By Mastercard, Official Sponsor of My Indulgence

Five gallons of regular unleaded: $21

Two "energy drinks": $6

Admission to The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens: $10

Chicken Quesadilla at the Huntington Café: $9

One "energy drink" at the Huntington Café: $6

Two hours spent in a lobby with screaming brats because sometimes it does rain in Southern California: Endless

Another "energy drink"  at the Huntington Café: $6

Spending seven hours in a car with the Little Womedievalist while traveling a grand total of 51 miles: Priceless

Graduate Students Love Fun Too

Over the CLCWEGSA¹ listserv this afternoon I learned that a faculty member had graciously agreed to donate her old junk to furnish the future "graduate student lounge."  According to the email, "She says she has a nice futon, some rungs, and a few more ideas to make it a more comfortable space."  My first response?  Thank the lady for luxurious ideas.  But then I thought about her offer of "rungs."  Because what this graduate student community really needs is a jungle gym. 

Freshman have their "fifteen."  Graduate students know how to multiply.  I decided that in addition to rungs, the Graduate Student Lounge of the Future could stand for some swings.  Swinging invigorates both mind and body! 

If we're gonna have rungs and swings we oughta have monkey bars too.  Sure there's something inherently racist about the African-American students swinging on the monkey bars, but who cares?  I'm talking about monkey bars here people.  Monkey Bars.  What hunched graduate student wouldn't disavow Derrida after a few hours of monkey bar-induced glee?  (Besides the closeted Republican one, since he obviously hates fun.  Why else become Republican?)

Nothing could improve a graduate student lounge with rungs and swings and monkey bars.

Except a slide.

So I sprung into action and formed the CLCWEGSA Wants Monkey Bars and a Slide Committee.  Our first meeting is tomorrow.  I anticipate the Swing Faction will complain about their marginalization.  But don't worry.  If they don't like it they can take a long slide down a short . . . slide.

[1] Comparative Literature Creative Writing English Graduate Student Association, pronounced "click-weg-sa" and hands down the worst acronym ever devised by people with ostensible mastery of the English language.

How to Write a Robert Charles Wilson Novel, a Recipe

Irrational insomniacs have for centuries fought sleeplessness with objects designed to keep them awake.  Who am I to break with tradition?  So I have spent the past two nights engrossed in the works of Robert Charles Wilson.  (Someone I trusted told me someone he trusted had recommended Wilson.  Three degrees of separation suffices in the sci-fi community.)  I read and was impressed by Spin.  So I was groggily enthused when I began reading Blind Lake late last night.  "Here is an author," I said to myself, possibly aloud, "who rigorously works through the implications of his fantastic premises."  Blind Lake proved to be an original and inventive novel.  Unfortunately it proved to be the same original and inventive novel I'd read earlier in the week.  "Why does this keep happening!" I yelled as The Little Womedievalist's alarm sounded. 

"What?"

"Nothing, dear, nothing.  Just blog stuff."

"What?"

"Nevermind," I said.  So, without further ado, I present the recipe for writing Robert Charles Wilson novels:

1 large bowl
2 isolated group of humans
1 tsp. kosher salt
1 woman who "wants to feel again"
2 men who want to feel her again
1 rogue genius
2 inexplicable phenomenon caused by pervasive interstellar Buddhism
1 cipher to embody it
3 large eggs

Isolate one scientifically-inclined human community in an inexplicable planetary envelope or military cordon in a large bowl.  Add the woman who wants to feel again and beat her until she's good and numb.  Slowly add one of the men who wants to feel her again.  (Set the second aside for later.)  Once you see life enter her eyes again, quickly pour the first inexplicable phenonemon caused by pervasive interstellar Buddhism into bowl.  Add one large egg and beat until she almost can't feel again.  You want her dejected but not suicidal, so pay attention to how much she cries.  If she starts balling constantly, ease up on the whipping until you think she can handle it.

Once you get her to the brink, add in the other man who wants to feel her again.  (Some people like to spice this up with the rogue genius, but I prefer to wait until after the second inexplicable phenonemon caused by pervasive interstellar Buddhism.)  Stir.  Once the two men who want to feel the woman who wants to feel again have been properly agitated, add 1/2 a tsp. of kosher salt and another egg and beat vigorously.  You want one of the men to fall apart.  Once one has, remove the other and set him alongside the genius.  (You'll need them to season the second inexplicable phenonemon caused by pervasive interstellar Buddhism.)  Add the cipher and refrigerate.  This part of the recipe should bore you.

Pre-heat the oven to 3500° for fifteen minutes.  As soon as the boredom is replaced by real narrative heat, remove the cooled plot from the refrigerator.  Sprinkle the other man who wants her, the genius and the second inexplicable phenonemon caused by pervasive interstellar Buddhism on the mixture and place it in the oven.  Let it cook for 150 pages.  (About two hours.)  When you think it's done, violently open the oven door and yank the mixture of the oven.  Don't worry if it ends up all over the cabinets and walls.  You weren't going to eat it anyway.  You had it once, remember, and while satisfying the first time you knew you didn't want to have it again.  Then why did you cook it?  That's right:

Henry Farrell told you to.  Once you've cleaned the kitchen up, sit at your desk, turn on your computer and send him anonymous hate mail.