"Some modern travellers still pretend to find Acephalous people in America."
Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopædia; or, an universal dictionary of arts and sciences, 1753
Number of times Japanese schoolgirls have been featured on Acephalous: 0
Number of times Firefox's spell-checker underlines the word "acephalous" when members of the Kaufman household type it: ∞
Dinginess of the kitchen in said household in units of disgusting: 7,671
Time (in hours) the male of the household requires to clean it: 0.19
Time (in days) before he will do so: 219
Percent of sarcasm in previous item: 78.6
Ratio of promises to clean the kitchen to actual cleanings: 9:1
Guilt (in buckets) the above ratio produces: 17
Number of Asian men currently sitting in the middle of the parking lot drinking beer on plastic lawn chairs: 2
Ratio of affected to actual double-takes Kaufman gave them: 5 to 1
Percent of people in the Kaufman household who spent the past week doing nothing but reading quality Scottish detective novels and watching three seasons of The Wire: 50
Weariness (in soul) attendant the same week: 1,910,382
Number of times Kaufman has mistakenly typed "The Wife" instead of "The Wire": 4
Percent of psychoanalytic critics who would think that very, very significant: 100
Percent who would be correct: 31
Number of Acephalous readers who have purchased Kaufman the fourth season of The Wire: 0
Percent who should if they know what's good for his soul: 100
Percent who should if they know what's good for his career: 0
Number of times Kaufman's danced this dance before: Once or Twice
How much funnier (in joules) those previous attempts were: 1 Yottajoule
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Because I'm Hormonal, More "Classic" Acephalous: Who's Important Enough to Write in Your Books ... (I've written or revised fifteen posts the past two days but lack the nerve to post them. No doubt I'm developing a complex which will end in utter silence. But what else can I do? Adam ain't posted either lately [no doubt for better reason]. I could be introspective about this sudden involuntary reticence, but who knows what I'd find in the heart of fear. [Certainly nothing worth blogging.] I'm sure I'll recover soon enough from whatever this is ... unless this is THE END. You know, THE MOMENT when you can no longer speak for sake of meaning. But I don't think I'm on the point of silencing myself. [Yet.] This probably has more to do with my being hormonal because I've been without levothyroxine for two weeks now [THANKS THIEVING LIBRARY!] and that's three times TMI and I'm going to shut it now. Enjoy the rewind and pray for rain.) My copy of Hardt and Negri's Empire has an interesting history. It begins in 2000, the year of its initial publication, when Jim Ziegler (since tenure-tracked somewhere) and I were discussing it in the "TA lounge," a.k.a. the round table in front of the graduate student mailboxes ... which the faculty use as a short-cut between the main English department office and the primary graduate seminar room. (And why shouldn't they? It's their department.) So Jim and I are idly chatting about Empire when Julia Lupton walks up, pauses, greets us, says something to Jim (I'm deaf, remember?) and then hurries off. (Julia's an important person around UCI—a model academic whose standards I fail daily to live up to—she's always hurrying somewhere, and with good reason.) Point being: Julia and Jim exchange words both assumed I could hear. I couldn't, but as I often do in such situations, I nodded my head and pretended to hear all. So when Jim's email arrived later that afternoon asking me what times worked best for me, I had no clue what he was talking about. I related my schedule. "Perfect," he responded. "I'll get right on it." "Get right on it?" I thought to myself. "Get right on what?" Turns out everyone rightly pegged Jim as (but mistook me for) the resident Hardt & Negri expert, and that I was now the co-coordinator of the faculty-dominated Empire reading group. You heard me correctly: a first year, in his second quarter, was assumed expert enough in the Hardt & Negri corpus to lead a faculty-dominated reading group. (In retrospect I realize the faith Julia placed in Jim was well-founded, and her willingness to defer to a graduate student on the topic a sign that she practiced the egalitarianism she preached. But I digress.) So I participated in this reading group with Jim, Julia and a host of imposing faculty members like Mark Poster and Andrzej Warminski. One of the highlights of my first year, I tell you. Time passes. The year is 2005. It is Spring Quarter. I haven't thought about Empire...
Are you going to do the turkey thing again this year? I love it when you do the turkey thing....
Posted by: Jason | Wednesday, 21 November 2007 at 08:27 AM
By all means clean the kitchen before the board fo Health comes and condemns it. As for your wife, watch what you say learn by what your father does.
Posted by: alkau | Friday, 23 November 2007 at 11:35 AM