Back.

Apologies for the lack of posts. The drive to Maryland took longer than usual because we enjoyed it more. I usually just push through to get where we're headed as quickly as possible. While I'm not what anyone would call "physically fit" anymore, I do have some mean driving stamina. This time, though, we really just enjoyed having that kick-ass stereo in the new Focus and the landscapes and the smell of lilacs coming in the vents and the endless fields of wildflowers on the mountaintops. We also finally named our car. The other Focus was tentatively known as The Boat because it was small. Ironic, therefore funny. Etc. The Mazda, although fun to drive, was never our friend. We never named it. We do, however, have a name for it now. The Glass Car. Sorry, dudes. I've never been so glad to say Bye-Bye to a piece of metal and plastic as I was that damned car. I don't quite spit when I mention it, but you get the picture. Anyway, the current auto is called Snowball II. If you don't get that reference, you need more "The Simpsons" to enrich your life. Lisa has a cat named Snowball. It dies. She gets another one and names it Snowball II. And it's black. Second Focus because the other one died, in black, you get it. Clever, I know.

Roxy I.

One of my brothers has a new puppy. A pug. Those little dogs who are so ugly they're cute. Here she is when I woke her up with a camera in her face. (Didn't know the flash was on.)

Photo Friday: Space.

Quickly, before I hit the road, here is my entry for this week's Photo Friday challenge, Space. It is my bird house, three weeks ago, with what was left of last year's bird family's nest. Now, it is occupied by an extremely vigilant mother bird who eyes me hatefully at night from her peephole if I go outside. Too bad I'll be out of town and won't get to chart that new family. I'm out of here as soon as I get my crap into the Focus and enough coffee for 13-14 hours of constant driving. See you Monday.

Fear and loathing in Southern Illinois.

Here are my famously hairy feet that cause one of my office-mates to refer to me as Frodo at times -- the famously sandal-clad or bare feet by which I am known sometimes by people who can't tell this guy from the other boring white dudes with glasses. So there I am today, going to the university to hand in my last paper and to get a signature from my advisor for my summer research project (on Thoreau, his Pragmatism, and Schelerian sacrifice). I take the stairs, as usual (I'm scared of elevators -- long story or stories, as it were). I catch my flip-flopped foot on the stairs and drop without grace, scaring the bejesus out of an undergrad getting off the stairs on the second floor. She asks if I am Okay, and I apologize for scaring her. I get into my office, put my gear down and feel something wet on my aching foot. I look down to discover that said wetness is warm and viscous because it is blood. My blood. It's all over my foot and shoe. And one of my toenails is blackish. I touch the offending toenail. It reveals itself to no longer be attached to my toe at all, though the unseen roots under my knuckle seem to be keeping it in place. Mfingddmnt it hurts. SoI do the manly thing. I get some paper towels from the nearest (stinky) men's room and clean up the blood. I wrap one around my bleeding toe and hobble down to my professor's office, hoping he won't notice my limping, cringing or bleeding. I hobble back to my office, put my leg up and decide I need to go home. I do. I clean up my foot. Then we go to the Bookworm and to Panera Bread for lunch. Both are stupid moves. The offending toe throbs, getting alarmingly swollen, and I'm gripping the steering wheel as if I want it to die by my hands as we speed home. Four Advils and putting up the poopy leg combine to help immensely. We wash the car twice and put the bra on, since we're leaving for Baltimore Friday morning. Have dinner and start a new book. Salvage the stange day. This is funny because my not wearing shoes always seems to render me exceptionally susceptible to foot injuries. The bone in my little toe is still in two pieces. I walked into a wall in Massachusetts, and I don't want to talk about it now, thanks. At any rate, I'm always stubbing or cutting or impaling some part of my feet/toes on something. It's not some principle that I'm usually not in proper shoes. My feet just get hot and like the air. Anyway, I also had my big toenails cut out when I was in high school. The doctor stuck me literally about a dozen times in each toe to numb them, though I seriously question whether that might not have hurt more than what he did after that. He used some wire-cutter-looking dealies (thanks, Homer) to cut the two nails in half. Then he pulled them out with pliers. To remove the roots, he used acid and hook-ish scraping thingies. It was less than fun. But it was extemely funny, to explain why my feet were wrapped in gauze: "Dude, I got my toenails cut out today." "No way." "Hell yes, wanna see?" "Hell no. Sick." With that in mind, you get to see the bandage, not the toe of today's mishap. For now. You're better off that way. And I don't really like to look at it. I know, I'm a baby. Sue me. Come to think of it, I had those babies removed on Friday May 13th. Eery, huh?

Fluvial excursions and why I rock.

In working on my last term paper today, I remembered a passage from Walter Harding's The Days of Henry Thoreau that made me want to get naked and go-a-swimming. He writes that Thoreau "took a boy's delight in swimming in the nude. As he walked through the woods on hot days, he made a ritual of shedding his clothes and bathing in every stream he came to. It then occurred to him it would intensify his pleasure to take his rivers 'endwise,' and so he began 'fluvial excursions,' wading down the rivers clothed only in a hat and occasionally a shirt to protect himself from the sun"(Harding, 296). Okay. Don't worry, SIU students, faculty and staff and Carbondaleys in general. This hairy dude is keeping his clothes on in public. I said I felt like doing it, not that I'd actually go through with it. I can be pretty damned modest sometimes. Yeah, really. In other news of the weird, do you know anyone who can wake up at 10:00 a.m. and write an entire term paper (for which only half of the research is finished) before 10:00 p.m., with a few hours of computer games, eating, television, an afternoon delight (yeah, I said it) and far too much internet procrastinating? Yeah, you do. Guess who. I rock. And I only needed seven cups of coffee and three Cokes to rock that hard. That hard. Well, maybe it's not that big of an accomplishment. I've done that before, with much longer papers. It's just another example of the rockingness of Johnny G. Live for it. You should. This all of course means that, after some early revisions in the morning tomorrow and a trip to the department for a signature and a turn-in, my relationship with the university is on hold for three whole weeks (almost four) until I get back from Baltimore during the first week of June and get rocking out on my summer research and studying for my preliminary doctoral exams. Don't fret, the blogging will not be on a break. I'll be here to annoy you and to remind you why you spared yourself from majoring in philosophy -- without cessation.

Stupid red shirt.

So this is how stupid I can be. I went to my office to work on my last paper today and to return two stacks of library books. It was warm, so I was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, jeans and flip-flops. You know how you carry around some vague notion of what you look like on a particular day with you? (That's a great paper waiting to be written; don't steal my idea, sucka.) I ran around all day thinking I was wearing this shirt that I have in three colors (good sale) in red. So I'm walking to my car to go home this afternoon, and I look into the reflective windows of some engineering or science building, and I don't see anybody wearing a red plaid shirt. I said to myself, "Damn, where'd I go?" I thought maybe I'd gone vampire or lost my soul or something to cause me to lack a reflection. You know, it would be cool to lack a reflection. I could market that and ditch the PhD and get a job as a spy. I've always wanted to be a spy. All I saw was this dude with a shaved head and a green shirt. I really thought for a second that I was looking at someone else. But yeah, it was me. I was wearing a green shirt all day and never even knew. Forget the MA and BA in philosophy and Mensa and all that shit. I didn't even know what shirt I had on today. I don't think I can chalk it up to absent-mindedness, either, despite my usually being guilty of that. It was just stupidity today. Absent-mindedness would have had me strutting around campus shirtless and hairy. You'd have seen absent-mindededness coming hundreds of yards away. Hell, even I would seen absent-minded shirtlessness in the window. But not the green shirt.

Photo Friday: Action.

Photo Friday: Action. Sorry it's late this week. Busy day. Too much action. Har dee har har. No, dat ain't me.

Haiku for the end of semester.

Empty coffee cups In a mound on a dark desk. Be back soon, Baby.

Many things.

First of all, many thanks to Armand for his mention of this here humble blog on Moleskinerie today. And many thanks to the tons of new folks who have stopped by today as a result. I'd offer you some coffee or tea, but the internet has not advanced that far yet. Next time, though. Things are busy around the university these days, as you can imagine. Everyone in the philosophy department and the university situation at large seem much busier than I am, so everything seems to be swirling around me very quickly and blurily. I was happy to get away for a walk to the campus lake today, on a brisk spring day. I shot a ton of photos. Yeah. And that's one of the campus lake. I almost stepped on a duck. I made a red-headed woodpecker flee for the shelter of a maple tree. I trampled some wildflowers. And I scared the bejesus out of a poor painted turtle sunning itself on a submerged treestump. I think I accidently disturbed the whole scene with my clumsiness. Sorry, lake dudes. So, while I'm not going to cross the line and actually endorse downloading un-purchased (i.e., stolen) music via the internet (cuz I never do that -- right), I think you should aquaint yourself with a nice selection of tunes for some crazed-dancing, power-walking, fast-driving, love-making or term-paper-writing. Of, if you're like me, all of the above. Except power-walking. I'm usually shuffling along in flip-flops these days. Or sauntering in Tevas. Never power-walking. Never. I swear. Without further ado, get these songs for yourself to listen to somehow: 1) Simon and Garfunkel: "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" 2) Modest Mouse: "Paperthin Walls" 3) Depeche Mode: "The Love Thieves" 4) Kanye West: "We Don't Care" 5) Colin Hay: "Overkill (Acoustic)" 6) Lunik: "Most Beautiful Song" 7) Interpol: "Obstacle 1" 8) The Police: "So Lonely" 9) Melissa Etheridge: "Secret Agent" 10) Jane's Addiction: "Just Because" If you ask me very nicely, I'll email you one or two. Because Gmail rocks like that. That's how it rolls, B. What, you want Gmail? Ask me not-so-nicely, and maybe I'll give you a Gmail invite. Free. You see, you get the sweetest deals on this blog, baby.

No one reads blogs on weekends.

At least, I think that's true. So I won't feel badly about not posting all weekend and instead getting work done on a Sunday (how unlike me!). And you won't hold it against me. See how lovely we fit together? Less than two weeks left, and only one more paper to write (the short one) and one more to proofread. So you won't hear me complain about the busy-ness of this time of the semester. I hate when people bitch about that. "Oh, man, I have two twenty-page papers to write that I was too busy sitting on my ass to start all damned semester, and no one else has work to do." "M-fer, I hate grading papers for this assistantship that I would really complain about not having if I had to go into debt like Pragmatik did at when he got his MA because they didn't fund MA students where he went to school." Lucky me, I'm "on fellowship" and don't "have to grade papers," and I have never worked for anything in my life and certainly didn't work for this fucking fellowship. They just gave it to me because they liked me. Yeah, that's what happened. It had nothing to do with my GPA, GRE scores, IQ, transcript, recommendations from top dudes or "academic potential." Same with my Master's degree and my undergraduate degree and driver's license and everything else I actually worked for. Sorry you're not as lucky as me, sucka. Don't worry, dude, I'm not talking about you. Ass.