Life is good! I’ve been busy. In February I designed a website for the new music group Toca Loca. I saw them play live last year as part of the Wordless Music Series and the show was incredible. They have clips on the site very much worth listening to.

More recently, I’ve just completely overhauled Yeah Yeah Records, our little label, complete with a manifesto. Very exciting. It’s still a little rough around the edges (for example, the store still isn’t set up to execute a sale directly yet, so for now I’ve just set all the inventory for 0 on all items), but we’ll work all that out.

The site overhaul coincides with a publicity campaign to promote Yoon’s latest CD. We hired a publicist! Using our credit cards!

Not content to be starting up just one business, I’ve also gone and started (for some value of “started” – it’s complicated since we’re inheriting something else that already had a certain amount of momentum and a portfolio) an IT Consultancy with a friend.

This means, of course, that my dissertation is on hold. I’m still not sure what I’ll be when I grow up, but right now I’m having fun pursuing these other things, so I think I’ll keep on pursuing them.

“A” told me that she saw a guy with a dreadlocks comb over the other day.

When I was a kid my favourite galaxy was M87.

That is all.

It’s that special day of the year when Spencer, that lucky duck, gets to kill two birds with one stone by celebrating both Anne’s birthday and Valentine’s day at the same time.

So! Congratulations to Spencer, and many happy returns.

No matter how lame that facial hair was, after you’ve shaved it off you will find yourself staring into the bathroom mirror, looking at the face of a little boy.

We’re experiencing a bit of a delay in getting some immigration issues sorted out, which has led to my not being allowed to work this semester. Although this is very stressful, there is of course an upside: It gives me a chance to experiment with a new look!

I’ve started by growing my hair out. A few years ago, I finally worked up the courage to shave my hair off. At the time, I found it somewhat liberating. I had had the same hair cut my entire life, and suddenly I didn’t have to worry about combing it or bed head or any of that. In a moment of reckless celebration, I threw out all my combs, all two dollar’s worth of them. And I savoured the thought of how much money I would save over the years by being able to cut my own hair. (Actually, I quickly learned that Yoon needed to be around for a post-buzz inspection so that I didn’t accidentally leave patches of hair around my head, like a crazy person. So really shaving my head was always a joint effort.) I also hoped that it would make me look tougher, but as I told my friends at the time, “The good news is that my shaved head makes me look a teensy bit tougher. The bad news is that I’m still the sort of man who says ‘teensy’.”

Anyway, my family thought it looked terrible. I recreate from memory the following conversation with my mother:

Mom: No one likes it, you know.
Me: Huh? What do you mean?
Mom: Well, never mind.
Me: No, what are you talking about? My hair?
Mom: Yes. No one likes it.
Me: That’s what everyone says? It’s a good thing I don’t care.
Mom: Well, your poor wife. Think of her.
Me: She’s one lucky woman is all I can say.

And I can still hear my grandmother saying, “Oh Chris.”

There were other signs that I didn’t look so hot with my head shaved. One of Yoon’s students saw me and said to his mother, “Mommy, does Yooni’s husband have cancer?” And at the end of last semester, I shaved my head after letting my hair grow out a bit, and a student, reflecting on the contrast in an email, told me that I shouldn’t shave my head – and this was before I had submitted the cheeky monkey’s final grade.

So, I’ll grow the hair out, but I haven’t settled on a style – right now I’m still in chia pet mode. I need something that requires little day-to-day maintenance and that is compatible with the fact that I have no money and thick, unworkable, fast-growing hair. I’ve decided to set my reservations aside and let Yoon have a crack at the problem. I figure the worst that can happen is that I’ll have to shave my head and look like a doofus again for a while. But I’m used to it now.

Anyway, I’m also running a little experiment with facial hair at the moment. I stopped shaving for a while in early January, but then the U.S. government wanted a picture of me for immigration purposes and I thought it best to look clean cut. Since this false start, though, I’ve resumed my efforts to put on a bit of facial hair.

Once again I find myself exploring a new look in the face of a certain amount of social resistance. For starters, I’ve had to endure the jibes of the security guard in our building (“Hey, I think you have something on your face. Perhaps a little dirt or something? Hahahaha.”). Also, I can see people looking at me and noticing. I wasn’t born yesterday. I know what they’re thinking. They’re thinking: “What is he thinking?” Finally, Yoon, who detests facial hair, has been dropping little hints that she thinks my face needs a full Brazilian asap. For example, she says, “You look disgusting! You feel disgusting! It’s so gross. I’m not kissing you.” She does kiss me, in fact, but to do it she puckers up her lips really tightly, aims carefully, and then pecks at my face in a vain attempt to avoid any contact with facial hair. And then the grimacing. Always with the grimacing.

To be fair to Yoon, it must be confessed that right now my face looks like ass. By far the worst of it was along the sides of my face, where a real man would have been able to grow a beard. Instead of a beard, I got a sparse population of wiry hairs such as would shame the most socially backward eighth grader. The other day, I finally snapped and retreated to a goatee.

Unlike my hair regrowth project, the facial hair project is strictly a short term affair, undertaken in a spirit of exploration and curiosity. For one thing, I miss being allowed to kiss my wife properly. But more than that, even the damn goatee is growing in in a disappointingly scanty fashion. The colour is actually kind of nice: blond and reddish – “cognac”, let’s be pretentious and call it. But there’s only so much I can take of this grotesque farce and the social opprobrium it brings with it, and I think I’ll be back to shaving regularly (every 2 or 3 days, as required) pretty soon.

On Saturday afternoon, Coltrane suddenly looked pretty rough. We took him to the vet right away, and learned that he had fairly advanced cancer of the spleen. He declined very rapidly over the weekend, but we were set to operate on Monday, until we learned that the cancer had spread to his liver and that there was nothing we could do. Coltrane died the way I hope I go eventually: full of years; after a sudden, sharp decline that left just enough time to say good-bye, but not enough time to suffer; and surrounded by the people who loved him most.

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It’s only at the tail end of what is probably the last semester of my teaching career that I figure out that, hey, it might be useful to use a spreadsheet to calculate the final grades.

A while ago:

Me: So, the other day I was going through some old computer files, and I found these jottings I had forgotten about.

Mysterious A: Oh yeah, what were they about?

Me: Oh, just jokes and stuff that had popped into my head that I thought I might use some time. For example, I found this one line that I thought would sort of go well as a line in a stand up comedy routine.

Mysterious A: Oh geez. What was it?

Me: OK, it was something like this: “Yeah, my wife and I decided to get married when we found out that she was regnant.”

Mysterious A: [Stares at me blankly.]

Me: Get it? Get it? Regnant, not pregnant.

Mysterious A: Regnant. What the fuck is “regnant”?

Me: “Regnant” means ruling or reigning. I’m not really comfortable with making that sort of joke and at Yoon’s expense, but I find the pun irresistible.

Mysterious A: Regnant? Regnant? Chris, that’s the worst stand up line I have ever heard in my life. Regnant. No one knows what “regnant” means. No one.

Me: It sounds almost like “pregnant,” which is why a lot of people used to get married, but it turns out to be “regnant.” Isn’t that funny?

Mysterious A: No, of course it isn’t funny. Regnant. I can’t believe you.

Me: You’re not being very supportive about this, you know.

Getting a rise out of Mysterious A (who is, I should say, a very supportive friend when the topic isn’t the word “regnant”), is always a treat, so I was pretty pleased with this conversation. A little later:

Me: So, I had a sort of stand up line I was proud of, but Mysterious A thought it was really stupid.

Nick: Heh. OK, what was it?

Me: “Yeah, my wife and I decided to get married when we found out that she was regnant.”

Nick: Regnant? What the hell does that mean?

Me: It’s from “regno,” which is like practically the first Latin verb anyone learns. Didn’t you take Latin for about 10 years?

Nick: Oh yeah. Heh.

Me: I guess it’s not funny then?

Nick: Not really.

Today:

Me: Hey, can I blog that conversation about that stand up comedy line you hated?

Mysterious A: Sure. God, regnant. Regnant. I still think about that sometimes. I stop and I think about it. I stop and I think that that is the worst stand up line I have ever heard. I still think about that, you know. Regnant. What are you thinking?

Me: You know, “After that battle the British were regnant in the Mediterranean for the next 200 years.”

Mysterious A: No. No one was ever regnant anywhere.

Me: I still think I’m funny.

A crazy man who lives down the street doesn’t like me. This fine morning, as I strolled along with my dog enjoying the sun and the crisp morning air, he broke my mood with, “Oh man, it’s skinhead city here. That’s some scary stuff, I’m telling you.” This is old hat from him; it cheers him up to abuse me this way from his stoop, from which he is rarely absent. It’s a stupid thing to say on any occasion, but it was especially stupid this morning, since I haven’t cut my hair in more than a week and it’s about a centimeter long now. In case you haven’t met me, I think it’s worth pointing out that I keep my hair short, but otherwise bear absolutely no resemblance to a skinhead. Also, I am the anti-scary. If you took a five year old child, kept him up past midnight, told him spooky stories around a campfire, and then had me jump out from behind a tree screaming and waving a flashlight beneath my face, that child would laugh.

I take it that he means to imply that I must be some sort of racist, which would be relevant to our interactions, since he is black and I am white. The funny thing is that I actually stopped acknowledging his presence about a year ago when I overheard him ranting to no one in particular about all the immigrants in the neighbourhood. Prior to that I would nod nervously in his direction when he started talking to me in his special crazy-talk. So if there is an actual cause of tension between us which has led to his calling me a skinhead, thereby intending to imply that I am racist, it’s the fact that I was offended by his xenophobia.

I wrote most of the following rant while on hold. I had intended to file it under “Consumer Complaints,” but no longer have the heart to publish the name of the company. I explain this uncharacteristic reticence, and the nature of the fizzling alluded to in the title of this post, below:

My internet connection went out around noon on Saturday, September 1st. I called to notify them, but nothing could be done that day. And of course no technicians were working on Sunday, so nothing could be done that day. And yet, I ask, did the internet rest on Sunday? Did no one write to me on Sunday expecting a reply? Did I not still have need for internet banking on Sunday? Did Yoon not need to run her business on Sunday? Did I not need to conduct research on Sunday? Did my heart not cry out that I might read Matthew Yglesias on Sunday, as a fitting rest for the spirit after long hours of toil?

And Monday came, but Monday was a holiday. But again, the internet did not cease from its activity, nor did my need for it diminish, though it was a holiday.

But when Tuesday came, then my heart leapt, for surely someone deprived of an internet connection on a Saturday could expect mercy from his internet provider by a Tuesday. And yet in spite of an hour of some of the worst muzak I have ever heard in my life, I could not convince anyone at Company X to fix my internet connection. That day, I stole a few moments with the internet in a shared office on campus. We had missed one another; our reunion was tearful, passionate, our emotions ragged and fierce.

Wednesday came, and I raged like Lear into the phone, starting early in the morning, scattering hapless call centre workers and their supervisors with my fury. Great was my vigilance, since I knew from experience that failing to call regularly would probably mean that my problem would be silently noted in the computer system as resolved by some anonymous fuckwit, ceasing all investigation into the problem.

The problem, I had been told on Tuesday, was far away from my building. But Wednesday morning brought news that the problem was specific to my building. I would need to be there the entire day. Could they tell me when they would come, morning or afternoon? No. No they could not.

Now, I understand that this is a common practice, but let us dream together of a more civilized age, when we will wonder at the memory of the barbaric practice of telling someone to sit at home all day while refusing to hint at when the call might come. “Ha ha ha”, we will laugh, in this more civilized age while we sip a delicious beverage of non-addictive opiates and watch the George W Bush trial on our high resolution holographic videomathingie, “can you imagine that in the past we actually paid people for services and they refused to tell us when they would be willing to provide them?” And then we will levitate and play with light sabers and do other cool things.

And again at 3pm I called, since no one had yet come. And long did I wait on hold, only to be told that someone would certainly arrive by 5pm, just wait for him, just wait for him, just wait for him. And so my dog went unwalked, and I waited by the phone. And at 5:30pm, I called and waxed wroth at both regular operator and supervisor alike. And lo the story changed once again: The problem had again removed to the central office, flitting away like a shade, no one would be coming, no one planned to come, and no one had bothered to tell me any of this. I might have sat by the phone for many hours longer, staring at it, like the teenage victim of a cruel prank by the coolest kid in the school who has asked the victim on a date with no intention of going on it and now the victim is sitting at home staring at the phone, with anger, longing, and confusion all mingling together, and the victim’s ears already beginning to fill with the vividly imagined sounds of mockery to be faced in the halls at school the next day.

But then the good news! The problem would be fixed by the evening! By Wednesday evening! But was it fixed by the evening, dear reader? Search your hearts. I think you already know the answer. In truth, I suspect the technician just lied so that he could go home without fixing the problem. Fucker. The supervisor swore that he would call me the following morning to confirm that my service had been restored, but of course he was lying, and the call never came. But he was lying from the safety of his anonymous perch somewhere on the subcontinent, since although he told me his name three times and I wrote it down, the operator the next day had not heard of him, and his name wasn’t in the file noting our conversation.

I curse Company X. May it’s stock wither and shrivel in the harsh frost of the competitive market. May the ship of its stock sail straight for the icebergs of bankruptcy and insolvency. May other mixed metaphors beset it in strange and contradictory ways, which you will understand to convey my contempt and anger even if no clear image forms in your mind.

And curse the consultants and executives responsible for the establishment and maintenance of such a stupid fucking system. Regarding the men among them, may their teenage children pluck the hair from their beards with a maximum of insolence, and their mistresses leave them for younger men with firmer erections. May the women among them suffer comparable tribulations, though I ask you not to imagine anything that plays into misogynistic tropes, which have done enough damage to our society already. Fuck them. Fuck Company X. Fuck Company X for wasting so much of my time. And last but by no means least fuck the moron who had the bright idea of forcing call centre workers to say repeatedly, right at the end of the conversation, when I was sunk in the dejected weariness that often follows rage, “Our goal at Company X is to provide you with outstanding service. Have I met that goal today?” Because at this point Company X could arrange to have me serially fellated by all the beauties of Hollywood past and present and I would not say – I could not in all honesty say – that I had been provided with outstanding service.

Now imagine in your mind’s eye, dear reader, a man who is stopped on the way into his favourite restaurant by a new headwaiter. The snub is deliberate, gratuitous, infuriating. The man rounds on the headwaiter, points to a table or two kept empty and launches into a magnificent speech. The headwaiter quails under the excoriating blast of righteous indignation. But halfway through his speech, the man reaches around and notices that he has forgotten his own wallet. Even if he had sailed past the headwaiter into the best seat in the house, it would have done him no good. He continues his speech. The principle is the same: The headwaiter could not have known the wallet was missing, and was the snub not deliberate, gratuitous, infuriating? Indeed it was; the offense is identical on either side of the unpleasant discovery of the missing wallet. But what a world of difference there is on the other side! A note of hesitation creeps into his voice. And now the worst dawns on him: so great was his surprise at the discovery that the headwaiter has noticed. The headwaiter stiffens almost imperceptibly. His apologies become unctuous, exaggerated; because at precisely this moment he has seen his enemy falter, no longer a threat. The man mumbles a half-hearted conclusion and backs away. He will never return to this restaurant.

So what happened was this: My internet service had gone out on Saturday. And I had been kept waiting pointlessly throughout of the whole of Wednesday without the courtesy of a call. And to this very moment, I do wish upon the men of company X the plucking of their beards with a maximum of insolence by their teenage children and the departure of their mistresses for younger men with firmer erections, and upon the women of company X comparable tribulations, though again request that you imagine nothing which would perpetuate misogynistic tropes which have done so much harm to society. But my rage is no longer pure, because company X had fixed the problem late Wednesday evening, and my internet connection was not working on Thursday because when I first spoke to them on the Saturday they had me run through a number of different tests with the cable to confirm that the line wasn’t working and at the end of the tests I had . . . left the modem cable not plugged into the phone jack.

From Saturday to Wednesday evening, then, my internet outage was a classic case of what philosophers nowadays call “causal overdetermination.” From Wednesday evening to Thursday afternoon, however, my internet outage was a case of what philosophers who have been drinking heavily might call “dickwad-who-is-me-determination.”

And so when the technicians finally sauntered into my place on Thursday afternoon, they were quickly able to point with a laugh to the fact that the modem wasn’t even plugged in.

I wasn’t there. Or rather, I was and I wasn’t. Yoon called me, and I had to listen in horror to the scene unfold over the phone. There was a bit of joshing, oh yes there was, joshing of the poor woman, who surely knew that she was signing up for a bit of teasing when she married me but could not possibly have guessed how much, or how bitter it would taste. I was nearly doubled over with grief and self-loathing. Their laughter still echoes in my ears. I imagine it always will.

Much like Oedipus condemning the man who slew his father, when I denounced “the one responsible for my internet outage” on the phone throughout Thursday morning, I was unwittingly denouncing: myself – which just goes to show that you should never, even for a moment, turn your back on a definite description. And I would gouge my eyes out, just like Mr. Rex, you know I would, but at this point it wouldn’t do a damn bit of good. No. Such an enormity of suffering could only be redeemed by Art, and so I have written this post.

It’s a gray day, and the light coming in my window now has a sort of wintry quality to it. This had the effect of momentarily putting me in a winter frame of mind, and the coolness of the room probably helped with that too. I don’t know what it’s like for you, but for me, winter and summer go along with entirely different frames of mind, so it’s very odd to be reminded of the one when I’m in the other.

I was originally about to describe these as different moods. But they’re more than moods, so “frames of mind” is probably better. I think I’m sometimes inclined to call them moods because the respective frames of mind are emotionally coloured. It’s very hard to describe but: Winter: cozy if I’m inside, a little sad, thoughtful, reserved, a sort of focussed energy. Summer: Happier, less complicated, a less focussed energy, and a part of me that stays clenched throughout the entire winter relaxes. And something about the quality of each gets projected onto the world, so it’s not just a way of feeling; it’s a matter of feeling a certain way about everything I come across.

I remember vividly the first time I noticed this. I was in high school, and I remember getting out of the shower on a summer day. It was overcast, like today, and something about the way that the light was striking the blinds made me suddenly think of winter. Seeing the light strike the blinds in that way suddenly made me aware of how very different the frames of mind are. It’s not that I had missed it previously because the difference is subtle. Rather, it’s because the difference is so total that it’s hard to remember the one way of feeling about the world from within the other.

It’s hard to deny that Meriones has a good point here:

But Aineias threw his bronze spear at Meriones, hoping
to hit him as he came forward under his shield’s covering,
but Meriones with his eyes straight on him avoided the bronze spear.
For he bent forward, and behind his back the long spearshaft
was driven into the ground so that the butt end was shaken
on the spear. . .
But Aineias was angered in his spirit, and called out to him:
‘Meriones, though you are a dancer my spear might have stopped you
now and for all time, if only I could have hit you.’
Then in turn Meriones the spear-famed answered him:
‘Aineias, strong fighter though you are, it would be hard for you
to quench the strength of every man who might come against you
and defend himself, since you also are made as a mortal.
But if I could throw and hit you with the sharp bronze in the middle,
then strong as you are and confident in your hands’ work, you might
give glory to me, and your soul to Hades of the horses.’
(The Iliad, Book XVI, lines 608-625 (Lattimore’s translation))

Right. It seems a basic violation of trash talking to complain after you missed someone that if you had hit them, well, then they’d have been in trouble. Coulda, shoulda, woulda, and all that.

I was washing the dishes when this little bit from Homer came up randomly on my mp3 player. The lame trash talking got me thinking about lame comebacks. As it happens, I’m responsible for one of the worst comebacks I’ve ever encountered. When I was a kid, another kid said something like “I’ll bet your penis is 2 centimeters long!” And I shot back, without thinking, “TRY INCHES!!!” Later, I made the unfortunate mistake of relating this to evil mystery commenter Kegri, who for years after would interrupt our arguments at random moments to shout “TRY INCHES!!!”

So, a few weeks ago I decided that I would cut out fucking around on the internet before 9pm each day (and, of course, that I would continue to get into bed around 11:30pm each night). I’m allowed email, and I suppose the rule isn’t total, since I also allow myself to post and view comments on this site. Oh, and I can check my Netflix queue, do online banking and so on. But other than that, nada.

This had has a few effects. For example, it may surprise you to learn that I’m more productive now. I just can’t read as many blogs as before, and I can’t read them in the same way, as little breaks in between other tasks. Turns out, that frees up time for actual work.

There’s another change too, which is even better. I think my tendency of taking these little mini-breaks through the day was getting really unhealthy. There’s a sort of jittery what’s-going-on-now quality to that sort of internet use that seems to me now to interfere with the having of . . . actual thoughts. Since I’ve cut back, I’ve felt calmer and more focused. I’ve also started to read books again – something I had gradually drifted away from over the years. This is all good.

The experiment was originally supposed to be for a week only, but it’s working out so well that I think I’ll keep it up. This means less blogging, of course, but since I’ll still be an opinionated person who likes to cook and to take pictures of his dog, I expect to post about a dozen times a month.