Loose Cans

At least the poetry lectures rarely disappoint (though until today, they were never in the least enlightening). The department head took over the lecture for Darryl today, and instead of repeating the utter basics of prosody, he took a new tack and went after the Poem as Object. Which is to say we had a lovely lecture on New Criticism, which is, if I am forced at gunpoint to choose one, my own personal critical religion. Though I am, as in rather a lot of things, of the reform school, which is to say, I will occasionally season my Critique Neuve a l'oignon with psychoanalysis or (rarely) new historicism.

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Got knocked out of the Hist Maidens two days ago. Sort of a pisser because I mistook the purpose of my position (first opp): I thought I was supposed to do exposition of the opp side, and it turned out I was basically just supposed to rebut the first prop. I came in third, but they only let two go through. A little annoyed, but not shattered. Basically the adjudicator said it came down to me and this junior in from Northwestern, and I had just done the wrong job. No big deal, though. I'm still in the running in the Phil, and I think maybe I might actually prepare right for my next one.

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Played a rollicking good game of Ultimate last night. At 6:30pm I found myself on the floodlit sandy astroturf field of a high school down the road from Halls, Alexandra College (highly reputed girls' school, basically Brearley with grass), with two other people from Trinity (both visiting: Brendan is from Middlebury and is pretty good, and Alexis is from France somewhere, and he could be pretty good if he stick with it. Runs his ass off) and about 20 from University College Dublin. The game was geared toward the beginner/advanced beginners, so the one single time we tried a zone with two completely inexperienced points (I realize this is hopelessly referentially opaque for most of you, sorry), the cup dissolved in about ten seconds while the right wing just sort of wandered around the pitch looking up at constellations, yet somehow managed to miss the disc that flew right over his head. After that we went back to man. Astroturf, by the way, is the devil. Especially when it has sand caked all over it. The thing about sand is that while it provides great traction, it makes layouts impossibly painful and bloody. We all had blood streaming down our right knees just from kneeling on the line before the pull.

After the carnage we went back to the UCD sports bar on campus for a few pints, which wasn't all that far away. UCD is gigantic. It's sort of a city unto itself. It's apparently the biggest college in Europe (though still half the size of a lot of US state schools like Michigan or Florida) with something like 25 000 undergrads. It's not in Dublin proper, so it's an immense and sprawling campus, and the first thing you see when you walk in is this, well, towering water tower which likely dwarfs any of the buildings in Dublin. Their facilities are extraordinary: sports pitch after sports pitch, and their gym has about ten gyms in it (at 9:30 pm on a thursday, there was basketball, fencing, badminton, and fencing going on). This is in stark contrast to Trinity where, it must be said, the sports facilities are unequivocally shite. Our gym is about the size of the New Gym at HM (though we have only one of them for 11 000 undergrads), we have one little fitness center, a dance studio, and a few squash courts. There's also a rugby pitch outside, and then there's College Park, which is just a sprawling greensward with a few trees on the perimeter, but they don't want you and your pointy mean cleats on their pretty grass. TCD does have sports grounds but they're out at Santry, which is way the hell out (right next to the airport). They're building a new gym, but God only knows when that'll be done.

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I really haven't got much more to say. I sit here and type because it's more fun than going home and doing nothing and looking in the fridge and then closing it and then walking once around the table, kick the soccer ball, knock over our beer bottle collection, fuck, pick them up, mosey back to the refrigerator, still nothing in there, and this really could turn into another one of those humongo sentences, couldn't it? I would, but I'm not so much up to it, right now. I need to go to the library and pick up Richards' Practical Criticism because the lecturer made it seem like a lot of fun--I might just even pick up Lucky Jim while I'm at it, huh?--bike home, pick up a second bag, then turn around because I need to go shopping very badly (they charge you for bags here, so you bring your own) since all I have is a package of tortillas, two eggs, and a little cheese. And pasta. But I'm sick to death of pasta. There's no milk or bread in the house, either. There are three nearly empty cartons of shitty orange juice, none of which are mine. All I have left is alcohol, really, which shows you how slowly I go through it: two draught cans of Guinness (the wonders of modern technology--it pours and tastes like real draught...well, almost. Not quite), a little whiskey and vermouth, and three bottles of wine, one of which is a joke because it's a) German, b) €3.45, c)9,0% ABV, and d) called HOCK. I shit you not. I suppose Hock is Deutsche for Plonk? I'll let you know how it turns out.

I'm getting very good with beef and marinades, though. I just can't figure out how to tenderize it sans tenderizer. Any ideas?

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SCROLL DOWN, FOOL. NO PEEKING.


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Uch argh bloogle yich, Christ! What have I spent the past hour writing? More like "Satire Completely Out His ASS." Good lord. I want to publicly apologize for the extreme heat generated by the violent friction of my suckage. I shall endeavor not to do it again.

And no, I'm not on drugs. I already told you, they don't have drugs here.

Okay so a couple. But none of the particular drug I'd do. Though at Frisbee the other day Jim left a dinky little spliff on the ground which Steve MacD and I surreptitiously bogarted (Jim, to his credit, noticed). And that's only remotely psychotropic substance I've seen since August. Brings a tear to your eye, doesn't it, Liz?

I don't believe I just used the words Surreptitiously and Bogarted in conjunction. Maybe I should do more drugs.

Ew, Jesus. I feel all filthy now, like I've been rolling in sewage.
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Just sat through the most unutterably boring lecture on Orientalism. It wasn't the subject that made it so, though, it was the lecturer. The subject was not wholly uninteresting, though it really could have been done much faster: all you really have to say about Edward Said is that he's wrong because Chicken Tikka Masala is the unofficial official dish of Great Britain. This actually makes sense, because Said, for all his flair, of which I admit there is no shortage, essentially forgets one thing that any postcolonialist (in this case, Homi Bhabha, who is a big macher postcolonialist currently at UChicago; Mike, want to try and hunt him down? You'd love him) will tell you, which is that you can't have hegemony without some measure of cultural exchange. There is no imperialist without an empire, and vice versa. They're interdependent. Blither blither. The whole point of my reciting this is that I finally decided that, as previously stated, the bit about the chicken tikka basically smothers Said. There is something wrong about the fact that I spent my whole lecture thinking about food.

Which is not to say I haven't been eating well, it's just that I haven't varied it much. I have consumed at least fifteen quesadillas (conservative estimate, and don't talk to me about Cup Noodles. They don't count) since I got here. I even eat them for breakfast now.

I realize it's nothing new to bitch about a boring lecturer; everyone has and has had them. It's just that I got the impression during this lecture that it was not really a lecture at all, but instead a piece of performance art, from which the audience was intended to shed all pretense to interest, strip away all lingering traces of fascination which so often blind us to the utter banality of things, and with perfect, luminous clarity, capture in our souls the very essence of complacency. The artist--which is what she seemed at the outset--was a virtuoso, impossibly practiced at mimicking the flat unearthly drone of bagpipes before they have enough air in them to play. Her accent was ineffable, untraceable, universal. At the lectern, her lone prop, she was dimly illumined so one could neither imagine her ethnic background nor guess at the culture which lent its spirit to this delicate art. She came, it seemed, from everywhere and nowhere. She tantalized us; each time her eyes flickered with the recognition of our presence, that collective heart of the spellbound audience would trip-thump once out of rhythm. She brought us to the very edge of wakefulness, and then, with a heartlessness that was in retrospect a moving commentary on the moral ambivalence of the human soul, once again sank us deep into unrippled pools of apathy. For so absent from flinch or quaver was her voice, and so enchanted was her audience, that our hearts all soon beat at the same rhythm. The soft precise susurration of a hundred hearts in sync was like the subtlest metronome; her tempo never varied or wavered. It was almost as though we were conducting her, and not the other way around. It was the most sublime paradox: the onus was on us, who were bereft of any agency, to perpetuate the perfect state she had embosomed in us.

She was no mere artist. This harlot, this seducer, this ewig weibliche eternal woman, this idea-woman, incorporeal, nor woman nor man, a voice like a hundred voices at once, indissoluble, black and white, all the colors and none, untouched by the irrational "feelings" to which mere mortals are so prone, such indivisible, singular Being...no. It is none of these. Adjectives are insufficient. No language will do this justice. For we were not in the presence of Being. Because she Was not. Such an "Effanineffable" cannot be so hemmed in by limits. She was Not. She was was not the non-Word, the word the soul knows ineluctably but can never translate. This Not was was not is is not will be will not be the Untranslatable. Yes. Because it is affirmation. No. Because it is negation. For in my Critical and Cultural Theory lecture this morning Six November Two thousand and three, from nine ante meridian to ten ante meridian, I, Samuel Benjamin Ashworth, "of Manhattan the son," learned that all these things are Not. And I have learned the meaning of

Classes are becoming disappointing in their lack of rigor. Today's tutorial on The Essay was sort of the perogee so far; we found ourselves talking about George Eliot's essay, "Silly Novels By Lady Novelists," which, while very good fun, is hardly worth talking about, even in a feminism course, which this isn't. As exposition, imagine Michiko Kakutani taking a few weeks out to write a savage 20-page review of the collected works of Danielle Steel (I would like to remark that that last constitutes the first hip-to-the-contemp-lit-scene comment this blog has seen thus far; no word from the peant gallery on whether it will be the last). I made the comment that I simply didn't understand why we were studying this essay, because it's transparently just a bagatelle. It has little structural value as an essay, and as literary criticism goes, it's pure fluff. Clearly, we weren't going to get anything out of it. The tutor basically agreed. We tried to plod onward (bent double, as students under boredom), but there wasn't much point in it. The Essay is turning, frankly, into a total waste of time. We end up talking about the content of the essay, which, in a class whose whole purpose is to devote itself to form, is a rather stupid thing to do. Furthermore, the poetry lectures are grotesquely simplistic, and the only reason I still go is because of Darryl, the lecturer, who is very fine, and who once bought me a pint and has been known to read to us from the patron saint of doggerel verse, William McGonagall. (Click the link, then go to "The Tay Bridge Disaster." It's utterly sublime.)

I have decided, after what I consider to be adequate exposure (and this is sure to inflame a few), that I am totally uninterested in Literature and Sexuality. The class, I mean. I am very much wholly obsessed with sexuality in literature, but this class, apparently, is not. We have heard the same thing, that being a Victorian woman was not (contrary to popular belief) all shits and tickles. I know! Shocking, isn't it? We have heard this ad nauseam. Yes, I KNOW that contemporary theory said that women had no sexual feelings (a woman of standing, when asked what to do on one's wedding night, was reported to have said, "Lie on your back and think of Britain."). Can we not get past this? It's killing all the sex for me, it really is. Give me Henry Miller or Don DeLillo any day. Oh, and then there are the classmates who read about how Tess, as she tramples through the brush, following the man she's infatuated with, gets all sort of "cuckoo spittle" and "slugslime" and STICKY WHITE STUFF all over her legs and dress, and they actually can say Look, I think you're reading too much into this. I don't see any masturbatory fantasies here at all!

Oy.

So I'm sure you're all dying to know how the Jewish Society thing turned out. Well, frankly, I really don't know because I cut out just over an hour into it. There were I think eight people there, a number which, were it any other club, I would never assume to be indicative of its membership, but in this case, it was rather unpleasant. There was furthermore little discussion of Judaism; the best talk I had all night long was with a grad student named Noga who lives beneath me at Halls and is an Assistant Warden, which means she can tell me all the dirt. Which I suppose was worth the price of admission, which was fortunately free. In any case, I soon left, having consumed only one beer (a Kilkenny for €4.50? You must be joking), and moseyed over to the Buttery, one of the campus pubs (the more central and larger one), where the English students had tried to organize a small party for that night. I found it not huge (maybe eight, ten people?), but pleasantly intimate. Also largely female. The number of warm male bodies there peaked at three, and then swiftly redescended to a comfortable two. I remembered something I seemed shockingly to have forgotten: that the best way to make friends is to get drunk with them. This is not so much to say that I got drunk (I think I consumed only three or four pints of beer, with one little glass of Power's on the rocks in between; I am quickly growing impervious to Guinness, which puts a major hurting on my finances), just that I remembered that particular something. The Buttery shuts down at 11:30, though, so we cleared out and we to this small dark club (where tuesdays are ostensibly student nights, which means they sell patently shite alcopops called "New Mix" for regular prices; the only difference is that on student nights at least they tell you what those prices are before you have to pay them) the DJ of which, despite the fact that there was literally not one single person in it, nevertheless delighted in raising the volume to cochlea-crunching levels. Dancing was proposed at one point, though no one made the slightest motion to get up and actually do it. We just sort of sat there and drank and talked--well, bellowed, really--and tried to recline on these deceptively hard banquettes that to an extent recalled those big ebonite armchairs in the lower concourse of Grand Central that winos are so fond of. It was unsettling: they looked springy and welcoming, but then you plunked yourself down on them and heard an actual Plunk, which was your kiester colliding with the recalcitrant framework of the couch. I was not hugely impressed; we're probably going to do this regularly.

This was an actual obituary published in The Times-Picayune, New Orleans on  10/2/2003.  

Word has been received that Gertrude M. Jones, 81, passed away on August 25, 2003, under the loving care of the nursing aides of Heritage Manor of Mandeville, Louisiana. She was a native of Lebanon, KY. She was a retired Vice President of Georgia International Life Insurance Company of Atlanta, GA. Her husband, Warren K. Jones predeceased her.
Two daughters survive her: Dawn Hunt and her live-in boyfriend, Roland, of Mandeville,LA; and Melba Kovalak and her husband, Drew Kovalak, of Woodbury, MN. Three sisters, four grandchildren and three great grandchildren, also survive her. Funeral services were held in Louisville, KY.
 
Memorial gifts may be made to any organization that seeks the removal of President George Bush from office.

(Merci Pop)

Damn. Who knew? I just learned this in my debate, and in response to my skepticism it was confirmed by all present. Apparently, that eerie blue halogen light in the bathroom here in the arts block is there so that heroin addicts can't shoot up in the stalls: they can't see their veins in that light. This of course makes them walk up those stairs all the way to the fourth floor, where the other, normally lit bathroom is, and stairs, as any fool knows (apparently, only the fool knows...) will totally deter an addict from getting his fix. "Oh shit, man. Stairs? Yo, I just can't deal with that. I better go to rehab."

I just came this close to going with the Philosophical Society to this uberdebate at Oxford. See, just before my debate on clean needles (which I tanked but still squeaked me into the next round), Tom, the VP of the Phil (who chaired my last debate for them, the smoking ban one), says Hey, we were impressed at your last debate. He asks me What are you doing this weekend? I say nothing that I know of, why? He says Because I think we might need you to come to Oxford with us for this big UK debate tourney. I say Whoa. He says We pay for your plane ticket and everything, I just need to see if James found someone else yet, I haven't talked to him since yesterday. I say This isn't a maiden's thing, is it? He says No, it's all the varsities, like a hundred people all tolled, but there are always a couple who've never debated before.

So whoa. Unfortunately, after the debate, he told me James had reached him and that they had already found the guy. So no Oxford. But he said the IV's (intervarsities) are coming up and they'd probably want me for that. This is kind of a huge honor; I think the Phil has between 300 and 400 members in the fresher class alone. It's kind of cool. I also like saying No, I never debated before--well, okay, once, but that didn't really count (my eight hours at JSA in 10th grade). And for some reason EVERYONE thinks I'm a visiting (one-year) student. Not a single person has yet guessed that I was a full degree fresher. I guess I look old. You should see the looks of shock, though. Today, when I told Tom I wasn't visiting, he actually asked (I shit ye not) if I'd gotten a degree from a U.S. college before coming here--like I was a grad student. His jaw sort of hit the pavement.

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I'm going to bike home now quickly so I can come back out again, this time without the bike (as much as I hate that damn bus): I have a Jewish Society meeting tonight (Yes!) at Mahaffey's pub round the back of campus. Very glad I finally get to meet the other nine Jews in college. It kicks off at half seven and will go for a good three hours, which means I very likely won't be in any state to bike home. Or at least I don't intend to be. They call it Drinking Week for a reason, damn it!

What's that you say? It's not called Drinking Week? Whatting week? Speak up, I can't hear you. READING week? What the hell is Reading week? Bosh.

So anyway I asked the guy on the phone if we were to have fresh blood of Christian children on tap; he responded emphatically in the affirmative. However, though it shall hardly be an easy task to repress the urge in face of such a brilliantly receptive audience, I shall have to refrain from making too many jokes of that order this evening, as I would prefer not to find myself beating such a fine, fine horse to death.

You know what? Even I can't tell whether that last sentence was sarcastic or not. Oy.

Was so goddamn sure I had my 9am RomRev class this morning that I dragged my ass out of bed at 7:30 to get there. Of course when I get to the fourth floor I find that the class, which was already rescheduled once, has been kicked back to thursday. This is reading week, so we're not supposed to have tutorials, but if you missed them last week for the bank holiday, they're supposed to have been rescheduled. So now I actually have two tutorials this week, which is a pain.

In any case, I now have two hours to kill before my dentist appointment. What's that you say, Sam? Dentist appointment? But whatever can be the matter? Well, it's funny you should ask, Ma, because you remember when that dear man, Dr. Feinberg, said to that equally dear man, Dr. Tarnow, just put a light cement on those two front teeth; he won't be keeping them in his head for long, we'll take 'em back out in december?

Well, it had been loosening for a week up until yesterday. Little by little it worked itself free of the gumline, and finally, following a good 2 1/2 hours of grueling man defense at Ultimate practice (Mikes, you will be appalled to know that we play almost exclusively man D at these sunday sessions: because they're not team practices, they're 'Dublin team' practices, they're totally informal. It's pickup. No positions, no zone. You try playing man against half the Irish national team for 3 hours sometime, see how you like it), as I was biking home (and I do so love parenthetical digressions. What was I talking about again?), I was about to reach the Halla na Trionoide gates when I breathed rather hard and the fucker (which is actually two teeth) just slipped out onto my tongue. With the same I promptly reversed its progress and shoved it back up there. In any case it was very bothersome. I told myself I was just going to eat soup for the rest of the day, but then reconsidered when I realized I had put the steak out to thaw that morning, and that it had about one more day in it before it went bad, and having to throw out two of the past three meat purchases was a prospect I little relished. So I made a great steak and chewed with the corners of mi boca.

I had--and this is another domestic success which I deliberately did not relate yesterday so as not to affright the mother--last wednesday or so gone to health services to get a list of area dentists. Yes, Ma, I had Dr. Woolfe's number, I just couldn't figure out how to work it so much. See, for reasons too compex and tedious to explain, I thought the area code was 016. Turns out it's just 01. So whenever I called Woolfe, I'd dial 016 475 1313 and get a modem tone. So I finally figured out how to call Dr. Geraghty 01 661 5544, and I arranged an appointment for today at 11:15am. Also he's right around the corner from college, which is handy. So by the time you read this all will be right again in my mouth. Also the receptionist said she didn't think a simple recementing would cost more than €5 or €10.

I must now go and do research on China because at 3pm I have a phil debate, or possibly hist debate, on the resolution "This house regrets the awarding of the 2008 Olympic games to China." I'm on the opposition, I think. Let me check.

Shit. Stupid machine won't let me open attachments. Pain in the ass. Oh, well. I think I'm opp. Which means I have to think of anything beyond the obvious generic reasons why a brutally repressive and secretive and borderline sociopathic country should deserve the massive economic boost that the Olympic games bring. Maybe I'll just sum up at the end, perhaps throwing in some bon mots to impress judges. That's a cushy job. If anyone has any ideas on the matter, send them before 2pm (I have a lecture then).

At least my other one is easy: This house would give addicts clean needles. I'm prop. That's tomorrow. Again, same deal. Any opinions either way, lemme know. Muh. I'm all sleepy. Snore.

I am enjoying this rather precipitous decline into domesticity. And this morning, between the realization that I was either going to have to wear long johns until monday or go commando, and my inability to get the sugar out of the bag and into the coffee, I decided it was time for a list. So herewith the first of what will be a string of such lists:

DOMESTICITY: FAILURES vs. SUCCESSES of the week

Failures:
--Laundry situation. Serious disaster. I dropped it off on thursday night, but owing to my decision to distract myself from Marie's departure half an hour ago by popping in to see Kill Bill at 6:15 (unimpressive, not really worth €8. €5.50, maybe), I missed the pickup time at 8pm. So now I have no underpants, and have had none since friday. By tomorrow I will have run out of socks. This is the biggest crisis ever.
--We run out of bread really easily. Because they do not, in this misbegotten country, include twist-ties with the bread, which they probably only recently began to slice, it goes bad within two days. The other night--I swear this is true--we found ourselves playing frisbee in the living room with stale bread. We also could have played hockey with the hamburger buns.
--Meat. I keep buying too much beef at once. Yesterday I had to throw out an entire thing of ground chuck because it had gone bad. This was terribly sad. And furthermore I fear greatly for the steak in the freezer.

Successes:
--Marie showed me two shockingly helpful things: one, how to work my radiator, and two, how to make the shower hotter (even though there was no fucking hot water this morning, which made for smelly Sam).
--My quesadillas are legend. I even made a breakfast one with eggs for us the other morning. See, what had happened was this: I was going to make french toast. So I got out the eggs and milk and orange juice. Yes, orange juice. French toast batter wants a dollop of it. So I beat the three eggs. Then I look up. And of course we've no fucking bread. And I was all like, Scheisse. But then I says to myself, I says, but ye have tortillas, have ye no? And I says aye, I do. So I scrambled me eggs and melted some cheese on the tortillas in the superb Tefal crepe pan Marie brought me, threw on some salsa, and slathered on the eggs. And it was bellissima.
--I am also getting quite good at grocery shopping. Even better, liquor shopping. I can quote you the price of Guinness 50cl draught cans at all of the local Off-Licences. The best prices are at Dunnes' Stores: €1.76 a can. That's a pint of Guinness for €1.76. But right now I'm mostly buying wine that's half-off. If it's on sale, I buy it. Except Cornejo Costas. That's just white piss.
--We are organized. This is a success. We are also getting more disciplined about cleaning the damn kitchen.
--We now have a Nintendo 64. Adrian brought it down from Donegal. Because there was a grave worry there for a while that one of us actually might get some work done.

There are many more, but I really have to go make some lunch now before running off to Ultimate in half an hour.