A Japanese dog and the Tea Party

This afternoon, Ryu and I walked the usual circuit around downtown. We approached the corner of Eighth Street and River Avenue where two people stood slightly bent forward, looking at a crop of tulips. The tulips are out en force before the first week in May. The woman in the pair had a camera in her hands, the man mimicking her movements but without a camera. They wore matching blue jeans and Pittsburgh Steelers windbreakers. Tourists. The two, seemingly satisfied with the documentation of the floral samples inside this one planter, straightened up in time to see us arrive at the corner. Now, before the story progresses, I want to share a useful set of metaphors prefaced by a bit of information.

First, Ryu is a beautiful dog. People across the age range and genders make cooing sounds when he prances past. If he and I are stopped at an intersection (or anywhere, to my chagrin, because he’s relieving himself), people exploit the interlude as an opportunity to pose a set of boilerplate questions: is it a boy or girl, what kind of dog is he, how old is he, is he friendly, where did you get him, my gosh he is so cute, can I pet him? Those questions belong exclusively to the realm of Yes and No, save for the ‘he is so cute’ bit which, of course, is not a question. To that, I grin and feel aggravatingly single.

Oh, the metaphor. Ryu is a total magnet. Were he a human and minus the leash, I’d be his wingman. (Full disclosure: I’ve never been a wingman. I had to read Urban Dictionary to confirm the word choice.) The situations wherein people tell me that he’s cute, what options exist other than to say “thanks,” comment in agreement, or provide a perfunctory grin? I can’t deny or lie that he’s a fucking awesome looking dog. Still, hello? How about some attention on the end of the leash wearing pants? Society -- and by that I mean the popular media -- teaches that animals ought attract attention to their carer. A dog projects a manner of unselfishness onto their human and, in Ryu’s case, a sense of style. So far, in a year, I’ve had not one bite. Which is unfair (and I don’t mean the pun). Always the wingman and never the... not wingman? How does that old saw work in the structure of the bridesmaids cliché...? Let me know, ladies.

I should note that walking downtown has practical and tactical value. Schlepping into town extends our range of both exercise and recognition. He and I walk a lot farther when in town than during our usual neighbourhood trek (at least, it seems farther, for his need to lift a leg every 30 seconds). He also gets to ‘chase’ the abundant foraging squirrels in Centennial Park absent my anxiety of car traffic. The downtown excursion is also tactical in that should Ryu ever slip away -- which his breed notoriously accomplishes like tragic Houdini-dogs -- it’ll give some comfort that a slew of people in both our walking areas would recognise a happily running Shiba Inu and know which weeping man to find.

Returning to the Steelers fans. The light to cross Eighth turned prohibitive as I came to a stop next to them. The woman’s face registered the familiar ‘I’m going to ask questions about your wonderful dog’ expression yet the man’s voice hit me first. “Is that a husky?” he asked. I looked at him, registered him as perhaps in the late 60s and, looking back to the now crouched woman, responded in the negative. “He looks like a baby husky,” she says from the balls of her feet looking at Ryu who is next to me and two feet from the couple. “No, he’s fully grown. Six years this summer,” I say. The man insists that Ryu looks like a husky. It’s then that a recognise his tone: matter-of-fact, as though the situation were switched and Ryu were in their care and I posed the questions. How odd. He asked whether Ryu is friendly, to which I deviated for the first time from the standard “yes,” to “he is friendly if you are.” When the man kept still and said “I’d better not risk it then,” I noticed a politically themed button on his baseball cap: white numbers 9 1 2 superimposed over an American flag. The white numbers sparked a backwards process of adding up the events of the past 1o seconds. These people are Tea Party activists. Holy shit. This hit me with force. The woman, still crouched and all smiles focused on Ryu, asks what ‘kind’ of dog he is, and I share that “he’s a Shiba Inu, a Japanese hunting dog; kind of like a fox.” She stands up yet remains looking down, enraptured. The man says, “well he can’t be Japanese or else his eyes would be all slanted.” I look not at the man’s face but at his political button. The Eighth Street crossing light turns. “Nos cruzamos, Ryu,” and we walk toward the park. The couple go east.

His eyes would be all slanted. The strange old man said that about my dog. My Japanese dog. Several issues here.

One, I’ve never encountered a self-identifying Tea Party activist. Last week I saw a white SUV parked outside the Curragh Irish Pub festooned with Michigan Tea Party magnets. I made mental note that the crazies are arrived. ‘Take back the government’? What does that even mean? It’s right there: where we the people elected it. My sole exposure to Tea Party supporters otherwise is through newspapers and the internet. If one discounts their leaders Palin, Limbaugh and Beck, the rank-and-file seem like average rednecks: poor, under-educated and racialist. Yet, the New York Times recently released a survey disproving that stereotype... at least, the poor portion. The survey also suggests that Tea Party supporters possess an average level of education (in 2010 America, what in hell does that even mean? I know college students who cannot conjugate a verb). Perhaps I’m on the wispy end of the 1970’s culture wars but possessing an education infers that one is aware of social acceptabilities. If Tea Party activists are indeed of average income and education (but totally racialist), then it boggles the mind to consider what for this man is socially taboo if describing Japanese things as ‘slanted’ is comfortably safe. Perhaps his mental calendar flips perpetually between 1944 and 1985?

Second, the man applied a human physiology to a dog without a discernible sense of irony. Slanted eyes - Japanese humans - Japanese dogs. I honestly don’t get the connection. Japanese people do not have slanted eyes. Their eyelids, like many East Asian people, have a double crease. So, yeah, not correct. The physiology of dog eyelids to their original nation makes no goddamn sense and negative a thousand sense in connection to the humans of that geography. Maybe this point links back to number one up there because, call me old-fashioned, an educated discerning person would not have made the inter-species analogy. It’s fucking clumsy, embarrassing.

Third, the man said the horrible bigoted comment in a didactic tone one uses when correcting a simple mistake. Try this exercise at home. Have a person say aloud, “we now have a lot of children so should by a Toyota coupe.” Then, you respond aloud with “no, we shouldn’t buy a coupe because it only has two doors.” Sounds reasonable, right? A sedan is defined by its having four doors and a coupe, two. No big deal here. Now, in that same tone say “well he can’t be Japanese or else his eyes would be all slanted.” Please, please tell me that you feel the wrongness of the words. English speakers should hear a similar wrongness of language not so much in tone as in time with the mistaken conjugation of ‘saw‘ and ‘seen‘ (I seen a Prius accelerate suddenly and then smash into an Audi vs I saw a Prius accelerate suddenly and then smash into a no you fucking didn’t you litigious liar, shut up).

The stinky cherry atop this anti-social cake is point four: he presumed that I wouldn’t taken offence to his comment. This upsets me most.

The bigot presumes that others of their group share their prejudices; therefore, all white guys are equally bigoted. NO. NO! That logic isn’t logic: it is racist. How does that obvious truth escape racialist people? This is an older, white married man ostensibly not from this city who yet possesses the peace of mind to conclude that an unknown white man also accepts bigotry. The adjective ‘unknown’ ought to activate his brain’s crucial ‘keep the questionable comments inside’ mechanism, but in this case the unknown might as well be ‘nephew.’ And that ‘quality’ about bigotry terrifies: the implied familial-like cohesiveness of racial identity. Remember, he and I are total strangers to the other. What we had in common are skin colour, language and shared space of an intersection. Yet, out of the stranger-ness this man found in me a familiar identity based on skin colour. That shared identity enabled the forging of a sufficient bond for him to comfortably share that horrible comment. His assuming my tolerance in hearing bigotry presumes that all white people are bigots -- that all white people think the same. Exactly zero white people agree with that presumption! Even crazies agree, if asked in a a sensible manner, that not all crazies think the same kind of batshit crazy. I’d bet other people’s money that this bigot would emphatically conclude that all whites do not think the same. He is a shameless racist and I am a heathen sodomite, yet we’re both white. ¡Viva la diferencia! No racial/ethnic/cultural/gender/sexual group appreciates that totality of prejudice by another group. Remember the calendar reference up there? It’s 2010 for fuck’s sake. But, go ahead and test my argument: replace any group in the gap in the following sample sentence as a test. ________ love to go shopping. Blacks? Racist. Asians? Bigoted. Persians? Ditto. Women? Sexist. Homos? (oh... shit...) Homophobic.

What is the take away from this experience? I walked into Centennial Park with Ryu, the scene familiar: sunshine and trees, squirrels and tulips in the city I chose to call home. Yet, I felt different. A strange man infected me with his racial presumption. For the first time I felt bad for being white. The comment about my Japanese dog looped me into a colour-bound prejudice that I did not fight. It happened suddenly. I was unprepared. It took place in public. Whatever. The truth is that my goddamn liberal insistence on the goodness of people cloaked the man’s vile nature until too late. I acted in response to a traffic light instead of in defence of principles and so suffered in the aftermath. This is an education.

Ryu seems unaffected, I am pleased to report.

The semester ending

Two weeks remain in this semester. Tomorrow is the last meaningful class. I didn’t plan beyond the 16th. Luckily for the students, they get two weeks to meet with me in conferences and revise their major papers. Whether they *do* is another matter.

The department chair offered two summer courses. Two. In summer. That’s fucking amazing for a couple reasons. Summer courses are plums usually taken by full-time faculty and part-time faculty with a high seniority level. To get a single course during summer is a minor miracle. To get two looks more like a Godsend. I thanked the chair profusely and empathically accepted the positions. The classes are serendipitous for timing and placement. A 101 is full-summer Saturday morning course in the Grand Rapids main campus and the 102 meets in Holland, a Summer II course in session Tuesday and Thursday from 6-9p. That neither class conflict with JCI schedule or require a shake-up of my newly earned personal life, is a cause for celebration. The income? Also great.

My current students, the ones which stuck out the challenge, will go into their next level courses far more prepared than their counterparts. It sucks that the semester ends right after I memorised their names.

I keep losing weight

I lost approximately thirty pounds since January of 2008. Here is a list of changes that I believe lead to this loss:

Converting to vegetarian
No longer eating fast food
No longer drinking soda/carbonated beverages
Cutting out fried food
Cooking more at home (this waxes and wanes)
Switching work shifts from 4p-Midnight to 10a-6p
Joining a 24hr gym
Daily protein shakes
Reading labels in the grocery store

My weight hit 180lbs last year. This week, the gym’s medical scale (see how I eliminate possibility of error?) read 152. I ran an extra half mile to celebrate. Tonight I celebrated a little more in the form of a gluten-free chocolate cake slice at Uncommon Grounds in Saugatuck. The added bonus of being amongst feathered-hair lesbians makes the scenery change a welcome one.

Despite the possibilities I might cite when people ask whether I’ve lost weight (and how), I usually claim a tapeworm.

Face burn

So, goddamnit, my face is burned. I don’t know what caused it but entertain a theory. My dermatologist prescribed Retin-A for acne. She advised the lowest dose due to its nasty side-effect of drying and irritating the skin. Retin-A sleeps with the group of medications whose side-effects are possibly worse than the condition they treat. The advice says to use Retin-A at night in sparing amounts, only enough to lightly glaze the face, and only at night. Sunlight exacerbates the irritants, making Retin-A the evil twin of sunblock. Even at night though the doctor told me to follow application with a moisturizing creme -- nothing brand specific, but anything hypoallergenic and preferably containing aloe. Four times per week I put on the meds followed by a liberal dose of St Ives creme. 10 days back I noticed a strip of red roughly following my beard-line on the right side of my face. It itched like crazy. I reckoned my skin was telling me to trim a little, so I did. After trimming my beard I then noticed my cheek’s left side looked normal. Neither region gets a Retin-A application (for obvious reasons). I didn’t think much of it until the redness showed up around my eyes. Ten days since the first notice of red, neither patch disappeared despite my reducing the Retin-A to twice per week and applying the St Ives every night.

Today I trolled websites looking for advice. Most people in a similar situation described redness lasting two weeks. They used Neutrogena products as moisturizer. One woman with whom I empathised completely described her red face as sufficiently embarrassing to keep her home-bound. The redness caused such embarrassment that going into public was off-limits. Jesus, do I understand that. My acne would flare so suddenly and viciously that, just months back this happened, I refused to go into public. I’d skip Krav Maga classes, insist watching DVDs at home instead of going to the cinema, making coffee at home rather than risk the stares at Lemonjello’s. Facial acne during teen years is one thing (and expected), acne at 30 is another fucking game altogether. And it’s another fucking world as a gay guy -- where looks are paramount. Anyway, I lost faith in the St Ives creme -- in part for it seeming to make the itching worse - and am heading to Meijer later to find Neutrogena. I had a personal embargo against Neutorgena products back in the late 90’s because of Norway’s resumption of whaling. I’m refusing to look up this issue right now for entirely selfish reasons.

Atavism

I promised myself years ago to write a response to William A Henry’s 1994 book In Defense of Elitism. Phil recommended that I read it, so I promptly bought it. It then waited on a bookshelf for a year. I’ve read it twice, the most recent one recently. This post is not the self-promised response to the book as a whole but rather of a single paragraph. Henry’s finest paragraph lies almost hidden and unassuming within his most controversial chapter, “Affirmative Confusion” whose topic any any reasonable person can deduce. The paragraph is reproduced below (with all due respect to Henry and his publisher’s intellectual and property rights):

The error is in looking for a group basis, a categorical basis, for pride. One’s worth and self-regard ought to come from individual competitive performance, not from group identity. Pride based on clan or tribal connections is atavistic. It appeals to people who fear they cannot succeed as individuals, and by diverting their energies it all but ensures that they will will not succeed as individuals (91).

The chapter is obviously addressing American Affirmative-Action programs. Henry claims from his position of anti-egalitarianism that the AA programs play into group identity politics to the detriment of all involved. Blacks, he writes, will subsume individual responsibility to the quota system. That instead of studying, hard work, building social connections, and community service upon which one builds a platform for future (and continued) success, individual blacks will rely on the quota system to guarantee a position of employment. Whites, then, will notice less-qualified blacks working amongst the professional ranks and wonder why a double standard exists for excellence. The resulting tension pushes racial reconciliation even further down the timeline instead of the intended sooner. The pernicious, camouflaged land-mines of identity politics litter the ground on which American racial groups are destined to share. AA programs result in, according to Henry, an atavistic impulse amongst contemporary generations of Americans. People for whom the Civil War and Civil Rights are chapters in high school textbooks instead of lessons on social revolution experience present racial problems in a cognitive dissonance. In other words, blacks, Hispanics, Asians and whites reach backward, rummaging through history’s closet, and from their group’s narrative derive their individual attitude. White’s (rightly) say that neither their families nor themselves owned slaves, voted to segregate Asians along the coasts, or used Hispanic nannies. Blacks will reach back to conjure up the spirit of oppression -- none of which matters to Hispanics and Asians. Hispanics wonder aloud why blacks deserve special programs when Hispanics constitute a larger slice of the population and have that whole language barrier to work out. Asians, well, I don’t know enough about Asian-American culture positions to say (and frankly, neither does Henry). The atavistic impulse that Henry disdains is individual’s use of historic events on a racial/ethnic scale as rationale for present individual problems. In other words, the fault is not in our stars but in ourselves. If a black woman, Hispanic man, white man, Asian woman cannot qualify for professional and secure jobs, the applicant should not cast a net backwards to find explanations. The problem does not lie in the past but in the present. One’s resume is nearly all that matters in our time, not our excuses.

Dictionary

I looked up the word 'scholar' in Webster today and didn't like what I found.

1 : a person who attends a school or studies under a teacher : PUPIL
2 a : a person who has done advanced study in a special field b : a learned person
3 : a holder of a scholarship

Numbers one and two, check. Three, no. I am indeed a person who attends a school or studies under a teacher; pupil, yep. I've also done advanced study in a special field and my family do refer to me as "a learned person" though never in that specific usage. Sadly I didn't qualify for a graduate scholarship but did during the undergrad years. So I guess all three do apply after all. What I find discouraging is the positivist tone of these definitions. Webster throws too wide a blanket over the term. I didn't throw in any qualifiers such as "failed" or "bad" but Webster did have an entry for the "Rhodes" variety. According to Webster, I am a scholar. As is my mom and a handful of friends. I know already that the dictionary isn't a great place to parse subjectivities but i'd like an antonym that had equal breadth of scope. "Idiot" doesn't really cut it.

A professor said a few weeks ago that my sentence contruction is masterful. Isn't that a strange word? Masterful. He followed up with noting that my essay construction, however, is pretty awful. It's weird. I think he's both right and wrong. To structure an essay is, for me, like killing a kitten. So repugnant that thinking about it opens me up to moral culpability. My sentences aren't very good either. Can I make a sentence without using a 'to be' verb? Only sometimes. Maybe he meant 'masterful' in that my sentences follow the Subject Verb Predicate model. That's nice. Those stars earned in fourth grade were worth it.

About half an hour ago I had the first suicidal thought in near a month. I knew when it happened because a weird feeling came over me and I looked at the clock. It was 559p. In this month I've not felt self-destructive. Which is good. People notice that I "seem" better, and that's nice too. I've had meaningful conversations with professors. My personal relationship also seems strengthened. That's good, too. Everything is great. What threads the bad times together with the good times is my utter lack of production. I've not written a motherfucking thing! I'm soooo academic. When I feel suicidal, I don't write because what a great excuse to not do so. I'm suicidal and deserve to do little or nothing. Look at me, everybody. I have mental problems that are solved with medication. Don't expect anything of me, okay? Because I am mentally fucking retarded. Summaries? Drafts? Abstracts? Outlines? Are you fucking kidding me? I'm on legalised drugs! Everybody knows I'm about to have a nervous breakdown so why not allow me to do absolutely zero and get away with it? When I feel better I'll get right back to work. Except that, here's the punchline, I won't! Haha. Jokes on you. I'll be too happy paying my bills, getting coffee, reading Victorian novels and catching up on celebrity gossip to write anything of value. It's pretty hilarious when you think about it. I'm not stupid but neither will I do any work. I'm not lazy either, rather, mired in a morass of self-doubt. Why write a masterful sentence when the paragraph will be shaped like a donkey's dick? Why write an essay that has logical holes larger than Peyton Manning's head?

Webster needs a new term. It has to be somewhere between the group Lazy, Apathetic and Stupid and Analytical, Productive and Honest. If that word really doesn't exist, let's invent one. How about Martinia? See, Martin is my last name and Martinia sounds vaguely like a Roman whorehouse. so it's perfect. Somebody that's smart but also incapable of doing anything worthwhile with them there smarts will be a Martiniac. Do you know a really clever person who plays Nintendo all day? Have him or her call me so that we can talk about the New York Times and trade Pokemon. We'd be best friends. Last year a friend of mine whose ex-husband is from South Africa told me that she had learned more about South Africa from me in a year that her ex in several. Haha. No doubt she thought it was a compliment but not really. What she did though is put her finger on a glaring truth: that I am the mental equivalent of a wombat, "a lumbering, herbivorous animal that lives in burrows in dense forests and eucalyptus woodlands, eating grasses, leaves and roots. They are the marsupial equivalent of the pig." Haha. And do you know what? Wombats are run over by cars. They're too fucking slow to get out of the way so cars will literally drive over them because to wait for them to cross the road will make the driver late to work. So simply run them over and congratulate yourself on ridding the world of something to fucking slow and stupid to get out of the way. Oh. Maybe Webster doesn't need a new word after all. Wait, yes it does. People wouldn't like being called a wombat and besides, my description for Martiniac is pretty good.

I've noticed that in six years my (real) job has consistently rewarded me for my professional excellence. I keep getting raises and bonuses. Couldn't tell you why. My job does not require critical thinking *OR* production of tangible proof. In other words, I don't have to justify my existence --- so, i don't! And I get paid a lot! Yay capitalism! I have zero incentive to be creative, so I don't. At the university I'm asked to produce analytical work -- but I don't, yet I continue to survive in the program. Congratulations all you recent MA recipients, you've just earned a degree where someone as retarded as me can exist and waste valuable resources. Who cares about Harvard, anyway? Not me. They're too clever to even consider me so I don't them. It's very egalitarian. Did you see that 5 dollar word right there? Egalitarian. I can use that word and sound smart but, really, I can't define it. I know it has something to do with fairness but, pft, fuck; I use it, people get it, I slip under the radar again. I am a stealth-bomber!

You know who I admire? The killer from the film Seven. Kevin Spacey is a pretty creepy guy anyway. Killing is pretty ridiculous, so that's not the inspiration for my admiration. You know the scene where the cops get into Spacey's apartment and the black cop is reading his journals? A shit-ton of notebooks filled with words without dates. He says it'd take cops a hojillion years (or something like that) to read the contents of the killer's thoughts. That's some goddamned solid work ethic right there. This guy kills people and still finds time to write --- for himself! Shit. I can't find time to clean my cat's litter box let alone clean it, deodorize it and then write two pages about my day. See, I'm telling you. I should not be a graduate student.

I've a feeling that I'll regret posting this. There's a lot of stuff I'm embarrassed about. Walking back from my car a while ago I remembered promising a professor that I'd mail to him a draft of a paper I still owe him from a year ago. Let that sink in. A *DRAFT* of a paper due a whole year ago. Now that it's sunk in, let me tell you that i've still not written the draft. Hahah. Not a thing. It's like I'm the superman of stupid. Look up in the sky, it's stupid superman. He's hanging out playing NintendoDS. Wasn't he supposed to be speaking at a conference in Boston? Oh, who cares. He's stupid superman!

Friday. Start!

It's the beginning of the long, Memorial Day weekend.
I'll be at the office the entire time. My friend/colleague has gone on
vacation leaving me to cover. That's fine. Plenty of quiet, potential work hours.
To help get into the right mood I put down hourly goals onto a post-it note. Here's what I have for today, Friday:
7p - wash face
8p - photocopy articles
9p - write in blog(s)
10p - take diet pills

So far, so good! It's 9p and i'm on track to successfully completing my tasks. Having said that I've not done any academic reading, thinking or writing today. I'd like to blame the noise and rattle of the office cleaning crew. But, no. My own laziness. A headache's been quietly storming the gates in the last few hours. That could be keeping me from serious mental anything.

Tomorrow my goals are a lot less (or more?) lofty. Three hours on each project for a total of six academic-hours in the larger 10-hr industrial work day here at JCI. In three hours I know how much I can accomplish. What I need is some way to psych myself for the work ahead. Some cheerleader for positive attitude. Now that I've written down my goal in a public, not-easy-to-ignore space it's not an option to later give excuses. C'mon Don! You're not dumb.

Reading about the profession does not make you a professional.

NO FAIR! NOOOOOOO!!
NO FAIR NO FAIR NO FAIR! ACK!
I'm the cute-but-demon kid from "Pet Sematary" after being killed by my daddy: no fair, no fair!

Three hours ago I logged into Blogger to write this post. Instead, I've been reading "Rate My Students" blog.
For three hours I avoided writing both my academic stuff and this blog --- about writing my academic stuff. Somebody, somewhere give me credit for good intentions. Or extend the pavement on this slow road to hell.

Why does writing have to suck so hard? My undergrad adviser said (to herself, though I was in the room only 4 feet from her face) "writing is so much fun. it's the research that I hate". Okay. Now, let's flip those adjectives and try empathising with Mr Martin. Research? SPACE CAMP AWESOME! Writing? Meh. Writing is like getting bad Thai food. By virtue of its Siamese-ness, the food rules; but, if its bad you eat it anyway because it's Thai food and Thai food is awesome. Repeat. Writing really is wonderful, I know this already. It sharpens or discredits ones ideas, puts your mind into the intellectual sandbox where the other minds are losing contact lenses or scraping off boogers in the nearby grass. You know, fun! But, shit. I can't get excited about the sandbox. Especially bad is knowing how much fun being in that sandbox can be. Imagine that your whole (well, reasonable adult) life you went ape-shit over pumpkin pie. Thanksgiving, oh man. Fuck football. Pie. Then around your 28th birthday you're like "meh, i'll pass on the pie" and your relatives give a look more appropriate to your announcing "10 bucks that my vagina is as soft as Karen Peterson's, the 4th grader down the block."

I used a lot of metaphors up there.

Don't question me.

The law requires I write something immediately upon creating the blog.
We Russians believe in affirming and living the law. I'm not Russian.

But i'm gonna! Write. Not be Russian.