Well, it’s midway through my “week off” before summer session starts.  Funny how I’m working so much.  There are classes to plan and writing to put off . . .

Being a workaholic makes time off problematic, especially when you have the kind of job that means you can work all the time.

I did take a few hours off last night to watch Season 1 of Frisky Dingo.  Thanks, DJ, for the recommendation.  I have never loved a villain more!  I have also added Waiting for God, a British Sitcom recommended by Jenni to my Netflix list.

Cool things, though:  I have three Simpsons interns for the summer, so maybe some factchecking and website building will get done.  Woohoo!  I’ve never been a boss before (I know, being a teacher is very much like being a boss, but there is a difference between students and interns).

My grandparents are celebrating their 58th anniversary today.

I’m going to take at least a day off to attempt to show a friend around Oakland and Berkeley.  It would be better if I knew where things were, but we’ll manage.

And then classes begin.  Will my Humanities class begin?  That’s still up in the air.

As many of you know, my most common form of artistic expression is making lists.  Usually these free-form poems take the form of “to do” and “groceries,” but occasionally, something with more substance emerges.  For example, my book group is currently making a list of books we know we should have read, but haven’t.  We’ve also asked one of our members to compile a list of must-read graphic novels.

As it’s summer, I’m sure we’re all thinking about expanding our reading, our viewing, our cooking . . . something about summer makes us want new things.  So I want to make some lists, but I need your help.  Help me expand the following lists & help me think of new lists.

Shows you’re probably not watching, but should be (netflix them):

1.  Whitest Kids U’ Know–it’s the next generation of sketch comedy (currently on IFC)

2.  Breaking Bad–the dad from Malcolm in the Middle finds out he has cancer.  To provide for his family, he uses his chemistry teacher powers to make meth (currently on AMC).

3.  Slings and Arrows–this series ran for three seasons.  It’s a Canadian show about a repertory theatre troupe.  Their productions mirror the comic drama of their lives.  Very funny.  Mark McKinney, of The Kids in the Hall, is a writer, creator, and star.

Websites you should be checking out:

1.  www.mentalfloss.com  This is the companion site to Mental Floss magazine, which I love.  It feeds all of my trivia needs, but with a wonderful dry humor.  The website not only features articles from the magazine, but also great work by bloggers–they have links to other cool pages, quizzes, and daily trivia articles on awesome topics (best libraries, strange but true ways of death, etc.)

2.  www.theonion.com  This amazing satire site now has video reports.  The satire is so good that some people think the news is real.  For example, years ago, they reported on the annual “gay agenda convention,” which made fun of the idea that there is a gay conspiracy/agenda.  Several preachers sent the article to their congregations, citing it as evidence of said gay agenda.

While you’re perusing The Onion, don’t forget to go to the AV Club, which features media reviews, interviews, and Dan Savage’s sex column.

3.  http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html  Each day, they feature a different astronomy picture.  Discover the cosmos!

Nonfiction authors you should be reading:

1.  Sarah Vowell–she’s a favorite of NPR and Jon Stewart.  Her writing is clever & good for you history buffs.

2.  Mary Roach–she’s a science reporter with three great books.  Want to know how cadavers are used for research & health?  Want to know how people investigate the afterlife from a scientific point of view?  Want to know what sex researchers are up to in their labs?  Yes, you do.

3.  Terry Jones–yes, the Terry Jones of Monty Python, who got his degree in medieval studies.  Check out his editorials for The Guardian & his amazing Medieval Lives, where you can learn about the actual lives of knights, minstrels, and damsels.

Okay, I have to get back to grading.  Add to the list and to the list of lists!

It occurs to me that the life blood of a blogger is bad news–all the better to bitch about.  I even advise my students to write about something that bothers them if they want to be able to write a good quantity of work.

Yet when I’m stressed out and tired, the last thing I want to do is blog.  I don’t want to whine & I don’t (always) want to rant.

So what’s the news that’s keeping me from writing?  Telling myself that I lived on next year’s wages in grad school, and then remembering that in grad school, I had student loans to supplement that income (and a decided lack of student loan payments).

Dealing with the panic of some of my students (you see, one class is worried because if they don’t pass, they get kicked out).  They really should have worried nine weeks ago.  And turned all the papers/homework in.  I mean, if failing a class gets you kicked out, don’t you attempt to do the work?

Finally, people shooting abortion doctors.  I have wanted to write about this because I have a lot to say.  I have not wanted to write about this because I’m afraid that once I get going, I won’t be able to stop.  Here’s a very short version of my thoughts.

They killed abortion doctors where I grew up (in Pensacola, FL).  It didn’t stop girls from getting pregnant and it didn’t stop people from getting abortions.  All it does is make it really difficult for a certain group of people to call themselves pro-life.  Oh, and kill someone, which that Bible thing sometimes says is wrong (not always, though–the people who shoot doctors are reading the Old Testament, but not the parts of the Old Testament where God kills babies, as he is wont to do).

Speaking of nomenclature, I would like to go on record as saying that we pro-choicers are not pro-abortion.

Even if someone is super-callous, they don’t want women having to have procedures that are potentially life-threatening (though not as dangerous as carrying to term) and usually cost more than they can manage.  No one wants more surgery.

I don’t know any super-callous people, though.  I simply know a bunch of people who know that you don’t reduce abortion by shooting doctors or by outlawing it.  Any medical historian can tell you that it was easier to find someone to perform an abortion when it was illegal (you didn’t have to find a doctor–women through the centuries have passed abortitives down with the family recipes (birth control and abortion are not just tools of single women–married women have used them to control their family planning for ages)).

What does reduce abortion?  Making sure that we reduce unintended pregnancy.  Remember that abstinence teaching doesn’t work, as studies show.  But comprehensive sex education does.  And so does providing people with affordable and effective birth control.  And so does making it easier to carry a child to term and to raise it–right now, the financial and social burden of an unwanted child can be galaxies greater than the burden of not carrying a child to term.

I have a PhD and a gifted child, but people still judge me because I had him young and alone.  Amazingly, it’s mostly the pro-life people who think they get to judge me, but only because I made the choice they preferred, carrying with me the evidence.  If I’d made a different decision, they wouldn’t get to have this attitude with me, because the last seventeen years of my life would have been very different.

We all want fewer abortions.  I just think that my way will actually work better than the “don’t have sex, but if you do, don’t use birth control” method currently so popular among “pro-lifers.”

If you actually want to save lives, take the guns away from the crazy fringe people and fight for sex ed and birth control.

I recently read Payback by Margaret Atwood.  It’s been hailed as another example of her amazing abilities of prediction.  Atwood is known for her keen observation of social trends.  Her predictive talent is so famed that she recently donated a prophecy for charity (the woman who bought it posted a blog about it–there was mention of the washing machine breaking).

Payback is a book about economic collapse and debt, written before our current crisis. 

It’s not about what to do or how things should be run, though there are some didactic parts at the end about environmental conservancy.  Instead, this is an amazing read about the socio-cultural of debt, from law to religion/mythology to literature.  She crosses time and geography, but manages to give close readings of both our stories and behaviors surrounding debt.

I especially like her reading of fairy tales (did you know why it was significant to be a Miller’s daughter?  I didn’t), Madame Bovary, and The Merchant of Venice.  She also tells us about the Victorian literary movement of a new form of revenge:  “not seeing your enemy’s red blood all over the floor but seeing red ink all over his balance sheet.”

Particularly astute is her discussion of words, in connotation and denotation.  Why does forgiving “trespasses” appear in some version of The Lord’s Prayer while other versions say “sin”–what’s the difference and how does it relate to forgiving debt?  Why is it “currency”?  If a Roman tax collector is a publican . . . well, she doesn’t say it, but it makes me wonder what a “re”publican is.

Read this book–it’s more approachable than you think and you’ll be surprised at what you learn.

The Good:

Alexander and I both wearing t-shirts given by friends today.

Medici Pinot Noir

Coming home in 95 degree heat to a cold beer

“Where The Wild Things Are” episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

The Bad:

North Korea (well, its leader anyway)

Homophobia

The chiropractor saying, “Why can’t you be less flexible?”

The Coolest:

Kenwood Yulupa Chardonnay

Going to Powells and picking up the new book by your friend, Luis Alberto Urrea.  Then coming home and finding that you’ve unknowingly bought a signed copy.

Am back from Portland. Sock dreams not so dreamy, but Powells is magical, mystical place. Would worship there daily if I lived there.

Speaking of, anybody know how I can get a job in Portland?

Feel the need to move especially now that the California Supreme Court has upheld voter-initiated inequality.

Voters shouldn’t be able to take away each others’ rights–that’s why Jefferson wouldn’t sign a constitution without a bill of rights.

Some good news today–was having lunch today and a former student came by to tell me that he enjoyed my class and that he’d read all these books since I’d introduced him to certain writers and essayists.

Well, Tiffany’s birthday was celebrated last night by a white trash party.  I was all decked out.  Panties and bras were on the clothes line in the car hole bar (complete with weeks worth of beer bottles on not-quite-patio furniture.

Some other touches:  had sports on the tv on mute.  Sports Illustrated on the table.  Tums out with the food.  A framed poster of young anakin in place of the monet.

Ken objected to the latter.  He said that since the poster could be a sign of geek-dom, it can’t be considered white trash.  Well, my outfit could have been a sign of me being a hooker, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t also connote white trash.

Methinks Ken protests too much.  (I acknowledge that many of my day-to-day decorations are signify white trash.  I can defend their kitsch value or their nerd value (in case of The Simpsons), but that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t signify trash to people who didn’t love me.)

We found out that we shouldn’t have the tv on, after we turned it to cops.

We also found out how strange it is to have this party (with us decked out as trash) was perhaps not the best time for the neighbor to come over to let us know that the sound machine used at night (to try to keep me from killing Ken since he’s in the bedroom playing video games while I’m trying to sleep) is too loud.

All in all, there was much cheese, beer, and chocolate.  Hooray!

Some blogger believes I “forgot” things; not mentioning things in a non-comprehensive list is not to have forgotten them.  His title is also weird–I distinctly mention that there have been lawsuits, so his claim that they’ve not had them in 20 years is off.  The article is here:  http://reporter.blogs.com/thresq/2009/05/the-simpsons-20-years-of-lawsuitfree-funny.html

My touching tribute to Dom DeLuise (via my matchflick column) is here:  http://www.matchflick.com/column/1946

Was watching last night’s Daily Show whilst doing yoga this morning.  Newt Gingrich claimed that socialized medicine (aka universal healthcare) would be bad because bureaucrats would be making your healthcare decisions.  He said the responsibility for your healthcare (and he seemed to imply fiscal as well) should be on you (and your consultations with your doctor).

My doctor and I do make decisions.  But they all have to be approved by bureaucrats at the insurance company.  Those bureaucrats were forced to take me, but if I were a freelance writer, I wouldn’t be able to get health insurance at all.  Let’s not forget that other bureaucrats make my health care decisions at the law level–whether I can have medical marijuana, whether a doctor can use the word “abortion,” etc.

So there are three problems with Mr. Gingrich’s fear of bureaucrats.

1.  He’s fine with a lot of laws about what my doctor can say or do.  That’s government intervention in health care.

2.  Bureaucrats completely run my health care.  And the really bad thing is that they do so for profit, which means that they are not in any way motivated to make decisions based on what’s good for me or what’s medically better.  They are motivated to deny coverage because that’s what happens in a profit-based system.

3.  For all those without healthcare, they would love to have a bureaucrat deciding whether they can have their cancer treatment.  Right now, there is no “decision” available to them.  At least a bureaucrat might say yes.

Am sick of this “bureaucrat” scare tactic.  WTF do they think we have now, if not bureaucrats?  Who’s living in a place where all the decisions are made by you and your doctor?

Oh, wait, those people in countries with universal healthcare tend to have that freedom.