election election

this election is drumming up some major conversation. people seem politically aware/engaged. more so than usual. maybe it is the just the limited pool of people i know. but i think not. this morning on my way to pilates, i overheard a young woman (maybe early 20s) talking on her phone about the latest obama & clinton debate. intelligently. with concern. with some passion. wow.

this year's election will give u.s. poli sci profs a lot of fodder for discussion: young people caring & voting? media coverage? inter-sectional identity politics? there is a lot to talk about. frankly, i only have a broad brush understanding of the issues. & i don't see that changing much over the next 6 months, unless i really make efforts to dig under the babble. doubtful.

for any voters born in 1981 or after, there has been a bush or a clinton on the ballot. surprising but not surprising.

1981-1989: ronald reagan & george bush
1989-1993: george bush & dan quayle
1993-2001: bill clinton & al gore
2001-2008: george w. bush & dick cheney

too bad jeb bush isn't running this time around. jeb bush v. hilary clinton would be a mind-blowing cross-dynastic battle.

my interest in the election has been primarily media-coverage related. despite personal feelings about hilary, she's faced some mean (personally mean) criticism. but she makes an unlikely victim, doesn't she? so not many seem sympathetic. i just don't think her crow's feet, shrill voice, man-like pantsuit wearing, helmut-hair, crying or not crying, cheating husband-taking back, etc. matters. in terms of P.R., the woman can't win. she wears a v-neck and omg she might have breasts. she wears another pantsuit, and she's not feminine enough. she doesn't cry. she cries and she's a manipulative jerk. not quite a man, not quite a woman. maybe the U.S. population isn't ready to elect someone transgendered. or maybe it does matter. it's not like stephen harper, with his lego-man hairstyle & too-short pants, really exudes a personality. i think charisma matters. charm matters. it matters in everyday life. of course it matters. obama has it in spades.

p.s.

for reasons inexplicable, i'll always have a soft-spot for paul martin, though. his wrinkled brow, weight of the world on his shoulders look reminds me of my dad. even his laugh is dad-like. i bet he tells corny jokes and his kids roll their eyes when he hits the dance floor. he still keeps an ugly three-piece suit in the recesses of his closet for old time's sake. he's loaned money to his good-for-nothing brother who will never pay him back. his kids don't call. come home late. smell like cigarette smoke. paul martin's time in office was a disaster. scandal after scandal. mishap after mishap. but i still have warm feelings towards him. would i elect him? nope.

morning malaise

aka "don't really want to go in to work"-itis.

this week is a short week. we had monday off for presidents' day. in alberta, presidents' day coincided with the bizarre family day, a holiday of much ridicule among friends here. family day? huh? frankly, i'm of the old-school where any reason for a long-weekend is a valid one, whether you celebrate presidents (which is actually officially called "washington's birthday") past or the conclusion of the race for presidents future or your "family" or nothing, who cares. most holidays are equal in the eyes of me. well, except halloween gets special props for being extra cool.

i skipped my sleep lab follow-up appointment for more pressing business. so i have to wait on the results for maybe another week. i'm nursing a malingering back injury which occurred (seriously) due to over-stretching! yes, such a thing exists. the left-side of my back aches in fits & starts all day long. i'm not exactly motoring into the day, as a result. i should go claim my roommate's WSJ and FT from the front door. yesterday, only the FT was there. i suspect someone nicked the WSJ (hopefully accidentally).

anyway, the big news was fidel. DB, we could go to cuba? i could sneak into cuba via canada and ask for no stamp cause of my us-based domicile. hmmm. ok, that's a happy motivation to go to work for money to go to cuba.

oh i forgot the best thing

the best thing about vlad, the sleep-lab tech, is that when i told him my family is originally from india, he got all excited and started telling me about all the bollywood movies he would watch in russia. apparently, the only movies he could get as a kid were russian or bollywood. so, he told me that his favorite actor was mithun chakraborty, which is half-parts a crying shame and half-parts wonderfabulous.

mithun's classic film is "disco dancer". The best line from that movie -- You ba-a-a-a-astard!" -- was routinely a part of my daily banter. Also, "you dirty son of a gun."

Thank you wikipedia.

sweet slumber eludes me

there is a banal scientific explanation for my stigmata. bah.

maybe you know, maybe you don't -- but i have been having some sleep issues: can't fall asleep, can't stay asleep, wake up ridiculously early. anyway. to (hopefully) deal with it, i went to see a doctor at a sleep disorder clinic. they set me up for an overnight sleep lab observation. monday night, i trudged through the cold (it's cold here now / cold, snowy, rainy) to ny presbyterian for my sleep observation appointment. my sleep room left much to be desired - namely, a prison cell.but, after living at UBC housing & partaking in extremely cheap accommodations on the road, not much fazes me.

my appointment was scheduled for 10:30 pm. i didn't get to lie down in the grungy bed until 1:00 am. already things were not looking so great for a restful sleep, since the technician wakes you up at 6 am. the technician setting me up for observation (which requires attaching a series of electrodes & monitors to my head, face, neck & legs.) is originally from russia. vladislav took his technician-ing very seriously. he explained everything in excruciating detail. when i jokingly asked him if he was going to test me on it later, he looked at me blankly and said "no test".

as he continued to tape wires to me, he explained that they had to use extra wires on me because they were running a "seizure montage" study on me as well as the regular sleep study. goody. while he was hooking me up, i watched BBC news on the television in the room. in the midst of a lecture on sleep apnea, vlad would throw in some political non sequiturs and some politically incorrect non sequiturs. for instance, vlad hates doing sleep studies on orthodox jewish people (though he is quick to explain that he is jewish himself). hmmm. okay. also, most of vlad's patients are large, overweight black men with no hair. the no hair part of it makes vlad's job much easier, since there is no hair getting tangled in the wires and getting gopped up with paste.

oh yes, paste. the stuff vlad uses to stick the electrodes to my head comes out of a tube like toothpaste and then solidifies like liquid cement. i imagine this is how people feel when they are getting dreads.

anyway, vlad finally finishes and helps me get into the bed. an ordeal, since i am hooked up from head to toe (well, almost toe). vlad covers me up with a blanket and leaves the room. we communicate through an intercom to make sure the set-up is working: look left, look right, look up, move your legs, breathe deeply. vlad comes in to the room again and fusses around my face. he clips two electrodes onto my chest. oh, was something malfunctioning? no, he says. i forgot to clip these on. the monitor inside the observation room shows you as flatlining. great.

good night to you too.

i lie in bed wide awake. they ask you to try to fall asleep on your back since that's the best way they can observe any problems you might be having physiologically. but i can't fall asleep on my back. i curl up into a weird fetal position when i sleep. i decide to try sleeping on my back. an eternity seems to go by. i wonder how skewed the data from this study will be, since i am in no way comfortable. i finally turn over to my side (with my back to the video camera) and try to fall asleep. after all, it's not called a lie in bed all night, tossing and turning, wide awake study.

i am not sure i slept at all. i have a lot of memories of not sleeping. if i did sleep, it was very light and not at all restful. at 6 am, the morning technician came in to wake me up. i bolt up, pulling at all the wires (which, emanating from my head, make me look like medusa). (oh, vlad took a polaroid of me with all the wires attached. it's pretty funny, actually.)

the tech disconnects me and shows me to a shower. it takes forever to wash the paste out of my hair. the paste is water soluble but it's also mega thick! it's like someone took a tube of crest and swirled it into my hair. i finally finish in the shower, pack up my stuff and leave the sleep lab.

time (at) sleep lab: 9.5 hours
time asleep (at) lab: 0.45 hours (maybe)

stigmata

i have stigmata.

well not really. they're not at the sites of christ's crucifixion wounds, but still. eerie bodily markings, indeed.

my funny valentine

i took down my bitterness-laden valentine's imagery because even i am not that bitter.

traveling blues

my friend, D.B., who works in a wonderful organization generous with holidays is taking 3 weeks off work and traveling with friends to morocco & spain. i wish i could go with, but due to capital w, Work, it's not to be (at least not now). D.B. will have one more week of time to spend with me, in fantastic destination yet to be determined.

but all this travel and frankly, some disenchantment with nyc right now, has me hankering to travel. the world. or some discrete corner of it, anyway. my list of places yet to be seen is dauntingly long. and, while i thought poring over travel magazines, would quench my thirst, it has actually whet my appetite (can you mix metaphors like that? meh.)

K.R. and his friend, M.L., might be jetting off to africa this spring. i've never ever been to africa. and J.M. and M.R. are going to travel south american on their way back to north america. sometime this spring, guys? i think P.S. is going on an across the states road-trip. all of which sounds fascinating. can you believe the "south" i've seen is houston, tx. that's just wrong.

so. maybe you have travel suggestions for someone full of wanderlust. even if i can't go, i can dream.

photog link

check out this link to world press photo, which has photography award winners in different categories.

i would love to put the pictures up here (with attribution of course) but they are all copyrighted.

i still haven't figured out the full extent of what i can do with blogspot, so there must be all sorts of bells & whistles i'm missing out on.

but anyway.

here are some pictures i can post since i took them.

canku

** i'm on a blogging spree! wheee! **

canku = canada + haiku.

way back in the summer of 2004, cbc radio 3 had a web'zine that rocked. they put up a call for canku submissions, haikus that captured canadian moments.

i submitted one. it was one of the few that they published. i am proud. so i found my haiku again, on a piece of paper stuck inside an old wallet. i reprint it here for your enjoyment.

Burning sky, prairie
dusk corner store candy smokes
girls wave, cars go by

doubts & serious thoughts

I've had a lot of time to think about things lately. And something I've thought about came about because of an unsettling incident with someone I deeply care for. I reacted very defensively to something I'd written a while ago that he'd found. He was probing my opinion - as written in the piece - and I responded by taking it very personally. I thought long & hard about why that would happen. I can (and do) take constructive feedback, challenges to my opinions, doubts people have about what I'm saying. That happens all the time. My beliefs aren't universally held, even if that universe is just the gaggle of friends in my orbit.

So I thought & thought. And I realized that I have never written something serious that I didn't *have* to write. By have to write, I mean, wasn't for a class or to finish the requirements for a grad degree. I have never written to express my opinion in any public fora. Pieces written for courses or for work are only seen by a small number of people, maybe only one other person. Portions of writing for briefs and other filings are sometimes so diluted by the time they see the light outside the firm, they don't reflect any one person's written work. I have written all sorts of fun things. This blog-writing is fun. I am a vociferous writer of letters to the government, to companies, complaint letters, commendation letters. I've even had fun writing cover letters.

So.

The really scary part of this observation is that it is calling into serious question my belief that I should or could enter a career in academia. Professors write. They lecture too. But they write. About what they believe. And they publish it, so others can read it. Engage in their ideas, refute, agree, criticize, expand upon. This is what academics do. This is what they are excited about doing.

Am I excited about doing that? I don't know. Can I do it? I don't know.

The idea of an academic career has lurked in the recesses of my mind since undergrad. I would leave a lecture thinking about how I might teach the subject matter, what I would say about it, how I would get people to think about the issues. I have been told by many people that I would make a great professor. I love to learn. I am so very comfortable in an academic setting. It's like a home-coming of sorts.

But do I know what it would mean? What a career as an academic would mean? Or is just something that feels like a better fit than what I do now. Would it be a better fit? Would I be mediocre? Would I fear my ideas? Or worse, have none at all? Would my work be entirely derivative, unoriginal, wholly devoid of relevance? Would I be consumed by self-doubt & insecurity?

Sometimes we walk a path and it becomes so comfortable, that path. We see others on divergent paths, and we smile. We see how great that path looks, but we're comfortable on our path. Our path seems like the right path. But then the path gets more and more sparse. It's laden with twigs and rocks and ruts. Is this still the path, we wonder? Have we stepped off the path? We look back to see where we left the path. We don't know. We're confused. We hear the sounds of others on their divergent paths and we worry that we won't get to where we need to go because we've lost the path. Others will get there. We will be stuck in the forest & night will come. We won't see what we're doing, or where we're going. There is confusion: was this the right path to begin with? Were we supposed to go right at that last crossroads? Is this the terrain we were supposed to traverse?

Oh, ponderous thoughts for a Wednesday.

Peter the Great

I have been reading a great, thorough, dense book about Peter the Great. It's really quite a fascinating read, given how fascinating he was. The author of the book took 10 years researching & writing, and it covers Peter the Great's entire life, along with information & background to all his relevant contemporaries.

I've always wanted to go to St. Petersburg, but after reading about the history of the city, I'm really keen to go. Any takers?

An interesting aside about this book: I was at the gym one evening and I had the book with me. There was a woman at the class who I recognized from another class at the same gym. At the last class, she had told me that she finished reading a book on Peter the Great. She saw the book in my hand, that wasn't just a random thing she said. And, how fascinating he was. All that. Then when she saw me again, she asked about the book, and the author, etc. She was talking to her friend about how she is leaving soon for the Sudan.

Of course, I got nosy and asked why she was going, etc. She works for the UN, and so does her friend. When they asked me what I do for a living. I gave my usual answer of dominatrix. No. I told the truth. The woman from the previous class said: I would never have guessed it. A lawyer who reads about Peter the Great!"

Either she doesn't know many lawyers, which is likely. Or she only knows lawyers with no interests, which is equally likely. Or I'm special, which is most likely.

Anyway, I present the man I've spent many nights curled up with in bed:

interesting signage

but seriously, pimp my head.

when american toast is a ... cheese

Why, yes, I would love some "American Toast" with my breakfast. I'll take some "Clever" orange juice with that, as well. Thanks.

American Toast cheese was found at the place that L.B. and i were staying at in Linz. We were put up by a lovely lady, who is a friend of a friend of L.B.'s. her apartment was great. she told us to help ourselves to whatever was in the fridge. we found American Toast in the fridge. Delish.

austria, t'giving 2007

in austria, companies really like to diversify their products. yes, that is the "clever" brand of orange juice & panty liners. clever? strange is more like it.

could you imagine buying orange juice made by stayfree? or feminine hygiene products made by minutemaid? it's kind of horrifying & kind of awesome all at once.

personal grooming. on the subway? really?

new yorkers are busy people, or so i've heard. apparently, so busy that they have to groom themselves in transit. on the subway.

friday night. about 6:30 pm. i was on the 1 train from south ferry heading up to canal street to go to the gym. yes, i do that now. once in a while. anyway. the south ferry subway station is super crap. only the first 5 cars open in the station, so there's always a mad frenzy for people to make sure they are in the first 5 cars. and there's only one entrance/exit. so everyone is trying to go up/down the same set of stairs & in/out the same set of turnstiles. the track is essentially a big circle, so when the 1 train rolls into south ferry station, the screech is insane. it sounds like 70 000 wild cats fighting one another on a giant blackboard.

anyway. that's the backdrop.

the train rolls into the station and waits there awhile before departing back uptown. i sit down and open up my book on "peter the great". across the way from me is a middle-aged woman (i'm guessing 40-something ish). she does not look crazy. she is remarkable frankly for being so unremarkable.

but then she does something remarkable. blogg-able even.

she pulls out numerous grooming accoutrements & a mirror and proceeds to tweeze her eyebrows. tweeze. her. eyebrows. in public. on the subway. without shame. i have seen women put make-up on the train. and that's horrid in its own way. but tweezing! c'mon. really. there just isn't enough time in your day that you have to multi-task PERSONAL GROOMING with transportation. at this point i am, myself, shamelessly staring at her. hoping to shame her into stopping before she pulls out her toenail clippers and decides to give them a once over. does she stop. of course not.

New York knows no shame.

instead, she starts to pluck hairs from her 'tache-ular region. and then from her chin!

swear.

seriously, gross.

the train starts to move and she's still pruning away at her face. she tweezes her face for 3 subway stops, before finally pulling out of her bag cotton balls & TONER to swab down the areas of her face she's just clear-cut.

just another new york moment.

an obsession exposed