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That clawing noise is Kitty going at the den door. Inside the den is Emily, no doubt anxiously pacing. They want to kill each other, and whenever we forget that basic fact of life, we risk injury. Lie on a bean bag between them and soon you'll be the site of a vicious cat fight. Both my daughter and I have long scratches. If we didn't wear glasses -- but I shudder and push the thought aside.

The hole in the wall is still there. Usually a small whiteboard leans against the wall, covering the hole so I don't have to look at it, but today it's staring back at me. As abysses go, it's not much, but how large does an abyss have to be? At the hardware store you can buy meshing to cover a hole in drywall, but then you'd have to paint it, and the new lavender paint would stand out from the faded lavender of the wall, and you'd have to repaint that wall. And then that wall wouldn't match the other lavender walls in the dining room, so you'd have to repaint them. And then the rest of the house, last painted several years ago, would look shabby in comparison and you'd have a major project on your hands. And, after repainting the whole house, you wouldn't want to hang the same damn art, so you'd have to befriend starving artists, and we know where that leads. And then there's furniture. No. Better to keep the hole. I'm used to it. Someday I may stuff a cat into it. That'll be the extent of my titivating.

A bit late, but here it is, a picture of Zoe in her Halloween costume. This time she's a rogue, or as she prefers, a thief. She's 10 now, in middle school; last week she went to her first dance. The time steals aways -- a cliche, of course, but nonetheless true.

Her policy is to never "double," her terminology for trick-or-treating as a character or creature she's trick-or-treated as before. (She'd have no truck with Gertrude Stein, that's certain.) How different she is than I was in my trick-or-treating days. I never had such concerns. I got a mask and a pillowcase, often acquired minutes before I dashed out the door. Some years I got two masks, just in case I hit a house giving out particularly fine loot.

We left the neighborhood this year. We'd been invited to a Halloween party by one of my colleagues, and when darkness settled, Zoe and a gang of colorfully costumed kids ran pell mell from door to door. We adults strolled up the center of the streets and the kids zigzagged in front of us, plundering houses on both sides. There were a few scraps and bruises, a bit of skin left on asphalt, but no major injuries. Zoe's candy bag was too small, so after a time I started cramming candy into my pockets, and even removed my tricorne to use as an impromptu candy carrier.

Woo woo. The software behind Bit o' Nifty has been updated, which fact accounts for the different appearance of this blog, the restoration of Commenting, and the loss of all the old links. Sometimes to move forward you gotta jettison the past, or some such platitude.

After I get some instruction from the site admin -- AJ, who makes me feel like Shaw's Jack Tanner in my ignorance of how these things work -- , I'll monkey around with the look of the site, and maybe even get in one of those whatever-the-hell-you-call-them link sections a blog roll.

Update: Good lord! While I was writing this entry, AJ restored all the old links. So much for a fresh start. ... I really do feel like Jack Tanner.

Early Sunday morning. The child is still asleep, and even the cats are recumbent, building energy for another day of stalking each other. The coffee machine gently burbles, and my tongue glides across freshly minted teeth. My students hate Gertrude Stein, but she is right, it's repetition, repetition, repetition with slight variation. The child will be a day older, the cats more scarred, the coffee machine older, the teeth more worn out. When the child, the cats, and I act and react today, it will be with one more day of experience, one less day to experience. One day closer to completed understanding, one day less to complete understanding. A winding up and a winding down. One more and one less Sunday morning.

After watching the Biden/Palin debate, I got online to see what the media were reporting because, you know, what we think matters far less than the narrative the media promulgates. But I got sidetracked by a cool little program at Wordle. You paste a bunch of words into a field and out pops a "word cloud," such as the one I posted using Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." Naturally people had pasted in the words of Biden and Palin to see what each emphasized, and the results were interesting, and I suppose if you have a mind to, you can search and find those word clouds, or you can make your own, because this post isn't about the vice presidential debate.

Wordle takes the words you paste in and sizes them according to their frequency. It turns out that Biden's most-used words were "John McCain." Palin has great love for "also." (Common words such as "the" and "an" are deleted.) And not surprisingly, Stevens' favorite word in his blackbird poem is "blackbird," with "blackbirds" a bit further down the list.

You can cheat, too. Instead of using actual sentences, you can simply type in random words, repeating the ones you want larger. But that gives me moral qualms; it's the behavior of a cad, a rogue, of someone you nod at as you pat your wallet.

In 1983, my friend Jerry Boulware started up Street Level News, a small newspaper in Denton, Texas. I wrote some articles and editorials and helped, sometimes, with laying it out, but it was Jerry's baby. Printed on news stock, it was a pony tab with 16 to 24 pages and featured articles on local bands, politics, and community events.

The Street Level News cover shown here is my favorite. The vantage point is the porch of the big white house on Fry Street where I lived in the late '80s; shown are Jim's Diner and Secondhand Rose. And shuffling on the sidewalk is Richard Earnhart. Joseph Kent, the artist, captured him perfectly -- the slouch, the shuffle, the beard and glasses. Anyone familiar with Richard instantly recognized him in the illustration.

Jim's Diner is gone, the Secondhand Rose is gone -- both went out of business years ago. But now the very buildings are gone, razed by a developer wanting to get some franchises in. Richard, of course, died in 2001.

After learning from Joe Messerl (see previous entry) that Richard won the National Spelling Bee in 1942, I did a little online research. It's difficult researching a name like "Richard Earnhart" because it's not that uncommon. However, with the information from Joe, I found numerous mentions of Earnhart's performance at the spelling bee. Here's a brief article from the June 6, 1942, edition of Time.

For winning the national grade-school spelling bee in Washington last week, eleven-year-old Richard Earnhart of El Paso, Tex. got $500 and a two-day trip to New York City. There he had his first brush with the metropolitan press, came off winner, hands down, over a flabbergasted World-Telegram reporter.

Richard had won his championship, over 25 other young spell-wells from as many cities, by romping through sacrilegious after his closest rival had stumbled on acquiesced. The reporter thought Richard might be interested to know that one paper, publishing this fact, had misspelled sacrilegious in its own headline. But Richard just smiled, "like a man who had been there before."

"Yes," he said. "They spelled it with an i, I take it." Other quotes from Champ Richard:

On his trip to Washington: "The space we took up in the hotel might better have been released to people who needed it more for national defense."

On learning Spanish in El Paso schools: "They don't teach us very much. We're really a bunch of parrots. ... I have a hunch the way they're doing it is not very good. . . . Speaking of school, it may surprise you to know that it comes from a Greek word meaning, of all things, leisure."

Ah, said the reporter, a little weakly, then Richard was interested in the derivation of words? "Yes," said Richard, "Etymology, it's called." Certainly, he enjoyed reading the dictionary: "It changes the subject often."

Was he enjoying Manhattan? "Yes, this is swell. But I would kinda like to get back to normal life sometimes."

The 11-year-old Richard was correct about "school." Here's the etymology:

"place of instruction," O.E. scol, from L. schola, from Gk. skhole "school, lecture, discussion," also "leisure, spare time," originally "a holding back, a keeping clear," from skhein "to get" + -ole by analogy with bole "a throw," stole "outfit," etc. The original notion is "leisure," which passed to "otiose discussion," then "place for such." The PIE base is *segh- "to hold, hold in one's power, to have" (see scheme). The L. word was widely borrowed, cf. O.Fr. escole, Fr. école, Sp. escuela, It. scuola, O.H.G. scuola, Ger. Schule, Swed. skola, Gael. sgiol, Welsh ysgol, Rus. shkola. Replaced O.E. larhus "lore house." Meaning "students attending a school" is attested from c.1300; sense of "school building" is first recorded c.1590. Sense of "people united by a general similarity of principles and methods" is from 1612; hence school of thought (1864). The verb is attested from 1573. School of hard knocks "rough experience in life" is recorded from 1912 (in George Ade); to tell tales out of school "betray damaging secrets" is from 1546. Schoolmarm is attested from 1831, U.S. colloquial; used figuratively for "patronizingly and priggishly instructing" from 1887.

I've created a Crazy Richard category and added to it all Nifty entries mentioning Richard Earnhart.

Joe Messerli emailed me today with this information about Richard Earnhart, whom I and friends knew in Denton, TX, as Crazy Richard. Here's what he has to say:

Richard Earnhart ([Henrietta M.] King High School Class of 48 [,Kingsville, TX]) was a genius. He won the National Spelling Bee in 1942 at the age of 11. Authority on Esperanto. Memorized large chunks of the encyclopedia and dictionary. Remembered thousands of jokes. Died in the Fall of 2001 in Denton, Texas .

I was paired with Richard in a boxing match (with gloves) in a high school phys-ed class. The teacher probably thought he'd put a couple of activity-challenged geeks together. Richard, however, having read a book on boxing (probably the night before), beat the hell out of me.

During that encounter I recall having been very aware of his big, bobbing head and my strange reluctance to throw a punch at it. Richard, on the other hand, showed no mercy, and repeatedly pummeled my poor head.

Did I mention he was about 9 inches taller than me?

Recently I sent this story to a classmate at that school, and her reply was: "Joe . . . I felt extreme sadness for him during our time in HS, and even more so now. We don’t understand those persons with rare gifts." I agreed with her that he was a person with "rare gifts." And that I guess I didn't understand him and should have been more sensitive to his needs, especially when he was clobbering me.

Richard has left a strange legacy on the internet (aside from the listings involving the Spelling Bee and Esperanto). Your chronicles of his last years and desperate days in Denton, Texas are fascinating.

Like your writing. Dare I suggest a Crazy Richard book?

After reading this, written by someone who knew him in grade school, I didn't have the heart to title this post Crazy Richard III, so Richard III will have to do. For more information on Richard Earnhart on Nifty, check out the Denton, TX, category. By the way, here's a list of National Spelling Bee winners from Wikipedia.

A bit depressed today. Students said an assigned short story was hard to read because it consisted of big blocks of words. The story -- "Good Country People" -- doesn't contain particularly long paragraphs. What does one say? I was embarrassed for them. I stood before the class, speechless.

Good grief. So there I am, lying in bed, smoking a cig, re-reading a Flannery O'Connor story I hadn't read in years, and suddenly I come across this: "Malebranche was right; we are not are own light." I mutter, find my glasses, lumber out of bed, bark a shin on an open drawer, and mutter louder. I must have awakened my daughter in the next room because she asks, "Why are you getting up?"

Feeling as grouchy as Hulga, I tell her I have to research something.

"Why?" she asks.

"Do you want to know the good reason or the real reason?"

"Both," she says, suddenly at her bedroom door.

"The good reason is that I was reading a story and came across a reference I'm hazy about. I need to look it up so I can understand it."

"What's the real reason?"

"If I don't look it up, a student will ask me about it."

She laughs and laughs. She falls on the ground, laughing. Brat.

Anyway, if you're curious, you can follow the obligatory link.

I've got a stack of papers to grade, which fact makes house cleaning, internet surfing, and blogging more appealing. After scrubbing the grout around my bathtub, I got online, posted a few comments, and then stumbled across an article extolling the importance of body language. According to those who write about such things, words account for only 7 percent of face-to-face communication.

So if you're trying to explain the difference between Realism and Naturalism in American literature, you need to focus more on body language than on the lecture you painstakingly wrote. But how do you explain determinism with gestures? Or local color with eyebrows? If I semaphore like an Edwardian orator, will the differences between James and Twain be clearer?

Of course, those who study body language aren't concerned, necessarily, with the messages of words and phrases -- the messages they care about deal with confidence, and rapport, and openness, and selling yourself. Those are the important messages.

I swear -- if I wore a tie, I'd hang myself with it.

The American Psychological Association recently voted to ban psychologists from participating in interrogations that occur "in settings where persons are held outside of, or in violation of, either International Law (e.g., the UN Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions) or the US Constitution (where appropriate), unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights."

Here's the resolution the APA passed:

PETITION RESOLUTION

We the undersigned APA members in good standing, pursuant to article IV.5 of the APA bylaws, do hereby petition that the following motion be submitted to APA members for their approval or disapproval, by referendum, with all urgency:

Whereas torture is an abhorrent practice in every way contrary to the APA's stated mission of advancing psychology as a science, as a profession, and as a means of promoting human welfare.

Whereas the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Mental Health and the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture have determined that treatment equivalent to torture has been taking place at the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. [1]

Whereas this torture took place in the context of interrogations under the direction and supervision of Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCTs) that included psychologists. [2, 3]

Whereas the Council of Europe has determined that persons held in CIA black sites are subject to interrogation techniques that are also equivalent to torture [4], and because psychologists helped develop abusive interrogation techniques used at these sites. [3, 5]

Whereas the International Committee of the Red Cross determined in 2003 that the conditions in the US detention facility in Guantánamo Bay are themselves tantamount to torture [6], and therefore by their presence psychologists are playing a role in maintaining these conditions.

Be it resolved that psychologists may not work in settings where persons are held outside of, or in violation of, either International Law (e.g., the UN Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions) or the US Constitution (where appropriate), unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights[7].

Footnotes

[1] United Nations Commission on Human Rights. (2006). Situation of detainees at Guantánamo Bay. Retrieved March 4, 2008, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/16_02_06_un_guantanamo.pdf The full title of the 'Special Rapporteur on Mental Health' is the 'Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health'.

[2] Miles, S. (2007). Medical ethics and the interrogation of Guantanamo 063. The American Journal of Bioethics, 7(4), 5. Retrieved March 4, 2008, from http://ajobonline.com/journal/j_articles.php?aid=1140

[3] Office of the Inspector General, Department of Defense: Review of DoD-Directed Investigations of Detainee Abuse. Retrieved March 4, 2008, from http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/abuse.pdf

[4] Council of Europe Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights (2007). Secret detentions and illegal transfers of detainees involving Council of Europe member states: second report. Retrieved March 4, 2008, from http//assembly.coe.int//Main.asp?link=http://assembly.coe.int/Documents/WorkingDocs/Doc07/edoc 11302.htm

[5] Eban, K. (2007). Rorschach and Awe. Vanity Fair. Retrieved March 4, 2008, from http://www. vanityfair.com/ politics/features/2007/07/torture200707

[6] Lewis, N. A. (2004, November 30). Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantánamo. Retrieved March 4, 2008, from http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/politics/30gitmo.html? oref=login&adxnnl=1&oref=login&adxnnlx=1101831750-

[7] It is understood that military clinical psychologists would still be available to provide treatment for military personnel.

This action apparently was not widely reported in the mainstream media; I stumbled across this important news at Boing Boing. Cory Doctorow of that website says the resolution passed by a slim margin, but I have been unable to find the actual numbers. The participation of U.S. psychologists in developing and overseeing techniques for the torture of alleged terrorists has been a blot on the profession for years; I'm glad the APA has finally condemned the practice, but dismayed the vote was apparently close.

The other day I read appeals from students, staff, and faculty who'd been given parking tickets. Theoretically, the tickets could have been for other offenses, but the 10 or 12 appeals we adjudicated were for parking. The appeals committee is constituted anew every month, and consists of one faculty member, one staff member, and one student. When I read the email requesting volunteers, I immediately replied. It sounded interesting and, besides, it seemed like an easy way to get some "service" credit.

As we waited for the student, the staff member joked that she liked appeals duty because she got to be a hanging judge. She had nothing but contempt for people who couldn't follow the rules. Apparently she had performed this duty many times. I didn't mention the dozens of parking tickets and library fines I've acquired over the years. Finally, the student popped his head into the room and said he couldn't serve; he had something or other that he couldn't skip. So a security officer was dispatched to the game room to find a student volunteer, and one soon arrived. Older than most students, perhaps older than me, she had served on the committee before, and like the staff member found contemptible people who couldn't follow the rules.

I commented that if we were simply going to deny all appeals because, technically, rules had been broken, then the appeals committee had no use.

I asked the women from security who sat with us about guidelines. She said there weren't any; everything was up to us. I said that's true of juries too, but judges don't often reveal that fact. She was professional, answered our questions, and carefully avoided making judgmental comments about the appeals we read.

Each of us was given a copy of each appeal. Included with each plea was a copy of the ticket and a form with two checkboxes labeled "uphold" or "deny." Majority ruled. I never saw what the other committee members checked, but I made no effort to hide my decisions, sliding the paperwork unfolded across the table to the security staff member.

However, I believe that only one appeal was granted. A faculty member, who had the required permit to park in staff parking, had to take her child to the emergency room, and in the confusion, finally arrived at work in her husband's car, which did not have the proper permit hanging from the rearview mirror. That was an easy one for me; she had a permit, had the right to park in staff parking, but because of extenuating circumstances, did not have the permit in the car she used. No problem and I voted to uphold her appeal. The others did too, I think.

Another case involved an adjunct. She had arrived on campus on a Saturday morning to volunteer for some function. She did not have a permit to park in staff parking and got a ticket. After getting the ticket, she applied for a permit and got one. Adjuncts on our campus can obtain staff permits. I reasoned that as an adjunct she had a right to park where she did, and though she did not have the proper permit, she was entitled to one, and what's more, she went ahead and got one. Easy for me; I checked the box to let her off the hook. The committee had the right to discuss cases, so I explained why I wanted her appeal to succeed. The other two committee members disagreed with me, saying she had not followed the rules. I was dismayed, and said something about no good deed going unpunished. I'm certain she lost, which in this case accomplished nothing, in my opinion, but to confirm whatever views the adjunct may have about the inflexibility of the system. Before becoming full-time faculty, I was an adjunct for years, and know that adjuncts are essentially volunteering their time to teach. So thanks for your service, Ms. Adjunct, and by the way, pay this fine for coming in on the weekend to help out.

I asked many questions about the various parking areas, and walked around the room so that I could peer out the windows to see them. I argued for several of the appeals, but didn't provoke much discussion. I was just one of three, and the other two didn't need to debate with me.

The rest of the cases were easy to deny. Students couldn't find a parking place, so they parked where there were no spaces, or in staff parking, or whatnot. Even to me that's not an excuse, and would never bother to appeal in such circumstances. One student claimed she had photographic proof that the outlines of a parking space were misleading. She was to present her case in person, but she didn't show up. In my opinion, we had no choice but to deny her appeal.

All in all, the experience was worthwhile, and I have some tips to those who want to appeal a ticket, at least at a college. Spend some time writing your appeal, provide a plausible argument, and for god's sake, employ standard grammar. You have to sell it. The faculty member did the best job -- she wrote a respectful appeal and told a compelling narrative.

At any rate, the odds seem to be against those appealing. I believe that of the 10 or 12 appeals we read, only one succeeded. I'm a little dismayed that the two "hanging judges" are so often on the committee, but I plan to serve as often as I can. There's nothing wrong with a little heart.

... it's strange how every now and then inexplicable rudeness can still provoke a sharp reaction. Anger, first, suddenly, and then --- the pause, as the toxins dissipate. Finally, pity, which is both empathy and revenge. Is it for this the cashier dumps change on the counter? But we categorize, and next time, expect no better, and return the glare with blankness, or more infuriatingly, bemusement.

Guys know that the graffiti on public bathroom stalls are often 1) scatological, 2) sexist, 3) racist, 4) homophobic, or 5) any combination of 1, 2, 3, and 4.

But today I saw this:

I respect women.

If the writer intended irony, those three words weren't enough to convey it. What's more, he didn't deface public property. The words were neatly printed on a piece of paper taped on the stall.

I've been reading political blogs for years; every day without fail I visit several. This gives me, I believe, the standing to say: If you belong to Party X, then spend more time on Party Y's blogs than on Party X's, and vice versa. You learn nothing if you seek out sites that merely affirm your views. If you post a political opinion, you should ask yourself, Why am I posting this? If it's to sway opinion, then don't assume those who disagree with you are idiots. If it's not to sway opinion, then you're a cheerleader playing to your audience's existing views. That can be good for voter registration drives, I suppose, but don't pretend it's insightful commentary.

Back in the day, one of my favorite comic strips was Sam Hurt's Eyebeam. It initially ran in the college newspaper of The University of Texas at Austin, but was later picked up by a few other newspapers. I can't remember what newspaper I saw it in -- perhaps The Dallas Observer?

Wikipedia tells me that in 1982, Hank the Hallucination, a character from the strip, won the student presidency at UT-Austin. That is news to me, but I can't say I'm surprised. The quirky comic had great appeal, and I clipped new strips whenever I saw them. When I lived in student housing at The University of Tennessee at Knoxville in the early '90s, I taped the old clippings to my cinderblock walls.

Anyway, Sam is still creating Eyebeams. All of them -- old and new -- are online here. Years ago, he created a video for Brave Combo, the world's coolest party band. And, finally, here's Sam Hurt's main site.

P.S. After putzing about trying to re-enable comments, I harassed the site admin. He doesn't know what's up, either. So, huh, at least for now. You can still email me at teades@bit-o-nifty.org.

A poet writes,

Unrequited love.
Is there any other kind?

Yes, I say, and then pause, troubled.

Tomorrow classes begin, my first classes as a full-time instructor. I've taught off but mostly on for the past 20 years; I wonder if being tenure-track faculty will curb my irreverent tongue? There's nothing like having nothing to lose. ... For all the hardships of being contingent faculty, of being anonymous, faceless, there's also a certain freedom.

Teachers, when they are not griping about teaching, often say they love it. Why? Seeing a student progress, seeing a student's eyes light up with a-ha!, seeing young minds getting it. There's that, of course, and it's rewarding, but that's not why I love teaching. Being in the classroom discussing why Donne opened "Death Be Not Proud" with a trochee, or why Herrick's "Upon Julia's Clothes" is so outrageous, or why we need to tackle the unsolvable mystery at the heart of Hamlet -- these moments push away all external concerns. I forget about my bills, my sorrows, my duties, even my daughter. For the 50 or 80 minutes of class, all that is is now; nothing is more important than excising pleonasm, than making a bit of writing live, than connecting "Araby" to students' lives and my own. In the classroom I am more fully myself than in any other arena, even than when engaged in heart-felt courtship. Teaching well requires all you have.

Athletes talk about this: the moment, of being in the now. Archers and motorcyclists have their own zen books on the topic. This is nothing new. But it is real.

The educational system, as a system, does not focus on joy, on the delight of feeling your mind exploding. It's all about jobs, and maximizing income, and fitting into society, and being productive. But as teachers it is our duty, our sacred obligation, to subvert the corporate goals of our Legislatures, and to show students that it's possible to be an individual. Some teachers, of course, give up, or never tried. They insist on flawless formatting; they take out their goddamned rulers and measure margins, they prescribe, they reduce writing to being correct. I spoke with a English teacher last year who proudly proclaimed she marked wrong every student sentence that began with "there." Why? Because one of her professors said it was wrong. Such nonsense and easily shown to be ridiculous by even minimal thought or research.

I'm glad the semester is starting. Yes, tons of committee work. Yes, the inevitable politicking inherent in any bureaucracy. But also -- teaching, and intelligent and wise colleagues, and the communal pleasure of worthy goals.

If you are innocent of a crime, you should talk to the police, right? Wrong. Evidence acquired in police interrogations can never be used in your favor in a trial; you can only put yourself at risk. Always exercise your rights to say nothing and to get a lawyer asap.

Boing Boing has two videos on this topic -- one from a law professor and one from a police interrogator. It'll take 45 minutes to watch both, but they could save you thousands of dollars and years of jail time.

My friends and family know that I've recently gotten a tenure-track teaching gig. How long, I wonder, until I romanticize my itinerant instructor days? Ah, how sweet it was to travel 500 miles a week to teach six classes at three different facilities.

This fall I'm to teach American Lit II, which covers the Civil War era up to the present. So I'm dusting off old books and preparing lectures on Realism, Naturalism, Modernism, this-ism, and that-ism. A lot happened in the century and half since the War between the States; what makes the cut and what doesn't? The textbooks, though good, simply can't cover everything, and some of my favorite authors are excluded -- and some authors get covered whom I have no intention of teaching.

If to lawyers jury selection is half the battle, to teachers it's syllabus creation.

It can take a lifetime to master this material, but my students will have only 14 weeks. Do I tell them that 14 weeks isn't enough to deal with one prolific author, let alone a single literary movement? But all college courses are mere introductions. There's a reason the college-editions of Jeopardy are easier than the standard editions.

How Cool! High on my rotation list nowadays is The Brian Setzer Orchestra's Wolfgang's Big Night Out. Take some classical music standards, jazz em' up with a rollicking orchestra, toss in Setzer's fun fun guitar -- that's the recipe, and how delicious it is.

Check it out.

If only Dante, Petrarch, Don Quixote, Cyrano de Bergerac, Werther, and Florentino Ariza had lived in modern times, they could have shelled out $12.95 ($16.95 with accompanying MP3 audio) for a hypnosis script and gotten on with their lives.

Oh bleh. The Thanksgiving break has arrived, and just in time, because work's been beating me senseless, but my daughter won't be here. She's going with her mother to feast with friends. That's good, of course; she'll get to dress up and have fun. But I get an empty house. I've got an unopened bottle of Maker's Mark, so I suppose I could throw a pity party, but I don't really like alcohol, much. Bleh.

Like millions of kids on Halloween night, my kid disguised herself and extorted candy from neighbors. Her haul this year was the largest yet; she's figured out that planning and efficiency result in more candy than wasting time chatting up her victims. Get the loot and run to the next house. She briefly considered wearing black pumps in keeping with her costume, but practicality won out -- she can run faster in sneakers.

She hasn't thought about this yet, but what's nice about Halloween is that no one tries to make you feel guilty for forgetting the spirit of the holiday. In the supermarket, you don't see cobwebbed tombstones standing alongside shrink-wrapped creches or plastic pumpkins alongside mass-produced crosses. Nope, Halloween, though it's as commercialized as all the other holidays, may be the purist of them all.

This is a plug for a blog I happened across a while ago. Eve's Alexandria is a lively and intelligent site chock full of book reviews. The young British women who run the site review a wide range of literature: classical, medieval, neo-classical, Romantic, modern, post-modern; science fiction, fantasy, mainstream; whatever catches their fancy. The reviews often are better than one finds in newspapers. There is a bit of a feminist agenda, but not overpowering and not unreasonable. Good site, good reviews, friendly people. Well worth the time. Anyway, there's a permanent link in the right-hand menu of this site under Nifty Reading.

Hrrrrrrm. I read today that a movie based on Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera will be released in November. Love as a romantic ideal or love as a debilitating illness -- the novel seems to have it both ways. It's hard to resist being seduced by Marquez's prose, even when you know you should. Much of the novel's power comes from the narrator's voice, which slides effortlessly back and forth through time. I assume the movie will rely upon extensive voice overs.

I find the novel irresistible, but I'll read the reviews before deciding whether to see the movie.

Update, Nov. 22: The reviews haven't been kind. I'm not certain if that makes me happy or sad.

At what point did irony become the default mode? Oh, I'm not talking about arts and literature; I'm talking about human interaction. The high school seniors I teach are already highly ironic; very rarely do they express anything without the knowing smirk delineating exactly how far detached they are from what they're expressing. Is it simply that expression without detachment sets one up for ridicule or marks one as merely sincere, the province of those that don't get it, whatever the never expressed it is?

Far from providing an Olympian height from which to comment upon the foibles of mere humans, irony is often deeply conservative. It affirms community with those too experienced? wise? thoughtful? jaded? to accept belief in anything; it affirms of whatever one says, like whatever anyone says, that this too is a lie, this too is inadequate, but really, what can you do? It's the expression of an attitude that dismisses wonder, admiration, worthiness, unless it's the worthiness of highly crafted irony.

Is this a product of our age, an age in which everyone is bombarded by the insincere, by hucksterism and pitches for this and that, by the efforts of highly skilled craftsmen devising ever-more refined ways to push crap, by churches employing the tactics of Hollywood to fill pews and coffers?

We have everything and nothing.

Where did they get this? Not from literature, though there the ironic has long been regarded as the essential stance. From television? From movies? From the malls, those entire cities of bright and shiny things that as soon as they are bought are already useless? From billboards, that change even as you watch them? From the sheer transcience of everything surrounding them? Nothing is what it is claimed to be, nothing persists, everything at its heart is a lie. They are frighteningly sophisticated, these high schoolers. In an (un)real way, they have seen it all -- interspersed with come-ons and slick appeals to their fears and desires.

They ask, why do we have to read this? What is the value of that? And I begin to say it's the stuff that makes us human, it's the stuff that expands the soul, and they look at me with eyes not innocent; they know I have to say what I'm saying but also know it's a lie and know I know they know it. And when I say I'm serious, they smirk, thinking I have to say that, too. They hear irony, they have to hear it, even when it's not there. They have been so heavily bombarded with the insincere that they're tone deaf, and believe their handicap is a sign of refined perspective.

There's a rainforest in my backyard. That's what I call it, anyway. Bounded by uncut railroad ties, it's approximately 60 feet by 40 feet. Smack dab in the middle of the backyard. My wife, when she was my wife, once cleared it for a garden. She wanted to remove the railroad ties, but I liked them. However, the thick railroad spikes that secured them in place had begun to work their way out. If I wanted to keep the ties, I had to take care of the protruding spikes. I bought the heaviest sledge hammer I could find and spend hours pounding them back in. Somehow there was no injury.

That was the extent of my effort. I'm not one for mucking in the dirt. The times I've been pressed into gardening I've hated it, usually, and the times I haven't I was lost in thought and not gardening, unless kneeling motionless in the dirt with a spade in hand counts as gardening.

The garden project went the way such projects often do. And the wife went the way spouses often do. The plot's wildly abundant, extravagantly overgrown. At first, the wildflowers she planted ran amok, but since then, vines, bushes, and trees have taken over. You can't walk through it, it's so dense. I know it contains poison oak.

I like it. It blocks the view of the house further up the hill, and I can sit at my kitchen table looking out the window without my neighbors spying on me. I can't see them, either; that's a blessing. The man of the uphill house is often outside mowing and pruning his bit of yard, and he radiates disapproval of me and my careless ways. His yard is tame, bent into something nice and safe, something that comforts the neighbors, makes them think, There is no danger here.

The backyard rainforest is a habitat for many critters. Birds and squirrels, mostly, but I've seen skunk slink about, and deer place their hooves on the ties and lean over to munch. At night it creeps me out; I can hear strange things scurrying. That's ok. We need strange things.

Does anyone remember Stanley Elkin? You didn't read his sentences as much as you rolled with them. They sped on highways past neon-bright strips of American ephemera, they cruised like big Cadillacs with floating suspension on and off highway ramps, they flung themselves high on concrete-ribbon overpasses, they didn't stop for nothing because there was always a lane or shoulder open. Someone once said, What William Gass was for the sentence, Stanley Elkin was for the list. Bold and exuberant, lusty, his sentences piled on detail after detail; the effect was a blur like scenery from a bullet train or glances through windows as you fell along a skyscraper, but if you were falling, you knew you were attached to a bungee cord because there was no way you were going to stop dead, you knew you'd bounce up and catch more fleeting glimpses and maybe holler a few words to a window washer as you sprang by.

Elkin was hot stuff in my circle. He got critical recognition -- a couple of National Book Critics Circle Awards -- but never had much of a popular audience. He died in 1995, by which time I had moved on too. I can't remember the last time I saw his stuff in a bookstore.

A day off. My kitchen table is cluttered with books, school papers (mine and Zoe's), pencils, pens, hairbrushes, empty cigarette packs, calculators, unopened mail. On the floor lie the same and more: piles of clothing, crumpled sheets of a short story, knots of extension cords, stacks of ungraded essays.

I should clean. I should grade papers. I should make my short story less crappy. I should figure out how to pay unpaid bills. I should figure out what to do with my life. I should plan for my senior citizenship. I should, as my psychologist (ex-girl)friend says, stop using "should." Even in the future subjunctive? I ask, and then wonder why my relationships don't last.

I can see Julius Caesar at the Rubicon pondering the cost to Rome if he crosses and the cost to himself if he doesn't. ("Should I stay or should I go now?") The short story I'm struggling to write is about passivity, and, no, the irony is not lost.

Well, the wizard behind this blog -- AJ aka The Toadking, Paramour of NinjaWife, He Who Changes Lightbulbs Without a Chair -- has just upgraded Bit o' Nifty. Doesn't it look spiffy? I realize to the unobservant eye, things might look the same, but astute viewers will notice the jump to Movable Type 4.01.

Let's see if pushing the publish key works.

This morning while driving through the hills of Tennessee to my first class, my cell phone rang. "Did you hear what happened?" my friend Roy yelled. "What?" I asked, the adrenaline beginning to kick in. Terrorist attack? Bush resignation? "Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature!!"

I whooped, I admit it. I almost pulled over but managed to control myself. We chatted ecstatically for a few minutes. I credit Roy with first turning me onto Doris Lessing more than 20 years ago. She should have gotten it decades ago.

After getting off the phone, I called my friend Keith. "Did you hear?!" I asked. "Yes, I sent you an email about it!" More whooping. Keith said he was going to read some Lessing to his classes.

When I got to class, I told my students that Doris Lessing had just won the Nobel Prize. Blank stares, but I didn't care.

This afternoon, while driving to my last class of the day, I called an ex-girlfriend. Our relationship was the healthiest I've ever had, and one I'm proud of because we both behaved like adults. For her birthday not long ago, I had Amazon ship her a Doris Lessing novel. She was excited about the news because she knew it was a big deal to me. We had a nice long chat. It's a good thing to know good people.

When I got home, I found an email from my friend AJ. Did I hear Doris Lessing had won the Nobel Prize?

What's curious is that I generally don't care much for prizes, but this time is different. Her writings have excited and challenged me in profound ways.

----

Here's the NYT story, which I link to because of the neat photo of her sitting on the steps of her flat after reporters broke the news.

UPDATE: "Oh Christ." ... Click on this video to see Doris' cranky and irreverent reaction.

She was either a high school student or a very young teacher. She was precise in every part, as if professonals had dressed her and applied her comestics. Everything sharp and crisp, every accessory perfectly color coordinated, every hair exactly placed, even the wisps that dangled with studied carelessness. Her base was smooth and natural; her lip and eye make-up perfect. If high schools had sororities, she would have been the leader of her chapter. The colors she wore on her face and body didn't matter; on another day other colors would have been as expertly marshalled.

Perched on a stool with a phone to her ear, she stopped talking when I walked into the copy room. She gave me a perfunctory smile, and turned away. I smiled a genuine smile to myself but stifled a chuckle. Someday she might grace the cover of a magazine I'd not buy. As I copied the handout I had prepared for class, she resumed talking with great animation. Over the rhythmic cha-chung, cha-chung of the machine, I heard the following:

"Yeah, can you believe it? He seemed like such a normal guy! But his father always was a perv! I know! Remember how he'd look at us when we went over? Ok, talk to you later!"

She hung up the phone and quickly dialed another number.

"Christy! Have you heard!?! Robbie got arrested for being a peeping Tom! Yeah! No, I'm not kidding. He put a ladder up against the Kinison's bathroom window and was watching Mrs. Kinison take a shower! I know! Who would have thought! He seemed like such a normal guy! The only clue -- remember his father? What a perv he was? How'd he check us out in our bathing suits? Yeah, I know! Must run in the family! Ok, see you later, bye!"

My task was done, but I couldn't resist making 50 more copies. She quickly dialed another number.

"Angie! Have you heard!?! ..." But now I couldn't help it. I started laughing. Not little chuckles but great guffaws. I had to lean against the copier, I was laughing so hard. She stopped talking and looked at me. I looked back and laughed. Flustered, she slammed down the phone and stormed out, her sharp movements breaking her precise lines. I liked her best, then.

Later, in my classes, I got a lot of mileage out of the incident.

I've been reading Doris Lessing's two-volume autobiography. It's full of brutal honesty and (often) painful psychological insights. In the early '50s, she was invited along with some other writers to the Soviet Union. Here's an excerpt from volume two, Walking in the Shade:

We were taken to a building filled with presents to Stalin from his grateful subjects. It was sad, because they were mostly hideous, derivations or fallings-off from some genuine peasant or folk traditions, like carpets with his face occupying all the middle of them, or carved boxes or metalwork -- all with his face. It was there I decided to try and write a story according to the Communist formula, because I was uncomfortably aware of our smugness and superiority. It would have very good and very bad characters in it, like Dickens. I wrote it. It was called 'Hunger.' It was about a youth from a village in Africa, risking his fortunes and his life going to the big city, this being a basic plot of our time, not only in Africa. The background came from Africans I knew, who would describe, when I asked, exactly how this or that was done in a village, how things were in the locations and shebeens of Salisbury. This story has been much translated and reprinted, and yet I am ashamed of it. Quite a few of my early stories I would like to see vanish away. What is wrong with that tale is sentimentality, which is often the sign of an impure origin: in this case, to write a tale with a moral.

Three times a week I drive to a high school in a small Tennessee town. There I teach a couple of classes, one in a trailer with no clock. Clocks are not needed. Loud clanging bells punctuate the day: when class is about to start, when it starts, and when it ends. These bells jar your whole spine, like a running kid with a stick rat-a-tatting a picket fence. If you haven't completed a lecture before the bell, you never will, because students dart for the door and plunge into the hall looking for the current that will get them to their next class before another spine-jarring bell.

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