Sarapen

Over on Rough Theory, N. Pepperrell and I have been wallowing in our guilt over not being well-read enough (is anyone in academia ever satisfied by how much they know?).  Anyway, now seems like an opportune time to share my summer reading list.  These are the books I hope to read after I finish my thesis.  I know, I'm guilty of counting chickens before they've hatched, but I think it's good to be optimisitic about the future.  I don't list novels because I tend to consume them at a really high pace and I pretty much just read whatever catches my eye when I'm at the library, the bookstore, or spy something lying around the house.  Anyway, the books I want to read:

1. Southeast Asia Over Three Generations: Essays Presented to Benedict R. O'G. Anderson.  I just bought this a couple of weeks ago and I'll probably just skim it.
2. Cultural Citizenship in Island Southeast Asia by Renato Rosaldo.  This one I bought a couple of months ago and I've also yet to read it.  I'll probably just skim it too.
3. Friction by Anna Tsing.  Something I got for myself Christmas 2005 which I actually have cracked open, but I've never really, you know, read it per se (more like randomly flipped through and lingered on occasional interesting bits).
4. Europe and the People Without History by Eric Wolf.  Again, I've flipped through it, I've gotten the gist of it, but damned if I've ever actually read it through.  Another book from 2005.
5. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity by Jurgen Habermass.  I've actually read the introduction but not much else beyond that.  It's yet another two year old book that I still haven't gotten around to reading.  Damn you, graduate school!  Why can I never have the time to read all these books?  Confession: Sometimes I'm tempted to shelve it beside Madness and Civilization just to see what will happen.
6. A Thousand Plateaus by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari.  I keep reading about this book in various articles and such so I figured I might as well see what it actually says.  One book review I read says that it builds upon the dynamic duo's previous work, so does that mean I'll have to read their other books before I get to this one?  I know I'll probably have to read Capitalism and Schizophrenia at the very least.  I wonder, is that enough of a grounding to not feel lost?  I admit, I want to read D&G partly because the anime Ghost in the Shell: The Stand Alone Complex is apparently written by Deleuzians.  In one episode, a sentient robotic tank is seen reading a copy of Anti-Oedipus.  I'd really like to watch this series and get the Deleuzian references.

You know what?  This is more of a 2007 reading list, in which case I should have written this list in January.  The summer can't be long enough for me to read all these meaty books.  Oh well, yet another reason for me to finish my thesis soon.

Posted by sarapen at 12:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After reading this post, I have come to the realization that I would make a totally kickass housewife.  I already spend most of my days indoors in a state of living death, constantly thinking about my next meal.  With a working man to support me, I could live the life of luxury I've always wanted.  Let me outline my qualifications for the position of Stepford Wife:

First, I'm very demure and soft-spoken in person.  Why, it takes me months before I feel comfortable enough with new acquaintances to start calling them by their first names.  I remember once in Home Economics in high school I had scalding hot jam accidentally poured over my fingers.  It must have taken me a good 20 or 30 seconds  before I started screaming "FUCK FUCK FUCK!!" at the top of my lungs (actually, it was more like "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!").  Clearly, my self-control is inhuman.  Who else but the perfect hausfrau could push down their emotions so well?

I'm also quite vain and would almost definitely start shaving everyday again if I had a caveman to appease.  Ever woken up in the morning, taken a look at yourself in the mirror and said, "Holy god, I'm good looking"?  I have.  I also enjoy getting and putting on new clothes, so I'll fit in with the other housewives at the beauty salon.  And guess what?  I have a relatively fast metabolism, so I can eat until I'm stuffed and still not look fat.  Freshman fifteen?  Pshaw!  I actually lost ten pounds my freshman year, none of it from dieting.

Furthermore, I'm experienced at doing household stuff like ironing and cleaning.  I went to a Catholic high school and used to iron my dress shirts and uniform pants myself, you know.  And cleaning?  Why, as long as there's something on tv for the next couple of hours I don't mind washing, drying, and folding the laundry.  I'm equally-versed in dishwasher use and in washing dishes in the sink, and I will almost never mistakenly use the toilet bowl to wash stuff in.  And speaking of the bathroom, I can get one clean lickety-split.  As for the kitchen, I'm a compulsive neat freak, so I'll almost always keep the stove clean.

Finally, I think I make a decent cook.  I have a reasonably-sized repertoire of dishes I'm comfortable at making and which I'm constantly adding to.  None of it is typical white North American fare, either, and hardly any of it is to be found in restaurants.  Meatloaf?  I don't even know how to make that.  I admit, I don't know how to bake, but I'm thinking of learning how to do that soon, and I'm confident I'll have no trouble in my education at all.

So you see, as long as I'm kept in bon-bons and tv series dvds, I will never leave your side.  You won't have to worry again about being alone in the cruel world (unless you lose your job).  Also, I will totally let you borrow my porn if you get horny.  I ask you, reader, is this not wedded bliss?  What more could a man ask for?  What more?

PS

Sugar mamas are also acceptable.

Posted by sarapen at 11:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

[They] are prevented by diversity of language from conveying their sentiments to one another, so that a man would more readily converse with his dog than with a foreigner.  But the Imperial City has endeavored to impose upon subject nations not only her yoke, but her language, as a bond of peace . . . but how many great wars, how much slaughter and bloodshed have provided this unity?

St. Augustine, The City of God (c. 413 AD)

Posted by sarapen at 4:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Something one of the profs in my department forwarded:

Here is our chance to have a say on the upcoming March 2007 federal budget. The federal government has opened a small window for everyday Canadians to have their say on what the 2007 federal budget will look like.  Responses must be submitted before 12 midnight (EST) February 28th, on the government web site:
http://www.fin.gc.ca/activty/consult/prebud07_e.html

Solid gold underpants, here we come.

Posted by sarapen at 4:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Yeah.

Posted by sarapen at 9:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From The Guardian:

• Anthony Giddens likes professional wrestling!
• Homi Bhabha watches Project Runway!
• Tariq Ramadan listens to rap!  Actually, I don't see why this should be a guilty pleasure since I can see professional reasons for him to listen to this, what with needing to understand the lives of young European Muslims.  Historically, after all, rap has been about expressing the discontent of a racial minority.  So this one doesn't seem as much of a guilty pleasure as the other stuff.
• Slavoj Zizek enjoys military games!  My favourite one.  The documentary about him makes clear that he's quite a character, but it never mentioned this particular hobby of his.  But Zizek's favourite game is something called Stalin Subway, where the player kills for Papa Joe?  I seem to remember he has a portrait of Stalin in his entranceway.  He claims he's being ironic, but obviously he's fascinated with the man.  And look at what he said about military games:

"I play them compulsively, enjoying the freedom to dwell in the virtual space where I can do with impunity all the horrible things I was always dreaming of - killing innocent civilians, burning churches and houses, betraying allies... Plato was right: there are only two kinds of people on this earth, those who dream about doing horrible things and those who actually do them."

Good thing he's an academic, he'll never have any power to tempt him.  Oh, and the snarky comments from academics_anon can be amusing:

"Is it just me or does Catherine MacKinnon come off as the dour, unpleasant creature in real life that she seems to be in her books?"

"I bet her actual guilty pleasure is sitting alone in a windowless room, brooding self-righteously."

Posted by sarapen at 4:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Maybe I should start immersing myself in the blogosphere again, I hadn't realized the theory bloggers were at odds with each other.  Figuring out who said what for which reason seems to be more trouble than it's worth, so I'll just stay content with the vague awareness that there was some kind of spat between the bloggers and commenters of The Valve, The Weblog, and Long Sunday about something or other.

Posted by sarapen at 3:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

If I lived in either the US or UK, I'd so apply, especially since I have a thing for applied anthro, but anyway, here's a heads-up to you Yanks and limeys out there:

Cultural Logic, headed by an anthropologist and a linguist, is a research and consulting firm that works for nonprofit organizations, applying cognitive and social science expertise to improve communications between experts/advocates and the public. Past topics have included global warming, early childhood development, access to health insurance, overfishing, racism, global cooperation, and domestic toxins. (For more information about Cultural Logic, see www.culturallogic.com.) .

We are currently seeking interviewers in the US and the UK immediately to conduct and transcribe brief (5 minute) phone conversations with members of the general public.

Grad students in anthropology, linguistics or cog sci are especially encouraged to apply.  The current project requires native speakers of American and British English.  Interviewing experience is a plus, but not required. 

Ideally, the research assistant would have a flexible schedule, but could commit to taping 3-6 phone interviews in an afternoon or evening and e-mailing the transcriptions the following day.

The research is underway and assistants are needed immediately.

Compensation is negotiable.

Please email Andrew Brown at <admin@culturallogic.com> or call to the US: 1(401)383-6500 for more information.
Sincerely,
Andrew J. Brown, Ph.D.

Posted by sarapen at 12:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(via The Wily Filipino)

Who could not want this t-shirt?  Running dog capitalists, that's who.  Are you not a running dog capitalist?  Then buy me a t-shirt, pretty please.  While you're at it, please buy me this trophy too:

"This 11" tall trophy is good for the office drones and graduate students in your life."

See, it's perfect for me.  I just wish they still had for sale the t-shirt of a fish getting a bicycle as a gift.  "It may not need that bicycle, but the bicycle is awesome and it is the happiest damned fish in the ocean."

Posted by sarapen at 3:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I left Halifax on December 19th and I haven't touched my thesis work since then.  Yes, it's hard to work during the holidays, but there's more involved in my non-productivity than that.  Going permanently back to my house in Northern Ontario has broken my work habits, and now I have to create new ones in accord with my new environment.

Plus, there's a lot more stuff to distract me here.  My brother has an extensive dvd collection that he's added to since last I was here and he's also gotten a bunch more books.  I've just seen a boatload of movies, including the Children of Men (Holy shit!  See it!), and I managed to start and finish Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian.  There's an anthropologist in that one, by the way, although the stuff she does makes her sound more like a folklorist, but since she's a Hungarian scholar practicing Soviet anthropology, I'm willing to suspend my disbelief pending more knowledge about Soviet anthro.  And there's the PS2, with which I've already finished Ultimate Alliance despite getting it for Christmas, and I've just started Final Fantasy X-2.  The kitchen here also has more appliances and special spices and delicacies, so I can make ever more complex meals for the eating.

Which is to say that I've landed myself in Procrastination City.  On the pro side of the equation, Sudbury is a complete car town and I don't know how to drive, so I can't go watch a movie on a whim.  It's also less -- how can I put it? -- less, umm, less than Halifax.  There, I said it.  There's not as much to do in Northern Ontario.  I also don't know as many people here, since everyone I knew has graduated and gone somewhere else.

That's why I've been so quiet lately.  However, I was already blogging far less before moving.  That was mostly because I'd gotten serious about writing my thesis and can pretty much focus on only one thing at a time.  I wrote rather long posts in the early months of my old blog mostly because I had no other work to do or I was procrastinating on the work that I did have.  Now, though, I actually find myself procrastinating on blogging itself.

Look at my ScrapBook folder of stuff that I saved away to blog about later and you'll see that I've posted about maybe less than half the stuff listed here.  That's not even counting the drafts that I've been opening and listlessly poking at every now and then.

 I can understand why Michael Bérubé is quitting blogging (Incidentally, his final post is also the first post of his that I've ever read).  Always Be Composing is a hard thing to do, and thinking about what to blog about takes away brainpower from other projects.  I wonder how s0metim3s and N. Pepperrell can keep writing such long posts, although as residents of Oz they have their summer break now, the lucky bastards ("bastard" is friendly in Australian, right?).

Okay, sometime before the end of January I'll finish and post the draft I have about various bits of media that I've been playing around with.  Scout's honour.  And I will so totally blog about the new episode of Battlestar Galactica.

Posted by sarapen at 3:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

In the part of the Philippines that I'm originally from, it is held that hiccups are a sign that the afflicted has recently filched someone's eggs.  Damn you eggs, I ate you fair and square!  Everything was legally paid for!

Unless this condition is some kind of commentary on how capitalist consumption is always essentially predicated on the theft of resources from somewhere else, such as the oil used to make the gas that fueled the truck that brought the eggs to market, in which case we're all screwed.

Oh wait, my hiccups are gone now.  Yay, capitalism triumphs again!

Posted by sarapen at 7:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“We Communists always oppose a one-party dictatorship, and don’t approve of the Nationalists having a one-party dictatorship. The CCP certainly doesn’t have a program to monopolise government because one party can only rule in its own interests and won’t act according to the Will of the People. Moreover, it goes against democratic politics.” Deng Xiaoping, 16th March 1941

Posted by sarapen at 5:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Battlestar Galactica characters if they existed in the world of The Simpsons:

I knew there was a reason I had Internet access.

Posted by sarapen at 3:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I mentioned on Rough Theory that I had read Francis Fukuyama, and I was specifically referring to his book The End of History and the Last Man.  However, I have to confess that I can remember absolutely nothing from the experience of reading it.  I know I read it since I have notes on it somewhere and one paper I wrote in undergrad cites it.  Evidently, I've read it in the past, but I can't even remember what it was about.  Well, I know what it's about because I've read reviews and it's mentioned here and there in other articles and such, but I can't pull out of my mind any knowledge of the book that specifically comes from my own reading.  I have a feeling I wasn't impressed, otherwise reading the book would have made an actual impression on me.  What I remember from book reviews also leads me to conclude that I probably dumped the book from my long-term memory because I didn't think it was that great.  I'm not too broken up about this situation, but it is rather curious.

Posted by sarapen at 2:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I demand amusement.  Hop on one foot, punch yourself in the stomach, sing, do anything at all, but don't let me get bored.  You know what's more horrible than procrastinating and knowing even as you're doing it that you're steadily screwing yourself?  Trying to procrastinate and not having anything to do.  Woe and worry, sorrow and lamentation, fallen, fallen is Babylon the great.

Off to Youtube I go.

And for any new people who have just stumbled on this blog (all two of you): don't worry, I don't whine all the time, I'm just full of self-pity right now.  I promise to stop feeling sorry for myself sometime after I get my PhD.

Posted by sarapen at 11:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Technorati Profile
It's mine Technorati! Mine mine mine!

Posted by sarapen at 7:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hello, my name is Jesse de Leon and I'm new to these parts.  My old blog is over there and it's about my Master's research on Filipino bloggers.  Well, it's kind of morphed into something else, now it's mostly me holding forth on whatever I feel like.  I got sick of Edublogs and their not fun hosting (ask me if you want to know the boring details) and decided to move here to Anthroblogs.  Thanks again to John Norvell for giving me a new forum for my online musings.

So, I'm a 1.5 generation Filipino immigrant who's working on his Master's thesis in social anthropology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.  I'm planning on moving my old posts over to Anthroblogs, but that involves Perl and scripting and work, and (1) I suck at programming, (2) I've never used Perl before, and (3) I'm trying to finish a chapter of my thesis to include in applications to PhD schools, which all means that I won't have time to properly set up my new blog anytime this year.  But if anyone is better at Perl than me, who only started learning it 2 days ago, I would dearly love to benefit from your expertise.  I've already found 2 scripts on the Internet that will mostly do what I want, which is migrating posts from my old blog to my new one.  Moving comments would also be nice, but moving the posts is essential.  But I'm having trouble figuring out what parameters to set and such, so I need help with that.

Anyway, I thought I'd just start blogging on the new site and worry about all that later.  I'm glad to join Anthroblogs and I hope this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Posted by sarapen at 6:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)