Category: Uncategorized

Via boing-boing comes this link about a pair of glasses that vibrate to help you stay awake. Or maybe they would just make your head hurt.

Via boing-boing/Web Zen comes this short video, Kung Fu Bunnies.

Not quite as funny is Cows with Guns.

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while, but I’ve been distracted by pesky things like work, life, etc.

Anyway:

I ended up spending up quite a bit of the MLK holiday assembling various products. Because, after all, what else was Dr. King talking about other than putting together various consumer goods?

The first project was the result of a Christmas present from the Wannamaker grandparents, a Star Wars lego model that had (I shit you not) over 1,000 pieces, and mostly itty-bitty pieces, too. The second was an Ikea purchased kitchen island/cutting board sort of table/station.

A bit about this second project: essentially, our dishwasher (one of those deals that hooked up to the kitchen sink via a hose and such– that is, it wasn’t built-in) died. Since we’re likely to move in about a year or so, it didn’t seem to make a lot of sense to go out and buy a new dishwasher. So we decided to buy a piece of furniture that would replace the dishwasher’s duel function as a counter top, that would add shelving, and that we could take with us.

Ikea, as I am sure most of you know, is a wonderful wonderful place for a wide variety of consumer good needs. Indeed, I found it kind of bizarre that they had a couple of model home set-ups where everything (including the flooring!) were things you could buy in that store. I suspect you could point to one of these rooms, say “I’ll take one of those,” and have the whole thing loaded into a truck that you could take home.

In any event, it was loads of fun to visit the store, and we were pleased with our lunch (and you see in the picture at the top here of Will and I enjoying some Swedish meatballs) and our purchases.


I know that Will and I made several mistakes with this Star Wars walker thing– we had both extra pieces and missing pieces. But it still looks pretty cool:

By the way, this is about 18 inches or so tall.

The second piece was the more utilitarian Ikea hunk of furniture:

How to compare these pieces? Well, in many ways, the furniture was dramatically easier to put together than the lego project. I mean, the lego thing took days to finish and involved at least 100 “steps,” maybe more. On the other hand, putting together the cutting board thing involved a couple of rather physically demanding steps– well, demanding for someone like me who a) didn’t have the right tools in the first place, and b) is a whimp.

I’m sure we’ll enjoy both of these things for a while, so I guess it was an MLK weekend well-spent. Though I’m not sure what one actually does with a lego star wars walker….

This was on after I went to bed:

I’m not sure how much sense it makes to those who didn’t see Borat; and yet, for those who didn’t see it, this speech gives a little bit of a sense about what it is they missed.

Just in case you’re wondering: it’s been pretty crazy-busy around here lately. But in a good way. Among other things:

• I had the pleasure of hosting a panel discussion with some of our recent MA graduates about PhD studies in composition and rhetoric last week. It was really cool and, I am happy to say, we were able to use some nice and new video equipment to record it. Soon I’ll slap it up on the writing.emich.edu web site. Not exactly an “exciting action” shoot, but some really good discussion points.
• I also had the pleasure of hosting (well, sorta) the bi-annual EMU First Year Writing Program Celebration of Student Writing. As always, that was a great event. It was the first time we had it in the new student center and its ballroom, which is a very fine space indeed. For the time-being, be sure to check out this link. But at some point in the near future, you will be able to view “The Celebration of Student Writing: The Movie,” a project I (along with Linda Adler-Kassner and my still photography colleague Steve Benninghoff) filmed/shot while this was going on. Quite the day; I showed up at about 7:45 am, left to go walk the dog and take my son to school, and then I was there from about 9:15 am until about 6:30 pm or so. A long and tired day, but a load of fun.
  
  I have a lot of things to say about these video experiences, but for the time-being, let me just say that I find iMovie absolutely addictive. Better than almost any video game I’ve ever played.
• And then there has been a lot of interesting developments as of late with the on-going struggle between the EMU-AAUP faculty union and the administration. There’s lots of discussion on EMUtalk.org; the short version is I am cautiously optimistic about the chances of actually settling this mess and moving on in a positive way.

And then there is the general chaos of the end of the term. It’s funny; I’ve been doing this work for years and years, but it seems to me that every semester, I never quite figure out what works best for my schedule until the semester is almost over. Oh well….

Well, it’s been busy around here, to be honest. Work has been super-duper busy for all kinds of different reasons, including a somewhat odd visit to my office by the president of the university. Plus there is that pesky teaching thing, plus I did quite a bit of work on what I suspect will be a long-shot sabbatical request, plus various meetings/getting ready for Winter 2007 teaching, etc., etc., etc.

And quite frankly, I haven’t had much time to do much of anything else. A little yard work. We’re having an “Indian Food Fest” tonight, an annual dinner party we have (it’s going to be a dozen this year). Next week, we go to Iowa for Thanksgiving.

So just the typical busy stuff.

Sorry I don’t have much else to offer; in the meantime, why not enjoy this video of naked mannequins on skateboards I found via boing-boing?

We held our first meeting of this year’s first year writing committee the other day, which is basically a group of folks who a) are teaching first year composition and/or b) who care. Mistakenly, I didn’t invite faculty to this meeting because faculty don’t really teach first year composition. But the folks who were at this meeting were actually okay with me being the only tenure-track-type person there.

Anyway, that got me to thinking about my WPAing so far this year. Here’s a list of thoughts on how things are going so far, in no particular order:

• I have come to describe my place as the “accidential WPA,” or the “tourist WPA.” The circumstances as to why I’m doing this work are complicated and a bit of a coincidence, but I won’t go into that right now. But one way or the other, I have been working on lowering expectations about my work as the temporary WPA. I think it’s working….
• A big part of my job is working with the new graduate assistants teaching for the first time, and that has been both interesting and rewarding. It simultaneously makes me feel old and young. Old because I realize that I went through the things these people are going through right now about 18 or so years ago. But young because I recall my experiences as a new graduate assistant way back when quite vividly.
• I am actually learning about the course that my graduate students are teaching, English 120, pretty much as my interaction with these students goes along. And I have to say– I really want to try to get a chance to teach this next year. I think it sounds like a lot of fun.
• Compared to some of the other political bullshit going on in my department right now (which is unusual, btw–things here are generally a bit more happy-go-lucky in our department) and the pretty stupid-ass stuff happening with the board of regents and administration with the strike (this post and this post, both on EMUtalk.org, give a flavor of what I’m talking about), being the WPA is a complete love fest/walk in the park. I’m not entirely sure if that is typical, and I am not convinced that this will last too long.
• One of the mantras I keep repeating over and over is this is not rocket science, and this is not brain surgery– meaning this is not that complicated, and lives are not at stake. That seems to help.
• I have learned a lot and I also have much better people to work with at EMU in my role as the interim WPA than I did when I was thrust into the position of being a version of the WPA at Southern Oregon 10 years ago. But maybe that’s a story for another time….
• One addition I should have included before: Because I am doing two related by different pseudo-administrative jobs this term– the director of the first year composition program along with my previous service work, as the coordinator of the undergraduate and graduate majors in writing– and I think I have have already learned what sort of work like this I am willing to do in the future. It’s pretty straight-forward: first, I would do either of these jobs in the future, but I wouldn’t do both of these jobs at the same time again. It’s too much work and too schizophrenic. Second, this work (combined with all the strike junk and the current departmental politics) makes it crystal clear that I never ever never ever never be a full-time and honest-to-goodness administrator, certainly nothing like a dean or associate dean or in the provost office or whatever.

You’ve got to watch the dog’s reaction to this thing: