BIG LOSER

So, as you can tell, for the second year in a row I have not been a NaNoWriMo winner. I did better this year than last, but even so, didn't even make the halfway mark. You can see from the graphic to the right that I didn't write anything for the last few days of November. Too sick to care. Midnight November 30 came and went and I was awake but not even thinking about NaNoWriMo; mainly I was thinking about my sinuses. Maybe next year I will finish this novel, or maybe not. In any case...big loser.

Also after like a month of dragging my Facebook Scrabulous stats up by finally winning some games with my mom, about a million people challenged me to games all at once and I am losing ALL of them. I have decided that four person games suck, in general, and in particular I never want to play with GKB, Scott and Travis ever, ever again. Hear that guys? Next time I'm just resigning. Last time I held on to "jeez" for like the entire game angling for a triple word spot, which I could never get...so this time, I played "quoit" right away, but again--the prime spot I was hoping for got blocked by someone else's word and quoit didn't get nearly the points it deserved. After that I decided I was going to lose anyway and quit trying...big loser.

Plus I'm still sick and that really sucks. I could go into detail about all the snot but that would be gross.

So I'm just feeling bad. Big snotty loser, signing off.

Nanowrimo

My Facebook status optimistically proclaims that I am dissertating but really, I'm doing this. Brain's not working too well yet, gotta slide into the day kinda easy.

Since I can now drink coffee again, I've decided to get serious with the Nanowrimo thing. I let myself coast on last year's word count for the first 2 weeks, and then realized that was totally stupid. It's probably cheating, actually, and it certainly violates the spirit of Nanowrimo, and it didn't do anything for my writing discipline either--which is really the whole point. Of course, it's not like I've been sitting around on a beach sipping tap water at my leisure or anything. If all the verbiage I've produced this month went into my novel word count, I'd probably already be at the finish line. But those words get divided up into two sermons, a bible study and a dissertation chapter. (And a couple of sad little excuses for a blog post, barely worth mentioning.)

But, I had a great night a few nights ago where I wrote about 3,000 words in one sitting, resulting in this new surge of affection and enthusiasm for my little novel idea. Things are coming together, and even better, new connections and possibilities keep popping up, and so fast that sometimes I can't keep track and some of them are going to get lost before they can get written. But I have a whole new theoretical angle to work into the thing now, one which very nicely captures the kind of tension and ambiguity I want this posthuman (of course!!!) novel to have. And I may even be closing in on a title--something which, as Dr. John could attest (that is, if he at all remembers me) from my Creative Writing course with him at Harding, I have a dreadful time with.

Plus, I'm writing exciting stuff now like birthing scenes...and eventually will work up the nerve to write a steamy sex scene between two virgins, a cyborg and an illegally genetically engineered guy. Yup. It just doesn't get any better than that, folks.

So, I'm going to put a little word count widget on this blog somewhere and do my very very best to catch up. I'm still way behind, and don't manage to write every day, and that's a problem. So I'm looking for motivation and that is what this blog post is all about.

Any other Nanowrimo's out there? I could use some writing buddies...

It's over! Yay!!!

I was really good and only slipped up once. But seriously, the best I could figure that I saved from not consuming beverages other than tap water was seriously less than some other people. Now, that could make me feel smug and virtuous, as in, wow I spend so much less than other people, blah blah blah, or it could make me feel like a heel for not generating a whole lot of revenue for the organization we're donating to. I'm a little conflicted about it. But the truth is, I pretty much drink water and coffee--and the coffee I brew at home. So my estimates were a good faith effort to reflect reality...but I'm glad we have a few Starbucks junkies around to make up for my lack. I don't know yet what our final tally as a church is.

Best of all, Brent helped me celebrate the end of this spiritual discipline with a brew from Grumpy's.

another sermon

A new sermon is up over at rude sermons. And, God help me, there's a podcast.

in CCfB training

Check it out.

Day 2

So, if you also read Joe's blog, you've read about this. The H2O project. Joe's blogged about it eloquently so I'll skip all that and get straight to the bitching.

I really need coffee.

And no, I haven't cheated. Sunday evening I had a ritual last cup and made it all through yesterday. Today will be tougher. Not just because it is Day 2 but because it is a Dissertating Day, and I typically make it through the day on cups of coffee and not much else as I sit shackled to my computer and try to think thoughts at a speed that really requires some cyborg-type upgrading. I take a grudging break to slap together a sandwich at some point, generally, and then take it to the desk and cram it down while at the computer. Caffeine is sort of a requirement for this sort of crazed academic output.

I will probably have gained 5 pounds from the amount of compensatory chocolate I'll be consuming over the next two weeks.

I could just cheat, I know. But I have this feeling that the point is more than just collecting the money I'm (theoretically) saving by drinking only tap water for two weeks. I have this feeling that there's some good to this consistent reminder that my "right" to coffee is illusory and nothing more than my habitual expectation of a rather cosseted existence. Or that there will be, once I pass through the five stages of caffeine withdrawal (I'm out of "denial" and into "pissed off"--I wonder what comes next?)

economics, sociobiology, and the brethren

Last week, in the class I'm auditing on theology & economics, discussion turned to the similarity between the economic theory of Gary Becker and the common sociobiological theory of the evolution of altruism. This occasioned a diagram, a bunch of concentric circles each representing a differing and weaker level of moral relatedness: close family, extended family, friends, acquaintances, ..."society," and so on. Until of course, there is no obligation perceived at all.

This was not a new thought for me, but what was astonishing, and made me giggle aloud as I sat there and contemplated the blackboard diagram, is that it reminded me forcibly of a particular afternoon at Harding in the Benson auditorium, where I beheld a diagram remarkably similar while listening to a lecture on fellowship from an author based on his recently-published book.

This can hardly be a coincidence.

biting!

Clare came home from daycare today with a very symmetrical distinct round of teethmarks on her shoulder. Yep, she got bit today.

I know that this is fairly normal but I feel almost ready to bite someone myself...that maternal protective instinct is fierce!

for the Bible tells me so

On Saturday night Brent and I went and saw For the Bible Tells Me So.

I was the only woman in the theatre.

Apart from that, my main observation about the film is that I was pleasantly surprised that the inevitable negativity toward Christianity was not the whole message, but was rather well-balanced by the stories of Jake Reitan (Lutheran), Bishop Robinson (who grew up Disciples of Christ in KY but now, obviously, Episcopalian), and others. Rather than simply dismissing Christianity as a religion too hateful and xenophobic to accept gay people, the film makes the case that hatred is not the center of the Christian gospel.

from the Sundance review article:

Karslake mostly avoids demonizing the religious right, instead simply
holding up the families at the heart of his story and saying: Here they are.
These are the gay people you so fear, and they are your sons and daughters, your
brothers and sisters, the neighbors you've known for years. Karslake has made a
powerful film, one that I hope will be widely seen, because it addresses the
fulcrum of the religious right's objection to homosexuality without attacking
those who hold those beliefs. Rather than smacking down with a righteous hammer,
Karslake instead simply takes those who would believe that there is no common
ground between faith and homosexuality and gently, relentlessly chisels away at
every argument that bolsters those beliefs.

One of the more striking things about the film is the difference in the quality of religious speech made so obvious by the film. Karslake "mostly avoids demonizing the religious right" because the religious right's own words--from the mouths of Jimmy Swaggart, Dr. James Dobson and others--so self-evidently angry and fearful and hateful, do the job without any outside help. The vitriol is paired against the quiet, ultra-reasonable, peaceful replies of people like retired Bishop Desmond Tutu, and the difference is never directly commented upon but allowed to remain implicit and yet unmistakeable.

My one disappointment: that I was the only woman in the theatre, and Brent and I probably the only two straight people. This isn't, in the end, a film for gay people or for welcoming and affirming Christians. It's a plea directed toward those people, like the families featured in the film, who find themselves caught in the middle between intolerant beliefs and the moral imperative to change. But those people weren't there. And they weren't likely to be, at the Quad Cinema in Greenwich Village. Will the film reach the people for whom it is an offering? I don't know. But if it does not, in fact, make it to a theatre near you (in Abilene or Oklahoma or Tennessee or wherever you are)...Netflix.

do androids dream of electric vodka?

Today I walked by one of these.

Perhaps you think that's bizarre. If so, you need to check this out.

Comments?

Theotokos

Someday, I'm going to have to write this book. A book on theology and childbirth. A chapter on Christmas and Advent and the important but often ignored fact of birth in the Christian narrative. A point in there somewhere about women's experience and why it's still discounted as theological resource. I'm going to have to look into Mariology and see what that's all about. I'm going to give a shot at figuring out why the hell anyone would write "women will be saved through childbirth."



Any other suggestions? What have I missed in my musing? Or has someone already written this book, and I should just go check it out and read it?

a modest request

I don't have any money to spare these days, no matter how much I would love to give fistfuls of it away to anyone with the heart and intelligence to use it wisely in solving the world's pressing problems of hunger and oppression and violence.

But I do have a blog (thank goodness blogger is free) and GKB's modest request is to link back to his website to let as many people as possible know about the work he'll be doing through the organization Invisible Children. I haven't checked statcounter.com in forever and for all I know, only 2 people ever even read this blog anymore, but hey, you two, if you can spare some $$ to help get GKB over to Africa and do some good work there...God bless you, and GKB, and the children that no one sees that Greg will be photographing on this trip.

The Brave One

Brent and I went to a movie Saturday night, thanks to Maria's offer to hang out with a not-yet-sleeping Clare. It's been a while since Brent and I went to a movie--the last was a doubledate to Harry Potter with Sarah & Andrew. I'd forgotten how much nicer it is to see a movie in your pj's on your own couch. The snacks are better, the bathroom's cleaner, the seat's comfier, and the comments from the peanut gallery are generally much more intelligent.

Since the point was just to get out while the gettin' was good, there wasn't anything in particular we wanted to see. It ended up a toss-up between The Brave One and The Kingdom. I like a good no-brainer action movie as much as anyone, but I can't say I was real excited about either. Jodie Foster's pretty good, but brutalized-woman-seeks-revenge-then-realizes-she-has-become-her-own-worst-enemy just sounded ho-hum. But, who cares...we're out and we're Clare-free!

So off we went. I must say that going to a movie in NYC was different from going to a movie anywhere else I've ever been. I now understand so much better why Law & Order is so packed with those god-awful cheesy one-liners. New Yorkers eat it up. Nicky Katt's whole function in the movie was to deliver Law & Order style dialogue (which, I have to say, he did with enough comedic flourish that it was on occasion funny). But the movie as a whole was disturbing, and even more so because we saw in a theatre in NYC. Jodie Foster's character, Erica Bain (despite the alternative orthography, certainly a symbolic nomenclature at work there), understandably traumatized, begins carrying a gun--and repeatedly experiencing situations in which she uses it fatally to protect herself and/or others from violent harm. There's an issue of plausibility throughout the movie, but passing over the need to suspend one's disbelief beyond the level ever required by an SF tale, the real issue I have with this movie is the frank and unnuanced sanction of Erica's action. Erica's counterpart, the good cop who befriends her, the steady symbol of respect for the law and restrained ("moral") use of force, at the crucial moment departs inexplicably from his convictions, hands her his gun (with the inevitably unfunny one-liner) and not only makes it possible for Erica to execute one of the men who had assaulted her, but also devises her escape. Erica is ready to be arrested, even after his complicity in the execution, but he tells her to run. The most disturbing thing of all: when she shoots the guy in the face, the audience whooped and hollered and applauded.

The movie ends with Erica climbing the steps in Central Park, the site of her assault, with a voiceover that makes clear that she has been irrevocably changed and damaged by the incident and its aftermath, and that there is no going back to the person she had been and wished she still was. In the last, say, ten seconds of the movie, it seems that the violence has been futile and pointless and has not changed anything--except Erica, who is less than she was. But the possible message of total lack of redemption in the violence she's perpetrated was probably lost on the audience that cheered her on as she blew the dude's head off.

eschewing our gender, yet again

Now dissertating in earnest, it is time to read N. Katherine Hayles' How We Became Posthuman again.

Hayles begins her story with a prologue on the Turing test. What everyone knows about this test is that it has become the litmus test for identifying the moment when machines become "intelligent" (intelligent=ability to fool human beings, which, all things considered, is a pretty poor benchmark but, zenme ban). What no one remembers is that there were two versions of the test in Turing's proposal, the first being that one would interact via computer terminal with two unseen entities, and depending solely on the electronically transmitted responses to your questions, you would determine--not which was human, and which machine--but which one was a woman, and which a man.

"If your failure to distinguish correctly between human and machine proves that machines can think," Hayles asks, "what does it prove if you fail to distinguish woman from man?"

Andrew Hodges, a biographer of Turing, argues that the intent for inclusion of gender test is to show that gender, unlike intelligence, is in fact dependent upon unalterable physical reality. Hayles disagrees; the cases as presented are parallel, and point to a willingness to define gender in terms of symbolic manipulation similar to intelligence.

All of this reminds me of the hermits' marvelous diversion, the “gender genie” test, a kind of variation of the Turing gender test. What does this say about gender and identity? I fooled it successfully, and rather grandly—now I am a man? No; but it does tell you something interesting about my identity, that is, I am a woman who can successfully represent myself through verbal/semiotic markers as a man. And perhaps that is interesting.

The crucial move, as Hayles points out, is “distinguishing between the enacted body, present in the flesh on one side of the computer screen, and the represented body, produced through verbal and semiotic markers constituting it in an electronic environment.” And this, BTW, is the advent of the cyborg... Why? Because technology is the bridge connecting the physical and represented body/ies. The test requires disjunction, therefore: “What the Turing test 'proves' is that the overlay between the enacted and represented bodies is no longer natural inevitability but a contingent production, mediated by a technology that has become so intertwined with the production of identity that it can no longer meaningfully be separated from the human subject.”

And, of course, Gender Genie's verdict on the above:

Female Score: 428/Male Score: 701
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male! (and in any case, definitely cyborg)

a random observation

Exit 299 on I-20 between Abilene and Dallas is "Hays Road." Exit 300 is "Clyde." Joe, what's up with this?

I'd forgotten

Occasionally it's really good to dive back in to the CofC world I grew up in...the world of cushiony pews and crowds of people and large carpeted lobbies and institutionalized quirks. It's been a long time since I'd attended a large, mainstream CofC and I'd forgotten some of the charming idiosyncrasies common to our gatherings. The hearty round of hacking coughs after the miked "Amen." The way people dress for each other. The agonizing greet-your-neighbor session that is the CofC version of passing the peace. The peculiar musical aesthetic of hearing the melody line of every song an octave below what's written. The way the men line solemnly up at the front of the church for the Communion trays and then troop out symmetrically down the aisles and weave in and out in this complicated-looking sort of symbiotic dance (ahem, choreography) with each other, and how Communion trays simultaneously and mysteriously appear from the back of the auditorium to speed the process (can't spend too much time communing with God and each other, it's boring, there's nothing happening up front).* The screens at the front of the auditorium with the fun graphics...

During the service at the church I went to a couple Sundays ago, they apparently regularly take time to recognize specific ministries of the church and thank the people who serve in them. That Sunday it was the coffee and donut ministry (an all-around important service, I say, with great great sincerity. I'm thrilled that CCfB is now initiating a coffee and bagel table and hey, thanks to Cara, Ashlea and Regina for doing this!!!). So anyway, up on the screens in front there was a large graphic to announce the name of the ministry, show some pix of people, etc., and to the right there was a graphic of a white church with a steeple in front. As the thank-you progressed, a large donut hurtled down from the "sky" and ringed the steeple (visualize this, people! Come on!) and stayed there for the remainder of the announcement...and no one laughed.

A thought: perhaps now that we too have a screen, CCfB can borrow this graphic when it's time to publicly thank our bagel and coffee people?

A final note. I enjoyed the sermon, although it was definitely a message for a large suburban CofC. The main theme, that the US is now a "mission area," based on the observation that church involvement in the US is declining while it is growing exponentially in areas such as Central and South America, Africa, and China is probably indisputable. But what I wish I had heard more of is, what kind of a mission area is the US? Is it a mission area of unchurched people totally ignorant of Christianity? Hardly. If the US is a mission area it is one unlike our usual conception of the term; it is a mission area comprised of people who are so Christianized that they've forgotten what that means, and who didn't notice when their religion got coopted and politicized and economized out of existence. So maybe we're in the middle of a mission area, sure. But it's a mission that requires a kind of Christian message we've never preached before--here or China or anywhere else.

*I did however have a nice thought about the lateral passing of Communion trays between laypersons. It has the potential to embody an implicit message of equality and fellowship between brothers and sisters in Christ. If, say, we repeated the words of institution to each other as we handed on the tray, perhaps even broke the bread for someone else rather than ourselves, rather than taking the tray while avoiding eye contact, breaking the tiniest possible crumb and munching it in imagined total solitude.

Brent's great-grandmother, Zada Belle Gravette, died this afternoon. Above is the picture we took during our visit this past Christmas--our five-generation picture. I like this one the best of the bunch because you can Nanny's smile. I always thought she had one of the best smiles ever. She smiled a lot, too, and it was always a kind of gift.

I didn't know her well, and only got to know her towards the end of her very extraordinary life. But I liked her a lot. I think it was impossible not to.

the vocative

O Readers,

How many of you do a job you know is worthwhile? Is fulfilling? Is just? How many of you would call what you do a "vocation" or say you feel called to it? How did you come to that calling? How many of you would quit a job if you realized it was contributing to injustice in the world? How many of you have chosen to earn less money in order to do a job that was more worthwhile than the bigger paycheck? How many of you would happily quit your job today if you didn't need to earn that money? What would you do instead?

a cool thing I did

A couple months ago I knitted the coolest thing ever. I got the pattern from Knitty (and I found Knitty through Brian). I have enough yarn left to make another (and perhaps even more) so pretty soon I will make one of these for Clare. But the first one belongs to Baby Sylva...Happy 1st Birthday!

the first day

So, this was it.

Clare's first day at The Children's Garden. And my first Dissertation Day.

How did we do?

Well, Clare didn't notice when I left, being engrossed in some new fascinating toy she'd never seen before. There was no agonizing tearful scene or anything. She loved playing outside, they said, and ate all her strawberries and most of her crackers right when I said she would get hungry. But she wouldn't go down for her nap. And she's got a runny nose. (I don't think this was childcare cause and effect--I have a runny nose too.)

I did not do quite so well. I did re-read my proposal and was pleasantly surprised at how organized my thoughts seemed, and how intelligent it sounded overall. Oh yeah, I thought, this is what it's about--good thing I read this thing again so I could jog my memory. And then I covered about 40 pages of Andy Clark's Natural-Born Cyborgs, which I'm finding quite congenial so far.

Then I took a shower--something I still find quite difficult to schedule in on a regular basis. It's amazing what a baby does to the logistics of personal hygiene. (Not to mention the motivation--after all they don't care if your legs are hairy or your armpits smell.) Then I went to the grocery store because there was nothing for Clare to eat for lunch, and bought lots of bananas and stuff. Then I picked her up. And that was that.

So, I think I'll give myself a C- for today. But Clare gets an A-. Maybe Thursday she'll nap, and pull it up to an A.