How my Ph.D. program doesn't support me.

The one prof I work for this quarter in the gen-ed curriculum has let me skip a lot of classes in order to work on diss, he just said to show up whenver we transitioned to a new book -

And I've made full use of those extra hours (4-8 a week!) and made *great* progress on my dissertation.

(I also taught 2 classes, once as a "thanks" and another time when he was out of town unexpectedly.)

In any case, that just goes to show you how when given opportunities, I take advantage of them - and it makes me notice how administrators in my program and beyond aren't creating those opportunities.

It really just p*ss*s you off.

Forgot - teaching on class differences -

I forgot -

When I taught on class differences, I 1st started with discussion of a relatively obvious example of how exclusionary behavior works - namely, racially-themed frat parties at the Univ. of Michigan and elsewhere, which led students to say that a hostile environment could lead people to feel unwelcome and shut them down, and that the idea that "here isn't a place for people like us" could keep people from coming to that school in the 1st place, and to the extent that that happened, it would decrease the range of viewpoints and the vibrancy of academic discussion.

Then, I extended that to class.

Pop culture thoughts (1 of 2): “Umbrella”.

The other day I heard Rihanna’s “Umbrella” and it took me back to my early years of my degree program and the bad-ass karaoke that me and my one (white) friend from Mississippi used to go to, and because of that I became wistful and remembered how happy and carefree I was back when "Umbrella" was playing on the radio all the time.

I then texted my one (white) friend from Mississippi about how much fun karaoke was and how everything somehow seemed different now somehow, and he replied –

I often think about that.  Not necessarily about [the karaoke hostess], but what it was that made us so happy and carefree.  We’ve had our fun if we never get well no more.

At that text, I was shocked – not only that he’s thought again about that time in our lives, but that he’s thought about it often, and specifically about why we were happier somehow then compared to now.

It’s not just me, to notice some change.

Great text from a friend from the student bar: How Justin Bieber’s fucked.

A few weeks ago I was reading Rolling Stone on Justin Bieber, and I came across the fact that his dad’s name is Jeremy and his uncle’s name is Brad, and I texted a few people who I know who’d care, that that kid is *fucked*.

My one (older) (black) (lady) (waitress) friend from the student bar who had said just a week earlier that she had seen Justin Bieber’s problems coming for years texted back and was like –

WELL SO FUCKIN WHAT?

- to which I replied that people who gave their kids names like "Jeremy" and especially "Brad" were assholes and their kids turned out to be assholes who raised more assholes, to which she replied –

You R ON TARGET

NEVER GIVE UP! SMILE AND BREATH

. . .

Drain problems at my apartment.

The drain in my shower has been cleaned out by my landlord, but it's still slow, and recently when I have water draining in the sink, some of it comes up in the shower with gunk and doesn't drain back all that quickly at all.

I then plunge it, and huge black gunk pieces with very little smell and the consistency of jello come up from the drain and swirl around in the water, and I scoop them up and put them in a plastic bag to throw out.

I wonder if I should get my landlord on this again, or if I should just keep plunging the shower drain myself.

I really have no idea what could be causing this – soap scum? shaving cream scum?.  I’m not putting anything unusual down my drains.

He's already looked at it once too and cleaned out some draintrap, and things worked fine for a while.

“Wolf of Wall Street” memoir: Rehab scandal.

So seeing the movie made me pick up the 1^st of 2 “Wolf of Wall Street” memoirs. 

I’m going to get the 2^nd, which starts out with him being busted, but the 1^st (Jordan Balfort, The Wolf of Wall Street, 2007) had this striking passage about his time in rehab, from the days when he was finally getting his sexual energy back after getting all the cocaine and Quaaludes out of his system (p. 482-483).

Each day we were given a few hours of personal time, to go to the gym and such, and I quickly insinuated myself into a small cadre of kick-ass [rehab patients who were doctors]...

It was about a ten-minute car ride to the gym, and I was sitting in the right backseat, wearing a pair of gray Adidas shorts and a tank top, when I popped an enormous woody.  It was probably the vibrations from the four-cylinder engine, or maybe it was bumps in the road, but something had sent a couple a pints of blood to my loins.  It was a huge, rock-hard erection, the sort that presses against your underwear and needs to be adjusted and then readjusted, lest it drive you insane.

“Check this out,” I said, pulling down the front of my gym shorts and showing the [other rehab patients] my penis.

They all turned and stared.  Yes, I thought, it looked good.  Despite my height, God had been very kind to me in that department.  “Not too shabby!” I said to my doctor friends, as I grabbed my penis and gave it a few yanks.  Then I slapped it against my stomach, which created a rather pleasant ‘thud’.

Finally, after the fourth ‘thud’, everybody started laughing.  It was a rare moment of levity at [the treatment center], a moment between guys, a moment between [rehab patients], where the normal societal niceties could be stripped away, where homophobia could be entirely ignored, and men could be just that: men!  I had a fine workout that afternoon, and the rest of the day passed uneventfully.

Eventually, someone rats him out for anti-social behavior, but that’s not what’s interesting, it’s how assumes his whole cock-thwacking behavior is normal bonding between (straight) guys.

I didn’t mark the page, but there was a brief gay-baiting period at the firm that he ran, and two guys who had blown each other were tagged as queer, but one guy who had another guy blow him was let off the hook because it was excused as a power dynamic thing over his subordinate and it was presented as not reprehensible but even admirable behavior.

An old buried text from a guy my friend used to date.

I found this series of texts buried in the saved texts of my phone, from the one ex-army DJ who my one (light-skinned black) friend from Arkansas used to date and who I had gone barhopping with and who I must have been texting about barhopping at out-there sexual subculture fringe bars when he was in town next (he goes to a state school a manageable drive away from the city and comes here every so often, and is always up for new experiences):

It sounds quite adventurous.  If you choose to take the journey i would be interested to hear your story.  Speaking of which-my last two visits i ended

with the mistresses and masters of a particular dungeon in [the city].  The taboo-fetish scene (and literature)is thriving in [the city] lately apparently. 

Well there were 4-5 female and 3 male.  Not including the married couple.  They kept talking about 2 others,male and female who seemed to be the alphas.

Yes.  It certainly seemed that way.  One couple showed up but they didnt seem like they were so much into the dungeon thing as they were to attach to so

xual energy...that is the vibe they gave off at least...maybe they were a master and mistress?? Or a client?? At that point i was just a vaporous ob

ever they were definitely observing me too.  Probably because of the simple fact that i was new to their circle.

I don’t have my replies to his texts, but I must have been asking if they were polyamorous or something.  I don’t think I ever found out how he ended up at the dungeon.