Think of this as an Appetizer Post

So, today is the last day of the Public Memories conference in Syracuse. It has been enlightening and interdiciplinary and conversational and delicious-martini-ful. And today I am taking the Greyhound to NYC with dear E; we were going to take the train, but the scheduling did not work out, so now we are hoi polloi-ing it back home, bitches.

When get home, I will post something more substantial about the things I got to see and hear. Right now, though, here are a few tantalizing tidbits:
1) New Crush! = Yummy Cultural Interventionist
2) Rejuevenated Crush! = Cara Finnegan continues to rock star her way through life.
3) Crush Maintained! = My dearest E--awesome as she ever was.
4) People who say that they have never been below the Mason-Dixon line are not my favorite.
5) Gumball machines are cool.
6) My love affair with Jean Baudrillard may be turning me into a disillusioned douchebag. And I'm kind of okay with that.

On being the Rhetorical (Other) Woman

Sometimes, when people ask me what I study, I want to answer: Temptation. It is the reason, after all, that folks are so suspicious of rhetoric, right? I mean---who knows what dangers may lie behind those seductive turns of phrase, those alluring figures and forms? Luckily, it turns out, there are some people out there willing to investigate (with kindness and generosity) the slippery places between credibility, sincerity, irruptions, and success.

That being said, I was brought right up against the contemporary force of these historical suspicions at the beginning of this week. A student of mine, bright and sharp, is currently considering graduate school. He has never considered himself, in his own words, a reader or a student. And yet... he is fascinated by the life of the mind--presented and performed as it is by me and my two newbie colleagues here at school. He sits in our offices, chats with us about concerns, asks really difficult questions. All in all, he is a delight.

He is also a native New Yorker.

There is a surprising provinciality in the minds of many native New Yorkers. Often, the desire/belief in these minds is that they never have to leave this place to live a full, good life. They want to stay close to home and family--much, to my surprise, like people I have met in less urban places. But being born in NYC does not make you cosmopolitan, and I am constantly reminded of this.

So, my colleagues and I are talking to this young man about his options for grad school... mostly options that are elsewhere, considering his interests and the perspicacity with which he views the academic world. For a variety of reasons, he does not want to leave the city.

Anyway, over the course of our conversation earlier this week, he mentioned to me that another colleague (native Long Islander, former student of the school at which we both teach, pursuing a PhD at Fordham--in the city) had pulled him aside and said, "Now, I know james can be persuasive, but you need to make these decisions based on your own heart/needs/mind/conscience." --or something like that...

I was surprised and a bit dismayed by this sort of sneaky and, um, secretive exchange. And then my student went on to say, "Well, you know, you are quite a temptress."

And I was floored. Silent--which, dear reader, you must know is a fairly rare thing for me to be.

I am a rhetorician, and rhetoricians study temptation. In the practice of teaching/learning temptation, we get accused of various sins: only teaching method without ethics, only providing tools without ramifications, only offering reasons without reasoning.

We are Helen, leading the poor, poor Paris and the angry, mistreated Menelaus into distance, doom, and damnation.

And, apparently, grad school.

Two guys in white button downs

Performing the Bible in a minute.
Bible In A Minute - barats and bereta

Boo Obama

I am disappointed in Barack Obama.

The death penalty is vile and should be abolished. Obama disagrees.

Oh, Debates.

You should check this site when you get a chance. It's called "The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 (Slight Return)," and it's moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. It's gorgeous. Thanks to my dear friend, AWS, for the link.

America Goddamn

Here is a sentence I probably won't get to write very often: I can't decide if I agree more with Christopher Hayes or DMX (in the following interview).

So you’re not following the race. You can’t vote right?
Nope.

Is that why you’re not following it?
No, because it’s just—it doesn’t matter. They’re gonna do what they’re gonna do. It doesn’t really make a difference. These are the last years.

But it would be pretty big if we had a first Black president. That would be huge.
I mean, I guess…. What, they gon’ give a dog a bone? There you go. Ooh, we have a Black president now. They should’ve done that shit a long time ago, we wouldn’t be in the fuckin’ position we in now. With world war coming up right now. They done fucked this shit up then give it to the Black people, “Here you take it. Take my mess.”

Right, exactly.
It’s all a fuckin’ setup. It’s all a setup. All fuckin’ bullshit. All bullshit. I don’t give a fuck about none of that.

We could have a female president also, Hillary Clinton.
I mean, either way it doesn’t matter. I don’t care. No one person is directly affected by which president, you know, so what does it matter.

Yeah, but the country is.
I guess. The president is a puppet anyway. The president don’t make no damn decisions.

The president…they don’t have that much authority basically?
Nah, never.

But Bush pretty much…
You think Bush is making fuckin’ decisions?

He did, yeah, he fucked up the country.
He act like he making decisions. He could barely speak! He could barely fuckin’ speak!
Can’t be serious. He ain’t making no damn decisions.

Well Barack has a good chance of winning so that might be something.
Good for him, good for him.


(Thanks to my favorite Geeks for the DMX interview and to my favorite Goth girlfriend for Hayes.)

Art thou afeard to be the same in thine own act and valor as thou art in desire?

I'm totally going to see Macbeth today. And the person playing Macbeth is Patrick Stewart. For serious. I am beside myself.

A Periphrasis Game for You

A while ago, DHawhee posted a bit on her blog (and in Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students) about her favorite trope: zeugma. Which is an Awesome Trope, btw--and is the rhetorical process of joining two very different phrases with the same verb (ex. "He ordered tea and the troops to invade" or, from "So I Married An Axe Murderer": She stole my heart and my cat.)

Anyway, another pretty neat-O trope is periphrasis, a form of circumlocution, in which one uses extra words to convey, talk around, and point to (but never actually say out loud) particular meanings. So, if you're a wordy bastard like me, you're gonna love periphrasis.

Hmmm, you may be wondering, what the hell prompted this blog entry? Well, I'll tell you. The other day my friend was telling me about this game he used to play with his buddies in college. The point of the game, he said, is to name different kinds of crazy based on characteristic. Delicious reference for tropes, I thought? Or super-fun way to pass the time on the bus to school? Well, dear reader, it is, in fact, both...

Here are a couple of the types we've come up with so far:

From his college buddies-

Marilyn-Manson-Crazy--used to mean someone who may look very very scary but is, in fact, from Ohio. Or Florida. And is mostly harmless.

Eating-salad-with-a-spoon-crazy--used to mean someone who is not super-clear on how to get things done in the most, um, expeditious (not to mention maybe culturally appropriate) manner.

Recent additions:

Probably-has-a-necklace-made-of-thumbs-crazy--this is the antonym for Marilyn-Manson-crazy, used to mean the type of person who everybody describes as quiet and polite until they find the bodies in his freezer.

No-passing-in-the-right-lane-crazy--used to denote a person suffering from slow-driving cars on the highway road rage. May lead to binge drinking and invention of new strings of curse words in a row. This happens between Birmingham and Tuscaloosa quite a bit.

Wire-hanger-crazy--violently OCD, used to denote the kind of person who must always be in control of even the weirdest details. Do not mess with this person. May not be quite as bad as the Thumb Necklace guy, but still not the most fun to have at slumber parties.

I'm sure there were more, but I cannot think of them right now, and I have to go to school and GRADE GRADE GRADE. There is probably another kind of crazy for that...