The Case of the Cursed Paper

At dinner with one of my favorite, if a bit awkward, colleagues the other night, I related the tribulations that I've encountered with a paper that I've been working on for the past few months. His response? "It's cursed." "Not yet!" said his sympathetic and slightly mortified wife.

So what constitutes an almost-cursed paper? Like many things, it began as a lark. Mr. Fluff and I had been enthusiastically, if not rabidly, watching a particular television series together on DVD. It's not every day that our media obsessions match up, so when they do, we go after them with a vengeance (and when it's over, he goes back to watching some crap movie on SyFy, like Mansquito, and I return to more civilized ventures, like In Treatment, or re-runs of Dawson's Creek). And, as obsessive watchers of "quality tv" do, we'd discuss the implications of a Marxist-themed episode, or the questions that the show raised about race, etc., etc. Thus, when I saw a paper call that seemed to encapsulate our interpretation, I pitched the idea to Mr. Fluff. "This should be fun! We could write it together!"

I suppose that this could be a War of the Roses kind of story, in which we destroyed our marriage and brought the house down around our ears as we argued over the paper. That part, however, went just fine. I'd do some writing and thinking, hand off a draft of the abstract to Mr. Fluff, who'd tune it up, we'd discuss the ways that our argument was trending, what kinds of secondary stuff we should examine. Easy peasy. So when our abstract was accepted to a conference in Europe, I thought, "huzzah! Clearly, the universe accepts our work together, and is pleased!" But before I could book tickets, Mr. Fluff clucked his tongue. "It's in a month. Will we be ready in a month? You just finished the semester, it's Christmas. Maybe we should wait and try a different one."

Undaunted (despite the fact that the conference was hot on the heels of some work I'd done with my grad students in the fall), I found a national conference with a panel that fit the bill, and we slid the abstract in just under the deadline. We heard back from the organizer the same day. We were in, and needed to hurry up and pay the registration fee. (This probably should have given me pause about the quality of the conference, no?) But fine. We paid up, and I started making plans for the conference, which just happened to be in my favorite of the 50 states. "Perfect!" thought I. "We'll give the paper, and then we'll take the rest of the week for vacation!" I booked the conference hotel, and then a sweet little B&B up the road from the conference city. I researched restaurants and day trips and hikes. And then, the morning before we were supposed to leave, the airlines cancelled our flight because of the terrible, horrible snowstorm of '10. And we weren't able to rebook until the following Sunday---the final day of the conference. Wah!!

After hemming and hawing, we decided we'd go to favorite state anyway for a vacation, eat the costs of the conference, and submit the abstract elsewhere. Third time is the charm, right?

Two months ago, I submitted our abstract to a conference in the UK, wherein it was accepted. We paid the exorbitant conference fee, and I've been scoping out the various online airfare sites, trying to find something reasonable. Oh, and in the meantime, I've also read a number of articles on this show, read a classic cultural/theoretical tome, and, oh, you know, written the damn paper to submit it early to their website. Last Friday, Mr. Fluff gets a call in his office, stating that his boss is quitting, and that he'll need to step into that role and run the entire office and all of its programs by himself for the next three months. And, of course, he'll need to cancel his upcoming trip.

Son of an f'ing bitch.

I think we can officially call this paper cursed. I'm cancelling the trip, and the paper, and etc. This wretched piece of work has cost me countless hours, as well as probably $600 in conference fees, and that's if we exclude the cost of the trip to favorite state which I wouldn't have taken if we hadn't already planned it. Do I just surrender, and bury the cursed paper in my yard with a tiki and an evil eye amulet? Do I let it sit, and hope that I can give it again somewhere? Is Mr. Fluff's computer build on an Indian burial ground?!!

Testify!

Whoa.

I've been obsessively watching cached video from CNN, MSNBC and YouTube this morning, as well as reading the NY Times, Politico, and the Huffington Post; I still can't quite believe Obama is our next president. I even performed the digital equivalent of face-slapping: I looked at Fox News online.

Slowly, slowly, it's sinking in, and the proclamations are out in force: this is an historic end to racial barriers; this is a decisive victory for the Democratic Party; this is a victory for democracy, which hasn't seen so many participating in voting since women's suffrage was on the ballot; this is a victory of hope over fear.

My cynicism prevents me from buying into all of those, even as much as I want to (and as much as they make me secretly weepy---don't tell!).

But I just watched Obama's victory speech, and I can decisively say this: it is a victory for grammar. A victory for syntax and enlarged vocabulary. A victory for diction, and for language for all Americans, and every global citizen who comes within earshot of a Presidential Address.

Of the many things to be thankful for on this post-election day, let's not forget the small things.

Geeks R Us

First things first: a link to the Sunnydale tee for Ashley, who's been deserted by her "google fu"---a term that is now my very favorite and I shall use it often and only cite her part of the time.

Next: a funny thing happened to me on the way to the checkout at the grocery store today. I'm waiting for my turn behind the dude who's clearly doing the weekly shopping for his family of 300, when I hear a voice:

it's really the case that it's always day, because that's in the name. Sun-DAY, Mon-DAY, Tues-DAY. All of them! See, so that's why I always tell people 'have a good day' even at night. Because it's always DAY, since it's in the word. So when the correct me, and tell me that it's night, I tell them that it's in the WORD, right?

The eminent source of this linguistics/logic lecture is, of course, the bag boy, who looks like he's related to McLuvin', only not as nerdly cute. Or as tall. With more acne. His target audience, it appears, is the poor checker, who looks to be all of 15. [Sidenote: aren't there child labor laws? And shouldn't at least one of them involve not exposing young folk to the great unwashed of the local grocery store? I'm including myself here.] Miss Thing looked like a deer caught in the headlights---a deer with a box of cereal in one hand and an avocado in the other. Clearly, this firehose of wordage had been going on for quite awhile. She never looked at him directly, and occasionally answered non-commitally, in some sort of Churchillian appeasement strategy.

There was a brief respite for all involved when Not-McLuvin' was called away to another lane, but he returned to us when I got to the checker. He was talking as he approached, so imagine this with a Doppler effect:

...when it's on a show. I don't think anyone in real life talks like that. No one I know talks like they do on tv. The language people use comes from tv, not the other way around. I think that writers sit around in a room and decide what they want it to sound like on MTV or whatever, and then we all start saying it.

Do you think that's the way it is?

I can't remember the last time that I had a moment of intergenerational oneness, but when the checker handed me my receipt, I met her eyes and commiserated with the length of her shift, the way that this incarnation of the Comic Book Guy on the Simpsons was all over her. She got it. I hope she also got my telepathic message that these guys grow up.

Not-McLuvin' knew that something had happened. No dummy, that kid. He was particularly subdued as he told me to "have a good day" (I choked down my desire to tell him "goodnight."). I so desperately wanted to grab that kid by the arm and tell him: "Look, I'm a 33 year old woman, and I LIKE geeky boys, so let me give you a few pointers. Maybe you could try asking her what she's interested in. I know, it's totally out there, but give it a go. First the net, then the trident."

I thought about my little imaginary speech all the way back to my car, where I loaded my groceries, cued up the soundtrack to the Buffy musical, and drove away.