Last week was thanksgiving break.  Since my car stopped working shortly the holiday, it was my privilege to remain here in c-u the whole while.  Which was nice, actually.  I very cruelly neglected my students and was able to make actual progress on the actual dissertation, for the first time in a few weeks.

But now the piper arrives, hungry hungry for payment, and (since I didn’t grade my huge batch of papers over break) I’ve now agreed to meet with my rhet students this week, returning their papers to them and discussing their next writing effort.

These meetings should be productive, but the meeting/grading grind is likely to be again just a little brutal. 

Thanksgiving was neat, and the 1st since 1993 that I’ve not spent it with my family.  In fact I stayed in my house writing all day, and venturing forth at around 7pm.  Really I was quite glad to have avoided the drive to Chicago, and to have found some precious time to work on the diss, and to have avoided stabbing my father with a carving fork during a discussion the recent elections.  In any case I made my way through the very frozen very quiet city (no cars even driving about) and across the park to the Colonial pantry.  Here I bought a large Red Barron frozen pizza.  Kind of enjoying the ritual abjection of the scene, I told the clean-cut clerk that this was to be my thanksgiving dinner, prompting a strange look of pity from the mother and daughter team that that was behind me in line (but just what were *they* doing in the Colonial Pantry at 7pm on thanksgiving . . . ?).

Some miscellaneous notes before I return to grading and turn off my fast-fading laptop:

1)  The new TMBG album is surprisingly not so good.  I’m not quite sure how this could happen.  Just a little boring.  Note that if you have questions on aesthetic value and tmbg they can probably be answered over at the at the tmbg wiki.  You can for instance discover the relative artistic value of the entire (non-dial-a-song) TMBG canon.  As assessed by a group of lunatics willing to rank The Ballad of Timothy McSweeney (#40) above Dead (#92).  I’m simply aghast.

2)  Also a little disappointing is the B. Wilson _Smile_, at least relative to its claim to be the album of the millennium (it seems like a lot of what’s on it can be found on other albums anyhow).  But perhaps this album is beginnig to grow on me.

3) The actual album that you must buy or have bought is Joanna Newsom’s The Milk-Eyed Mender.  Just brilliant, if you can adjust to her rather (erm) bracing voice.  And I must confess to much repeated listening to Ladytron’s Light and Magic.  I’m not sure if this is good per se, but I find it most trigger-tripping. A powerful cylon menace will rock you from this album.  I guess there is a new version of it too, with extra tracks and such.

Ok then.  No more time.  My power gauge dwindles and a paper on Global Warming is shooting me a come-hither look and gesturing with arms of steel.

Which reminds me of one more thing which must be shown.  As JBOT assures us, we are never safe from robots. They follow us now, and hide themselves, even in the most sacred of spaces. 

Sorry.  Some links cannot be resisted.

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