Saturday, August 19, 2006

The magic bullet

I rejected my youngest son's requests to play a game--I'm furiously trying to revamp syllabi and update the 1010 website for the fall. It took several rejections before he gave up, but once he did give up I began to worry about what he was getting into. Turns out he was watching the magic bullet infomercial (the little blender). I asked him why he was watching this particular program.

"Because it's about food" he replied.
"Oh, so are you planning to make up some of that food?"
"Maybe when I'm 12 or 11 or 13. This is my two times [he meant "second"] watching the blender."

He's still soaking up cooking ideas and I'm...well, not really working on my syllabus. One knows your self-respect as a parent is shot to hell when you are blogging and your 5 year old is watching an infomercial.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

The living dead

I sat down to read Persepolis 2, an autobiographical graphic novel by Marjane Sartrapi, who grew up in Iran during the tempestuous 70s and 80s. As I often do before I start reading, I turned on the TV--for company? out of habit? fear of missing some great television event? For whatever reason, tonight I did catch a major television event: #6 on the list of Animal Planet's Extreme Animals--The living dead.

Number six is ostensibly about an ant which becomes the "living dead" after its brain is invaded by a parasite. The life cycle of the parasite, though, is even more compelling. The parasite somehow takes over the ant's brain without killing it which leads to the ant climbing a blade of grass to the very tip where it clamps down (something these ants never do for good reason). Here the ant sits for days if necessary until a rabbit (or a grasshopper) eats the ant. Incredibly the parasite escapes the rabbit's digestive system and then hangs out in the liver where layers of something or another cover it as it matures. From here it produces offspring which are peed out in some sort of droplets which, you guessed it, are saborosa tid bits eaten by the ant. Now that's one hell life cycle.

Obviously the parsite's perch of power questions our assumptions about size and strength. The microscopic parasite is running the show from the inside of those seemingly in charge of themselves. It's the physical manifestation of Gramsci's hegemony—no, serious. In one interpretation we humans are of course the brain-dead dangling ants waiting to be consumed; in another, the more Gramscian and the one I prefer, we might be lucky enough to be the rabbits--we unknowingly help the system along, we suffer some physical and mental energy loss, but there's hope that we can identify the potentially mind altering parasite and rid ourselves and our society of the beast. If we are the ants, we're screwed and nothing we "do" matters an iota.

Maybe I dig to deep and should finally, now, read a page of two of Satrapi before I’m too tired. I wonder if Satrapi will ultimately judge her acts of "rebellion" (western rock music and 501 jeans) as something meaningful. Or will she determine, as Fatima Mernissi does in Scheherazade Goes West, that western freedoms ain't what they are cracked up to be: while at a conference in the US she can't find a skirt that fits her beautifully big and appreacited (in her own country) hips without going to a special store.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

This could have been posted on the Osterblog

While getting my second massage of the summer from the LDS primary president in our ward (bet you wouldn't have guessed that), she mentioned that she was Greg Ostertag's message therapist for three years. Among other tidbits she told me that one of the first things Greg made clear was this, to paraphrase: "Look you may have heard a lot of criticism about me not living up to expectations and getting crap from Karl Malone, but the deal is basketball is like 4th or 5th on my list of priorities. Family, playing golf...are more important and enjoyable to me." I kind of respect his honesty--could be interpreted as an excuse but doesn't seem that way to me.

She also gave Antoine Carr a massage but only once--said he never took his shades off and was basically an ass. I supplied the word ass for her as she is, of course, our primary president.

Wow: three posts in a day. They've been building up over the last week.

Phrase of the week

My 11 yr old son to my 5 yr son after the younger one excused a punch to the arm by saying "my mind is controlling me" (he used to say his stomach was controlling him--lately he's kind of obsessed with what body parts control him: "I'm thinking in my mind and my mind says I want another treat").

The phrase is: "Sorry but I'm allergic to bullcrap."

Friggin word of the day

I've been trying to remember a particular word this last week, one that can come to me naturally in conversation or writing but one that I can't call up on demand: "I'd like to use that one word, the one that means 'earthy,' connected to the primitive." But it just won't come. I've even put up a little reminder in my home office--still couldn't remember that damn word this morning while laying in bed. Sometimes I think my brain is defective. Often I think of the word "ephemeral" instead of this word. This may be because I had the same issues with emphemeral for quite some time--just couldn't call up the word when I wanted to. Strange since "ephemeral" is, in some ways, the opposite of visceral though not really.

Well, the word is....visceral.