I’ve found that my blog reading is much like my magazine reading. I’m always behind and have a stack of stuff to read when I get around to it.
• via Clay Spinuzzi, Hello, My Name is Bob, and I Check My Email While on the Toilet. Excerpt:
In many recovery programs, one of the first steps to overcoming an addiction is to admit there is a problem, “Hello, my name is Bob and I check my e-mail while on the toilet.” That may sound comical but without acknowledging the worship of the urgent, there can be no change. Man must re-build the walls of his digitally infiltrated castle. He must find his place of quiet, of solace, of meditation, and of focus. The important must supersede the urgent once again; it starts with the off switch.
Spinuzzi asks (rightly so): Are they going to preach against reading magazines on the toilet next?
• Also from Spinuzzi, a presentation he gives to students on how to argue your way to a better grade.
• Via my office-mate Jeremy, funniest typos in résumés. I may have to share this with my classes next term.
• Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore writes about feminism and faggotry. Excerpt:
I’m trying to talk about faggotry and feminism, how they intersect so clearly in my life but elsewhere they’re rings around one another. Feminism taught me to politicize every choice, including the ways in which I claim desire. I want to say that faggotry taught me to claim desire, including the ways in which I politicize every choice. Just because that sounds symmetrical. It would make things easier.
Another note: What am I thankful for?
- Chosen families and the wonderful times I’ve had with them
- The wonderful opportunity I have this year to teach full time
- Feminism, which has saved me
- Anti-racist activists here at OSU
- Cigarettes
- The trip to the hot tub earlier this week, which seemed to help my foot out a lot
- Coffee
- Rhetorical theory, especially Judith Butler as of late
- Genderqueer politics
