...at least, I seem to MAKE it tiring because I care so damn much. I think next semester I am going to pare my classes WAY back, so that I remain sane. Because seriously? This is ridiculous.

I could also be saying this mostly because it's summer session and I'm teaching five days a week, with a paper due every week. That's insane. And I kind of pity my students for having to do it - especially the ones that are taking more than one class. But oh well. It is what it is, and we have to get five assignments out of the way whether they like it or not. Yaaay, University policy.

Anyway so now I have actually PLANNED for class tomorrow, as opposed to doing it while half-asleep at 7 in the morning over a cup of mint tea. Yay for sleep?

Anyways

Saw nishmaelkimble and his orchestral collection yesterday down at the Brewery, which is always a good time, especially as it means I get to see people that honestly think that it's neat that I'm going to be around next year. I probably have an ego problem (POET. CAN'T HELP IT.) but it's nice to hear that sort of thing now and again. Makes me think that I won't, in fact, become a horrible grumpy hermit by November.

Digression

Not really. It's about a million hours late (I am bad at finishing these kinds of tasks, apparently), and I'm sitting around, awake and restless, responding to student emails and seething a little. Not about my students. About other things. I guess this might make for some horrifically bad writing tomorrow. It's always good to get THAT out of the way. Makes room for stuff that's only bad, as opposed to horrifically.

I am not a fan of needlessly complicating my life. So I suppose I won't - not that I have, and/but I refuse to be convinced otherwise, either. Because good lord, yo, things are looking up. Screw what anyone else thinks. (Not entirely true. I like my friends. I care what they think. So ignore the annoyed ramble.) I'm...going to go to bed early. Because why not. Because it's simple, and I'm after simplicity, all appearances to the contrary.

Hm. I appear to be at one of those points in my life where I feel like I need a forum in which to post a whole series of devastating song lyrics.

I'll refrain. I just wanted to see you jump back from your chair.

This is Genius

I was skeptical of the Genius feature on iTunes - by all accounts, "playlists-based-on-this-one-song" programs have historically been pretty awful - but so far it's produced decent playlists for me. The only reason I'm doing this right now is so that I don't end up listening to the same song all day for want of a particular key and time signature. Cavashawn's 4-song EP can only get me so far, really.

The mildly alarming side-effect of the program, however, is that since it riffles through your whole library, it can (and does) come up with stuff that you forgot entirely that you had, and that consequently brings a whole bunch of nostalgia rushing right up behind your eyeballs like the world's most emo tidal wave.

I am unsure whether or not this is a good or bad thing.

SEE?! Like right now it just started playing "Banquet." And now, in my head, I'm doing all sorts of crazy things right before going to graduate school, when it seemed like I probably needed to get a lot of crazy things out of the way (I think I mostly mean stupid here. Stupid things).

Anyway it's kind of terrible and kind of awesome. (The sublime? Hardy har har harrrrr)

I Guess My Life Is Less Messy Now, Or Something

So the department all but guaranteed me a position next year. This is exciting! BUT. (Sweet tapdancing Christ, WHY must there always be a "but?")

They're unsure if they'll be able to give me a reduced teaching load. This is kind of hysterical, as we went from "you're out on your ass" to "we might have to pay you more than you wanted, and you'll have to do way more work for us." Yay, economic pendulum-swinging. I don't honestly think I can handle a full adjunct load; not with the projects that I have lined up for the next calendar year. But they're not sure if they're going to have enough interested people to be able to offer me the "postdoc fellowship" deal, which is less money but more free time, and at this point in my life I value time INFINITELY more than I value money. Okay maybe not infinitely. A girl's gotta eat. But you know what I mean.

Anyway so that's...interesting. But I have teaching!

(Side note: I just had a Twitter-conversation with the author of House of Leaves. He told me to go put on some socks, and reassured me that I'd probably be okay for my reading tomorrow. Most of the time I kind of hate the internet, but this time right now is NOT ONE OF THEM. Fangirl glee!)

So I didn't sign a lease for nothing. There's that.

On Feeling Like You've Just Been Beer-Tapped

Have you ever done that to someone? You walk up to them, because you're a giant jackass, and clink your beer on the top of their beer bottle, which causes it to foam crazily and them to drink quickly, lest they end up with booze on the shoes. It's a good game.

Anyway I kind of feel like my life lately just did that to my brain/body, because life is a giant jackass (even though I love it so), and so now I'm trying desperately not to overflow. With all KINDS of feelings! Foamy feelings. That might be gross.

In a hyperactive, hyperventilating, hyperbodily way, it's great - in the same kind of terrifying, brink-y way that being on too many stimulants is great. Everything is tinged with just a *little* bit of nervousness, but other than that, you feel like you might just be floating a few inches above your chair. I'll gladly take this pop-art state of mind over crushing depression any day. Hopefully the inevitable comedown will be gentle with me.

Happy holidays for you that celebrate. I'm listening to reggae and craving chocolate in your honor.

...just wanted to say that today was one of those days where you lean into the breeze and try not to think about the fact that it's going to be 40 and rainy in 24 hours.

Took my first bike ride of the season. TO THE BAR. nishmael's set was grand, no surprise there, and I took some pictures, most of which are probably pretty bad. SORRY ADAM

Tons of crap to do. It's recruitment weekend. This will probably be depressing.

But seriously, today was the kind of day where you took bigger steps, to try and keep up with the whole world shaking itself off underneath your feet.

...Which has something to do with NYT's anniversary.

ANYWAYS this is actually from The New Yorker - which really doesn't have anything to do with the Times but for some reason, because I am not a native New Yorker, I clump (HAHA - this will get funnier in a minute) them together in one inky, annoyingly-highbrow category - and made me do all sorts of lol-ing all over my office, which was probably distracting to a lot of people.

Namely, it's George Saunders being a curmudgeon, and I am still wondering WHY I haven't seen this until now. In the piece, he does the following rewrite of "My Humps," which as we all know, is the greatest tribute to mammary glands that has ever reached the ears of this species. SRS BZNS:

If you haven't already, and I already Twittered about this but I am listening to it AGAIN, you should really check out Lemon Jelly's "Space Walk." The whole album is spectacular, but there's just something about a song that contains remixed fragments of the radio transmission between NASA and the first guy to see the Earth from space that makes everything a leeeeeeeettle bit better. 

That's all.

THIS, folks, is why I'm pretty sure I'm done with this whole English grad student BULLSHIT:



I mean, I lol'd. But really, it would be exponentially funnier if it weren't SO damned true. When you think about it, it's a really stupid field. I sort of can't believe I've been doing it for this long without realizing how dumb it really is.

I am now, however, going to have to make up some new lines for the whole "oh, you're a poet? WhatareyagonnaDOOOwiththatsweetie" thing that I have to endure every fucking day of my whole fucking life.

Anyway, tonight we saw a reggae band and it was awesome and reminded me of JBB shows, and then I got all nostalgic THE END.

And I'm back. Lazy day in Manila today; I woke up at NOON. It would appear that I am back to my normal sleeping habits here on the other side of the planet; this is bad because our days start at like 8 but not ALL bad because it might make my jet lag less horrendous when I go back. Speaking of, I hardly had any jetlag (other than waking up at 5 for a while, which in Bato, seemed almost normal) on the way here. Does this mean it will hit me double when I'm stateside? PLEASE NO.

The Story of the DKK, and Other Things

So Baguio is an unspeakably neat place. I have determined this. After getting back from Itogon (THAT'S the name of the mining barangay whose name I brain-farted on earlier), we went straight to Baguio's version of an urban poor community. Basically, this means indigenous people whose land has been encroached upon by the ever-expanding city of Baguio, not to mention the many and varied, uh, "interests" of the national government, who seem to be at the nerve center of EVERY POSSIBLE THING that is wrong with this country. But anyways. These people are weavers - they do some subsistence farming, but to get by, they buy thread from local corporations, and make parts of things like bags, table runners, jackets, etc...then sell the parts wholesale back to the corporation, who puts them together and then sells them at a markup.  They do this because there seems to be no way for them to get enough startup capital to do anything that would even approximate eliminating these (rather exploitative) middlemen. Thus they're stuck making about $3 for 9 hours worth of manual work at a loom that looks as if it has been time-warped there from approximately 1756.

At least they're not living on a mountain of garbage? I dunno. Slanty-face.

On another note, most of the mining companies that have a stake in demolishing stuff up here are from the UK and the US - apparently we use THIS gold to back up OUR currency, while the peso slides because the national government sits on its butt. Crazy but true - the motto of the Philippine socioeconomic situation. Or "horrible but true." Or "unspeakably evil but true." Or "fucked the shit up."

So after our visit to the weaver community, we were whisked off to lunch. Lunch was uneventful, but I do realize that I've been skimping on my culinary blogging. So here are some interesting Cordillera food-factoids for you, some of which are gross:

1) The local delicacy around here is known as pica-pica, or as the locals winkingly call it, "killing me softly." What is it: a chicken that has been BEATEN TO DEATH, then cooked. This results in, basically, rubbery chicken. I have no idea why it's considered so good. I just felt guilty for eating a chicken whose last moments consisted of every inch of its body being bruised. I HAS A SAD

2) They also do the above to dogs. Dog is very common up here. I didn't eat any because I didn't have the chance; I might have, but then again, I might not have.

Hm. Those two do seem to be the biggies of the area. I'll list more if I can think of them.

For Real This Time

The DKK - otherwise known as Dap-ayan ti Kultura iti Kordilyera - I had to look up the D word, because it is in Ilocano I think and also I have no idea what it means (the whole thing means "Cultural Center of the Cordillera"). This is where we went after lunch, and stayed until the wee hours of the morning. It was, in other words, a REALLY LONG STRETCH OF BEING AWAKE. Turned out to be more than worth it, though.

The DKK is a group of musicians and artists that are committed to preserving the (extraordinarily) rich cultural heritage of the indigenous people of this country. This is not an easy feat, as nearly every province has a tapestry of different art forms. So it's a multi-chaptered group of people that do everything from make documentaries to record cds to stage protests and spontaneous mural-ings. They took us in for the afternoon to teach us how to play the more common indigenous instruments, most of which are made out of bamboo and fall into the percussion category. So we thunked things on the ground for a while, and hit things with mallets, and blew over the tops of some things to make noise. We made a lot of noise.

Then we took the noise outside, where we hit GONGS (the handles of which, back in the day, were made from HUMAN JAWBONES) with mallets and generally made a racket while dancing. Yes, DANCING. This is another hilarious/embarassing gringa moment, because here I am, Kermit-the-Frog-esque body waving around and shuffling my feet to indigenous festival and funeral tunes. The courtship dance is particularly hilarious; you basically get shoved into the middle of a circle with a member of the opposite sex and you have to dance such that you look as much like a chicken as possible. As if that weren't enough, as the female, you have to watch the male dance like a chicken and THEN, if he comes anywhere near you, you have to do your best coy-chicken impersonation and run away from him. It is great, and by great I do really mean great but also embarrassing and pee-your-pants hilarious.

So I learned how to whack indigenous instruments and to badly approximate indigenous dance. It was super fun, until they told us that we would have to perform for them after dinner. WTF. So we spent a lot of time being nervous and planning things badly, until we agreed to let Philippe recite something over us demonstrating just how well we had learned to whack indigenous instruments. I should have realized that letting Philippe do his poetry thing would have been disastrous - as much as I told him to KEEP the motherfucking VOLUME down, he started, predictably, yelling things about spirituality and other nonsense concepts in the middle of our performance. I tried shushing him, but it didn't work. He's an idiot. But my rhythm remained intact, and they seemed to like it, so that was a thing. At least a puppy didn't poo in the middle of our recital like it did for some of the ALAY kids (San-Fran based Fil-Am youth org) who were interrupted in the middle of their hip-hop performance by said pooing.

After our ridiculous recital, the DKK members treated us to a bit of a jam session.

I am not sure how to approximate what happened then in words, because it's not one of those things that translates into words very well at all.  I think it might have epitomized how very musical the Filipino people are - honestly, for being some of the most downtrodden, poverty-stricken people on earth, they sing as if they had every reason to keep living. And even though I didn't understand a word of any of the songs, sung as they were in regional dialects (not that I would have understood them in Filipino, but you know), it didn't really matter - you know, transcendent properties of musical beauty and all that. HAR HAR. I think what was most moving was when three of the members started singing a particular song, and then when they hit the chorus, suddenly EVERYONE (that's about 20-odd DKK members that came out for this shindig) joined in. So it's dark, and we're sitting outside in a circle, and suddenly this chorus of voices crescendoes out of nowhere in PERFECT harmony...so many chills. Not to get emo, but it moved me to tears, it was that unspeakably beautiful.

Blah blah life changing moment blah blah blah

You know, you try to write these things down and you fail. I am going to stop failing now, and sign off, but suffice it to say that it was probably one of the single most emotionally-jam-packed moments of my life. I felt full to the brim with it, my proverbial cup running over. These people are amazing, and their culture is amazing, and I am amazed.

Quick update. I've got other shit to do, yo.


Barangay Whatever

I have no idea where we were yesterday, in other words. It was about 30 minutes south of Baguio. I thought it was going to be, like, camping out in a shack, but we ended up at our host's family-compound-thing (everyone out here has one, donchakno) and it was shockingly nice. They also had a small zoo: a few pigs, about four million dogs, a slightly lesser number of cats, a tadpole pond, chickens...anyway it was noisy. So their house was clean, and not made of plywood, and even had COUCHES. Yay couches. Only crazy thing was the bathroom - creepy-ass tiny hole in the floor in a shed outside. With no door. Errrrrrgh. It's a good thing I didn't have to, yunno, take a poo, because srsly guys, my aim is not that good. TMI SESSION OVER

So yesterday we spent the day touring the area in the CPA's jeep, which was enlightening ("here are the native mining sites" (tiny hole in the ground), vs. "here are commericial mining sites" (WHOLE MOUNTAINSIDE DEMOLISHED)). More on that later, if I remember.

At home, we were treated to a jam session by the local band, all of whose members are cousins. They were very good - and did hilarious covers of 80's country songs. I made friends with a tiny, malnourished house kitten. It slept on Becky's feet. I wanted to put it in my pocket and take it with, but, uh, it might have had fleas? Anyways.

Sorry this update is so short (no, no I'm not; my entries are usually HEINOUSLY long). Urban poor orientation now. Bbl, yo.

Man, this could be one of those days where I COULD get off my butt, but I know I'm not gonna, because I have wasted the past 7 hours. Guh.
Today my phone officially died, gp could have given a shit whether or not I existed, I didn't get anything done, didn't clean the piggie cage (on the plus side, they seem to actually go poo in the litterboxes, who knew), didn't read, didn't buy my books....grrr. I'll have to make up for this tomorrow. In the meantime, here's a goofy thing that I got from suikavanishes

( I got K! NOT THAT KIND! )
Has anyone ever gotten a wrinkly lip from eating too much vinaigrette? Yeah.

One Digital Life officially rocks and I haven't even had a chance to really check it out yet, but I don't care, because they have this, which put me in a whopping good mood: