I don’t make resolutions–if I did, breaking them would be just another thing to beat myself up about (like most Americans, I have a negative running commentary that tells me I’m too fat, that I’m not kind enough, that I don’t work hard enough (that one is insane, considering how much I work), etc.).

But I have aspirations.

I want to try more new recipes. My goal is at least four a month.

I want to discover new music. You, dear reader, can help me with that.

I want to watch more stand-up comedy. My goal is at least two new specials a month.

I want to buy more things second-hand. This is hard, because I hate shopping in the first place, so jumping on the internet for exactly what I want is much easier.

I want to be less aspirational when buying fruit and yogurt. I am not going to eat as many servings as I think I will in the moment, and I don’t want to waste food.

I want to blog more.

I want to spend more time with my friends.

I would like to hurt less and to work less, but I don’t have any idea how to do that right now, except for to keep doing what I’m doing–my exercises, my appointments, my paying down medical debt.

Most importantly, I want to try to fight back more against that awful voice in my head.

I would like to treat myself as well as people who love me do.

I want to remember that every picture of me is a beautiful picture, no matter what I look like, as long as I’m happy in it.

Failed relationships: 2

Failed attempts to get to New York for MLA: 1

Subsequent snow bombs avoided: 1

Freshman seminars taught: 3

Workload sections taught: 5

Other writing courses taught: 10

Shakespeare courses taught: 1

Grad classes taught: 1

Independent Studies taught: 3

Times I got to be in a room with Peter S. Beagle: 1

Plays/Performances (The Nether at CapStage, Cudamani at Mondavi, Eddie Izzard at Mondavi, Weird Al at the Crest, The Bluest Eye at UCD, Office Hour at Berkeley Rep, Angels in America at Berkeley Rep, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in London, Tartuffe in London, The Jungle in London, Everyone’s Talking About Jaime in London; The Thanksgiving Play at CapStage; Tig Notaro in Napa; three staged readings at CapStage; The Wolves at CapStage; Alan Parsons Project at the Crest; A Doll’s House, Part 2 at Berkeley Rep; Snow in Midsummer in Ashland, Manahatta in Ashland, The Way the Mountain Moved in Ashland, The Book of Will in Ashland, Brian Poshein at the Punchline; Sweat at CapStage; Rae Gouirand in Woodland; Paula Poundstone at PCA/ACA; Paula Poundstone at Mondavi; Meet Me in St. Louis at the Woodland Opera House): 29

(Best Play: The Jungle)

(Worst Play: Tartuffe (Runner up: Meet Me in St. Louis))

Campus Book Project Performances Performed: 2

Safe cars purchased for the boy: 1

Healthcare appts: too many (I average three/four a week)

Conferences (SWPCA/ACA (Albuquerque), PCA/ACA (Indianapolis), Great Writing Conference (London), WorldCon in San Jose; MPCA/ACA in Indianapolis; Utopian Studies (Berkeley): 6

Conferences turned down: 2

Trips with Melissa: 3

Trips with Vanessa: 3

Side trips to Santa Fe: 1

Times I had a color-changing cocktail: 1

Speakers hosted through Conversations with Writers: 1 (Mike Winfield!)

Times I got to see what was in Frida Kahlo’s bathroom: 1

Close disasters that harmed our lungs and closed our schools: 1

Times I was featured in UC Davis magazine: 1

Margaret Atwood Journal volumes edited: 1

Times I walked past George RR Martin: 3

Honey festivals attended: 1

Presents from my mother for my birthday in August: unknown; she swears she’ll get around to sending it/them.

Appreciation certificates: 1

Showcases with my stand-up kids: many

Books turned in to publishers: 2

Book proposals turned in to publishers: 1

Awesome book covers Denise fought hard for and that we got: 1

Book club meetings at my place: about 50

Days I thought, “wow, I thought this country couldn’t get any worse, but . . .”: 365

Cheating students caught: 5

Upper Division Comp Exam Administrations: 3

Cats who passed: 2

Kittens we adopted: 2

Black cats who now live here: 2

Parts of my face that are safe from a black kitten: 0

Blind cats who now live here: 1

Blogs I discovered praising my teaching: 1

New restaurants: Many

(Favorite: Talli-Joe’s in London)

Museums: many

Times I decided to dye the ends of my hair blue-black, for a comic book Wonder Woman effect, which was supposed to be gone after 7-14 washes: 1

Months the ends of my hair have been green: 6 (and counting)

Books read: lots

Books given up on: 3

New musicians discovered: many

(favorite: Laura Mvula)

Nandos meals: 1

Shows binge-watched: Too many?

Haircuts: 1

Pedicures: 3 (lifetime: 3)

Manicures: 0 (lifetime: 0)

Time with friends: Never enough.

Abdominal migraines: 1

Visits to the ER for abdominal migraines: 1

Times during that visit that I had to explain to healthcare professionals what abdominal migraines are: 3

Times I had to go the ER because I suddenly started feeling really weird and it hurt to breathe but I was in a meeting with our HR person and I thought to myself, “something is really wrong. As soon as I get out of this meeting and teach my class and grade some papers, I should lie down.” But then the HR woman said, “you are rapidly changing colors. Can I call you an ambulance?”

Times I had my son come pick me up from the HR woman’s office because there was no way I was going to pay $800 for an ambulance again.

Times I told the ER doc that I was relieved that he didn’t know what was wrong with me, because if he did know, it would mean I’d had a heart attack or an embolism: 1

Times I took an actual vacation to Ashland: 1

Times my car was chased by a wild turkies: 2

New recipes: Many

(Favorites: crock pot pra ram; creamy creole pasta with shrimp)

Raises for an accomplishment from three years ago: 1

Raises for an accomplishment from two years ago: 1

Ridiculously awful things UCD has done since then (to me and mine), including making it impossible for me to get another merit raise: 2

Children graduated from college: 1

Anubis, my son’s giant black cat, has had a cold. Even though he only touches the kittens when batting them away, he has passed it on.

Thoth (my little black cat) is sneezing quite a lot.

This is unfortunate, since he frequently sleeps on or near my face.

This morning, he woke me up by sneezing directly into my mouth.

So that was the start of the day, followed by an awareness of pain on the left side of my back, which isn’t unusual–it’s been acting up.

I checked the clock, discovering it was one minute after I was supposed to be at my allergy shot appointment.

(I’m not usually the type to sleep in, so I hadn’t thought to set the alarm.)

I ran into the bathroom, to pee and change.

My back went out in between the two.

So I ended up at my appointment, limping, twenty minutes late, and still in my pajamas.

While my shot nurse was injecting me (it’s four vials every two weeks–it takes a while), we discussed my problem. Then she called my GP’s PA, upstairs.

Luckily, I’m around there so often that everyone knows my name and the things my body gets up to.

My GP said he would fit me in in an hour.

I went home so the boy could drive me back (I’m not allowed to drive after a back pain shot).

On the way, we discussed the morning and the unliklihood of my getting a cold from the a cat.

“But this is how bird flus and swine flus start.”

I decided that we should definitely call it the Anubis plague if it does happen.

The boy said I should ask the doctor about it, but we had other things to discuss.

Doc: How did you throw it out?

Me: Trying to change into big girl pants.

Doc: Yeah. Each time I throw my back out, I try not to repeat that motion.

Me: I have to change into big girl pants again someday, Paul.

Doc: That’s true. One time, I was in the closet and I [starts bending down] . . . I should not act this out.

Me: Probably not.

Doc: I thought about just letting [the shot nurse] give you the meds cause I was busy, but then I thought that was irresponsible, but now that I’m with you, saying it out loud, I realize I should have just let her give you the shot.

Me: Probably.

So now I’m home, on my back.

A little sick black kitten is cuddled up with me, sleeping on my neck.

And sneezing on my face.

The first time I saw Fight Club, when it came out in 1999, I said, “I am going to teach the fuck out of this.”

And I have.

It’s a beautifully constructed film (dir. David Fincher), based on a powerful novel by Chuck Palahniuk.

It also strikes a chord with those of us who want to understand and who fear toxic masculinity.

(Sadly, it also appeals to those who are toxic. I have had a few young male students misunderstand the film, seeing it as an endorsement of Tyler Durden’s worldview, instead of as a critique of it.)

I most recently taught it in an advanced composition class as part of a zeitgeist assignment.

Fight Club set now would be a very different movie.

A 2019 Fight Club would still critique consumer culture and its role in what’s bothering our straight middle class white men–Susan Faludi explained in 1999 that contemporary Western men feel adrift–they are no longer respected simply for being men; they struggle to financially support themselves and their families. Faludi noted that they were actually in a position close to women in the 1950s–encouraged to find satisfaction by looking good (hitting the gym and using product) and buying the right things. Faludi called this the culture of ornament.

The protagonist in the film isn’t satisfied in ornamental culture. Divorced from real connections with people, he attempts to find happiness in self-help groups and then in a hyper-masculine paramilitary terrorist organization.

Notably, he doesn’t ever try helping another person or finding an honest connection with others.

Our protagonist would still have the same choices before him if he were having his crisis in 2019. More might be made of escaping with drugs, though. In the film, he asks for sleeping pills–his doctor refuses because the narrator needs real sleep. It’s likely he would have gotten his hands on pills some other way–and perhaps pain killers–if the movie were set now. (One can also imagine an epidemic of opiate use in the Fight Club members–there are so many emergency room visits–so many broken bones.)

A 2019 movie would likely show the men to be even more misogynistic than they were in 1999. Tyler explains that they were raised by women and abandoned by their fathers–he questions whether they need women. But it’s likely those same men now would also be incels–the whiny, insecure men who think they are owed sex, that women shouldn’t get to turn them down. Tyler famously said: “We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.” Inherent in the promise of being a millionaire movie/rock star is the promise of women chasing you. Not having easy access to sex is part of why weak men are very, very pissed off now.

And incels are a growing problem in domestic terrorism.

Speaking of domestic terrorists, Fight Club‘s world is overwhelmingly white. Would today’s Tyler be resorting to racism and a fear of immigrants to make his army? Probably.

Watching Fight Club in the #metoo era is interesting. Project mayhem isn’t just attacking corporations and chain coffee places–one of the headlines we see is “Performance Artist Molested.” One shudders to imagine what they did.

But the biggest change when watching this movie now is the intense discomfort when the protagonist threatens to commit a mass-shooting at work. We hadn’t had as many of those incidences in 1999–not enough for the manager to fire him and call the cops, which is what I’m assuming would happen now.

The protagonist makes a clear threat after his boss asks him about the Fight Club flier in the copy machine:

“Well, I gotta tell you: I’d be very, very careful who you talk to about that, because the person who wrote that… is dangerous. And this button-down, Oxford-cloth psycho might just snap, and then stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-10 carbine gas-powered semi-automatic weapon, pumping round after round into colleagues and co-workers. This might be someone you’ve known for years. Someone very, very close to you.”

He then notes these words are Tyler’s.

How does anyone watch this now and think Tyler’s ideas are good ones?

Update: McSweeney’s also played around with how we should understand Fight Club 20 years later here. It’s awesome.

Second update: When I taught this in Winter 2020, one of my students said it looked like a pretty Republican world, because he saw so many American flags. I then had to explain that back in the 1990s, flying or wearing a flag had nothing to do with political party. It’s only after the 2000 election and 9/11 that Republicans somehow co-opted it. (Notably, that’s the election that invented the idea of “red” and “blue” states.)

My Google calendar shows me all the American holidays.

This year, it lists Black Friday as one of them.

I’ve never been one to “celebrate” this holiday. I don’t like crowds or shopping. I don’t buy big ticket items for myself or others. I didn’t grow up shopping that weekend–Thanksgiving was always at my grandparents’ house, in the country.

I can’t remember when this day became big, but I have vague memories of seeing reports of the crowds, the near-riots. And I remember being upset when stores started opening on Thanksgiving night (according to the internet, that happened in 2011).

I have ex-pat friends overseas who are confused by the UK retailers’ efforts to stage sales on the Friday after Americans celebrate a holiday–in a country where people don’t celebrate Thanksgiving and thus when no one has the days off, what is the point?

A couple of years ago, I was flabbergasted by my students’ response to “Bart vs. Thanksgiving,” from Season 2 (1990).

“It’s not realistic–they didn’t talk about Black Friday.”

I tried to explain to my students that the episode does capture an older form of Thanksgiving–one in which the holiday wasn’t linked to shopping in that strong a  way.

Sadly, the students found that unbelievable.

 

A little while ago, I wrote about a particularly embarrassing moment in Santa Barbara in 2012, involving Alan Parsons and my cleavage.

But that wasn’t the weirdest thing that happened that day.

Melissa and I had just finished a conference–I had given a presentation on a writing assignment I’d invented.

We had a day to play before we headed home, so we went to a mission and then on to wine tasting.

(The mission was where Juana Maria was buried–she is the real person The Island of the Blue Dolphins was based on.)

In the chapel of the mission, we came upon a statue of Mary Magdalen (the women misidentified as a prostitute in most contemporary churches).

Melissa said I would make a good Mary Magdalen. So I started singing “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” from Jesus Christ Superstar.

And we went about our day.

At one point, my mother called, but I let it go to voicemail, since we were out and about.

When we finally made it back to the hotel room after our long day, I checked the message she left.

She didn’t say anything.

Instead, the entire message was her singing the beginning of “I Don’t Know How to Love Him.”

“Oh, no!” I exclaimed to Melissa. “Can she read my mind? That’s dangerous.”

PS–This event remains unexplained. Mulder and Scully should get on it.

I love The Alan Parsons Project.

Unabashedly.

And so I’m excited to see a live concert tonight at the Crest in Sacramento–last time, I had to go all the way to Napa to see them.

If you’re saying to yourself, that band’s name sounds familiar, but I can’t quite place it, let me assure you that you’ve heard the music–I don’t watch sports, but I still know the first song off the Eye in the Sky album, Sirius, is played all the time when stars take the court.

You may also remember that Dr. Evil’s plan, in Austin Powers 2, to turn the moon into a death star is the “Alan Parsons Project.” “The Dr. Evil Edit” then appeared on The Time Machine album.

The Alan Parsons Project isn’t like other bands–various musicians cycle in and out–the constant is musician/producer Alan Parsons, most famous for his work on a couple of Beatles’ albums and Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, which got him his first Grammy nomination.

The albums the Project puts out are loosely themed. One of my favorites is Gaudi, inspired by the work and life of Antoni Gaudi, the Catalan architect, whose Sagrada Familia is still under construction (it started in 1882). It started my quest, now fulfilled, to visit Barcelona.

Other albums also appeal to the queen of the geeks side of me, with themes ranging from Keats to Poe to Freud to Egyptology.

It was probably the Eye in the Sky album I heard first–I went through all of my stepfather’s albums, looking for new friends. It was love at first listen, and I demanded that the family collection house the complete works.

One song that means a lot to me is “Prime Time,” from Ammonia Avenue. When I was a terrified 17 year old, I listened to it on repeat on the way to the hospital to have my son. “Even the longest night won’t last forever [. . .] Something in the air / Maybe for the only time in my life / Turning me around and guiding me right.]” Now, having had him in my life for 25 years, I can say it did all work out, surprisingly, amazingly, even if it wasn’t at all according to plan.

(That night did last forever, though–and by two days later, the theme song should have been the next song on the album: “Let me go home / I had a bad night / Leave me alone.”)

I’m listening to The Alan Parsons Project as I write this–my computer tells me I have 18.7 hours total.

I often listen to The Alan Parsons Project while I’m writing, which annoyed my son greatly in the Fall of 2012, when I was finishing an intensive project.

On the way to a Writing Program conference in Santa Barbara with Melissa in 2012, I relayed a conversation the boy and I had just had:

The Boy: Why are you always listening to this?

Me: I binge it when I’m writing.

The Boy: But you’re always writing!

A few days later, Karlissa spent the last day in Santa Barbara touring and wine tasting.

Near the end of the day, we were at Cottonwood Canyon tasting room. Just as our host was handing us a chocolate to have with the dessert wine pour, he mentioned his friend, Alan Parsons.

And I fell off my stool.

Literally.

I got myself up, fished the chocolate out of my cleavage, where it had fallen, and said, “The classy thing would be for everyone to pretend that didn’t happen.”

When Melissa explained why I’d been so overcome, our host insisted that the embarrassing story would be told.

“Well, when you do, tell him there’s a whole book out there written to his music.”

 

 

A lot of men tell me they’re frustrated because

• women don’t write back
• women won’t agree to a date after a nice conversation
• women flake
• women stand them up
• women aren’t honest in their profiles
• women have too many conditions for dating
• women don’t start conversations enough
• women are hypocrites who don’t practice what they preach

Guys, women are people. So are you. Almost everyone does this.

I sometimes try to start a conversation with people who have “liked” me, only to be met with silence.

(One guy just sent a message back to a first message I sent 11 months ago!)

I have proposed a drink after a day or so of messaging, only to be met with silence. (Two months ago, a guy kept sending me long messages (average word count: 750). There were days and days of this. He scheduled a date, asked for a reschedule, and then ghosted me.)

Last week, I got stood up for a date. (Not for the first time.)

Last year, a guy arrived to a date, told me he had to move his car, and then never came back (he wrote later, saying he had a migraine, but never asked for a do-over).

Some men I meet don’t look like their profile pictures.

Many men have been shorter than they claimed to be.

There’s a guy on POF who has sent me the same cut and paste opening twice. Within three days. And I had answered him the first time. I asked him why he didn’t have a profile picture when he had set the following conditions for someone to message him:

“To send a message to [redacted] you MUST meet the following criteria:
Female
Lives in United States
You must have a picture to contact this user.”

Many men search for and say they want “thin”; I don’t contact them to tell them what a beautiful person I am inside.

Many men search for and say they don’t want a woman who already has a child; I don’t contact them to say, “but mine is an adult.”

Less than an hour ago, a guy blocked me after I told him we were incompatible. What were we incompatible about? He said he didn’t believe in sex before marriage.

To all the guys who are struggling out there, we are struggling too.

Two Waltonens agree: meh.

We both wanted to like this book: we’re graphic novel fans, and there are some interesting things happening with the art here . . .

But meh.

Beowulf isn’t a great story–it’s old, and it was originally poetic, but this version replaces the poetry with images, and they just aren’t interesting enough to make the story compelling.

The authors also make a weird choice.

I won’t spoil it, but I will say I had to go back to figure out if I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. There is an art choice that changes a dynamic in a fundamental way–but then it is NEVER explained or addressed. Thus, it’s just confusing. It’s also an image I would like to get out of my mind.