Remember me?  I used to write stuff here, and periodically even had something to say.  Alas, in the last few weeks I’ve been transformed into a committee drone, and have been mucking about in a paperwork swamp.  Really.  If paper could ooze, I’d be covered in it up to my elbows.

In short, once again—and I recognize that this is getting a bit tiresome and repetitive—apologies for the absence.  I’ll be back soon.  Promise.

An odd weekend:  I made the mistake of reaching for a hairbrush on Saturday morning—I should know better—and was rewarded with a muscle spasm between left shoulderblade and spine.  The initial sensation—think cattle prod—was bad enough, but worse was the knowledge (from too many previous experiences) that the next couple of hours would present a gradual stiffening into total immobility and an increasing sense that any movement would cause the ripping of muscle from bone.  I tried the hot shower thing, which everyone recommends but which never ever works, and being failed by that, hopped in the car for a quick visit to the good folks at the Urgent Care division of my doctor’s office.  I was briefly poked, presumably examined for the signs of jonesing, and given a big prescription for big muscle relaxers, with the express instructions to (a) take them on a full stomach, (b) only take 1/2 of one during the day, and (c) prepare the day’s food in advance of taking the first one.

Well.

Being me, I had plans that could not be disrupted.  I did, responsibly, get someone else to drive.  And I did warn my colleagues about my newly developed combination of stiffness and stonitude.  But I went out nonetheless.

To see Derrida.

Oh, sure, those of you on the right coast have had this odd little biopic for weeks, but this far from the Yale English department, things take their time.  So here I am, with a row of folks from my department and a host of other academics and intellectuals and people with very funky glasses frames, watching a documentary about a theorist that becomes a theory of the documentary impulse and of the relationship between documentation and theory.  It’s not perfect—at moments, it’s downright annoying—but it’s nonetheless fascinating.  Maybe it was the drugs, but I was spellbound.  And maybe it was the muscle spasm, but I could not turn away.

In any event, I have a new piece of slang I’d like to promote:

skelaxin (skuh-LAK-sin) pres. part. of vi skelax 1. chillin, esp. in the company of scholastic acquaintances. Despite the intensity of the film’s discourse, I was pretty much —.

Have just come from completing civic duty, which is increasingly difficult to imagine has any beneficial effect in the world, given the awful lesser-of-two-evils choice before us here today.  Thank goodness for the phone calls this weekend from my favorite president advising me in the casting of this vote.

The most important race on the ballot, however, is not this year’s gubernatorial election, but that of 2006, the primary for which is being held today.  Proposition 49—aimed at creating after-school programs for “at-risk” kids (good), but funded in a loaves-and-fishes style, in which no new taxes are raised and no existing programs are cut (puzzling at best)—is the brainchild of this candidate, who everyone openly acknowledges is testing the waters for a gubernatorial run.

And I thought the Gipper was frightening.