I’ve just posted what follows on Machine, the aggregator blog from this semester’s Theories of New Media class.  I’d asked the class to post concluding thoughts thinking about the blog exercise, what they’d gotten out of it, how it affected their writing, what they wish had happened differently, and so forth.  Their comments provoked some of my own thoughts on what worked and what didn’t, and particularly on what I’ll do differently next time.

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I ordered some jeans online last week, and just attempted to track the package, in order to figure out when they’ll be here, and hence, when the single pair of jeans that I currently own that I like—and thus the single pair of jeans that I wear, and thus the single pair of jeans that is developing holes at the corners of the rear pockets that are this far away from becoming obscene—can be relegated to grunge status, and proper non-gluteal-exposure threatening jeans can be rotated in in their place.

The package was sent “USPS Parcel Direct,” which is a new one on me, in no small part because the parceldirect.com link in my notification email finally resolved to a fedex.com URL, but with a USPS logo up top.  So I’m perplexed already.

But nowhere near as perplexed as I was at discovering that my jeans have spent the last four days in two different “sortation” centers.  Why sortation?  The gerund wasn’t good enough?  Too focused on the action of sorting rather than the result of that process?  There’s something troubling to me in this, not least because previous packages have moved very quickly through various sorting centers, but sortation is apparently a days-long process, and I need my jeans yesterday.

Before my sabbatical can begin, I must:

– Attend three committee meetings.
– Have one meeting with a program administrator.
– Eat lunch with the dean.
– Go to two job talks.
– Grade sixteen literary interpretation final papers.
– Grade twenty new media final projects.
– Grade sixteen graduate term papers.
– Grade two senior theses.
– Revise a curricular document.
– Write two letters of recommendation.
– Pack and ship a semester’s worth of belongings.

I’ve got six days.  Any bets on whether it all gets done?

I was never really one for drinking and dialing.  Probably because I so loathe the telephone as a medium of communication.

Drinking and blogging, however…

Perhaps I should run a breathalyzer through the wi-fi.

So, sure, I read the press releases, and I even wrote about it somewhere that I’m too lazy to go seek out a link for right now, at 2.38 in the bloody morning, so I knew it was coming, but I still want to say that I’m completely over the top freaked OUT by the new Macromedia home page, which gives me a bad case of what Buffy used to call the wiggins.

I think.  If someone could explain the wiggins to me, as distinct from the willies, I’d be much appreciative.

Word in this morning’s Chronicle is that Tulane University is entering a period of major restructuring as it attempts to reopen.  This “renewal,” as the university calls it, includes the elimination of 233 professors (53 from academic departments and 180 from the medical school) and 14 doctoral programs (including economics, English, French, historical preservation, law, political science, sociology, water resources planning management, social work, and five programs in engineering).  26 of the 53 academic faculty being laid off have tenure, as do 39 of 180 medical faculty.  This follows the layoff in October of 242 full-time staff members.

The decisions were made by the university’s president, Scott Cowen, in consultation with a group of seven external advisors (”Malcolm Gillis, a former president of Rice University and an economics professor there; William G. Bowen, president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and a former president of Princeton University; James J. Duderstadt, a former president of the University of Michigan; William R. Brody, president of the Johns Hopkins University; Eamon M. Kelly, a former president of Tulane; Harvey V. Fineberg, president of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies; and Farris W. Womack, former chief financial officer at the University of Michigan”) and was “reviewed” by “an elected faculty advisory committee.” Cowen also apparently consulted with the American Association of University Professors in order to ensure that the processes he’d laid out were in compliance with the AAUP’s guidelines on terminating faculty members.

Of course, the Chronicle quotes chairs and faculty of departments that have not been cut as saying that the plan, while unfortunate, makes good sense.  And perhaps it does.  But there’s something in all of this that bodes ill for me, something beyond my complete lack of surprise that English and French are included among the doctoral programs to be eliminated, something beyond my continuing heartbreak at watching the city that I love more than any other implode.  Tulane seems to me to be sketching out a roadmap of the future, not just for itself but for institutions nationwide, a Darwinian approach to institutional survival that allows its leadership to take the opportunity of devastation to do what it has longed to for some time:

“We basically cut the programs that were not the strongest,” he said. In a way, the hurricane prompted the university to make decisions it could not make before the storm hit. “Under the current way universities operate, you can’t make these decisions under normal circumstances,” he said. “It takes an event like this.”

None of my friends at Tulane are in the affected departments, but my heart goes out to them nonetheless—this promises to be a difficult, painful period for everyone there.

What does it say about me that my first thought was ”suicide pact”?

Nothing good, I’m sure.

Chuck Henry, NBC 4 News, 11 pm broadcast:  apparently the sky marshal program was begun “in 1968, under President Reagan.”

I wish I were kidding.

Today’s the last day of classes here in Claremont, and given that I’m very, very shortly outta here (first, holidays; then, vacation; after, blissful months-long period of reading and writing)—well, needless to say, I’m happy.  But also sad.  And I wanted to take a few minutes to contemplate the sadness before beginning the mad dash to get my leave started.

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The last couple of nights, I’ve dreamed about running, a little way for my unconscious to attempt to guilt-trip me into getting back into my running shoes.  It’s been one thing after another for the last week:  a strained something in my left knee and hip that had me walking funny for a couple of days; a big pile of meetings that required me to be showered and dressed earlier than I usually can if I run first; the muscle spasm; sheer inertia.  The dreams only kicked in once I hit the sheer inertia phase of the cycle, signaling that it’s time to get going again.

My dreams are often like that, embarrassingly obvious little nudges from below telling me that something’s going on that needs attending to.  Like the night not long ago when I went to bed after having drunk a fair bit more than I should have:  I dreamed of drinking glass after glass of water, the best-tasting water I’ve ever had.  Of course I woke up dying of thirst, completely dehydrated.

And let’s not even get into the recurring dream about my inability to find a working bathroom at the MLA.

What I can’t quite tell, though, is if the dreams are intended to wake me up—“Hey, stupid:  you’re thirsty!”; “Come on, lazy slug; don’t you remember how good it feels to run?”—or if, rather, they’re intended to keep me asleep, simulating the satisfaction of whatever need my body has such that my mind can keep dreaming.

It never works with the MLA dream, though; I never can find a toilet that isn’t either occupied, broken, or so repulsive as to be unusable.

At some point, of course, all those bodily demands have to be answered.  I’ll be back on the treadmill tomorrow morning, in more ways than one.