Copy, Right?

I have no idea what other graduate work is like in Med School, Law School, or practical fields like Engineering, or Biology, but I can sum up a humanities/liberal arts education in 4 letters. Or I can use a nice 4 letters: read.

For the past 4 years, I kept talking about how I really, "wanted to get back into reading." Whenever I did pick up and obsessively devoured a novel, I'd think, "this really is fun, I should do this more often."

Well it's not like that.
I've gone from reading 2 novels a year (summer and christmas breaks) to an average of 2 full academic texts per week plus articles, something on the order of 700 pages per week.

But hey, it's just a function of time. And for the honor, I am going deeply into debt. No complaints there, at least that part I entered intentionally. But I can't just sit on my hands - I've got to fight economic ruin as best I can: hence, Federal Work Study.

I've never done FWS before, and it has been a fascinating experience. Not the work itself, that's simple and repetitive (see below), but the scenario. I'm a former radio station manager working on an advanced degree in Islamic Studies, and I'm making copies. OK, I'm also a classics major - perhaps we should have seen that coming, right?

But what about my "peers?" A lot of the doctoral candidates get to do cool things (so called only because I don't have to do them) like teach classes. But there are a fair number of bright, even brilliant, scholars and professionals of much higher calibre than myself grinding out a living (or at least spending coin) running faxes and retyping end notes.

Personally, I assist two different profs, and my duties are:
1) Prof A, gofer: run to one of Columbia's 15 libraries (or off-campus) and bring books back for a prof's research; about 7-10 books/week.
2) Prof B, scan texts. Not articles, not chapters. Full books. 300+ page books.

The first part is not challenging, but gets me familiar with campus, and lets me set my own hours, so it's OK.
The second is a real mind job. I'm conflicted. You see, I get paid $12/hour for however long it takes to do these scans, so the more the better. But I'm also in that prof's class, which means eventually I have to read whatever I scan, and his expectations are high even for Columbia standards. One of my other teachers declared, "at Columbia, we generally prefer not to give more than 100 pages per week for each course..." Well, bully for him. But Prof B (who is still awesome) expects all students to read 2 full books each week, after I scan them in first.

So I spend 2-4 hours standing over a copy machine, scanning in page after page, re-assembling the files, and posting them for the class. Then I spend 5-10 hours reading the stuff I just "created."

On the plus side, it puts me in an opportune position to overhear office gossip. Of course, in the office I work in (Department of Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures), that gossip is as often in Arabic, Turkish or a variety of other tongues I cannot follow.

Mostly, I think about that which is closest at hand - Am I really going to read this entire book I'm scanning? Is it even legal to be digitizing on this scale? These are expensive books ($35-$125 for most), aren't I disrupting to global academic industry somehow? I don't care - the juciest detail is that by scanning a $35 book, I profit $24 in payment for the 2 hours it takes, and I save the $35 I would have had to spend - but I wonder how widespread this is. When I tell the office staff that I need to scan in the full book, they look at me like I'm crazy, so maybe it's not too common. And hey - why would they assume I'm the crazy one? I'm just FWS, I obviously didn't come up with this idea on my own.

When life gets too dull, or I get frustrated with what's coming up, I just back off for a moment and shuffle papers. Sooner or later, some aspiring scholar of classic Hindi literature is bound to come in and get ambushed by a paper jam. The real world inevitably thrusts itself back into my line-of-sight.

Ah, Refreshing.

Weber

Journey to the Center of an Egg

It is said that there are two things which all peoples of any culinary ability should be able to do.
1) Make Toast
2) Boil an Egg
To these I would humbly add a modern 3) Cook Ramen.

So why is it that I, who am certainly no Alton Brown, but likewise above the level of nuke-it-and-chew-it-chef, have so much difficulty with item #2?

The first time I failed at boiling an egg, Shelley very kindly reminded me of the basics: Don't put cold eggs in boiling water. Don't leave the heat on hi for 20 minutes. Don't throw the eggs into the pot from a distance of more than 3 feet.

Thus, for my second attempt I enjoyed a much firmer foundation. Still, the results weren't impressive. I can get the things cooked, no runny yellow seepage here, but in the process of doing so I must be doing something else wrong, because they just won't peel.

At this moment, at this exact moment, at least 2 to 5 of you reading this know exactly what my problem is. But I don't.

I'll point out that for me, this ova-pocalypse is in spite of my regular and consistent success with the same procedure in other environments. I've boiled eggs on a 1960s era electric stove in Oklahoma, a Soviet gas stove in Estonia, and numerous propane grills and open flame cooking fires across the wilderness of the American Southwest.

But not in New York. Here, *something* is different. What may never have been totally correct elsewhere still managed to work itself out. Here, it's by-the-book, and even that's not a guarantee. My third attempt I broke down and googled "how to boil an egg."

My shell still gets stuck. If you want to do something truly frustrating, try super-gluing an egg shell to a semi-solid membrane and then picking it off one flake at a time. For a more entertaining version, just watch someone else try the same.

I'm getting better, but this experience (as you may have guessed) has parallels outside the kitchen.

Returning to an academic environment has presented many challenges. Some of these are due to the obvious difference between graduate humanities studies and the "real world" of my former employment, while others are due to the specific nuances of either the NYC environs, or the Columbia expectations.

Put short, I'm at my best when I can resolve a problem through trial, error, and an almost MacGuyverian synthesis of alternate solutions. (Note: if I could actually achieve Guyverian solutions involving Japanese organo-body armour, that would be much cooler. And 5 bonus creds to anyone who's still with me).

But 'Mac was a man of the (mid?)West, and certainly not a New Yorker. I won't lay claim to summarizing the character of this enormous and diverse Metroponormity, but it's clear from my time already that while NYC may encourage creativity and improvisation, it doesn't care much for my parochial jerry-rigging.

Another good example is my continuing involvement with WKCR, the jazz radio station at Columbia. As I reported in another post, the initial contacts were rough. Despite working 8 years in radio, the powers-that-be decided that I need classes to learn how to be a DJ. It's what they expect of all their students, so why would I deserve an exception? OK, fair.

But today is a special day; today is the birthday of jazz legend John Coltrane. WKCR has a great tradition in which, on the birthday of certain jazz notables, they override all other programming and regular DJ shifts to present exclusively the music of that artist for 24 hours. Special DJ assignments are made, people fill in, etc. Very cool idea, and one which we stole and implemented monthly at KRTU in San Antonio.

Birthday Broadcasts represent my favorite aspects of local independent radio. They serve to highlight the less-famous works of an artist's career and they demonstrate a commitment to unique programming that larger, more formal stations cannot risk. I love them, both in concept and in practice, and for the past 5 years I've been able to be a part of many, many such broadcasts.

This year, KRTU was conducting it's regular annual event, and I wasn't there to be a part of it. It's my own fault - I moved away. WKCR is also doing a Coltrane broadcast, but because I am not yet certified, I was not permitted to participate. In San Antonio, even if I wasn't assigned a shift, I could work something out and get some air time, even long before I was Station Manager. In New York, no amount of reasoning or logical triangulation accomplishes anything. There are rules, and I must follow them. It's not tyrannical; it's not even unfair; but my complete inability to creatively circumvent the situation is very new and I'm still adjusting.

So I'll keep practicing my patience and adherence to actual rules. I'll remember that I'm not special, and that somethings must be done in a certain way.

Put another pot on the stove, get back in line, and pay close attention. This Texpatriot is learning your heathen ways, big city.

+ Weber (feeling semi-Lame)

P.S. you can hear the complete KRTU Coltrane Birthday Broadcast anytime in the next week from this page (pick any Tuesday 5am-10pm show)

What's in a Name?

So here it is, after weeks of promises, and only 4 months after starting my first blog; the debut of my second.

The reasons for this new blog are simple.
1) The premise of the old blog became obsolete.
2) I wanted to keep doing it.

Why I wanted to keep doing it (armchair psychology, or simple megalomania) is an interesting matter, but not one I'm willing to delve into here. Suffice to say that I enjoyed the added connection I had with you, my readers, and that I'm intrigued by both the processes of deeper analysis of the everyday assumptions, and the farcical treatment of accepted social norms.

See that? Grad schoolin' pays off already with these $30,000 words.

So what the hell is a Lame Texpatriot?

First, let it be known that I was born in Oklahoma. Not only that, I grew up there, spending 19 years or (or 2/3 of my life) therein. So when I tell you that I never felt like an Oklahoman, an Okie (from Muskogee or otherwise), or a Sooner, this is a case of self-identity. I am an Oklahoman in every way, except in how I choose to present myself to others. I even fit classic Okie stereotypes (an affinity for wind and wide open spaces, a genuine interest in meteorology, an inability to correctly pronounce foreign capitals - "Pray-guh"). Still, it took a couple years in a foreign land for me to find an identiy I felt comfortable associating with, and that I find most appealing upon my departure.

To be an ex-patriot Texan -hence Texpatriot-, one must first 1) be a Texan. 2) Not live in Texas.

I'm all aces on the later definition having recently transplanted to the least-Texan place on Earth - New York City! (*thanks Pace). As to the first, I started thinking of myself, grudgingly, as a Texan in fall 2004. Oddly, this was tied to national politics, and adversely to a character as closely tied to Texas as I wish to be distant from by association - George W Bush.

Having lived in Texas since 2000 as a student, I was living high on my Oklahoma Drivers License with my parents address still my only permanent residence. Then I graduated, got a place of my own, shifted my mail, pillar of the community, etc. What sealed the deal was that I needed to vote - and after my abortive Ralph Nader write-in ballot for the Oklahoma 2000 election, I knew absentee wasn't going to work. I needed to vote - in Texas. That required a TX drivers license, and with it the corresponding Texas Voter ID card. Don't let people tell you that a little paper can't tell you who you are - in my experience there is nothing more absolute. There's some poetic justice in it: I became a Texan (at least in name) in order to vote against George Bush (who is a Texan just in name himself).

Shockingly, as I spent more time in TX I grew more and more enamoured of the place, but the final blow was my summer 2008 Eurotrip. On this eye-opening 3 month adventure I went a lot of place, met a lot of people, and did a lot of thinking. But I did it all as a Texan. Rather than introduce myself as an American (or even Canadian as I was encouraged to do), I just came out with it. "Hi, my name's Ryan. I'm from Texas."

It's either sad or glorious testament to the power of American cultural imperialism that never, in 3 months of travel, did anyone ever ask, "where is texas?"

I won't lie, I conceived this plan from devious roots. I was laying claim to some social assumptions with this loaded association, and taking equal joy in the more positive innuendo (independent, stubborn, honest) as well as exquisite irony in the less desirable -and less accurate- connotations it carried (conservative, rural, simple).

Everywhere I went, people said things like, "I didn't know there were people like you in Texas." Not sure that was always a positive for me or the state, but it was a sentiment I savored.

As for "Lame," that's a harder explanation. Writ short, it attests to both my specific inter-Texan loyalty for San Antonio, and also for the continuing spirit of self-depricating humor with which I hope to both entertain you and enlighten myself.

The San Antonio aspect is an in-joke, and for those in-the-know my apologies, but it must be explained and I'll leave it to the comments for you to object to my version. There's a motto in Austin that declares, "Keep Austin Weird," in deference to that city's long-standing reputation for open-mindedness to the point of absurdity. The counter-point is that San Antonio, Austin's closest major neighbor at 90 miles, is the antithesis of Austin. It's not young, it's not cool, it's not weird. It's old, stoggy... lame.

Hence started a reactionary grassroots bumper sticker campaign to make a mockery of the Austinite charge, "Keep San Antonio Lame." In other words, "you hipsters can say (and smoke) what you like, but we love San Antonio just the way it is, and if that's what you call Lame, then so be it; Keep it Lame." I ascribe to this both in principle and it attitude, and I want to take some of both with me wherever I go.

Props should be paid to whoever was involved in the inception of this local gem of wisdom.

My purpose henceforth will be to keep you apprised of my limited travels and manifold travails as I make my way in this wide world. I reckon to do some thinking on subjects mundane and deep, and I'll pass those along not only for your amusement, but for your participation. These blogs allow comments, and by god I demand them.

So saddle on up and forgive the jargon. I'm here to keep your peace incomplete and your vision painfully impaired by pixelation. And for your trouble and patronage, I will be eternally grateful in the Texan manner of stoic, silent appreciation.

Ya'll take it easy.

Weber (on the Lame)