Cooler than You: Stupid Things I Say and Do

I really have little, if anything, in me to say about the NYC bombings this weekend.  Yet, parts of me feel the urge to pontificate . . . of course, there's also the questions from a couple of close friends wanting to know when I'll ponder. When 9-11 happened I was teaching a course--we were covering the Comstock Laws--and when Saddam Hussein was captured I was shoveling my car out of a blizzard.  When he was executed I was in rural Virginia for a holiday and packing, as I was headed to my first trip to Turkey that January.  When Osama Bin Laden was captured I was doing laundry in an urban, city 'hood fashion.   I pontificated here, probably one of the better ones . . . or not.   When bombs, of pressure cookers and burner phones, went off in NYC I was home . . . reading literature on Chinese American restaurants, blaring some "empowered women's mix" from Apple radio, and rotating with edits on a grant application to finally finish my Aegean Sea cultural st...

Someone, not long ago, asked me when I was going to write about 9-11.  I had no response, and I expertly avoided the question.  Why? Well . . . here's the best I can do. That day, a decade ago, still seems too close for comfort, too surreal to be true, and like a dream.  I didn't loose people that day, but friends of mine lost cohorts, lovers, and confidants.  To be cliche, we all lost a sense of stability, bliss, and cohesion.  Yet, for scores of people not located within this mecca then, or now, the 9-11 day doesn't ring with the same level of sobriety, somber, and dismay as it does for those within a stone's throw of its ashes. I remember what I was wearing, I remember what I was teaching when the first planes hit, I remember  . . . hours waiting in a computer lab constantly hitting refresh to find a message from a friend.  I remember sitting in shock, lying in my bathtub long after the bubbles had died, the water had gone cold, and th...

A decade ago I was in grad school, working toward a Phd, and I was teaching my first class at Hofstra.  It was my first semester adjuncting, to supplement my stipend from TAing . . . those days are always filled with many things, ideals, and outright fears.  My 8-o-freaking-clock classes passed on, and I came to know my colleagues . . . Perhaps I should note that I am not the "famous" adjunct who got arrested that term.  In class. Yea, a favorite professor brought in a civil war weapon, and some shit called the Nassau poe poe saying there was a sniper on the Hofstra campus.  John was hauled off in silver bracelets.  *Excuse me while I laugh--like a retarded jackass--at the very fine memory of the chair telling me to not bring weapons to class . . . at John telling me the tale of having to the call the chair to bail him out . . . at the talk on campus.  Good times.* None-the-less, to this day I get jitters when giving my lecture involving the Comstock La...