CFP of the Day

Going through the 300+ emails I got while I was on vacation (I've received many generous offers to enlarge both my penis and my breasts), I found a series of "calls for papers" for The Jewish Studies Area of the Popular Culture Association 2007 conference. Among calls for papers on topics such as Yiddish theater, Jewish Mythology, and the Kabbalah, someone is asking for papers for a panel entitled:

Jews in Space

Sometimes it's hard to take my life seriously.

Runners up include: "Superheros Revised" and an update on a previous CFP which proudly announces the superfluity of participants for "Violently Shakespeare." I am not really sure why I think this is so funny (jetlag, maybe), but I think it's pretty damn funny.

Update: I somehow missed this one:

CFP: Sex with God: Monotheism and the Eroticized Framing of the Human-Divine relation

One suggested sub-topic was:

The function of imaginative transgendering in eroticized conceptualization of the human-divine relation in Medieval religious writing

Ladies and gentlemen, we may have a new winner.

Love and Loss: One Sweater's Story

I'm jetlagged. I've been up for 27 hours. I haven't read a newspaper in 2 weeks so I don't even know what to be pissed off about (is that too many prepositions to end a sentence with, even for the Reform Grammarians?).

David Brooks could've eaten a kitten on live t.v. and I wouldn't even know.

Did he? That would be great.

Not for the kitten, of course.

Anyway, I am sleepy and babbly, so I thought I would tell you the story of my green sweater. I have this green sweater which is quite ugly but which I wear frequently. It is insanely comfortable and is just the perfect weight to wear when it is cold out, but not cold enough to warrant a jacket.

Ok, I love this sweater. I'm man enough to admit it.

So, I'm wandering through this museum on my vacation, and I am in the Medieval section thinking, "wow, these guys sure loved their bloody Jesuses. Yech." And as I am thinking this, I notice that my sweater, which I'd wrapped around the arm of my backpack (it was hot in the museum, so I took it off) is gone.

I was distraught. I actually had a vision of what my life would be like without my favorite sweater and I felt a chill. A chill that my sweater could have fixed - IF IT HAD NOT DISAPPEARED.

Not wanting to give in to my materialism - or rather, my fetishization of material objects - I forced myself to finish a now uneasy tour of the medieval paintings before going in search of lost sweaters. Then I went to the front desk. "Please," I said. "Have you found my..."

and at this moment, in my distress, I forget the word for sweater: "Have you found my...shirt. A shirt, the kind that is knit?" I stammer awkwardly.

She had found it and all was well. I have written a small poem to commemorate its recovery:

A Shirt, the Kind that is Knit

Oh, green sweater!

You make everything better.

You make water wetter and the Concorde jetter.

You’re better than an Irish setter.

With you I feel cheerfully unfetter-

-ed.

And never tearfully unsweater-

-ed.

Because you ARE a sweater.

You are as welcome as a letter

To a chronic debtor.

(As long as that letter said: “Dear Jim, (or whatever the debtor’s name was), Forget about that 50 bucks you owe me, you no-account bastard”).

ok - maybe tomorrow I can write something coherent. I think I'm a little pissed off about Gunter Grass, but I can't remember why. Am I mad at him? On his behalf? Maybe I'll remember.