I Am A Bad Person

I have just spent the last forty-five minutes going through a database of academic journals to read bad reviews of a colleague's book. My research excursion didn't start out with this project in mind, but once I got started I couldn't stop.

It was the happiest forty-five minutes I've spent all month.

I am not proud.

I can't help myself. I really kind of hate this guy. He's pompous and meanspirited. He's a lazy teacher. He's smart but too clever by half. He treats the department administrative staff as though they are his personal assistants. He cons his undergraduates into doing research for him. He never speaks to anyone below him on the pecking order without trying to make them feel small. He's nauseatingly deferential to the departmental superstars. He's a jackass.

And yet, I would like one day to be the sort of person who wouldn't spend forty-five minutes reading bad reviews and feeling cheerful.

I'm going to stop.

Right after I see what Lewis Montoya wrote about it in Journal of Early Modern Cultural Studies.

Help me.

Do You Have Popular Mechanics?

Never watch football with me.

I grew up in a football lovin' household. My dad was a jock and loved football. And basketball. And tennis. And Greco-Roman wrestling. But mainly football.

I hated watching sports as a kid. Playing them was ok, but I never got the appeal of spectatorship. We didn't have a tv, so watching sports mostly meant going to a smelly and noisy high school gym or an ice cold ball field. I usually brought a book. My dad usually pretended not to know me when his friends came by.

I'm kidding. Sort of. My dad and I get along great, but I've always thought that my indifference toward football was my small way of rebelling. And that my love of baseball, which I discovered as a teenager and which my dad doesn't like, was an extension of this rebellion.

I'm not hostile to football, it's just not my thing.

But some folks came over to the Feemus homestead this weekend to watch a little college football. I admit--I was a lousy host. I've been so busy with work that I actually brought my laptop into the living room (nothing enhances the football watching experience quite as much the clacking of a keyboard). I wasn't watching the game. But it's hard for me to keep my mouth shut for too long, even when I don't have anything to say, so occasionally I have to yell out stuff.

If there's an incomplete pass, I have to say something like: "THAT'S gonna be a base hit."

Or I call players for intentional fouls. Or for icing. I just won't shut up.

It's a minor miracle that I have any friends.

Still, there's something about sitting around the living room on a Saturday afternoon watching men in shiny pants run after a ball that really is conducive to, for lack of a better word, bonding. So we sat around the living room and watched men in shiny pants and counted up the divorces and failed relationships between us. And someone said: "None of us may ever have kids."

Which, you know, we all already knew. But we made the obligatory "...that I know about" joke.

And the conversation turned, as conversations do, to sperm banks. We all tried to convince my friend, Jack, that he should make a donation. Because the world will be a much less hilarious place without another Jack.

And then the conversation turned, as conversations do, to what kind of *ahem* "reading material" such banks provide for their donors:

"If they're updated as frequently as other doctor's office mags, you've probably either gotta jerk off to some girl with Farrah hair or some dude with a Tom Selleck mustache."

"I wonder if they have, you know, specialty magazines."

"Such as?"

"'Juggs and Ammo,' maybe. Or 'Pony Girls'?"

"Um, that 'Pony Girls' reference was a little too quick, man."

"I heard about it from my brother."

"Sure."

"I wonder if they get any weird requests. It'd be funny to ask the nurse for specific publications."

"Like?"

"Sear's catalogue?"

"'Excuse me, Miss, do you have the Wall Street Journal?'"

"'No thanks, I don't need a magazine. I brought a copy of Jane Eyre."

"'I hate to be a bother, but do you carry 'Cat Fancier'?"



Ever since this conversation, every book or publication I think about I think about in this context. So work is becoming a little embarrassing. I mean, there are only some many times a guy can burst into laughter when someone mentions Kant's Critique of Pure Reason without getting a reputation as a bit of a loon.

I guess it turns out that this post isn't really about football. Let's blame the writers' strike for any thematic incoherence in today's blog. Agreed?

Oh Feemus, Where Art Thou?

Good lord, has it been two weeks since I've posted anything? I have been very busy trying to find a new job. Which, you know, ugh. It's a dreadful process, but not dreadful in a way that makes for interesting blog posts.

Except...

Lots of colleges and universities have religious affiliations. The one I'm at now does, in fact. This usually doesn't have much bearing (or any) on curriculum. Some colleges ask faculty members to affirm the principles of the insitution. But there's one college I've come across who asks for a little bit more. They have a five page document about faith that one must sign, including a section on behavioral expectations. A sample:

The College will not condone practices which Scripture forbids. Such activities include occult practices, sexual relations outside of marriage, homosexual practice, drunkenness, theft, profanity, and dishonesty. Westmont also recognizes that Scripture condemns “sins of the spirit” such as covetousness, jealousy, pride, and lust. By their very nature, these sins are more difficult to discern. Because they lie at the heart of the relationship between the individual and God they are of central concern to the Westmont community.

Ok, I think I broke like six or seven of those before noon today. But the one that just kills me is the prohibition on covetousness, jealousy, and pride. That just makes no sense. Academia would collapse! Covetousness, jealousy, and pride are to academia as oxygen is to fire (if this were an analogy question on the SAT). But who's going to police this?? The pride squad?

The whole document is weird. Faculty members can't possess alcohol or tobacco on campus. And not only do they have about 38 references to heterosexuality and marital fidelity, they also mandate for their unmarried faculty members "healthy family relationships."

But have they met my mother?