And this post was written because..?

Too much to post and too little interest in posting. These past two weeks in Italy have generated enough random thoughts and obscure observations to...um...to do something requiring a great deal of time, effort, and space. And to think that we've nearly a week left in Europe.

Sadly, however, Orvieto (and perhaps the rest of Italy for all I know) is something akin to a very expensive third-world country when it comes to matters technological, and as a result, none of these little tidbits will probably see the soft glow of the cyber-æther until I've returned. This makes the fact that I've bothered to write this particular post--let alone mention in said post that I won't be able to post said until I'm back in the state--even more indicative of the general state of mind one can achieve on a strict diet of cured meats, cheese, and a fairly large daily dosage of wine.

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Reflecting the Media Electric.

Just a quote today. Something to brighten your day and to remind you of the world in which we live.

"Anything that might be of interest to Slitscan. Which is to say...anything that might be of interest to Slitscan's audience. Which is best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving he warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally, I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth...no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections."

--William Gibson, Idoru

For the uninitiated: Gibson's portrayal of "Slitscan" is, roughly speaking, as a reality-TV show turned pseudo-network/media-conglomerate such that other networks' programming actually serve as little more than bumpers and tie-ins to Slitscan. Something akin to Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner's favorite shared wet-dream, I imagine.

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Honesty and Happenstance.

This morning I began writing a letter to my dissertation advisor. It is far from finished, and it may never be sent. A part of me isn't even sure why I'm writing it. The letter discusses everything that's gone wrong for me since entering the department. It talks about my frustrations with the attitudes of both the graduate students and the faculty: the constant posturing and grotesquely elevated senses of self-worth; the disease peculiar to a great many academics (or academic wannabes) that causes them to perpetually feel the need to try and demonstrate their superior intelligence.

It talks about my run-ins with faculty who, under the influence of quite remarkable drug and alcohol cocktails, have publicly admitted to wishing me ill-will for one reason or another; or to, "never really learning anything from their students." It talks about how I've received significant feedback from one, yes...ONE, member of the faculty during the very first semester I was here.

It talks about how contemporary philosophy has the feel of rhetoric and sophistry. About how the language and attitudes of MBAs and JDs have invaded the halls of the Humanities so that now we're told (repeatedly and often) to "network" and gain "position" in order to maximize "face-time." It talks about how department chairs tell prospective graduate students that "rankings don't really mean that much" while at the same time telling current graduate students how "getting hired at a highly ranked school is really important." [I'll drop a link to a very telling article once I scam a copy for your perusal.]

Perhaps most significantly, it talks about is how my original love of philosophy has since been turned into a festering pit of hatred and anxiety and frustration that has left me all but paralyzed intellectually. Maybe it doesn't say all of that quite so melodramatically, but it's in there...it's all in there somewhere.

And it talks about whether I should even bother trying to work on my dissertation while in Boston, or if I should just get a job tossing lobster on the docks.

But what it doesn't talk about, at least not yet, is just how much of this is actually my fault. It doesn't talk about whether any of these allegations are real, or just my projecting some deep-seated resentment, or fear, on the world around me. Granted, some of them are fact, and so relatively immune to interpretation; but much of this is perspective. It is, after all, my view of things...of people...of attitudes.

Maybe I'm just not being honest about where I am right now. Maybe I'm just not happy with whatever cards I've been dealt this time around. That's what happens when you wager without looking at your cards: it eliminates the chance of a tell, but can leave you cold and lonely on an empty bluff.

I'd like to think that my vision is relatively unclouded by virtue of having never tasted the particular flavor of Kool-Aid they're selling, but who knows. Jonestown wasn't built in a day, but I've certainly had my fair share of the electric variety.

I'd like to think a lot of things, but then I'd never sleep...

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