I Got the Moon, I Got the Cheese, I Got the Whole Damn Nation on its Butt

I have little to say today, but I feel the obligatory nature, intrinsic to the debate season, to announce that we are oot of here for the weekend. Luckily the Pack's contest against the evil Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts is on national tv and hence will be waiting on tivo for me when I get home. We are going back to Wilkes-Barre, PA, the Kings College Tournament which we also attended last year. This time, luckily, most of our expenses will be paid for by Rochester, since Katie works for them officially. Anywho, it shouldn't be difficult or anything, so at least the money we make juding will be helpful. It comes right at the point where we are starting to get paid on a regular schedule anyways, but a couple extra dollars to waste on psychoanalytic literature, J. Crew payments, and truffles never hurt nobody.

My classes today were both hella good, the type that remind me why it is that grad school was actually something I wanted to do, that made sense. The second course obviously should, since its titled and focused around one of Lacan's seminars I know almost nothing about and have not read. That said, the seminar has enough "famous moments" in it that I had heard of most of its important elements, many of the Lacanian aphorisms, but lacked any real comprehension of their surroundings. That gives this seminar the potential to be especially interesting and Steven Miller is exceeding my, fairly high, expectations. The other seminar, which I expected to be interesting, but not necessarily useful, is looking like it may fulfill the first expectation and defy the second. I have read a couple articles by Irigaray in the past, but for the most part I had no serious knowledge of her writing. One of the things I find fascinating at this point is her ability to adopt certain conventions, pretty explicitly, without naming them. Before class I could have told you that she does this with Lacan, since I can pick out the moments she is obviously building on or playing off the statement that "Woman does not exist" or the idea of multiple being, but it was indicated to me this afternoon that she does the same with Hegel and Meleau-Ponty among others. She acknowledges when she is criticizing Freud or Marx or whoever and it appears that there are times when she will mention that she is entering into dialogue with Lacan, but nonetheless, this appropriation, which is a fairly common tactic of contemporary literature, and especially feminist literature, is something I have never encountered in theory before. I'm sure will have more to say about her in the future but for now, we wll leave it at that.

My friend Erin Anderson is in Japan and posting all these crazy pictures of Tokyo. I will admit that I have never had the pizzazz my brother and a number of my friends do for all things Japanese, from anime to sush and ridiculously packed cities. I was enthused at the fact that since my brother is more than likely going to end up in Japan for a while after he graduates, I will likely get the chance to visit him. Though I obviously would not exclude the possibility that I would go to Tokyo without there being a family member in residence, I would say it is much less likely. Regardless, there are some things the Japanese seem to have a passion for which have got their ups and downs. Lets take vending machines: the Japanese have vending machines that kick it where you stick it but also vending machine stores!! Vending machines should take credit cards, you should have some ability to do crazy shit like buy a certain number of quantities or select amongst hundreds of options or...well I can't really think of anything else you can do with a drink vending machine, but I haven't even really put much thought into it. I mean, there are people who fucking design vending machines, I know this because there are new ones out there, new ones every year or so, what the fuck are they doing, just sitting around like "how bout this, instead of having the little buttons all in a row ont he side of the machine, we could make them really big and put them in the middle!!!" Seriously, no other designer gets off with such minor innovations over the course of like 30 years. Despite this obvious super-ability of the Japanese attitude, the vending machine store is the dumbest idea of all time. What the fuck would you bother to rent a store for if you are just going to fill it with vending machines. How bout just rent one wall of a store or a FUCKING SIDEWALK!!! or THE SIDE OF YOUR FUCKING HOUSE!!!

I have more to say on the subject of Japanese plus and minus, but now I am tired and have to get up early so I can go to class and shit before I head to the PA that does not go with Puffy.

Peace,

MB-K