Non-post,

Today it was perfect out and I read the second act of Waiting for Godot and a few chapters of The Bell Jar. I can tell that Sylvia is taking me downhill fast. Other sad things include the song "Baby Birch" by Joanna Newsom, people who can't read books, and missing my mom for another 24 days.

Literacy Challenge, Thy Name is Queasiness.

I've actually toyed with the idea of blogging many times before. Last summer a very beautiful friend and I started one up to document our separation during college. It was formatted as an exchange of letters, but tapered off after a disagreement about appropriate audience.

The main reason I've avoided blogging up until now is fear about guilt (See: progeny of Catholic AND Jew- a psychoanalyst once remarked that the combo should be illegal). I don't like to feel guilty about things, but I do pretty often. Some of the things about which I feel guilt are books that people loan me I don't want to read, moving to California, falling behind on the news, listening to the same five stupid songs every day for the past eleven years instead of taking interest in new artists, and the very notion of owning pets. Sometimes I feel guilty just looking at other people's pets. Not because I worry they're neglected, but because I associate them with the guilt I would inevitably feel from the inevitable neglect from which my hypothetical pets would inevitably suffer.

I probably have a lot of guilt about white privilege, but I haven't taken a class about this yet so I can't tell you about it.

The point is, while I plan to blog/market the blog a lot more during the summer, the dedicated readership is gonna have to hold on in between blog posts. I'm sure you're all getting on with your lives. I'll try to do the same.

P.S. Today I read an essay by Steve Pile about modalities of resistance with relation to dominant spaces. I liked it. Now I have to read several more essays. So many pages. Each one dripping with guilt.

Seventy-Five Percent

Texts I Have Encountered Today: A Literary Review

1. A terrible documentary about global sex trafficking. Oh, man, was it bad. Unrealized metaphors. Choppy narratives. Told by a female voiceover who also seemed to be a robot... for no reason. It's not easy to create an hour-long account of the geopolitical causes and horrifying effects of coercing young women into prostitution that DOESN'T make me cry, but "Remote Sensing" passed that test with flying colors. Dude, I thought to myself after the screening in my ten a.m. Gender Studies class, am I seriously NOT upset about global sex trafficking right now? No? Chill, guess I'll heat up some macaroni.

2. Tom Cat in Love by Tim O'Brien. Also unsatisfying; giving up on it. Mr. O'Brien's prose, as per always, is effortless. But as per unlike most of his gems- Going after Cacciato- July, July- The Things They Carried- I'm just not reading much truth in it. Unless the truth is that being married makes you crazy, vengeful, and completely unsympathetic as a subject. If this is the case, I would beg my married readership not to tell me yet. Please?

3. Cosmopolitan May 2010- Red Hot Read- "Sky High Seduction" by Susan Lyons. Mostly discusses the logistical difficulties of hooking up in an airplane. Dialogue, therefore, more instructional than affectionate. And I hate texts (literature and film) in which characters are about to be caught in a place they don't belong. Like the beach house scene in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". Hate it. If I had been Jim Carrey, I would have left Kate Winslet in that house and not felt a pinch of guilt about it. Being that I am not, it is all I can do to rate this Red Hot Read a One on the widely accepted Fist of Five scale.

4. Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neal Hurston. ...Okay, this one is actually pretty good.

I might just move into the library.

In case you weren't already sure, I am in college. This means that I have to do things like write a five-or-six page paper on post-revolutionary social shifts in Tehran. By Tuesday. Have I started? Sort of. I've been carrying around a lot of books for several days, and today I am looking at the books. The only good thing to come out of this project so far is material for the Literacy Blogging Challenge.

A consistent motif in all the articles I've read about the status of women in Tehran is the veil or chador. My current Gender Studies prof is always getting up in arms about the Western perception of "veiled women" in this part of the world. She feels that white supremacist American pseudo-feminists are always advocating wars and interventions in order to unveil these women, who they perceive to be victims of their Islamic states. "I think that's pathetic," she says. "Women have been kicking butt in the veil since forever." I think she is probably right.

While I do this important feminist research, I am listening to "Daddy's Home" by Usher (lyrical content: about what you would expect), "I Can Transform Ya" by Chris Brown ft. Lil Wayne and Swizz Beats (lyrical content: appropriate for Chris Brown), and "College Chicks" by G Side (lyrical content: makes me thankful G Side too obscure for my mother to google). Problematic? Whatever. Let's not scapegoat rap music, please.

And Better Than Ever Before!!!!

You probably think that I have dropped out of both the Literacy Challenge and the Blogosphere at large. This is not the case. I have read something every day since my last blog, and though the stresses of college life have prevented me from informing you of them this week, I am now very much on track.

Right now, for example, I am reading an article about the role of government in both controlling and catalyzing the drug trade in the favelas of Rio. Best I can figure, favelas are small residential communities in the hills (or morros) that overlook downtown Rio. Samba, the national music of Brazil, is reported to be from these morros, though in reality the creation of samba was probably more an interaction between the morro and the city. Something we talked about in section is that both Brazilian samba and American rap music are represented as the music of the poor, black population, but the state of Brazil embraces samba and the state of United typically sanctions rap music. Both are problematic, as I'm sure you can imagine.

In the above picture, two of the best members of Team Indiana (a phrase I am coining for "friends who live in Indiana"- see alittleleeway's Husbandman, Kid with Many Problems) are referencing the tendency of the American rap group the Wu Tang Clan to say, "Dolla Dolla Bill Ya'll" while wearing expressions similar to these. After two Gender Studies classes and one Sociology class at Berkeley, I am still totally unsure as to the acceptability of these enfranchised white males to pose for photographs using the Wu Tang Clan as comedic fodder. But I'm less concerned about my own legitimacy in taking these pictures, because I am the subaltern Other. And anyway, they look damned cute.

Well, it seemed better than writing a history essay.

Well. After 5 years of lurking about, I'm finally opening shop in the blogosphere. I've been grappling with this idea for a while, and my opportunity arose a few days ago when the SuperBloggers in my life embarked upon a Blogging Literacy Challenge (SuperBloggers would link to their own pages here, but I haven't figured out how to yet). I think we are writing about things that we read.

Over my spring break last week, I started The Bell Jar. I connected to The Bell Jar more than I can remember connecting to any novel I've read in the past three years. The problem is, I was borrowing it from a friend who needed to read it for English class, and I didn't finish it by the end of the week. There are zero copies available in Berkeley's enormous library. Thus, I will enter the Blogging Literacy Challenge- and blogosphere proper- with an assigned book for English 45C.

That's the bad news. The good news is, that book is The Sound and the Fury. I am three-quarters done with this book. It's pretty damn sad. There's a lot of misogyny, a lot of racism, a lot of violence, and a lot of familial disfunction. Kind of like the Flannery O'Connor and Tennessee Williams I read in high school. The impression I get from Faulkner and the rest of these folks is that being a creative genius in the South is a harsh gig (unless your name is T.I.). One of my roommates, who is from San Francisco, has talked a lot this year about wanting to take a road trip through the South. Some of my favorite relatives live in the greater Atlanta area, but other than that I would rather go to almost any other region of the country. I would like to see the Cadillac Ranch in Texas, and I would like to go to the Badlands. And other places mentioned in Springsteen songs, like Atlantic City, the streets of Philadelphia, and Candy's room. That being said, The Sound and the Fury is sensational. Really fantastic. You should read it if you get a chance.