disgruntled grad feels more…gruntled?

Well, although the headline sounds rather indecisive, undecided, ambiguos, confused, equivocal, etc…this isn’t really about that. It is about pure chance, and how pure chance is amazing!!!

It turns out that this quarter, I was asked to TA for an English course that covered material from Beowulf to Milton, which is highly out of the ordinary that someone without their master’s degree gets to do so, but it happened…and I am happy.

But just think of the elation I felt when I was asked to TA the rest of the sequence–English 22 and 23!!! Yes, due to sheer chance! I was speaking with one of my professors about exactly that–and he said that I shouldn’t feel guilty about what happened given that nobody was hurt by it…

So it turns out that things exciting do happen in graduate school after all!

Doctor vents frustration with US healthcare…

So there I was, sitting in the Doctor’s office–for over two hours. Not bad, when you consider that only about 50 minutes was spent waiting–the rest was with the doctor, with the radiologist, and taking vital signs, and scheduling a follow-up. Anyhow, I was speaking with the doctor about healthcare in general, and he was lamenting the slow erosion of quality healthcare in the US. Having worked for a variety of HMOs, he finally came to UCSD, where check this out–he was actually allowed to spend more than 15-20 minutes with me in the examination room. Then he personally saw to getting me a splint for my ankle which has been in the pits for about 4 weeks now, and personally made sure that the fit was good.

During the time, we chatted about what I was doing, my coursework as a graduate student, and it turns out that he loves romantic poetry and Shakespeare. And then I asked him about his work. He said that he went in to the practice to help people, and it was sincere, and that he came to a college because the majority of his time here did not go in filling out paperwork for insurance companies…anyways, I just thought this would be some sort of thanks to the doctor, with hopes that more people read it, and perhaps demand more of their HMOs.

Econ students asks me about poetry…

My neighbor, an econ student asked me about Ravindranath Tagore today. I told him that I thought Tagore is excessively goo-ey, an answer for which I would have been in trouble had I not said so. Yes, he is just that, Goo-ey, and more so than sappy victorian poetry as well. But here’s my question, Econ students can and do read fiction, why can’t literature people read econ? And not just the systems theory and marxist stuff?  So I let him borrow my Norton, and he’s going to give me his Economist after he’s done with it.

Another sorry student…

So it turns out that another one of my students has plagiarized…well, not really another student, but the same student!!! and from the same website!!!  Something must be going on…

WTF!!! Indian elected Lousiana governor???

So, I was reading through the newspapers, and yes, it’s true, an Indian-American, not an American Indian, has been elected the governor of Lousiana.  But wait!  It isn’t an Indian-American whose values are in fact, Indian.  This guy is a born-again roman catholic, against, abortion, for repealing hate-crimes legislation, and also, for teaching intelligent design in schools as an alternative to evolution….

So, don’t hold your breaths, anyone, Louisiana is not going to make a recovery from being the backwaters of America, it will remain as it is, crime-ridden, corruption plagued, poor, and now to continue with poor leadership, and poor standards of education, health and social policy.

Ah ha! the trick hast been revealed!

Yes, for those of you–those many, many of you who have been diligently following my blog–for you, I have finally discovered the trick to continuously updating my blog!  I finally got the sense to make it my homepage.  Narcissistic?  Oh well, suck it up…

Quick notes about ideology….

Our economic system prides itself on rational thought. In fact, democracy as a concept prides itself on people’s ability to make rational thoughts and judgements. An idealistic enlightenment outpouring, no doubt, but what about when people don’t decide things rationally? What happens when people are enthused, say in terms of how religious revivalism enthused people in the 17th and 18th centuries?

(an aside, en-thused, “Thused” from theos, the greek for god, so literally, being filled with god

Ideology, the way neocons have made it out to be contains everything of being enthused in the traditional sense, but not a whit of ration. If people are not voting or acting in their best interest, does this point to a larger failure for democracy to work, or a failure of the economic system? My post just prior to this one will make this one make more sense.

Christian Brownback is a dinosaur in the 21st century

So I ended up somehow, confusedly, coming across a blog for senator brownback of Kansas, and completely found myself taken aback by the sheer illiteracy of the commentary. There is an incredulous and irrelevant “ticker” that says that so-and-so many children have died from abortion since the war in Iraq began, another button that says that “heliocentrism is an atheist doctrine” and the lame assertion that Buddhism is pagan, atheist and also “a religion which Satan founded in anticipation of the coming of Our Lord, Jesus Christ,… the predominant religion enslaving and bedamning the huddled masses of East Asia”.

Anyhow, enough free advertising for wackos. Let us begin by understanding that America is perhaps the only developed country where people actually vote not based on what is in their best economic interest. For, why would a poor southern person vote for Bush? There is absolutely no economic incentive: tax cuts don’t affect that person, Bush just made cuts in education spending, which clearly could have assisted the poor person, nor is Bush favorable when it comes to healthcare. So what economic incentive is there really? None.

What is happening essentially is that people, against their best wishes, are voting on ideology, which has powerfully been corrupted by the neocons, the religious right, the fundamentalists of America into making the average person incredibly alienated from their own economic conditions. Ideology has captured American politics to such an extent that people cannot judge according to the merits of a proposal.

One of the moderators on Brownback’s blog calls himself “sisyphus”. The problem is that Sisyphus rolled the rock up the mountain, only to have to sent down again, just as he neared the top. Sisyphus was denied the satisfaction of actually accomplishing his task. So there are two things that are ironic about the moderator’s username: the most obvious is that why choose a pagan icon on a christian website? and also–why choose an icon who is emblematic of failure?

Don’t worry, though, it’s not supposed to make sense or be meaningful–just like the Christian right.

HTML here I come!

So, to the world, to all of you, I hereby announce that I will be coming at you, with the power of HTML.  Meagre declaration for most of you, but whatever! to this non-techy, literature graduate student, even the simplest programming language is meaningful!

Jane Austen teaches tact…

Here I am, reading Sense and Sensibility, just a few days after attending a wedding with my girlfriend where the bride, groom and officiator could certainly have known better when it comes to social etiquette. So, if you’ll tolerate the following story, I’ll tell you how Jane Austen relates.

Consider the following scenario (bride = B; groom = G; Officiator = O; Bridesmaids 1 & 2 = BM1, BM2):

B, BM1&2 go for bachelorette party, but O and G join them, because B wants something romantic to happen with O and BM1. Meanwhile, she turns BM2 into a fifth wheel, but BM1 is repulsed by O, and instead makes conversation with BM2, informing her that from the way B speaks about BM2’s boyfriend, it seems apparent that B is jealous of the relationship that BM2 has with her boyfriend. Not so smooth. Then as the two days progress, O and B make comments trying to continually bust BM2’s boyfriend, and O’s mother, who is just as obscene as O, joins in. This makes it clear that O actually has a crush on BM2, and B is aware of this.

After the wedding, during the reception, BM2’s boyfriend, is going to the bathroom and runs into G, who says to him, “I know B gives you a hard time, but I think you’re ok.” After leaving, BM1 calls BM2 and tells her that she’s going to have to talk to B about busting BM2’s boyfriend all the time, because she will lose BM2 as a friend otherwise. BM1 also says that the wedding has made her feel close to BM2 than B, despite the fact that BM1 and BM2 had never met before.

How does Sense and Sensibility relate to all of this? Well, there are many things going on, and perhaps the most important is knowing how much of yourself to reveal, and how much not to reveal. Moreover, social etiquette must be noted as well. So let’s begin: in the process of trying to make set-ups, neither B nor O had enough tact to conceal their own preferences, something they could well do to learn from Elinor’s behavior, as opposed to Marianne’s.

Furthermore, we may be living in the 21st century, but isn’t it still trashy when you are trying persistently with some who is already in a secure relationship and happy (in the case of B’s prodding about O and BM2’s boyfriend)? Isn’t it vulgar the same way that against the wishes of a friend you are trying a ridiculous scheme (note Lucy trying to prevent the attachment of Elinor and Edward).

Anyways, Jane Austen is the soap-opera/hollywood of her day, and although this blogger’s post is more gossip than literary, it is quite obvious to see that people don’t change, and that there really is very little of a thing called progress, if human emotions are concerned.

There’s the reach for a larger context–drama is inevitable, and that Jane Austen was astute enough to capture it then, and it remains true to this day.