21, Forever!

How was that for a long blogging hiatus? But summer gets short, and I had some sort of epiphany that blogging less would mean more of other kinds of writing. It didn’t turn out to be particularly true, I learned, but coming back to $3.60 was just the tiny low-pressure carrot I needed to get some really annoying work done. Book proposals out to eight presses (who each of course wanted a different package), an article out, and a conference and writers series in the works, developing fellowship programs for the cinema, and countless query letters and so on: Yay August! Phew– I’m glad you’re almost over. (Never thought I’d say that!)

And anyway, there are gazillions of old, retiring posts on $3.60, in favorite categories like world-making, feral women, and the global uncanny. Who needs me?

In other news, this week has also seen, sadly, lots of back to school shopping. Oh, who am I fooling? Back to school shopping makes school so much better! I am a professor. I know these things, things confirmed by Forever 21. Admittedly, it would be great if they would change their name, but I guess I’m finally old enough to hold my head high, for I know there is nothing about my twenties (except the body, of course) that I would want to return to! And, I found better fitting “versions” of items I had bought and returned to Anthropologie, thus saving a stunning amount of money–to then be spent on a ridiculous and happy-making Juicy hoodie. And yep; let’s make this year three without any real H&M happiness. Alas.

Oh, and this year’s teaching theme? “Disco demure.” Last year was “shiny comfort,” but I got bored because I couldn’t find the right infusion of gym shoes.

(If you are or have been my student, you are probably thinking that I look the same every year and all of the time, but it’s all about our illusions, no?)

(I guess Gwen Stefani is suing Forever 21 for ripping off L.A.M.B.? I totally get it, but can’t help but twinge at the idea that the mash-up reference queen could sue anyone for versioning anything. Shouldn’t she be sued by a Harajuku girl, or Jamaica?)

Okay, back to business:

The topic docket is long: Cypher & Syllable needs some formatting and some editors; the NAACP is fully on my nerves; I’m incensed that I was the last person to see The Last King of Scotland, and now it seems too late to rant; why so many of the Utah miner stories, like many such reports, so actively skirt questions of miner safety; I’m fascinated with the out of control rhetoric of CNN’s God’s Warrior’s series; find Obama and the black thing irresistible, and on and on and on and on. Oh, and the new M.I.A. album?