Thanksgiving

Hey T6ers, with it being Memorial Day, I just wanted to give thanks for the fact that Adam, Abe, and Dusty are all back in the US safe and sound after serving time in Iraq. Does anybody know anything about Rudy? Thanks for the service guys.

I'll up YOUR date

Despite the running commentary of my own personal blog, I have no way to know who is reading it, so I thought I'd try to keep the freight train moving through 611 Online Depot here by revealing a personal update™ of my own.

Unfortunately enough, nothing really "happens" to me, as I am still unemployed, virtually friendless, and an eccentric recluse.

I am starting to try to put together some plans to move forward, though, so I thought I'd run them by you, as you're all highly intelligent people with perspective on many things.

As you may know from my blog or other updates here, I've found myself at odds with the general customs of adult life in the western world. The idea of changing myself to fit in to a job is not appealing, so I'm trying to figure out how to design a income-generating lifestyle that suits me the way I am.

I've done some research and one thing that seems to be promising would be to create multiple free-lance sort of income/profit-centers that involve my interests and passions.

So for instance, at any given time I could:

Be selling articles to publications...
Be Licensing my music compositions to companies...
Do consultant work on music projects involving LA groups in the mid-60s, particularly the Beach Boys...
Design clothing...
Be a landlord of some rental property...
Own a restaurant...

Etc.

The idea is, if you have enough little enterprises, money trickling in from the different things, it will add up to be a real income. And then I wouldn't get bored and would be doing things I like that I might not be able to make a career out of by themselves.

Anybody have any thoughts, practical advice, on this?

And of course, I'm constantly looking to get out of Bland Crapids, Pissigan. Yes, people here call it that.

Response to Coye's Appeal for a Personal Update

An announcement this important deserves one of those cool author pastiche things that I sometimes do, but sadly I just don't have the time to do it right. I'll settle for this: on Friday, I was offered my first tenure track job. This morning, I accepted. It's at Gordon College, a school that's like Wheaton in most of the good ways, and unlike Wheaton in many of the bad ways. (As I was talking to the dean about the Gramm situation at Wheaton, her first response was, can we hire him?) Several core faculty are retiring in the next couple of years, so the department is transitioning from older to much younger--there'll be ample opportunity to teach literary theory and other classes of interest. The hardest part will be starting to think of myself as a professor, and not just a graduate student. So that's the short version.

Since I'll be working 5 minutes from Dave's house, chances are good that the T6 ECLAD (hmmm... what did that stand for? Experiment in Communal Living and Discipleship... that sounds like it might be right. At least I hit all the letters.) will be in Boston. Coye can work at Harvard (or Boston College, in a pinch), and the rest of you can find work doing the things that you do. So, that's the new plan. Feel free to join us (it's way better than LA, or so I've been told).

Progeny-less Update (Life in Austin)

It's been awhile since we've had a personal update that didn't involve offspring. Here goes.

I am currently (this week) finishing up my last semester of course work. Beginning this summer, I will be working full-time on developing my prospectus and composing that magical document, the dissertation. I may have more to say about this later, but, for now, in short, I will be writing about the troubled relationships between seemingly mimetic works of art and "unrepresentable" historical violence (World War, Holocaust, the Bomb, the WTC attacks).

I spent the last four days at the 2008 International Narrative Conference. I have been working off and on for about a year as conference staff, and I chaired a couple of panels over the weekend (and attended what seems like hundreds). I heard some great panels, met some academic heros (and got a couple of business cards), but what was most impressive was seeing the "invisible acadamy" made at least temporarily visible. It made the direction of my life seem less obscure and evanescent.

I continue to teach, and am looking forward to teaching a course of my own creation in the fall. It will be, perhaps unsurprisingly, a course on violence.

I've been watching a lot of Top Chef on Bravo (my one televised guilty pleasure) and cooking quasi-elaborate meals whenever time and budget allow (and sometimes when they don't). My exercise regimine has slacked off, but I'm hoping to change that with the return of Friday basketball over the summer. Hopefully I can get back to regular running as well (I can feel my legs crying out for a good run even as I type).

The life-long pursuit of good coffee and good beer continues, as does a very rewarding playing at domestic bliss. The heat and humidity of an Austin summer are beginning to creep into the background of the everyday, and I'm trying (not terribly sucessfully) to ignore the democratic primary. I'm still at the same parish, doing the same sorts of parish-y things.

Alright. Back to writing about Civil War photography. Be well, my friends.

Andrewisms

For your reading pleasure: a few smatterings of Andrew's latest:

"Look! A brush tooth!" (Translation: Look! A toothbrush)
"I am a man with a tree on my head" (Indeed, he had a plastic tree on his head)
"Look! A man!" (A bit awkward, since the person is usually standing within earshot).
"Look! A girdle!" ("Look, a girl")
"I'll have a Little Mac!" (Yelled up toward the front of the car after Dad ordered a Big Mac).
"Three minutes, OK? Say sure!" (His typical stall tactic)

I'm sure these are more funny to me than to you...