The Badness of King George

      Laudator Temporis Acti has reminded me of this delightful piece by the legendary American cynic and intellectual shit-disturber, H.L. Mencken, in which Mencken kindly translates the Declaration of Independence into then-idiomatic American.   For those of you unfamiliar with Mencken (he was grandly redrawn as E.K. Hornbeck in the classic play Inherit The Wind), I recommend perusing some of the materials available here from the University of Maryland library.

      It's one of those rare shames of being Canadian, that few of us north of the border are even at all familiar with him.   He's much more commonly known in the States, but for some reason he hasn't been held to Canuckistani breasts in the same way that other Yanks have been.   He can be penetratingly insightful-- and sometimes unnecessarily vicious.   More than anyone else in literary history, I can easily imagine him echoing, with righteous indignation, Pooh-Bah's famous assertion from The Mikado: "I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something in-conceivable. I cant help it. I was born sneering."   "Sneering," though, would probably have been putting too fine a point on it for Mencken.

One Thing To Gruel Them All

      The Chronicle published online this delightful-- and alarmingly fitting-- piece comparing the curse of dealing with a dissertation with-- wait for it-- The Lord of the Rings.    For the record, my own experience in same situation had only one other member of a fellowship (a white-bearded Gandalf, naturally), and I think that in the end I turned into Gollum.   Either that or I got lanced by the Ringwraiths and subsequently dropped the blasted ring along the way.   *shrug*  

      Because The Chonicle will probably make the article inaccessible in a few days, you can read the text of the article by clicking on this pretty little link right here.

Frodo Baggins, A.B.D.

by Susie J. Lee

When I was A.B.D., I tried to motivate myself to write my dissertation by setting deadlines that corresponded with the premieres of Peter Jackson's cinematic interpretation of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic trilogy, The Lord of the Rings. My goal was to have a first full draft of the dissertation written by the time the third movie, The Return of the King, came out at the end of 2003, and to watch all three films back-to-back in Times Square in celebration of the achievement.

      I didn't exactly meet that deadline. But once I had finished my dissertation and successfully graduated, I watched all three movies again, this time on DVD, and was struck by how closely the story mirrors the experience of writing a dissertation.

      For those who have not read the books or seen the films, the significant parts of the story center around a long journey made by a hobbit named Frodo Baggins. He travels across a land called Middle-earth to throw a ring into the middle of a volcano called Mount Doom -- an action that, for doctoral students, is known as "filing the dissertation."

      Like many a dissertator, Frodo's terrible and treacherous mission has a dual nature. He cannot, and does not, accomplish the goal without the help of others, but ultimately, he must bear the great load alone.

      Frodo is accompanied on the journey by his hobbit friends Sam, Merry, and Pippin. Merry and Pippin are like fellow graduate students still doing their course work. Their carefree nature disappears along the journey, however, as they begin to recognize the impending doom of becoming All But Dissertation. By the end of the second movie, The Two Towers, Merry and Pippin have passed their comprehensive exams and gained a greater maturity, but it is not clear whether they will go on to the dissertation phase. Maybe they've decided that an academic career is not for them.

      Frodo, on the other hand, has made the decision that he wants to go all the way. His most important companion is Sam, who is the equivalent of Frodo's "partner."

      Sam is not a Ph.D. student, and more than anyone else, he has the terrible burden of being the one closest to the ring bearer. Sam's own fate is tied to that of the ring yet he is helpless to determine his future in a direct manner. He cannot make Frodo finish; he can only try to make it easier for Frodo to do so. He is the long-suffering hero whom every ring bearer thanks at the beginning or end of the acknowledgments of the dissertation -- the one about whom everyone writes "I couldn't have done it without you."

      On their way to file the dissertation, Sam and Frodo separate one time. The separation is the result of a deception spun by a fallen soul named Gollum -- aka, the doctoral candidate who will never finish.

      Gollum lived with the ring for many years and it destroyed his life, mind, and well-being. Gollum is the living image of what Frodo will become if Frodo cannot complete his task. Frodo in fact pities Gollum, while Sam can only feel disgust and distrust for the miserable creature.

      If the ring is to be destroyed -- and the dissertation finished -- new alliances must be formed. Without that fellowship, Frodo's quest is doomed. But a partner alone cannot provide enough support for the difficult mission.

      For example, he is stabbed three times during the course of his journey by disgusting and horrible creatures. He is hounded by terrifying beings called the Ringwraiths. Those attacks are the equivalent of the dissertator's endless financial struggles. Each loss of funds prevents him from paying enormous photocopying costs, expenses for travel to archives, bills for books and supplies, health insurance, and campus fees. They take a toll on his morale and his health and increase his stress and exhaustion.

      One of Frodo's key supporters who tries to protect him from those problems is a wizard named Gandalf, who, for our purposes, represents Frodo's dissertation committee, usually made up of three people.

      Gandalf is instrumental in running interference for Frodo and making sure that he can complete his mission. He writes recommendations for grants and letters of introduction to libraries. He critiques drafts, locates possible sources of money, and feeds his student whenever possible. Most important, he offers intellectual guidance and moral support. Gandalf has his own challenges, however. In the Mines of Moria, he faces down a horrifying demon called the Balrog -- meaning he must also teach, research, publish, and serve on committees.

      Frodo's "fellowship" also includes family, friends, dissertation groups, fellow doctoral students, professors, undergraduates, and archival and administrative staff members. They provide counsel, writing deadlines, good company, book references, housing, theoretical critiques, and other key assistance. There are even filmmakers like Peter Jackson who provide incentives around which dissertation deadlines can be set.

      Yet while all that support is critical, the mission of the ring is still Frodo's alone. Even with help, can he achieve his goal?

      The drama of filing the dissertation is heightened at the end of the process, in those last months of writing, editing, and formatting. A critical scene in The Return of the King highlights the deep emotional struggle between Frodo and his alter ego, Gollum.

      Frodo and Sam have finally arrived at Mount Doom, which means that Frodo finally has the full draft. But he looks terrible; he has been defeated emotionally and spiritually by the burden of carrying the ring. He has reached the end of his long journey, but will he file?

      At the volcano, Sam yells to Frodo to throw in the ring. But by this time, the strain and burden of carrying the ring for so long has damaged Frodo's mind; he doesn't want to let go. He looks at Sam with a crazed look and says, "The ring is mine!" which, translated, means that he can't or won't finish; he has more research to do, more editing; the dissertation is just not good enough; he must reformat the page numbers.

      He has taken the step toward becoming Gollum. He will remain A.B.D. forever. Sam cries pitifully. His life is ruined, too.

      All of a sudden, Gollum appears and wrestles Frodo to the ground. They struggle for the ring and Gollum bites off Frodo's finger. Gollum has unwittingly forced Frodo to rise up and save himself from himself. As they struggle, they fall from the ledge, and the ring falls into the molten lava (along with Gollum). The deed is finally done. The dissertation is filed.

      But Frodo has completed his mission unwillingly. The year of carrying the ring has damaged him and taken the joy from his life. He has completed his quest, but he's not happy. Can he recover?

      Several years later, Frodo is back in his comfortable home in the Shire and has completed the book manuscript for the story of his journey, called The Lord of the Rings. But he confesses to Sam that he is still not at peace. He leaves the Shire on a big boat to find peace and be with his mentor, Gandalf, and other associate and full professors in a faraway land called tenure.

      Having shared my Frodo allegory with my dissertation group and my fellow graduate students, we've started to refer to the dissertation as the "ring." When we share stories about writing 12 hours a day for months on end with little human contact, or about feeling angry with people who have the time to eat in nice restaurants and go to the movies, we say, "That's the power of the ring."

      The moral of the story, because there is always a moral to these kinds of stories, is to take care of your health and appreciate those around you. Unlike Frodo, we all have the job market to go through, too.

She's A Neodematerial Girl

      Now and then, some people ask me why I don't read more contemporary scholarship, and why I wear my disdain for it with a medalist's pride.    Rather, though, than explain oh so laboriously, and surely repetitively, let me simply direct you to this, The Postmodernism Generator, which produces mini-articles that are astonishingly close to so much of the vapidity that passes these days as scholarship.   One of the generations, which you can read here, yielded these brain-paining paragraphs:

"Society is fundamentally a legal fiction," says Baudrillard. The masculine/feminine distinction intrinsic to Madonna's Material Girl emerges again in Erotica, although in a more self-falsifying sense. Therefore, the characteristic theme of Hubbard's [1] critique of conceptualist socialism is not dematerialism, but neodematerialism.

In the works of Madonna, a predominant concept is the concept of capitalist narrativity. In Material Girl, Madonna analyses Debordist situation; in Erotica, although, she examines conceptualist socialism. Thus, Lyotard suggests the use of Debordist situation to attack and modify class.

How eerily close this nonsense is to half the pieces in any edition of the PMLA these days.   The postmodern solution to everything seems to be to make use of as many ironizing prefixes and jargonistic collisions as humanly possible.   I probably shouldn't use the word "humanly" there, though.   I'd probably be dismissed as a soppy, ignorant humanist for doing so.

Finally, A Website With Practical Applications....

      At long last, my life is made sooooo much easier.   (Figures it would be Canadian, does it not?)  

      Possibly NSFW due to naughty, naughty language.

"Something To Do"

      Alas, these poor kids will be probably end up being described as The Diverty Dozen....

      Also from the notoriously unreliable Ananova comes this article, which, if there's any truth to it at all, should prove more disturbing than all of the Hammer horror films combined.   What was that about things older and harder than Bob Dole again?  

"Give Me Your Tool," To Him I Said

      Twenty centimeters, eh?    Hmmm....

         Favourite quote: "It's highly polished."   No comment.   Except perhaps that it's strangely assuring to know that there's something out there older and harder than Bob Dole.

The Hans-On Approach

      Because we Canadians are just power-hungy, land-grabbing ice fiends....

      Now we know why Paul Martin was so desperate to become Prime Minister.   He wants this to be the penal colony for his more pooh-pooh-lar predecessor.

From The "Oh, Get The Fuck Over It" File...

      ... comes this article which seems to testify to the pricklish philistinism discussed briefly here on Saturday.   Some things are just too ludicrous to believe.

      In other film news, the CBC has an intriguing account of what may well prove to be Ingmar Bergman's final film, Saraband.   Gee, and it stars Liv Ullmann.   Who would possibly have predicted that?  

      (Key quote: "It's less Bill O'Reilly, more Kierkegaard."   Mercy be for that.   I think.)

Winnie The Who?

      Last week, the NYT had a piece on the actress Danica McKellar that somehow I missed until now.   I remember-- or, about as much as I remember anything anymore-- the crush I used to have on her years and years ago, when she was on The Wonder Years, a show I used to find unbearably schmaltzy, but which I watched mainly for her.   In adulthood, though, the only impression she really made was in her guest stints on The West Wing, her adorable quirkiness put to good use as the sister of Joshua Malina. (And further proof, for me, anyway, that the Aaron Sorkin days of The West Wing were truly a Golden Age of writing for women, because Sorkin knew how to make his women both smart and sexy, the latter more a result of the former than the other way around.)   Turns out, though, that Ms McKellar had made a kind of name for herself in the world of mathematics, which for some reason surprises and impresses me, perhaps because it allays my concern that most of the people we see on our screens are little more than empty-headed personae.   Reminds me, for example, that Carroll O'Connor, aka Archie Bunker, had a Master's in English, and that Kris Kristofferson (!) has a Ph.D. in same.   (O'Connor, however, could act; Kristofferson couldn't.)   It's also surprising, I guess, because so many of those "Where Are They Now?" cases tend to prove pitiable rather than admirable. Key quote from the NYT piece: "I love continuous functions and proving if functions are continuous or not."   Cute, very cute.

      POST-SCRIPT: Yes, that picture I included seems ot show her as having primate arms.   Those more lecherous among you (er, us), may want to check out the pics from the current Stuff magazine.    Consider this update a performance of this blog's continuous functions.

Too Long In Exile

      As I've mentioned here before, it seems one of my lots in life to lend out material that I'm bound never to see ever again.   I can't even begin to count how many books, videos, CDs and such I've lost in such fashion over the years, and some of them have been genuinely missed.   Years ago teaching for RK, I allowed several of my students to borrow the Branagh Hamlet, only to have it vanish into the vortex that is undergraduate self-absorption.   Then there's the quartet of CDs I leant to a former friend and bartender, a four-poofer in the world of this sort of vanishing.    And so and so forth, to the point I regularly end up thinking, "Gee, I haven't listened to xxxx CD in a while," and so I go hunting for it in my collection, only to remember that it has gone into the great wide open.   This happened as recently as yesterday, when I decided to drag out my tattered old copy of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, partially because I was reminded of the play's anniversary last week. Great, I thought, another hole in my already bleeding library.   Add that to the list of stuff I have to buy again.   Insert overly regular grumbling here.

      This morning, however, while sorting through my hard drive, I discovered quite to my surprise an old MP3 file (probably from Napster, or other such place) of Van Morrison's "Ball and Chain." The song is from 1993's otherwise lacklustre album Too Long In Exile, the few other highlights of which include another rendition of Yeats ("Before the World Was Made"), a cover of the Doc Pomus/Ray Charles standard "Lonely Avenue," and a riveting turn on Bobby Bland's "I'll Take Care of You."   (I should also mention Van's version of Sonny Boy Williamson's classic of perversion, "Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl," which seems elevate lecherous growling to a kind of minor art form.)   Exile, as you have probably determined, is also one of those lost discs, so finding the file today was an unexpected delight.   There is, after all, precious little better than discovering an old favourite: there's a refreshing familiarity that underscores one's capacity to perceive things anew, and the result is serendipitous. (Serendipity, I'm reminded, is looking for a needle in a haystack and finding the farmer's daughter.)   Through the unknown, half-remembered gate, as Mr. Eliot would say.

      "Ball and Chain" is one of those overlooked songs, and sadly it's a song that never made a mark on the charts and which Morrison himself never performs in concert.   It has, however, a neat little groove, simple but jaunty, and it harkens back to days of apparently easy (as in "with ease," not as in "without difficulty") melodic arrangements.   And for a love song, it's also wonderfully tongue-in-cheek, which happily tonics some of the overly-earnest pretensions-- to say nothing of the mushiness-- of so many other songs of its ilk.    There is, contradictory as it may seem, a whimsical stateliness to it, as the main rhythmical shuffle is decorated by guitar, piano and sax complements that seem almost like little musical pirouettes. There's a quaint pastorality about it, too, that reminds me how well Morrison does with the genre, particularly in terms of classics like "Caravan" and "Tupelo Honey."   This is a song for Sunday morning strolls, when the pace is unhurried and the air crisp and clean.   Shame it is that I haven't heard this song in so long, and more so that few others beyond pure Vanatics have ever heard it.   I recommend giving it a listen so you can judge for yourself.   (It's a 5MB file, for those of you, like me, cursed to be stuck on dialup.)   But for this chap, it's a joyful reminder of a type of music that so seldom seems to be made these days.   I know, I know, I'm too old-fashioned by half, as if any of you reading this didn't already know that....

The Mouse That Roared

      Er, well, evidently not:



      And Jenny, of course, is mouth wide-open. Surprise, surprise.    (Human in pic, for those of you asentient enough not to surmise this already, is NOT me, but my maternal unit.)

Irresponsible Plasticity

      Howard Jacobson has a terrific piece in today's Guardian that this blog would consider essential reading for those that purport to study literature.   In addition to a dynamite concluding paragraph, which in many ways echoes ideas I've expressed on this blog and in discussions in and out of the classroom, I'd like to call attention to this paragraph:

The other proof of our philistinism is our politicising of literature. I am not thinking only of the hijacking of book programmes and literary festivals by the current-affairs mob, I also mean the excitement generated by the idea that a novel, or indeed a clutch of novels, has, say, 9/11 as its subject matter. There is, of course, no reason why it shouldn't. But there is equally no reason why it should.

Philistinism: what a perfect assessment, not just of literature itself in this day and age, but also by the leading critics and discussants of it.   I can just imagine so many of my onetime colleagues but-but-butting their way to defending their philistinism.

Blowin' In The Wind

      For those of you interested, this article just wants your extra time and your (chigga chigga chigga chigga chig) kiss.    Mwah!   

      (And strangely enough, there isn't even a single paragraph devoted to inappropriate lip-locking in public drinking establishments.    Tsk, tsk, tsk....)

      It's worth adding that were I teaching Shakespeare or some other pre-modern subject, I'd be inclined to reproduce this article for my students just to dispel some students of the tendency to read all kisses and references to kissing as always-already erotic.    It might help to untangle some of the silliness one so often confronts in teaching, say, Twelfth Night or The Merchant of Venice.    And definitely the outright stupidity that sometimes comes from those reading Alyosha's tale of the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov.    Gawd save me from the erotomaniacal criticism that seems to have been born of Iago's leering and Puck's mischief-making.

On Buster's Cookiedusters

      Dave Barry's blog provided me the link to these horrible haikus on-- of all subjects-- the neutering of Man's more rarely-unleashed Best Friend.   As you might well have predicted, this (pardon the phrase) threw this Old Dog a bone, to dig up these lines in his own effort.   This blog dares-- dares, double-dares, TRIPLE-DOG DARES!-- all of you to see if you can jump the hump and, er, come up with your own.    Added challenge: borrow from a famous writer, though we expect here at Doctor J's that Virginia Wo(o/l)f is most surely not a good idea in this regard.

Howl by Maulin' Ginsburg
I saw the best parts Of my miscegenation Carved off, eunuchal, Slakèd, dragged themselves Through the begroined streets At dawn, taken for		Angry fucks, beagle-whetted Connipsters, yearning for an Unctious, skanky scent, Cravenly c'nncted To those furry dynamos, Chien-eries of night....

Call Me Up In Dreamland

      For those few of you reading this blog that may actually care, a recent interview with Van The Man sent a chill down my spine with these paragraphs:

"I'm never really making one record. I decide what to put out from a pool of a lot of tracks."

At the deep end of that pool are long-dormant recordings Morrison hopes to compile into a series called The Unreleased Masters.

"It's an ongoing project that I work on when I get the time," he says. "It's too early to say, but we might get one out in October, some stuff from the early '70s. A lot of the stuff I've forgotten about. I actually don't remember doing it because there was a lot happening and these weren't the mainline records that came out. So it's very exciting for me. It's fresh and new because I haven't heard it in so long."

Most of us that are fans of The Man were thrilled with the release of the double-disc The Philosopher's Stone several years ago, with all its wonderful recovered material.   One shudders to imagine how much material remains unperformed or unreleased, especially given how much has, in fact, seen the light of day over the past two decades in one form or another.   These promised Unreleased Masters could prove to be astonishing in the same ways that TPS and Dylan's The Basement Tapes were, so for once this blog has occasion to be genuinely excited.   Further, one stops to fathom how much material might remain, given Morrison's already impressive canon of almost forty albums in forty years.   Remember the days when artists were prolific rather than marketing constructs?    This series could be staggering reminder at the very least.

      BTW: There are also many whisperings and hints of a similar set of unreleased songs by Ray Charles, but given the difficulties of locating and archiving such material could prove more wishful thinking than tangible possibility.   One haws to imagine, however, if twenty years down the road anyone will bother to look for-- let alone care about-- Britney: The Lost Tapes.    Methinks not.

But You Got Away, Didn't You Babe?

         I remember you well
         And the Chelsea wholesale,
         You were talkin' so brave and so sweet,
         Offering 20 beef head and a well-made bed,
         While the special agents wait in the streets....

      (Forgive me, Leonard.   But, tell me, how could I resist?)

And Did Those Feet...

      ...in ancient time?    (Imagine the irony if the perpetrator turned out to be named Blake?)

      And for those of you that are wondering:   Yes, I do have a very odd way of looking at things.   Sue me.

BLURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

      Leave it to our wacky-- and increasingly ridiculous-- neighbours to the south to gerrymander Time.    Weialala leia, wallala leialala....

Ecce Homo (and Ecce Nympho?)

      Sometimes, one really doesn't have to say a blasted thing....

      Same goes, by the way, for this, which really should have received a grammatical once-over by someone with more than a second-grade knowledge of the English language.    Key quote: "Clearly there are a lot of Glorias out there, so men beware."    Indeed.    (Insert mock silence here.)

      ~~ And her name was G--- L--- O--- R--- I--- AAAAAAAA.... ~~

Disquiet Riot

      Gee, he says, plucking on the strands of his beard more than a bit facetiously, I have received a notice from my union explaining how they are fighting for my rights.    Hmmmmm.... What a wonderful reminder this is of deadpan comedy.   

      Further, from the same notice: "YOUR BARGAINING TEAM NEEDS YOU!    What you can do..."    Please, please, I can't stop not laughing....