Paper Fruit

Last week I saw this over at Fantasy Magazine:

We are looking for readers interested in dedicating 5-10 hours a month to reading Fantasy Magazine slush. We will be glad to train you in considerations of online publishing and editing. Position is unpaid but we would be glad to write letters of recommendation or whatever’s needed for internship status and buy you drinks at conventions.

So I applied. Why not, right? I like drinks, I’m going to World Fantasy Con, and I’m pretty awesome at quickly reading a high volume of stuff carefully and critically after three years of grad school at FSU, right?

So today I woke up to find a very exciting email in my inbox. The first line read:

Everyone: If you’ve gotten this email, then you’ve been accepted to slush for Fantasy Magazine. Congratulations!

What.

Yes! Seriously! I guess my seven semesters of heartlessly (and for the most part thanklessly) grading seemingly-endless piles of student papers has finally paid off! This is a better gig by far because instead of stacks of essays on Descartes or Antigone I get to read speculative fiction which, to be honest, applies much more directly to my sensibilities. Also as an experienced RPer I will be able to spot a transliterated Dungeons and Dragons campaign from, like, a mile away.

So awesome. I’m very enthusiastic about this, and feel very honored they are taking a chance on me.

I’ve been running a special here at Paper Fruit allowing the Teabaggers/Right Wingers to voice their own opinions without my commentary. For our third installment. . .

Again, any commentary I might have could only ever be a footnote to how the Teabaggers voluntarily represent themselves.

I could blog about a lot of things today. I could blog about my frustration with the rhetoric used by the radical right to polarize discussion in this nation. I could blog about Joe Wilson’s rudeness. I could blog about the fear-mongering and hysteria of said radical right. I could blog about how I’m still annoyed by the whole Barack Obama speech hullaballoo. But instead, I think I will sit back and let this group of people speak for themselves. Nothing I could write could be better or more telling than seeing their opinions, plainly stated in their own language. So I’m going to give them a platform to talk about themselves and their viewpoints. Lets see what they have to say:

Click on the slideshow icon on the right.

I gave some big ups to Josh at Herbivore the other day, regarding how awesome he and his wife Michelle are and all the positive things they do for veganism and for animals. I am always struck by their commitment to the movement, it is very humbling and inspiring at the same time. But today I want to maybe darken up that sunshine with a cloud for a little while in order to make it seem all the brighter once that cloud has, uh, evaporated, or whatever happens to clouds when they go away.

A few years ago Josh was pretty viciously screwed out of thousands of dollars and many, many hours of work by a money-hungry cookbook author who I will not name here.* This person found another publisher (but far worse designer, given the cover of her book– ah, schadenfreude) and so good for her! She lost nothing and gained everything at the expense of people who work every day to make the world a better place. Fantastic!

But here’s the thing– because of her very selfish actions and profound misunderstanding of the way the publishing industry works, Josh had to eat all of the costs of the layouts and the cost of pulling out of the printing contract at the last minute, and additionally he had to foot the bill for all the promotional costs (he had printed up really cute flyers and had been giving them out at vegan/vegetarian festivals around the country before all this). Because Josh is ethical and does the right thing he also promptly refunded all the pre-orders for the book, and that’s kind of a big thing for a small business owner. So that’s why I’m encouraging everyone to buy something from Joshivore on September 16th, the date of the “official” release of this other cookbook.

What’s done is done. I just think it would be great for people who care about independent publishers, small business ethics, and punk rock trust to support Herbivore Clothing Company. I will most likely be buying a t-shirt because I am frivolous and there is a new one with a little girl and butterflies on it. YES!

If you know a vegan or vegetarian do your holiday shopping early! Buy a birthday present! It will be awesome.

*If you care about not purchasing a cookbook written by an unethical, un-nice person who doesn’t deserve your dollars then message me and I will tell you the title so she doesn’t get anything else free, not publicity or advertising or anything.

Penelope has been sick. I guess she’s been sick for a while and I didn’t realize. She’s lost two pounds in about a month and isn’t eating well. Her liver enzymes are elevated and the vet doesn’t know why so Tuesday we are going to get her an ultrasound to see if we can determine what is up on her insides.

Today was better. She ate nearly a whole can of tuna and drank a lot of the tuna-water after a few days of only nibbling at her proper cat food, so good for her! Her eyes are brighter.

We are taking it one day at a time. I love her very much and so I am worried, but hopefully things will get better for her. I think the tunafish stimulated her appetite– she used to love drinking the tuna water when I used to eat fish, and she went the hungry cat equivalent of blood simple when she smelled it.

Poor Pod. She’s so grand.

I have apparently lost my beloved, much written-in copy of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It was only a paperback, with the cheesiest cover (pre-Raphaelites FTW), but it had three semesters worth of notes that I used to teach with at FSU, as well as personal commentary on some of my favorite sections. I used that copy to research for my previous project as well as my current one, and I am pretty unhappy. I have another translation for quick reference, but I don’t like it as much. Humphries is such a vivid, gentle translator. He gives back Ovid’s humor without sounding brash or cheeky or overly modern, and is poet enough to capture Ovid’s pathos without sounding maudlin or overly melodramatic. Here’s hoping it turns up.

Read Humphries here, as I am doing (until the old copy shows up or I break down and buy a new one).

Today I got all excited because I thought I found the perfect bike. . . and I tried it out and everything but then in real riding conditions it turns out I hate the shifting system more than just about anything. It’s all crazy and weird and the shifting is really violent on the. . .uh. . . front shifters or something? Boo. But the shop said they’d take it back and so tomorrow I am doing just that. I am maybe a little heartbroken, but that’s OK. My bike is fine, just kind of slow, and I will wait until the right bike comes along for me. Boo.

UPDATE:

Well, my Tallahassee dawgg Trevor who knows bikes like woah called me back and talked to me about the bike for about 40 minutes, and reassured me that some of the difficulties I was having were purely learning-curve related, and that he thought the model I bought was actually really awesome for the kind of riding I want to do around Boulder. So I went in this morning and talked to the dudes over at Full Cycle and they helped me out a lot in terms of understanding why my bike acts like it does, and said the gears and stuff (professional bike terminology) were working fine. So I’m keeping it, and I’m pretty pleased now that I’m getting more used to it. The wrist shifters aren’t so bad, and the dude at the bike shop showed me how they’re actually really cool because I can custom-adjust them for different riding conditions. Also, if I end up hating it, I can apparently replace the click shift with some other kind, but I don’t think I’ll need to. It’s really so, so pretty, and it’s only going to get better since I’m modding it with some really silly sweet-looking silver fenders as soon as they come in. I already put a seat-leash on it, and so when my new messenger bag arrives from Timbuk2 and my back stops hurting all the fucking time from my ginormous stupid backpack I’ll be really riding in style.

I am feeling really weird and uncomfortable today. Since our new apartments are so much smaller, we are giving away a ton of our furniture, all of which I really liked. And our washing machine and dryer. I know this is a good thing, but I feel a little bit like I’m being forced into a weird new shape without really being ready or OK with it. We are keeping lots of nice things, like our tea chest, and the coffee table my parents mosaic-ed back in the 1970s, and the dresser I bought with one of my first paychecks from my first real job. . . but I just watched our nice TV stand, our coffee table, an end table the cats loved, and some other things drive away. John and I built that household aesthetic together, and. . . I dunno. That is definitely done now. None of the stuff we’re getting rid of are antiques but I liked them, and so I feel a little strange. I know they will be loved in their new homes, and that is good, but the part of me that likes stability and comfort and being around the same stuff is confused and feeling really unhappy right now. OK, I’m done whining now.

I am going to take a few minutes to be frustrated about something.

I really don’t understand what the heck is up with people trying to tell me it’s a bad idea to leave grad school, causing me to have to endlessly justify my decision over and over and over again and making me feel increasingly vexed about my choice. I don’t see really what the difference is between grad school and any other job– you work, you get paid (kind of), you deal with co-workers. In fact, grad school, and academia, to those who aren’t in love with the culture, is even more of a hassle than other jobs. Just like anything, it is fun for people who love it and annoying and terrible for people who wish they were doing something else. And for me, grad school has been interfering with my other goals and aspirations, and I don’t desire to work in an academic department. Or deal with writing papers. Or deal with department politics. So what is so terrible about leaving? I can go back if I want to. When I got my Bachelor’s degree I graduated with one of the top five GPAs in my entire graduating class. My GPA for my Master’s is a 4.0, and though I haven’t gotten my grades from this summer I assume I’ll have around that for my year of Ph.D work. I have fantastic teaching evaluations, professors who would write me letters of recommendation. I’m not leaving with my tail between my legs, failing my classes and skulking away because I can’t teach. I’m leaving because I want to leave grad school, I’m not enjoying it and I want to do something else for a while. My “family of choice” thinks it’s a good idea, as does one of the biggest deal professors at FSU, an awesome person who has guided me with the combined skills of a mentor, a father, a professor, an advisor, and a friend, thinks that my decision to try something else for a while or maybe forever is an awesome idea. I have another friend/professor who thinks I am following a “calling” by leaving and maybe that’s the case. It certainly feels right to leave. Why can’t everyone else just see that?

There is some sort of weird stigma with quitting school, as if choosing to leave an expensive, high-stress environment with uncertain payback, that I don’t enjoy, and don’t want to do for a living, is crazy and must mean I have some sort of psychological issue or some other tragedy. As if I am failing as a person because I am leaving. Any job has opportunities, but most people who quit a job because they feel unfulfilled aren’t met with “but you might have been promoted!” or “But you might have gotten a raise!” or whatever. Usually people who quit a job are met with “Congrats, awesome! Such great opportunities await you!” But with quitting school you get the concerned brow-furrow and the personal questions. “Is everything OK?” “Are you sure you want to do that? You’ll lose so much work!” “Why just give up now?” Let’s take stock of things for a moment: I have one year, and not even a complete year, of Ph.D work. I have a Master’s degree, which of course in this day and age is the consolation prize of degrees, chump change instead of a respectable effort. I dislike the elements of academia that are unfortunately its defining characteristics in this day and age. So where exactly is the tragedy?

And so I have to go through the whole rigamarole over and over again: I’m too mentally exhausted at the end of most academic days to write, and I want to take a few years to try my hand at the writing thing. As a grad student I never have time for other things I love in the world, like painting, cooking, writing, knitting, whatever. I have to do those things on breaks instead of frequently. I want my evenings and weekends to myself again. I don’t enjoy writing papers. The fields I work in are currently dominated by academic trends I find unproductive, disingenuous if not (occasionally) downright despicable, and uninteresting. 

Grad school was an awesome experience for me. I can parse academic writing. I have boss research skills. I can read (to some degree) ancient Greek. And I am going to use those skills, hopefully, to write. I know it is an insane crazy dream and I will most likely fail at it, but I don’t want to look back at my life one day and say “I really wish I had taken the time to try the whole writing thing. I had an opportunity and I squandered it.” So that’s what I’m doing. I feel fine in this decision, except when I have to endlessly justify it to everyone I’ve ever met. So everyone just leave me alone!