Posted a few things from my Facebook notes.

Spent four solid hours on the phone with Verizon this morning. The short short versi0n of my narrative post is run run run away.

Feeling morose and tired. Facebook is having a dark night of the server. Daughter having attack of nerves re medical issues.

(PSA: Please, never put people on your insurance policy without consulting them. The remark makes itself.)

I am going to enjoy the bathroom etiquette site ===> in my links, play something fluffy, and go to bed. It has been generally a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Feh.

My list from one of those dumb Facebook things. This one was cool:

“This can be a quick one. Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag 15 friends, including me because I’m interested in seeing what books my friends choose.”

I annotated because I’m a geek, primarily for my own benefit. You don’t hafta. Hell, you don’t hafta take the quiz.

1. Stranger in a Strange Land–Robert Heinlein
“Thou art God.” Immanence. Hmm. “Drop your boundaries and let your so-called water brothers walk all over you.” Hmm. “Sex is pretty much essential to any meaningful relationship, or enjoyable relationship, or lack of relationship.” Um, does my personal individual opinion of what I feel like doing with my body get any say? I’m wrong and I should do it anyway if I’m evolved? Hmmmm.

2. Illuminatus! trilogy– Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson
The world is not what you think it is. (Useful.) Weirdness is in itself a cultural imperative: No matter what, if it’s weird, it’s cool. If you’re weird, you’re cool. Oh, and by the way, drugs are really cool. (Not as useful.)

3. There is nothing wrong with you–Cheri Huber
The title says it all.

4. Narnia Series –C.S. Lewis
You can get enormously wonderful things from believing in the cheerful irrationality of a theistic cosmos if it floats your boat; and, if you don’t proselytize about it, feeling secretly smug toward atheists who do proselytize is an Easter egg. (Easter egg. Get it?)

5. Sister Carrie–Theodore Dreiser
I knew every bit of what Hurstwood was going through even before I went through it myself. Now I’m going for the Carrie part.

6. Lolita–Vladimir Nabokov.
Go look up “unreliable narrator.” Then come back. I’ll be here.

7. Nine Princes in Amber–Roger Zelazny
I just took enormously to Corwin at the git-go. One of the books holding a topography of a huge piece of my inner space. Don’t know why.

8. Little Women–Louisa May Alcott
A real family. The fantasy aspect of the different world of Civil War New England. Positive female characters. I needed this book.

9. Moby Dick–Herman Melville
“God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught — nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh,Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!”

Go magnetize yer own harpoons. Arr!

OK, not for everybody, but it’s my favorite book.

10. Jonathan Livingston Seagull–Richard Bach
Well, *have* you ever seen an imperfect sky? Have you? Book on this list I most wish I could disown, but . . . Doh! Stupid seagull!

11. A Wrinkle in Time–Madeleine L’Engle
Being a nerd kid is cool. (In case you don’t know, it’s only the first book about the Murrys, and the one about the twins is possibly my favorite.)

12. The Phantom Tollbooth–Norton Juster
I got up my nerve and approached him after a talk. I confessed that PT had such a profound influence on the way I thought about learning, that I was about to graduate from Harvard with my PhD. I thanked him.

YES. I actually got to personally thank him. What made it infinitely even more awesome was that he got just a teeny-tiny bit damp around the eyes.

13. The Faerie Queene–Edmund Spenser
What a long strange trip it’s been. The reason I went to grad school in English.

14. The Tempest–William Shakespeare
The three-line literature course:

III,ii CALIBAN: I am subject to a tyrant, a
sorcerer, that by his cunning hath cheated me of the island.

V.,i. MIRANDA: . . . O brave new world,
That has such people in’t!

PROSPERO: ‘Tis new to thee.

15. Xenogenesis trilogy–Octavia E. Butler
I wrote my &^%^$%^& dissertation on it. “Stay with me.” Heh.

(Re-posted from Facebook, original date 6/26/09)

Michael Jackson was very complicated.

English geeks have something called semiotics, a sort of science about meaning, which we take for granted now, because it’s like Newtonian physics: Yeah, so what? (Now.) Anyway, there’s this whole thing about how we need figures upon which we project ourselves, so as to keep from owning our shit.

Our academy peeps have often said that this is a BIG piece–if not the only piece–of racism. If Michael had been white, he would have been viewed very differently.

Think about Stalking Cat. Cool. Bizarre. Psycho. Whatever. The creative Mr. Avner has gone out and DONE IT. Yet, his transformation is simply himself–and doesn’t claim to be otherwise–in fact, it’s a spiritual thing.

It’s a lot more OK for America to deal with a man turning into a cat, than for a black man turning into . . . something else. And we all know the disturbing something else was .. .

How dare he?

I heard once that he started on his path because the boys’ father had abused him horribly, and that every morning he looked in the mirror and saw his perp’s face. If you don’t know how that feels, don’t judge. Because I do, and if I’d had the resources, I’d have tweaked some stuff too.

Of course the man was really fucked up. Abuse. Horrible stress being pimped out nationally as a little boy. Having a terrifying amount of talent. Money money money money. And he wasn’t “authentic,” which is englishgeek for “not black enough.” (How dare he?)

Thing is, lots and lots of people do dumb things with their babies; they just don’t get caught at it. (If I’d been famous the day my two-year-old was spotted walking on the two inch ledge OUTSIDE the balcony bars . . . luckily, he himself has a dancer’s balance.) Thing is, lots of people have an appalling lack of boundaries with kids (to say the very least), and not a single one of those MANY priests scurrying out of the woodwork got the press Michael did. Thing is, yup, he was crazy–but Michael was so so so less crazy than he might have been, given his resources.

I think that perhaps the most disturbing thing about Michael was the talent. How dare he?

Art dies, but that’s the whole sucky phoenix gig. It’s its job.