Adjunct Lyfe: Floating Between Two Worlds, or Maybe Teaching Really Does Matter

Some days I can barely wrest myself from bed.

If it's a morning class. If it's a large class. If I'm behind on grading. Sometimes I really hate teaching.

My mood is perhaps the other influencer, but undoubtedly there are days when I dread standing up in front of the room. Their beady eyes half-closed (not half-open, I'm a pessimist) as they fail to respond to my overtures for class discussion. I crack the same tired jokes, and then move on to complain about how old my mattress is and consequently how much my back hurts. Some days that's the only reason I get out of bed.

Five years of being an adjunct could probably do this to anyone, but I comfort myself in saying that it is largely circumstantial. If I were paid a decent wage for my work, if I had actual benefits for the first time in my life, if I had more time to write...there's the kicker. Day after day I prop myself up in the front of the classroom to extol the virtues of personal writing and offer my time honored pearls of writerly wisdom and the truth is that I struggle to write on my own anymore.

My Twitter bio denotes I'm a "writer/blogger" but it might as well add a blood red bold "FORMER" before it. Because the truth is I rarely find time to write anymore. Between teaching, drinking, fits of depression, working another part time job and drinking I'm lucky to set aside time to write. My blog sits untouched for the better part of 6 months. I haven't completed a decent short story in over two years. And my freelance career reviewing music has all but dried up. Let's be honest here: the most substantial thing I've written recently is a tweet.

So I suppose I'm resigned to the teaching lifestyle in the way that many failed writers are. But then there are weeks like this one.

Weeks where I'm forced to reflect upon what it is I do and how it can influence people. And how they influence me. (It's like the Blind Side sort of...)

Earlier this week I learned a student of mine from just about a year ago had passed away. He was a shiny faced, well groomed young man cut down in what should have been the best of his years. I received the campus-wide email on Tuesday and then proceeded to track down what little tidbits I could online.

I paused for a moment and thought of him. Briefly I debated attending his visitation, then signed the online guest book as a consolation for the fact that I wouldn't be there...I remembered the conversations we had in class. How calm his demeanor seemed. How affable he was, even though I didn't at all agree with his opinion on Ferguson, MO. Passing him in the halls or on the campus sidewalks, we'd said hi to one another not 8 months ago. And yet, he was gone.

I barely knew him of course, but it was enough to shake me and ponder whether I'd made a difference. Do the students remember me the way I often remember them? Or do they quickly forget the discussions we had, the reflection assignments I forced them to do?

                                                                   .........................

A couple days later I noticed a flyer for a book sale in the student center. I checked the time and realized that it actually started today. Offhandedly, I told myself I would visit in the afternoon after class. It was a Sigma Tau Delta (International English Honor Society) fund raiser, and the name brought to mind my time as an undergrad and member of Sigma. Roaming the same halls I do now as an underpaid adjunct, I had my mind shaped and my pursuits influenced by some of the same faculty members still huddled in their cluttered and aging offices. I count one of the soon to retire English faculty as my mentor, and to her I owe much of my post-graduate career. When I try to end a sentence in a preposition, I still hear her voice in my head.

Class was filled with the same lack of attention on the students' part, and the same self deprecating humor on my part that everyday is. I read a paragraph aloud and then asked the students to tell me what the focus of the description was. Immediately I called on one student who said he forgot. Another who hadn't listened at all...Suddenly, I was taken back to the time my mentor had yelled at us all in British Lit. Clearly no one had read the entry from the text. She spun her wheels for a moment then grew angrier than I'd ever seen her and dismissed the class midway through. I realized if I approached my freshman this way we'd probably never have a full class period.

As class ended, I spoke with a few students individually. One student asked me for help editing a paper for one of her other classes. Once she had left, I remembered the book sale. After informally committing in my head I already felt obligated. I packed up my tattered textbook and headed outside. Up the same old crumbling cement stairs I'd traversed as a student. Noticing the "Caution: May Be Icy" sign flung to the side in the process, I realized how unseasonably warm of a February it had been and marched on.

My time was limited because I'd agreed to meet my mom for lunch at whatever chain restaurant she would decide on this time. Her general negativity and dietary restrictions aside, I looked forward to eating a decent and free lunch.

In the lobby of the student center, past the cafe I spotted two of my former students conversing in front of a long table covered in paper backs. Their spines pointed skyward for easy viewing, as if they actually wanted to be fondled and flipped through.

I greeted both of the students warmly but casually. In my head, I placed that they had been in the same morning class with me. He sat against the far wall, was ex-military and, if the uniform hadn't given it away, was also security on campus. He was a damn good writer, and in particular he had a story about PTSD that I told him he could probably have published somewhere. We would joke about Seinfeld in class. Sometimes I still repeat to myself his perception of Fitzgerald. "It's another story about rich WASPS" and then I laugh.

She was quieter but a great writer. At the time she had worked early morning hours at the airport before class. Her glasses were large but modern and stylish. A sleeker version of horn rimmed glasses for millenials perhaps. On several occasions, I had commented on her paper that she should consider being an English major although I wasn't quite sure what her major was. It was a rarity that I remembered distinctly. I had seen her on campus several times since and realized she was involved with English club and the school literary publication. She looked more professional and mature though, and I'll confess that a couple times I had passed her in the hall and not fully recognized her.

We chatted, the three of us back and forth. I could tell there was some reserve on their part, either because I had been their English professor or simply because they weren't sure if I would even remember them. I couldn't tell them how much I remembered of course, but later on I did tell them where they had sat in my classroom.

She was in fact working the table/event and returned to a secondary spot where the money box was being kept. The security officer slinked off in the same direction and I followed him to the other table. He was picking through novels and commenting on what he liked and didn't like. James Joyce was too wordy, but he liked Hemingway. I remembered his sense of humor, and grabbed a copy of Twilight and offered it to him. We laughed and then I noticed a book by one of our own faculty members. It was none other than my mentor herself.

I thought about my one and only proofreading credit for her scholarly collection on the work of the Brontes. She had dedicated it to me and one of my friends from college. "For those intrepid proofreaders..." it had said and mentioned us both by name.

I chatted with the young woman in charge of the sale again. She claimed that new editions of textbooks always added more female writers. As I picked through the virtually worthless and discarded old editions of English textbooks I considered her claim.

In my pocket I felt my phone buzz and knew it was my mother calling me away from my used book reverie. Attempting to make a casual exit, I walked over to where my former student was standing. She told me how busy she was working two jobs, and that she would graduate at the end of the semester. I should've congratulated her but instead thought about how much she looked like a young faculty member rather than a student. For a second I even confused myself into believing she was talking about teaching rather than attending classes. I chastised myself after I'd said my goodbyes and left, but planned on telling her next time I ran into her.

                                                             ......................

That night, I was still thinking about all three of my students as I sat at the kitchen table in front of my glowing laptop screen. Using my best internet skills, I'd spent some time researching the young man's passing. There was a newspaper piece about his brother winning a wrestling championship and dedicating it to him, but not much else. The death was listed simply as unexpected but no causes were mentioned. I thought about the irony of calling any death unexpected. They all were, even if you had a terminal disease. In my head I invented scenarios and thought about him. Somehow I decided on a car wreck or a truck flipping over somewhere in the sticks of Missouri. It was no more likely than anything else, but it satisfied my curiosity momentarily.

Afterwards, I moved on to the upcoming graduate. I remembered vaguely her mentioning a boyfriend in class, but not much else besides her previous job. The first thing I stumbled upon was a wedding registry and an entire site about the upcoming nuptials. They were to be married following the spring semester around the time of her graduation. On the wedding site was a list of places to visit for out of town patrons. Included was a book store I knew well and the art museum two blocks from my apartment in midtown.

I clicked through the google entries a bit and came upon her Wordpress site which contained a CV and some writing. In the background was a picture of her crouching amongst shelves of books in the basement of the bookstore mentioned in her wedding registry. (There was a picture of me virtually in the same pose floating around the internet somewhere, so I knew the spot well.) Within her blog I found a post about her transition to being an English major her freshman year and a mention of me and my class. She remembered each time I'd written on her papers, praising her work and suggesting she become an English major. Not only that, but it had actually influenced her initially nerve-wracking decision to switch from psychology.

Closing my laptop, I thought about the people who had told me the same thing along the way. And all the teachers and professors that had shepherded me through academia and into the throngs of adjuncts and struggling writers. Maybe it wasn't such a bad way to make a (meager) living after all.  

  

Smith's Crossing

Sometimes I wonder if this is how Elliott felt
when he plunged the knife into his heart
And lacerated every word he'd ever spoken,
every B7 chord he'd ever strummed
ringing out in broken unison.

Then I realize I'm being melodramatic
and I have no Chiba to weep over
my own self absorption and destruction;
There will be no lost-voice addendum
to my own life's works (Because we love you)
Or the disharmony of my own mind as I drown
in crushed autumn leaves
With the trash or the breeze,
please let me be carried away.

Some Girl I Went Out With

Some girl I went out with told me about a free concert tomorrow night,

We got drunk and then got stuck in the rain,

It wasn’t romantic.

She told me her parents were hip

And recommended restaurants to her,

All I could think of was my mom telling me to eat at Apple Bee’s

We had some bougie pizza and fancy salads

And just drank lukewarm water initially,

Midway through I remembered I was already having pizza for dinner.

I wanted to get drunk early in the day

So I asked her to go to the bar down the street,

Obligation and my desire to drink carried me over the brick sidewalks.

When we parted I wondered if we’d talk again,

There was no touching

But this may have been because there was a rash over half her body.

Ode to Dave Ramsey (and My Past)

Luminous memories of a fire inside,
keep me awake/up at night
and stagnant for days.

Conversations with old drunks
remind me I'm alive,
and that I owe no debt to southern aristocracy.

The Portentous Menacing Road of a New Decade: Turning Thirty in the 21st Century

The following was originally published in 2012 (in a slightly different form) as an editorial foreword to the online lit publication Hipster Fight! At the time, I served as the fiction editor and was on the eve of my 30th birthday:

           The Portentous Menacing Road of a New Decade: Turning Thirty in the 21^st Century

      As much as we try to avoid it, time pushes us on and our lives inevitably go through tumultuous periods of change and refashioning in the same way that art movements tend to do. No, I’m not writing a bathetic “Sympathy” card for Hallmark or openly trying to ape F. Scott Fitzgerald in one of his more reflective moments; I’ve simply come to the conclusion that once I feel well adjusted, the fates irrevocably throw a wrench into my stagnant and predictable routines. Long term relationships wear out their welcome, jobs end unceremoniously, you poke your eyes out after realizing you’ve murdered your father and married your mother, rebound relationships end as quickly and as drunkenly as they began, you throw away all the crap you’ve been holding on to for several years including all those Eagles LP’s that your uncle gave you and you never really liked anyway but you kept out of some sort of familial guilt or a perceived and confusing rite of passage…but on to the next adventure, amirite?

     I should note that I’ll be turning thirty within a week or two of you reading this. The youthful indiscretion that has propelled me into writing Carver-meets-Salinger flavored fiction and maneuvered me into working for an online literary journal is tapping out its misguided end to the beat of a Replacements b-side. Little will change I’m sure, but it is a time for the façade of serious reflection tempered only slightly by some self-effacing humor.      In these waning time-trials of my twenties, people enter and exit my life as if I were a booth attendant at Grand Central Station. They greet me, stand around for awhile and then pay their fare (or vault the turnstile) and move along. Some of them make return trips, others purchase one way tickets and send me friend requests on Facebook as a consolation prize. Later, I notice they’re married and have a young daughter named Sydney, Madison or Isabella and a son named Jackson (all their sons are named Jackson for some reason…). I click on the picture just to confirm that it is in fact this person’s baby. I’m satisfied by the similarities in facial structures that I compare against my knowledge gleaned from watching hours of DNA testing on Maury, so I move along to stalk some girl that I had a crush on in middle school. She currently works at a salon and still lives down the street from where we grew up, hmmm…      

       Turning thirty, in an era that has obsessively embraced the cult of youth, means less than it used to; at least it doesn’t have the same connotations as it did for Nick Carraway. “Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm. Thinning hair.” It would be easy to get sucked into the cadence of Carraway’s thoughts at this point in my life; I’m newly single and feeling slightly melancholy and bitter about it; many of my friends are either in lengthy domestic partnerships or even married, so I see them less and less (hi Justin, Joel, Cassie, Brandon et al); and my hair has certainly been thinning for several years now, as evidenced by my regular viewing of the Bosley infomercial. Ultimately though, I’m more likely to be swayed by the fact that I’ve read The Great Gatsby upwards of ten or twelve times at this post-grad school juncture of my life.  

     Eventually it occurs to me that maybe we’re not so different, me and this Carraway fellow; both getting carried away with our own mortality while losing friends to the adult world at large…and yet as much as I can commiserate with Fitzgerald’s narrator, I keep my doubts that much will have changed once I wake up on October 16^th (hungover, no doubt). I will have technically aged a year over night, but the Nirvana posters will still hang in my room, keeping watch over stacks of used novels and upright piles of vinyl.  

     The portentous quality of aging that we’ve all stayed up nights dreading is balanced only by the promise of a still distant and opaque horizon.  So we march on, ships against the waves borne back…never mind, I am aping Fitzgerald.   

Alt-Haiku (in the tradition of Kerouac's American Haiku)

Scoach I 

Listening to Wilco,

Cool cross breeze through open bar; 

drunk, aimless, peaceful

Scoach II 

"Return of the Mack"

Plays on the internet juke box, 

Dumb girls scream; I'm back 

Interview Story (from 2011)

The following piece was originally published by Aol Jobs in January of 2011, and underwent moderate edits from site staff. 

I Interviewed at Best Buy

I am a 28-year-old who recently finished graduate school. In the fall of 2003, I was 21, not yet in college, and working part-time to full-time (depending on the week) at Domino's Pizza. Most of my nights were spent in a mind-numbing rush of angry customers, dirty dishes and clogged sinks.

Those were the days when people still mainly purchased music via physical copies of CDs, and as an avid music lover, I spent a fair amount of my spare time in music stores perusing the CDs I'd read about in magazines. On one of my days off I ended up wandering down the CD aisles at Best Buy, something I did on a regular basis. Delivering pizzas 30-plus hours a week and living in my mom's basement afforded me the ability to waste much of the money I made. This eased the pain of living at home and delivering pizza while others were off at college.

I picked up a copy of the Beatles' 'The White Album' and stared at the plain cover and the song list on the back. I couldn't justify the $32 price though, so I set it back on the shelf and continued up the aisle. With 'The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill' echoing in my head, a guy in a blue shirt with a name tag stopped me.

"Do you need help with anything, sir?"

He had curly, shoulder-length hair that shook when he talked. I always found it entertaining when retail workers called me "sir." As a 21-year-old pizza boy, I wasn't sure what qualified me for that title.

"No, I'm just looking around," I said and stopped in front of him. That was my stock answer for any salesman, even if I did have a question.

"Well, if you need anything just let us know."

A fun-looking job

He left me and returned to his post at the end of the aisle next to a computer. I wondered if he was actually looking anything up or was just playing solitaire when I saw him type something in. At the same time a pretty girl with long brown hair wearing the same blue shirt walked by and smiled at me. I watched her walk over to the same post and start talking to the other guy. She flipped her hair a couple times and laughed.

"What a job," I thought to myself. "They're getting paid to flirt and play around on a computer. I spent most of my working hours alone in a car smelling other people's food."

When I left, I noticed a sign by the registers that said something about an "open interview fair" happening the rest of the week. The sign read "No waiting, come in with your resume and be interviewed immediately."

A comment about Elvis

I came back a couple days later wearing a button-down shirt and slacks. The staff was quick to point me to an enclosed area in the back of the store. I followed a girl to a curtained section and waited behind a couple of other guys in a line. After about 10 minutes, someone directed me to go behind the partition where there was a table set up with a few chairs around it. I sat down in front of a portly, middle-aged man with frizzy gray hair and a face covered in stubble.

"How are you?" he asked.

"I'm doing good," I said and handed my resume across the table to him. He glanced at it for a few seconds and set it down.

"So you're interested in working at Best Buy?" he asked. He continued with some general questions, and somewhere along the way I told him of my love for music.

"I really like Elvis Costello," he said and looked down at my resume again. "I heard them playing 'Alison' out in the store before I came back here." Just then I remembered a tidbit I'd heard on VH1 earlier in the week.

"Did you know that Huey Lewis's backing band, the News, were the studio band for Costello's first album?" I asked.

I figured he probably already knew it but it wouldn't hurt to throw it out there.

He looked at me funny and smirked. "I didn't know that," he said and chuckled. He scratched his stubble for a moment and thought about it. "Why don't you stick around for a bit and I'll get you a second interview with one of the managers."

A long but worthwhile wait

I agreed (of course!) and thought it all seemed pretty easy as I waited, sitting next to the customer service counter for someone else to interview me. It felt less tolerable after an hour had passed and nobody had said anything to me. Finally, I asked a girl at the counter if she knew what the problem was.

She disappeared for a minute behind the scenes and then came back and told me a manager would be right with me. After about 20 more minutes I wondered what the problem was. She looked over at me again and smiled. Finally, out came a different man, the long-awaited manager.

"Sean?" he asked and looked down at a clipboard. I nodded my head and faked a smile.

"Sorry about that wait, I didn't know you were out here."

I figured he'd just look at my resume and send me on my way.

But still, I followed him into the curtained area again and sat down at the same table. He glanced over my resume and smiled at me.

"It's getting a little late; I'm leaving here at 7. Why don't you just call Lab Corp this week to set up a drug test and come in for orientation next Monday."

I shook his hand and he sent me on my way. It was that easy for me to get out of the pizza delivery business and get a job at Best Buy.

Months

      I hadn’t seen her in months and all she wanted to talk about was Ted.

     “I miss him. How is he?” She was wearing a yellow shirt and jeans. She’d quit wearing jeans until she met me.

     “He’s actually staying with my sister and my mom right now.” The bright yellow stuff was something I couldn’t get over. She’d worn a solid yellow dress the first time we met.

     “Ah, that’s nice of you to loan him out to them.” It wasn’t a loan so much though. My sister had wanted Ted at her graduation party, so I brought him along. A couple hours into it, I was bored of getting drunk by myself so I left to see a movie. I figured letting him stay there was better than leaving him to bake in the hot car. But in the dark of the theatre, I regretted ever leaving Ted with my sister again.

     “Anyway, thanks for asking me to lunch.” It had been pretty much out of the blue. Then again, any contact she’d had with me over the intervening months was completely random. Just when I thought she was gone, she’d pop back in.

     “Thanks for accepting.” She smiled and looked straight at me so I could see the deep cerulean of her irises…or the green. I wasn’t sure. I was partially color blind.  

Bozwanian Prince (Musings)

Each time I log into my hotmail 

As if something of importance will show up

(a letter from you apologizing for when you destroyed me, 

or just a reference to my teddy bear’s obsession with lotion)

instead I’m greeted by a Bozwanian Prince who needs my help 

in the worst way. 

Somehow it comforts me and I respond in kind. 

                            *****

Whenever I get random spam from a bra website,

I always think of you

                            *****

The painting you did of me for my birthday

Is still hanging in my room,

I can’t bear to take it down 

And there’s a bear in it  

                            *****

When you left me, I was lost in the desert 

For 4-5 months, 

I changed my voicemail to reflect the fact that I 

Would be out of office for an indefinite period, 

But I still haven’t changed it back

St. Louis, City of Rolling Smoke

Riding back from St Louis

I felt like I was leaving our new life behind

In a mist of alcohol and old brick buildings.

And it’s easy to love somewhere you’re not from.

The worn land has no story or

No memories of your own

As the traffic rose east,

I wanted to turn around and return

To where we’d never been together before

To remind you that all of City Museum

Was not a fever dream in smoke. 

(Originally published on HubPages Sept. 2011 under the pseudonym Jean Valone) 

Team Unemployed: ‘Rough Justice’ in the Real World of the Recession

It’s afternoon on a Wednesday in late January. I’m waking up at my usual time. Most days my goal is to get up before one o’clock so I can watch “People’s Court.” If I stay up past 4 a.m. surfing the internet or go out to a bar the night before, I might even wake up too late for the show. I’m unemployed and just out of grad school, this is the sort of small thing that dominates my life without any sort of outside structure.

Sometimes I look myself in the mirror and mouth the words, “Jean, you’ll have a job soon.”

I’ve been unemployed for most of the last year. I think I’ve been without a job longer than I’ve had one over the past three years. It’s not uncommon I guess with the economy the way it is, I see stuff on TV all the time about people who are doing worse. Don't tell anyone who's unemployed that the recession is over. We know better. The news says this many people haven’t been unemployed since the Great Depression. That doesn’t make it any easier; it’s just nice to pretend I’m keeping perspective on the situation.

I haven’t had a job since the end of September when my car was parked on the street and totaled by a stolen vehicle; the six-pack of Busch left in the abandoned vehicle was little consolation. With no plan and no source of income, I was forced to quit my job delivering pizzas. The upside is that I have to ride a bike everywhere which is good exercise even if I have to towel myself off in the men's bathroom before class. I've lost a few pounds and I’ve been eating less fast food because it’s almost impossible to drive-thru without a car. The down side is, well…obvious.

Now there’s seven inches of snow on the ground and I’m stuck at home with a Master’s degree in creative writing to keep me warm. I’m not sure which part of my story is comical or depressing. I’m a twenty-eight year old who’s over or under-qualified for almost every job I apply for. Most days I file it all under unfortunate but depressingly funny. It gets me through episodes of the People’s Court when Judge Milian is in a bad mood. Her Cuban axioms and witty references to “rough justice” keep me waking up on time no matter what the drink special was the night before.

The term resonates with me as something more relevant than poetic justice. The world has offered a bit of rough justice to me in its own way. Destroying the vehicle of a delivery driver seems ironic in that Alanis Morrisette kind-of-way but I’m guessing it isn’t. Someone with two English degrees not being able to figure out what is or isn’t ironic sounds like more rough justice…or maybe poetic justice.

People look at me strange when I tell them what I studied in school. Usually I get one of two responses.

“Creative what? Writing? What’s that?” or the more likely response, “What are you gonna do with that? Teach?” I tell them yes I’d like to teach and move on. No I don’t have any teaching experience. Yes, I understand the beginning of a new year during a recession is a bad time to look for a job. I fake a smile and move on.

In keeping with this state of mind, I avoid conversations with relatives about what I’m doing now that I’m out of school. The holidays are rampant with these kinds of conversations, but I eat a lot of food and act preoccupied when they finally ask.

“Well, where are you looking for a job at?” As if somehow their expert advice will propel me into a lucrative career path. Maybe someday I’ll thank them when I’m rich and happy.

Every time I see him, my grandpa tries to convince me that working at Quik Trip or Kinko’s (or "Ginko’s" in his words) is the way to go. I tell him I have a Master’s degree in English and that really isn’t what I’m looking for. He never respected my delivery jobs even though I got through most of my undergrad and grad school on them. My year long stint at the eyeglass store grinding lenses was something he understood a little bit better.

As January rolls on the snow continues to pile up and I continue applying online for adjunct teaching positions, getting mostly no response. Earlier in the month I heard back from my alma mater and they told me they were interested in interviewing me later in the year for some possible fall classes. It was exciting but not totally reassuring news. I wonder sometimes if I could get by that long without a job.

Most days I try to survive the best I can. I sell things I don’t need anymore on Craigslist or eBay: guitar pedals I don’t use anymore (what the heck does a Flanger do anyways?), Xbox games I can’t play any longer because my Xbox 360 quit working not long before I did. Other days my girlfriend gives me a ride to the closest Wal-Mart and I return things that are still in the package from birthdays and Christmases past. One week three pairs of long underwear nets me a nineteen dollar gift-card which I spend mostly on boxes of Totino’s Pizza. She laughs at me while I eat a dollar cherry pie from Wal-Mart in the car. I read the package and inform her it contains both regular corn syrup and the much preferred high-fructose variety. Ideal nutrition for the man out of work.

It’s been a rough year but I keep my head up. There are always more jobs to apply for and be turned down.

Earlier in the year, before I was delivering pizzas, I went on unemployment for a few months. The three-hundred and fifty I got a month wasn’t much but looks pretty substantial in retrospect.

My savings from grad school are slowly dwindling each time I eat out or pay the bills. The money I got from family on my birthday and at graduation keeps me afloat into the new year even though I feel pressure to take a job within walking distance as a waiter (sorry, “server”).

Earlier in the month I’d gottten excited about the one interview I’ve had post-grad school. My hope dissipated when the owner told me he “couldn’t afford to pay me a regular salary for my work on his journal,” but he did teach me how to make money online doing freelance writing. Looking back it seems pretty cool of him even though I declined his non-paying offer. The first thing he told me was that I was overqualified for the position.

Eventually I found a way to make a few bucks online using the recommendations he’d given me. It’s reassuring to make any money these days, even if I have to write stupid How-To articles for the next six months. I’m currently at work on one I’m probably not qualified to write: How To Get the Job of Your Dreams.

I’ve gotten skilled at locating career and job information on the web, as in where to find it and what to look for. Maybe I should be a career counselor; definitely falling in the under-qualified category on that one. I’ve found that most career websites are hidden platforms for advertising. They email me jobs that have nothing to do with what I studied. I put in writing as a search term and it brings up janitorial positions that require high school level writing for reasons I’m unaware of. I would put in the creative aspect, but I’m afraid the website will laugh at me or ask me what I’m talking about.

It’s not the work I miss, rather just having something to do. That’s the worst part about being unemployed, the lack of activity can really hurt morale. It’s not hard to imagine I could get another job, it’s just hard to believe it.

It’s more rough justice for a year filled with what I described earlier as “depressing comedy.” I’m the star of my own reality show/sitcom and I don’t even get paid or have a laugh track. Cue the audience.

UPDATE: I got a part-time teaching gig in August. I still do freelance work in my off-time. I have a car now and I don’t eat dollar cherry pies anymore

(This piece previously existed as two separate articles for an unnamed and recently defunct content website. Both were rejected.)

Workshop Response, or Portrait of the Fartist as a Young Grad Student (First in a Retrospective Series)

    I’m not really sure what to say about this one.  I’ve surely never been this shocked by a workshop story.  It’s not a positive shock though, it’s certainly a disgusted and surprised kind.  This story left me wondering why anyone would go about forming this plot.  A lot of the writing wasn’t bad but everything was overwhelmed by the events of the story. 

    Specifically, I have no issue with reading about men having relations with each other; so the idea that I don’t like the story because I’m a homophobe can quickly be dispelled.  The handling of the material is entirely offensive and this is from a person who’s not easily offended.  The narrator’s choice of words and ways of describing things lead the reader to believe that none of the subject matter was taken seriously.  A few examples include: “grabbing his manhood and taking in a mouthful of gratification for them both,” “his boxers instantaneously soaked in greasy fluids from a throbbing member.”  I could go on but I won’t.  This sounds like something out of Penthouse Letters (yes I’ve read Penthouse Letters before).

    The writer seems to have a real problem with tone also.  Several bits of dialogue are punctuated oddly with exclamations or question marks where they clearly don’t belong.  For example, “Is this what you want!”  People don’t yell at each other when they are having foreplay, nor do they yell when asking a question. 

    The ending of this piece just flabbergasted me.  Not only did he have sex with his fiancé’s father but he got HIV from him?  In what world do symptoms of HIV occur immediately?  And I won’t even mention the toilet scene.  There’s so many things wrong with this story that I’m going to have to stop here.  My suggestions would be either to tone down the language or just change the subject matter all together. 

I Am The Cosmos

This song means everything to me right now, specifically the first lines containing the titular phrase. Chris Bell, the founder of Big Star and former vocalist/guitarist for the group, finds the perfect middle ground between hazy guitar chords and melancholy vocals/lyrics. I'll admit that for me his vocal work in Big Star (#1 Record) was always overshadowed by Alex Chilton, despite the fact that Bell actually founded the early 70s Memphis pop-rock group. Of course, Alex was already famous from being in the Box Tops when he joined Bell in Big Star and the unrealized potential of the group combined with inner tensions to cause Bell's exit from his own band. As Alex became the sole front man and birthed the classic Radio City album, Chris Bell wandered from his home in Memphis to travel/record in Europe, all the while experimenting with drugs, religion and at different points his own sexuality. "I Am the Cosmos" is the most fully realized product of that era, and it marries the post-British invasion aspirations of Bell's former group to more ethereal and atmospheric pop. Bell juxtaposes his larger spiritual beliefs and connections to the earth with his human and more base desires of loss and longing. Although his ethos may be in line, clearly he wants someone he can no longer have.

(For more info on Bell and Big Star, check out the music doc Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me)

Over the weekend I found a Star Wars trucker hat at the Savers on Noland Rd. in Independence. But it didn't fit.

Long Day of Childhood

I guess there's a reason I'm just now learning about this failed ad campaign from Ragu.



First off, I'm wondering why you would try and market Ragu to children. Although I guess it's not explicitly being sold to young people. It plays on common awkward situations children go through, so anyone could identify or at least laugh at them. Still, the adolescent boy (who incidentally has the same face that I used to...FACE OFF!) is the protagonist and is obviously supposed to be a sympathetic figure. But who the hell would want to eat shitty pasta sauce after seeing your parents mid-bone? And that song! It sounds like third rate Alan Jackson or Randy Travis...so basically most of what's on country radio currently. Carry on.

Miley Cyrus as Postmodern Icon and Symbol of Late Millenial and iGeneration Culture: Towards A Theory of Popular Culture Under Late-Stage Capitalism (A Work In Progress)

Understanding What Miley Represents: Deconstructing A Decentered Culture

Miley Cyrus as a cultural symbol stands for nothing, substantiates nothing and ultimately means nothing. In this manner, she is the most representative of any pop star yet created and nurtured by late stage capitalist American culture.  

She has no defining qualities: (as with some of the most successful pop-stars) her capricious looks and stated beliefs change with marketing ploys, new albums and commercial campaigns, but she even lacks some of the traditional physical qualities that have been focal selling points for more recent female pop stars (think Britney Spears, Katy Perry etc. who often rely on their physical attributes and socialized feminine appearance). Hence, Cyrus's need to so strangely and emphatically create some sort of a public image and extreme but empty representation of herself. If Michael Jackson was the transitional high modernist to post-modernist realization of a pop celebrity, then Cyrus is its complete fruition and apotheosis. She is our culture’s Destiny.

Un-tethered to any of the modernist values that moralized and justified a belief system based on once fixed rules, or reacting in direct relation to or against such a moral belief system (a la punk rock and generally, counter culture), she represents the first generation raised entirely in the age of the internet. The constancy previously represented/broadcast by such institutions as the church, the state and even the traditional, grounded world of the corporation has had little to no effect on the Millenials. Yes they are vaguely aware of much of it, and they may even purport to have religion or a codified and constant center. 

What spiritual or constant self could one have, when pushed and pulled at every angle by advertisements for products, belief systems and even outward appearances to try on? If identity in a late-stage capitalist post-modern dominated society is shaped, purchased and created through owning and displaying products, what “self” can there be? The decentered self testing the spacial qualities of its world rather than the metaphysical ones is what we’re left with.

Cyrus is the decentered and ever shifting celebrity self (without a self), raised by corporate trends, Hollywood handlers, and agents, and steeped and encouraged in her narcissism, self-absorption and fame. Her behavior has always been cultured and developed behind the scenes in a lab, always with the public eye in mind. Every move is coordinated and cross-checked for the marketplace. 

She’s the fruition of the post-modern progression of popular culture that values nothing other than instant gratification, brought on by capitalist ideology. To say she’s nihilist or apathetic misses the point. Pop culture itself is not equivalent to nihilism or apathy; it holds few things sacred, outside of its own referentiallity, self importance, self perpetuation, money/ownership and the aforementioned impulse to gratify. In a sense then, these are the new values. Our popular culture, driven by corporate supply and artificially altered public demand, firmly believes in these as its core qualities. Those that do not own enough or the right things, are described as “poor”;this is in an economic sense of course, but also implies poor in spirit,potential, and of course poor in social standing. To own things is to exist and represents active participation in late-stage capitalism, which is the only way imaginable for those raised within it. 

Transposing and Defining the “I” for the iGeneration

The Millennials lack self because the antiquated notion of a fixed self ceases to exist in the ultimate gestations of post-modern culture. The creation of, perpetuation of, and ultimate belief in a progression of the concept of self, begun in and around the age of Enlightenment, has now reached its own mirrored-apex in the era of the Millenials and popularly in Miley Cyrus.

The Enlightenment first conceived of and publicized the self, as it “sang of [it]self and celebrat[ed] [it]self.” It created laws to protect and perpetuate the notion of the self (See the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights and the French Revolution etc.). In part, this was because the individual self as entity is essential to ownership of personal and private property which had only recently been borne and fully propagated. The Romantics waxed poetic about the multitudes held within the soul, or the core and fixed representation of being, the entity which possesses, profits, creates and owns. In other words, the entity that is necessary to take part in the capitalist marketplace.

On this same trajectory, Modernism was the next realization of the self, the next step on the evolutionary ladder. The self became a distorted and often hazy proposition, a twisted and distorted refraction of the centered-self dreamed of by Enlightenment era philosophers and thinkers, but was still based on a center of gravity, a “winding wheel” to rap oneself around, a comparison point/mile marker with which to judge the permutations of the different selves of the world. Modernist and high-modernist art often focused on the fragmentation of the self as related to forms of expression, mental illness and the impressionistic qualities of the self and the surrounding world.  

In the post-modern era we've seen the end of self, or at least the dissipation of the traditional concept of self. Personal identity is not a fixed proposition or singular belief that comes from an inner being or soul, it's an ever-shifting amalgam of images, socialized concepts, products and other ephemera. Self is now created and distributed for the masses, as a social product that is transmitted electronically.

Come See the Wheels of the Machine Twerk On: "If a body catch a body coming through the iPhone..."

“We Can’t Stop, We Won’t Stop” then, is the indirect mantra of the helpless and self-lacking (not to be confused with “selfless”) Millenial culture as it comes of age and takes possession of its own being. It comes in the language of the addict, mixed with the belief system of the capitalist. A mélange of apathy and a pastiche of empty meaning.

In traditional terms, the “coming of age” represented when one took responsibility (nee “ownership,” conceptually related to owning property) for one’s actions, and conceived of a future for the self. But once again, as in the creation of the concept of the self by the Enlightenment and its relation to property ownership, the realization and expression of the self is done in the terms of capitalism, that being one predicated on purchasing and owning property. Because Millennials have been socialized to own more and at a younger age by corporate advertisers and society at large, their grabs at self-actualization only seem more feeble and meaningless. If one already owns property at a young age, then a transition from adolescence to adulthood represents nothing more than ownership/control of one’s immediate flesh and blood, or perhaps gaining more property.

However, one with no self cannot take responsibility for its own actions. It can only take ownership of products, items and in the case of the adolescent, one’s own body. Hence the emphasis on the body as a representation of freedom in young women: what previously had been controlled and directed by the family, the rules/laws of society (for the under-age), and the hegemony of men, now comes into its own in a rite of spring. To fetishize (display and celebrate) one’s own body and act in accordance to one’s own sexuality for late millennial and iGeneration  women is virtually all that is left of the expression of the self. Much of western society teaches and raises women as sex objects, early on ones that are controlled and directed by others, so it only makes sense that the act of having sex or even the open display of sexual qualities for the first time is a statement of selfhood and control. 

The common Millienial and iGeneration women, those who Miley Cyrus is selling products to and in theory representative of, do not believe in feminism. The language and focus of feminism, under its post-structural third wave have become abstruse and disconnected from the lion’s share of the middle-class female populace at large. All that remains is the primal and base cry of the more extreme and reactionary wing of the second-wave feminists as it relates to sexual control/selfhood and reproductive rights: the right to choose to have sex, and in be in power of one’s own sovereign body. With no real form of self-expression outside of owning products, both young men and young women will opt for sex and the physical body as the closest thing to expressing and defining a now distant concept of “selfhood” and being.

“We Can’t Stop, We Won’t Stop” is the rallying cry of a now warped and empty transition to adulthood inside late-stage capitalism. “It’s our party” as in we own and control this scenario. We are members of the capitalist marketplace, if only because we can schlep our body around in ever stranger ways, which then creates a very base concept of self: the self is my physical body and what I choose to do with it.

In the face of a baby boomer controlled culture that has worshiped and capitalized on youth in order to sell products, we see the progeny is the shallow but self-absorbed iGeneration. Their entire lives they’ve been coddled and given whatever they want, so that the only thing that hasn’t been given to them, can’t be taken away and can’t be fully controlled is their own body. 

Sadly, Miley Cyrus is our child: collectively the culture’s. We’ve raised, nurtured and encouraged her to be what she is today. We watched her grow on Hannah Montana as a fictional pop-star with multiple personalities, then morph into a real one. She is a product with no actual being to speak of, and her public persona represents nothing in particular. Her wild gesticulations and tongue wagging, are nothing more than an inert replica of the modernist culture that challenged the status quo and the prevailing rules and conservancies of religion, government and the family which held actual meaning in a not-too-distant past world still based on the concept of a centered reality. (Those pangs of guilt towards our freak-child easily confused as a phantom ringtone and then brushed aside.) Our decentered culture represents nothing in particular or of note outside of an affirmation of capitalism and the dissolution of the self, and Miley is its final embodiment.