Blogs

I heart Merlin so very much. He's put up a bunch of new 5ives, and they're going very well with my morning coffee and Loverboy's "Working for the Weekend" on the stereo. My favorites include:

Five terrible fake Eve Ensler plays
Five things I find kind of hypnotic
Five things you must abandon immediately
Five things that almost always make a song better
Five things whose use by children kind of depresses me
Five things in my pediatrician’s waiting room
Five bastardizations of my first name
Five things that are always funny

Explain performativity to a high school / undergraduate / general public audience, and do it within a 750-word limit. It's harder than it sounds, I'll tell you what! I tried to pack everything in: a definition and history of performativity, critiques of it, and political strategies stemming from it. I'm sure I mucked it up real good. :o

PERFORMATIVITY. Performativity is the idea that gender is a daily, habitual, learned act based on cultural norms of femininity and masculinity. The idea comes from the work of Judith Butler, who was influenced by theorists who studied “speech acts,” or the power of authoritative words to both say and do at the same time. One example is, “I now pronounce you man and wife.” According to Butler, gender works in much the same way. As girls, many of us learn countless subtle ways to groom and arrange our bodies to be feminine and attain approval as “normal” in a culture that puts people into one category: man or woman. For example, girls internalize stereotypically feminine acts such as wearing dresses and makeup, shaving one’s underarms and legs, sitting with legs crossed, and playing with dolls (which, it could be argued depending on the kind of play, is a preparation for the adult woman's traditional gender role of raising children). Women and men continually “cite” these gender norms in their day-to-day behavior, usually without realizing it. Even the simple act of filling out a form and circling the “Mr.” prefix is a performance of gender. Most often, gender is among the first things one notices about another person, and that is not so much a result of biological differences as it is a result of these stylizations of the body and habits of mind supplied by cultural norms. Such norms are oppressive because a person’s social legitimacy and normalcy is dependent on conforming to one of the two genders.

Anyone checked out my new song? Doe Maar is (was) a Dutch band from the 1980s; from what I gather, they're your basic 80s synthesizer-fabulous band, like, oh I don't know, Devo or maybe the Thompson Twins, but with more mainstream popularity in the Netherlands. It seems like they were about as popular as Duran Duran.

If you've listened to the song and you know about my love of happy melodies, you know why I like it; I also like how parts of the song sound almost proto-ska. I'm told the song is about a man who meets a woman, they fall in love, and they're so blissfully happy that they feel young again. The English translation of the title is "since a day or two." I could have this all wrong, though -- maybe Frank will be kind enough to correct me if I don't have my facts straight. :)

Now I want to hear some Thompson Twins...

I am eating the best turkey I've ever had in my life, so good I might have to nudge my mom aside and make this Thanksgiving's meal myself (I'm sure she'd happily hand over that responsibility :) ). Last time I was at the grocery store, I bought two 1-lb. white honeysuckle turkey breasts and froze both of them. I'm already thinking ahead about how I'll cook the other one: with Cajun seasoning or herbes de provence?

But I'm getting ahead of myself. After I thawed this turkey breast by leaving it in lukewarm water for a while, I put it in a foil packet with some of the water, plenty of olive oil, tons of hot Madras curry powder, some ginger, minced garlic, and hot pepper flakes. I sealed it up tight and put it in the oven for an hour or so at 325 degrees. It's unbelievably juicy and delicious. I can't take all the credit, though; Charlie reminded me of the foil-packet method of cooking meat, fish, and poultry in the oven. He'll be terribly embarrassed that I'm saying this, but I will anyway: Charlie can give great advice and recommendations on just about any topic. He can tell you how to fix your computer, cook your food, optimize your exercise routine, and improve your teaching. He's also excellent at recommending movies and music.

I've just finished a draft of the entry on essentialism for the Encyclopedia of Third Wave Feminism. As I've said before, the audience for this book is high school / undergraduate / general public, so I've tried to write the entry keeping that in mind. The editor sent me some entries from the Encyclopedia of Rape for me to follow, and I've tried to stay in keeping with the conventions of those entries, which tend to start out with a history of the thing or concept. In this entry, I attempted to show the "so what" of essentialism too. Hopefully the editor will think it's okay.

...as a guy I dated in college used to say, "a lukewarm dose of hell." (Be sure to pronounce it "HAY-ul.") When I finish the one I've been working on today that's due tomorrow morning, I'll have three down, three to go -- that's two 24-hour ones and one 2-hour done, and two 24-hour ones and one 2-hour left to do. Keep in mind, too, that I've had to juggle this with teaching, a heavy grading load, and two other projects with looming deadlines. :(

I'm still hitting the almond butter jar, by the way, and even eating raw, unsalted almonds from the little store at school. Are almonds nature's Paxil?

Others have posted great 1970s photographs of family, and I of course have to add mine. I wish I had more family photos here in Minnesota, but they're all at my parents' house. Here's one I do have, though -- my mom sometime in the 60s or 70s. I don't know anything about the context:

• Had lunch at a Thai restaurant with Laurie today, the same one where I bit into a spring roll only to find a shiny new screw. I'm glad I gave them another chance.
• Got two care packages today: One was from my friend Andrea, of "Remember: It's not all gumbo," and consisted of some University of Alabama t-shirts and shorts and a CD she made for me. The other was from Mike and contained a necklace made at a summer camp out of twine and two beads. He says it provides "guaranteed good luck." :-)
• Discovered love of almond butter. I've been wanting to try it for a little while now so bought some when I went to the grocery store today. I could probably eat the whole jar inside of an hour, but I demonstrated the proper restraint and only had a spoonful.