the not-so boredom

so, I wrote on Wednesday about being bored… I seriously have to stop doing that – it’s not good for my health.

Thursday morning, the wife and I were downstairs in our basement digging through christmas stuff and figuring out what we could put up without tempting the newest kitten (TARDIS) to drag it down and break things. I got a call from my mom. She’s been kinda nutty lately, so I was expecting a simple “I need you to listen to me right now” kind of phone call.

I heard, through her garbled speech at the time, “come home.” So, Lin and I packed a few things and jumped in the car to head the hour and a half east to mom’s house.

The boredom that ensues…

Today my students turn in their final exams. I grade them. I post grades to the freaking web-based thing… and then… ?

Yeah, that’s the boredom that ensues.

Except that there are a bazillion things to do. I’m teaching online next semester (same course, totally different format), and I’ve chosen slightly different texts for the course. So, there’s reading and planning to do in mass quantities. There’s this essay/piece to write before the end of the year. There’s that whole freakin’ thesis thing, you know?

There are two more seasons of the new Doctor Who series I haven’t seen. There’s most of a season of Torchwood I have yet to see. There’s re-watching Buffy. There are two weddings and a trip to see lin’s parents. I hope there’s no funeral. There are dogs to care for. There are the two Goffman books I just started reading, a book I got in the mail, some books on the shelf that need to be read, and the two John McPhee books I started last night before bed. There are words on pages begging me to read them and yet I’m bored. Or scared of the boredom.

Stonewall 2.0

I read this today in the New York Times. It’s a few days old now, I think. Here’s the gist of it: Some people are calling the outrage and protests over the passage of Proposition 8 “Stonewall 2.0.” It’s partly a take on Web 2.0, this new user-created content move on the world wide web. But it’s also a hearkening back to the Stonewall Riots of 1969. And I have problems with this second part of all this. Here’s part of the article: “Many grass-roots leaders say the emergence of new faces, and acceptance of tactics that are more confrontational, amount to an implicit rejection of the measured approach of established gay rights groups, a course that, some gay men and lesbians maintain, allowed passage of the ban, Proposition 8.”

The problem I have with this naming of the Proposition 8 protest is with the differing goals of the Stonewall Riots of 1969 and the protests against the passing of Proposition 8. I don’t have mixed feelings about this – it pisses me off that now someone is going to go back and rename the original riots “Stonewall 1.0.” I have these images of beta versions of software that aren’t fully tested… and it slightly sickens me. It bugs me, too, that people have this idea that the energy surrounding the Stonewall Riots (and the Compton’s Cafeteria riots that happened even earlier in the 1960s) can be somehow re-created. There are very BIG and REAL differences in the social climate for LGBT people now, and the people leading these Proposition 8 protests are not similar to those who led the Stonewall Riots.

The story of a coward…

You, sir, are a coward.

“Cowards are cruel, but the brave Love mercy, and delight to save.” ~ John Gay

You, sir, are merely afraid, and thus cruel. If you were truly brave, you might open your mind to the world around you, rather than developing theories about it from a sheltered place in its central apex.

“The coward only threatens when he is safe.” ~ Goethe

Why else would you threaten, then, coward, unless you felt safe in that central apex – sheltered from the trials of the real world, and protected by the patriarchal shield of biological research, which with your tongue you twist.

“A coward boasting of his courage may deceive strangers, but he is a laughing-stock to those who know him.” ~ Phaedrus

And so I know you well enough to laugh – and this is good for me. I have a feeling your decision to no longer teach this particular class is related to the cowardice you feel at being unmasked as a masquerader – someone whose knowledge and abilities surpass your own is quite the challenge – especially when she is a she.

“You are like the eels of Melun; you cry out before you are skinned.” ~ Francois Rabelais

If, indeed, you had something to cry about, your cries might be answred. However, your need to create a war in your head between you and all paranoid feminists (and all feminists are paranoid, aren’t they?) reveals your own fears and insecurities – thus you must cry before you are struck, lest you be skinned.

“Who knows himself a braggart, Let him fear this; for it will come to pass That every braggart shall be found an ass.” ~ Shakespeare

I quite believe your bravado is simply a mechanism of disguise – for underneath, a donkey lies.

“There are at least two kinds of cowards. One kind always lives with himself, afraid to face the world. The other kind lives with the world, afraid to face himself.” ~ Roscoe Snowden

I wish you lived with yourself, yet instead you choose to be afraid to face the world. What is it that hurt you and caused your insecurity? At one point, I thought you might reveal it – but you’re so scared to admit it, you must scream its nonexistence at others. To quote Mister T, I pity the fool.

And a response to the coward – in the form of fable: The Coward and the Ravens: “A coward was leaving on his way to war. Some ravens cawed at him, so he put his weapons down and stood still. Then he took up his arms once more and proceeded on his way, but the ravens cawed at him again. The coward stopped and finally said, ‘Squawk at me as long as you want: you are still not going to get a bite out of my flesh!’”