I've been thinking that its high time I wrote again, but the problem is that I spent the entire weekend writing an essay after letting the pleasures of procrastination distract me from the fact that getting such things done sooner rather than later makes for fewer sleepless nights. And now, I have completely fried my poor brain and apparently lost the ability stop the run-on sentences, and man, do I hope that I didn't leave any blatant ones in my essay. Oh well, too late to worry about it now.

Classes are back on this week, and we're back to the burn out. I've been really unenthusiastic about written work, which isn't at all like me. Sure I leave it to the last possible minute, but generally I'm quite happy to write about pretty much anything. It used to be a point of pride that I could spin about 6 and half pages' worth of actual content into 10 pages of essay on sheer strength of style. Lately, though, I feel like I just can't bothered with any of it. And that sort of attitude really isn't going to help with end-of-term essays coming up in just over four weeks.

I'm thinking that perhaps I need to volunteer with a local community development organization over the summer break. Maybe it would help motivate me if I could see how I might apply some of this theoretical knowledge in a real world setting. Or maybe I just need some regular contact with a non-academic environment. The university is such a strange place sometimes. So many people running around wrapped up in their own heads. Sometimes its really interesting and stimulating, and sometimes its weird and unhealthy.

Maybe its because the environment is so different from what I've been accustomed to, but I'm feeling rather like I'm on an extended vacation from my real life. Which maybe isn't the most helpful approach when it leads me to behave as if what I do here isn't really going to matter in the 'real world'. It also leads to things like this happening:

Yes, they're subtle, but yes, those are purple streaks in my hair. I promised myself crayon-colored hair after reaching a certain weight loss goal, and five months of living on a student budget that doesn't allow me to eat out finally put me over the edge.

So on the plus side, we have "purple hair". On the minus side we have "now have to go shopping because nothing I brought with me fits". And the time in life in which you cannot afford to eat out is not the time in life in which you can afford to junk pretty much your entire wardrobe and start over from scratch. Not to mention that I'm not a fan of the whole shopping experience. I was reminded of that in the past week or two, in which several days of shopping in a variety of establishments netted me 1) one cardigan that really doesn't go with the remnants of my wardrobe and 2) two t-shirts. Hate. Shopping. So. Much.

But at least its been good shopping weather. By which I mean the kind of weather that makes running around the city a pleasure. When the sunshine on your face makes life good even when you're leaving a store in which you have spent two hours trying on everything in sight and not finding anything wearable, that's good shopping weather. I dug out my sandals in blissful denial of the fact that it still gets cold enough when the wind picks up to make exposed toes impractical. The sun is shining, there are flowers blooming everywhere - I refuse to let a piddling little nuisance like the fact that the temperature can drop 10 degrees from one minute to the next keep me from my sandals. I'm so ready for it to be summer.

Jersey!
Topic: Odds and ends
Headline of the day: "Rockers Disturbed, Bon Jovi lead U.S. album charts"

How disappointed was I to find out that this wasn't actually a value judgement on Bon Jovi's chart position?

Thank you, Paul Sheehan, for showing me the error of my ways
Topic: Ranting
I am so totally going to swear off eating so as not to contribute to the magnitude of the problem of "Fat Chick Syndrome" in Australia, a timely and critical issue that you grapple with so eloquently in today's Sydney Morning Herald.

And thank you, Paul Sheehan, for sparing 73 words of your 900 word editorial to address the problem of "fat blokes". Its efforts like this which make it crystal clear that you're not just some pig taking advantage of the current climate of obesity panic to crap on ad nauseum about your image of the ideal woman under the guise of concern for public health and well-being. No, clearly you sympathize with the plight of women, as we're forced by "the unspeakable cruelty of women's magazines" to loathe our bodies. Because clearly, its the fashion industry and women's magazines that are responsible for perpetuating unrealistic physical ideals in our culture. Print advertisements, movies, television - those aspects of our culture that are essentially unavoidable for those of us who don't follow fashion and don't read women's magazines - all of these are merely incidental to the rampaging scourge of Vogue, Mademoiselle, Cosmopolitan and their ilk.

And thank you, Paul Sheehan, for affirming the "transformative" nature of taking one's appearance seriously. After all, like Susannah, host of What Not To Wear and the paragon of taste and discretion that you hold up as an example to all non-"giraffic" women, I too could say:

"Oh my God! The breasts have engorged to an E cup, the stomach has emerged like a hernia, open and laid out for inspection above every waistband, and the arms, well, they are worryingly vast and soon to take over my entire body. This may sound like an exaggeration, but it's how I feel about the parts I don't like."

At least, I could say that if I was worryingly disengaged from my body and therefore prone to metaphorical self-dismemberment. And I'm sure that your response to me would be the same as your response to Susannah, a rational yet sensitive and not at all patronizing statement to the effect of "well, that's a realistic self-assessment, but at least you're well-packaged". After all, only outrageously fertile girls and young women of 17 to 23 should be running around in "push-up bras, Gosford miniskirts, spray-on jeans, low-cut tops, bare legs, bare arms, bare ankles, G-strings", as you pointed out with an admirable lack of prurience in an earlier article.

Actually, Paul Sheehan, reading these two articles together, I realize that I know what to do to take action against the "affluenza" that's causing Fat Chick Syndrome. It's so obvious to me now, after reading your articles, that I've been contributing to the problem by getting educated and not having babies. After all, since "[n]ature has programmed [me] for pregnancy, genetic diversity and keeping the species going"¹ then I must have been causing myself untold stress by forestalling that urge in order to pursue a career and a postgrad degree, and "[s]tress and weight tend to go together".² Funny, that the stress of postgrad study seems to be causing me to lose weight, rather than gain it, but the exception proves the rule, right? And since you say that "there is a marked link between intelligence and weight"³, it seems obvious that if I were to go on for a PhD, I'd only be risking getting fat. So that's off the "future plans" list now. I can't thank you enough for helping me identify this vicious, vicious circle.

Right, so to break that cycle, I need to find a father for my babies. How about it, Paul Sheehan? Clearly, your dizzying intellect and compassionate soul ought to be passed along to the next generation. That is, as long as you're not ugly. If I'm going to "[b]uild a better package"º in order to help cure affluenza, doing it with an ugly man seems sort of counterproductive.

---
¹"In praise of female sexuality"
²Affluenza is a big weight on our mind, too"
³"Affluenza"
º"Affluenza"

Testing the power of denial
Topic: Events
I don't care what the Observer says or the US Navy admits to, I cannot believe that this is real: Armed and dangerous - Flipper the firing dolphin let loose by Katrina. I just refuse to believe this. Because this? Is insane.

It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Experts who have studied the US navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.

Dolphins have been trained in attack-and-kill missions since the Cold War. The US Atlantic bottlenose dolphins have apparently been taught to shoot terrorists attacking military vessels. Their coastal compound was breached during the storm, sweeping them out to sea. But those who have studied the controversial use of dolphins in the US defence programme claim it is vital they are caught quickly.

First reaction: when did life become a B movie? Second reaction: the Observer is overselling this story with all the "may be"-ing. Third reaction: wait, the training is for real. I'm willing to believe in hell, so long as it has a special place for the person who came up with idea of training dolphins to kill people.

(Thanks to Ro for forwarding the article to me)

Admin issues
Topic: Whatever
Okay, I'm going to be trying something new for the comments section, and I suspect that it may make all the old comments disappear. So if you happen to notice that a comment you made has vanished, it's not because I'm suddenly into censorship. I'm just trying out some fancy new stuff, and my technical knowledge isn't sufficient to test it out without sacrificing the existing comments. So if your comments did vanish, please accept my apologies.

Update: Hmmm. Apparently my technical knowledge is even more insufficient than I originally thought, because I can't get the new comments system working. Everything anyone has said is safe, at least until I sort out the issue.

Words and music
Topic: Odds and ends
Ampersand Duck writes: "I don't know why critics say that we've all lost touch with poetry, because isn't good songwriting poetry? Anyone who pays attention to good lyrics is interacting with poetry. There's no real difference."

I'm always happy to find someone else who pays attention to lyrics. I really find it odd that more people don't. Especially people who can sing along to a song, get the words right, and still not pay attention to what they're singing. I mean, I like the occasional song that's just dumb and fun, and can occasionally overlook stupid lyrics for music that's really good or a singer who has an outstanding voice. But the music that I listen to over and over, and the artists whose careers I follow, are usually strong lyricists, whether their approach is generally fairly straightforward (Ani Difranco, Ben Folds, Suzanne Vega, Ms Dynamite) or more personally symbolic and evocative (Tori Amos, Nirvana) or falls somewhere in the middle (Mike Doughty/Soul Coughing, Eels). But I was realizing, as I was trawling the web looking for sample lyrics, that even for a lot of these artists, it isn't particularly easy to find lyrics that stand alone on the strength of the words and the way they're put together (such as "Everest" by Ani Difranco and "Down on the River by the Sugar Plant" by Mike Doughty). The music is a really important part of the whole experience of the song, in terms of creating the context and atmosphere that help with the interpretation of the lyrics.

So I don't know that I necessarily agree that there's "no real difference" between poetry and well-written lyrics. I think its important to keep in mind that a really good song is about the interaction between words and music, how they fit together, and how the singer interprets them. Some poetry may fit well into the structure of a song (Nikki Lee's Here Lies Dorothy Parker), but some never will (ee cummings springs to mind as the most obvious example). I think there's a reason that both Ani Difranco and Mike Doughty, who are great lyricists, treat the poems that they write as distinct entities from their songs.

But then, it's not like I disagree that some lyricists' work is poetic and can stand on its own. (See why I'm so much fun in an argument? Now I'm on this side! Now I'm on that side!) It's just that I think that poetry and songwriting need to be understood as distinct arts. But I do completely agree that it's inaccurate to say that people have lost touch with poetry. Go visit Ampersand Duck and see the posts on National Poetry Week for proof. Poetry is not dead. It's just been somewhat mangled by angst-ridden adolescents (mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa).

.....
Postscript: So, some words make their own music, some music expresses itself beautifully without words (go get Kaki King's Legs to Make Us Longer. Now. I'm not joking), some words and music aren't complete without each other . . . and then there are some words and music that really need video to be fully appreciated. For instance, these gems: "Yearn/ You burn with desire/ Your pants are on fire"; "Now nothing looks better than a pair of gold pants/ Skintight fabric with enough room to dance"; and "Beats like these could break through walls/ I get my motivation from shopping in malls".  Believe!

Many, many, many thanks to TDW (you're a fireball!) and AF (gold pants forever!) for recognizing that I needed to know about this.

An ounce of prevention
Kate's recent post on Moment to Moment, and a recent spate of news about bird flu in Indonesia (this article from The Age is the latest) reminded me that I've been meaning to write about this post on WorldChanging from a few weeks back, calling for a grassroots awareness campaign about avian flu on the web.

I've had this particular post just sitting around for so long that I can't remember where I picked it up (Kottke.org, maybe?). Part of the delay in writing about it, I suppose, is that I really don't know much about public health or avian flu, so I didn't quite know what I had to offer to the conversation. And I've no desire to sound like a paranoid hypochondriac by yapping on about avian flu when I don't know anything about it. Particularly when there have been scares around nasty local illnesses before that failed to materialize as international pandemics, like Ebola and SARS. And there's the denial factor, as well. I'd very much like to go on thinking that in this age of modern medicine and technology, we would be able to avert a pandemic, so I don't really need to worry about it.

Sounds a bit like the situation around Hurricane Katrina in some ways: a bit of ignorance; a bit of denial; and a bit of experience with prior alarms that weren't false, exactly, but that didn't live up to their hype - not the sum total of what went wrong, by any means, but all contributing factors to the severity of the situation. And when things did go wrong, our technology and our medicine and our systems failed in New Orleans. What reason do we have to suppose that failure isn't equally possible in the face of a severe and highly contagious illness?

I'm not stockpiling anything, but the more I find out about the avian flu situation, the more uneasy I get. Recombinomics¹ has a list of the latest avian flu news, which is currently heavy on cases of bird-to-human transmissions in Indonesia. But this article points out that the migration of birds out of East and Southeast Asia into other areas of Eurasia means that bird-to-human transmissions will likely begin occurring over a far wider geographical range. Furthermore, the head of the World Health Organization recently said² that it's just a matter of time until a form of the virus that transmits from human to human develops, and the virus will then be able to spread far more rapidly. The Flu Wiki says that 20,000 to 40,000 people are killed every year by "normal" strains of influenza (I'm assuming that figure is for the United States), so who knows what kind of death toll a more virulent form of flu could cause?

Basically, it seems to me that it's really important to be informed about avian flu, and to have some knowledge of the resources that are currently available for keeping up with critical information about it and taking appropriate action. The WorldChanging post and its comments would be a good place to start learning about it if you feel like you need more information, but if you want to get straight to practical issues and action, the Flu Wiki is probably the way to go.

Most practically, and most importantly (especially for those of you in the northern hemisphere who are heading into cold and flu season now), take care of yourselves. Eat your greens, take your vitamins, and try not to run yourselves into the ground. I'll try to do the same on my end.


-----
¹link via comments on WorldChanging post
²link via Moment to Moment

Scatty
Topic: Navel gazing
"Scatty" is my new favorite bit of Australian slang. Google indicates that definitions vary, but in the context in which I first heard it, it was used where I would've used "scatter-brained". I like "scatty" so much better, though. It's much more evocative. Sometimes being scatty is dreadful and you feel like poo. But sometimes the randomness of it can be fun and surprising and entertaining, like when a good jazz singer scat sings.

I have most definitely been scatty lately, and it's gone back and forth between poo scatty and jazz scatty. We're on the semester break from classes this week and the next, and I've not been terribly productive this week. At least, I haven't been productive where studying is concerned. I've done many things that are good for my general sense of well-being, like housecleaning, getting my hair done, going shopping (stop smirking! My wardrobe is in a truly sorry state), and spending time with friends. I've fit in a bit of research and reading around the edges of all that, but not as much as I had planned.

I've got a lot on my mind lately, which contributes to the scattiness. Part of it is that I'm struggling a bit because I've hit the point in my stay where the newness of everything has worn off. I'm coming out of the adjustment haze and realizing that I'm in this place that opens up so many possibilities to me and I that have a very limited amount of time in which to explore them, and I start to feel stressed about that. Particularly when I realize that my time here is nearly half gone already, and I have no idea where it went.

Also, when the newness wears off, I look around and realize that, while I've met a lot of really cool people that I like a lot, I really miss my old friends. There is a point at which trying to figure new friends out goes from exhilerating to exhausting, and I am at it. I know it'll pass, and that many, maybe most, of my friendships here will survive it and be better for it, but right now, I just want a night out in Baltimore with my friends in the worst way. I want to be with people who I'm past "polite" with, who I'm past feeling like I need to impress in some way, who I'm past the initial "proving ourselves" stage with. To still be figuring all that out with people here - to not know who I'll become good friends with, and who I won't, for whatever reason - is very frustrating at the moment.

So some enterprising soul in the scientific community needs to get off her butt and start working on making those Star Trek transporter thingies happen, so I can just zap over to the States to get hugs from everyone and find out what's been going on, and zap back here in time for class. And then I can zap over to Skopje to see what's going on there . . . yeah, somebody needs to work on practical instananeous transport because I'm feeling greedy - I want the best of all my worlds, and I want it now!

Ruminating
Topic: Navel gazing
DamselFish is in the midst of a multi-country work trip, which she's writing about on In and Out of the World, and I'm jealous. Or at least, I was until she got around to writing about the indignities of air travel. I know the feeling of being a "sleepless and slimy sardine" after a long stretch of traveling a little too well, and I don't think I ever hit four countries in the course one trip, which is what DamselFish is doing. I don't envy her that part of the experience.

I do envy her trip to Sarajevo, though. I had one brief trip to Sarajevo when I was working in Skopje, but it was long enough for me to fall in love with the city. Some places hit me like that - I fell in love with Baltimore before I even really got to know the city, and five minutes into my trip to New Orleans last year, I loved it. I suppose it helped that Sarajevo was something of a legend in the former Yugoslavia -- so many people told me how much I was going to enjoy visiting, and they were always eager to share their own stories about how much they enjoyed the city. I heard over and over about how there was something special about Sarajevo.

They were right - there is something special about Sarajevo. I would step over pits in the sidewalk caused by mortar shells, look up past the bullet-pocked buildings to the steep hills where the snipers sat, notice the number of brilliantly white headstones in the cemetaries, and see uniformed NATO soldiers everywhere I looked . . . it should have been oppresive and depressing. And yet there was a vibrancy to the city. It felt to me like the people of Sarajevo were trying to get on with life, making the most of the international attention to and presence in the city, and rebuilding with what was available. I don't know that I would call the feeling hopeful, exactly, but it was inspiring, that people would pick up their lives after the war and get on with all the little things that make a city a city, despite everything that they had been through.

Reading about DamselFish's travels prompted me to flip through Ulica/Street, a book of photographs by Macedonian director Milcho Manchevski, which features snapshots of street scenes from around the world, featuring a lot of pictures of Skopje and other Macedonian cities. Some of the photos of Skopje just take me right back - I've stood on that street corner, I've shopped in that store, I've watched that little scene unfold. Funny how Manchevski's photographs do that for me in a way that my own don't.

It made me very nostalgic, although I'm not exactly sure what for. For Skopje itself, to some extent, but maybe more for who I was when I was there. I was excited, I was idealistic (well, more idealistic than I am now), I believed I was going to make a difference. And now? I'm not so sure. I learned a lot in Macedonia, and I'm learning a lot here, and some of the lessons are not easy. Development may sound good on paper, but in practice it can do harm, or not do much to effect meaningful change. I had thought I was eager to get back out into the "real world", so start working again, but now I'm thinking that there's a whole lot more I could learn about and reflect on.

For instance, I've been thinking that one thing we haven't really dealt with explicitly in any of my classes is the ethics of development work and what motivates people to do it. I just finished reading Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures, which tells the stories of three UN staff who worked in various conflict situations in the 1990s, and one of the things that leapt out me was how different their motivations for getting involved in UN work were, and how it led to different kinds of problems and mistakes for each of them. It makes me wonder if I might not be better prepared to go back into the field if I was engaging with theory a bit less and myself a bit more. I know that it's not hard to get caught up in the idea of "doing good", the romance of traveling, the adventure of living in another country - only to burn out when the travel gets to be too much and the culture shock gets too severe and you realize that the amount of good you're doing is limited.

But then new inspiration comes along in a amazing person, or a really effective program, or a great idea, and you're off again, ready to try to change at least a little corner of the world. I just don't want to get so caught up in that cycle of exhileration and exhaustion that I lose sight of the big picture. Of course, I'm not at all sure what I think the big picture is at this point. Still working on that one. I just wonder, when all this studying is said and done, whether I'll be ready to jump back in to work, and I hadn't at all anticipated feeling that way when I thought about what I might get from my studies.

A picture is worth a thousand rants
Topic: Events
Got this from Ro today - did a quick check to see whether it was real or not. Snopes says its true, so I give a big around the world and back snap to the (half-asleep? quietly subversive?) Sky News caption writer responsible.