TO THE BEACH

What can't you do in grad school?

QUIT YOUR MOTHER FUCKING DAY JOB

goodbye office, hello beach!

ADVICE FOR GRADS

MF DOOM on overcoming writer's block

 

DID MY TIME, TOOK MY CHANCES

Don't mind my more than 2 week hiatus, I've been entertaining friends from near and far, rocking out to my long-time anthem mashed into the best 54 seconds on the internet (below), wrapping up office life, planning expensive vacations that I'll never be able to take again until well into the 2020s, beach partying, festival going, picnicking, all around summering. And GRAD LIFE is still nearly two months away!


 

HIGH TECH SOUL (D95-97)

Today will be a day I will later look back on with extreme nostalgia once I begin grad life.

The work day that I had the luxury of elegantly wasting in its entirety by reading about the Amen Break and the history of different subgenres of electronic music while also reminiscing about the days of drum and bass, and then the somewhat more recent by also bygone good old days of Dogzstar.




Yeeaaah

GRAD LIFE BOOK REVIEWS: THE GLASS BEAD GAME (D91-94)

GRAD LIFE BOOK REVIEWS: THE GLASS BEAD GAME by Hermann Hesse

If you too would like to abandon luxury and live a life not unlike that of a medieval eunich to better enable you to endlessly investigate frivial intellectual pursuits, including an elaborate game that can take weeks to play that makes absolutely no sense to anyone else, you should try out Castalia, home of the GLASS BEAD GAME (and also the famous Magister Ludi). Only students who are simultaneously highly intelligent, incredibly weak willed and possessing no desires to accomplish real, tangible goals are allowed into the province of Castilia, and you can check out any time you like but YOU CAN NEVER LEAVE. Well maybe, but that would be a SPOILER.

BREAKING NEWS: HIGGS BOSON (AND CHAIRLIFT) PUT THE SEX BACK IN PHYSICS (D90)

Back in GRAD LIFE I always relished social opportunities to interact with physics students. After the first 25 seconds of conversation when you've been forced to establish your disciplinary commitments, there is usually a somewhat awkward lull heavier than dark matter itself. I found that a way out of this was talking about the sitcom The Big Bang Theory. Turns out, with my limited sample set, this is usually a good topic of conversation with physics students because they realize that no one gives a fuck about anything they do and its the best PR they've got (that or physics dudes were just excited to talk to a girl outside of their department).

Oh, those poor physics grads, toiling away although nothing has happened in their field for so long, and all they've got to argue about is string theory (more proof that everything I know about physics I learned from aforementioned sitcom). Do a google image search for "sexy physicist" and you'll find Calista Flockhart on the first page and Stephen Hawking on the second; not much to dispel the stereotype of the tragically unattractive geek.

BUT hey, smug social science and humanity grads, with all this buzz about Higgs boson the flow of campus social capital has been irreconcilably disrupted. When is the last time you did anything that fundamentally changed our most basic understandings of the ENTIRE UNIVERSE? No, Toward an Sociology of Extraterrestrials would not count.

This shit puts the sex back in physics, hopefully to be reallocated from critical and film theory, if there is any justice in the universe.  Loyal readers of TYCDIGS, go find a physicist and show your appreciation, physically. Wouldn't we all like to start here?



Although perhaps Chairlift called this sea change with their [choose your own adventure] video earlier this year about all the parallel universe in which their singer Caroline is a sexy yet charmingly doe-eyed PhD student rocking GRAD LIFE.

LETTER FROM A READER: HAPPINESS (D89)

Dear TYCDIGS,

I am a miserable grad. Show me the way to something slightly resembling happiness.


Thanks,


Glum in college suburbia


Dear GiCS,

I think the best way to arrive at real happiness is to become a fanatic for some sort of pointless sport. But if you study any of the social sciences I'm familiar with, your graduate education has no doubt taught you that allegiance to any sort of sports team just some pointless derivative of nationalism. So you could try a hobby that fits into your budget, like bottle collecting, especially if you live in a state with cash deposits.

Love,

TYCDIGS

I CAN WELL UNDERSTAND WHY CHILDREN LOVE SAND (D88)

One thing that is great about not having a GRAD LIFE but being somewhat familiar with it is you can pursue any pseudo-intellectual thread you desire and feel good about yourself for it in the way only grad students can but without other grad students around to criticize you for any misinterpretation along the way, such as figuring out with the help of Wikipedia that Wittgenstein's Mistress is not surprisingly strongly influenced by Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and then having PDFs of both open on your computer as you go back and forth between them, feeling really damn good about yourself, because you completely disagree with Wittgenstein's approach to language but nevertheless really enjoy both texts.

And then you can say to yourself, and no one else except your poor blog readers, oh dear, doesn't the overemphasis for Wittgenstein on the relationship between language and reality and simples and complexes seem oh so similar to my man John Wilkens, who (centuries before Wittgenstein) tried to create a perfect philosophical language from the little kernEls of truth and materiality that words represent but got not much further in real terms than translating the Lord's prayer and making funny charts like this:

And then, rather than saying anything rigorous or new or even very interesting, you make a blog post and feel productive for the day!


Hey everyone, listen to Turks in space!

[UPDATE 15:33: LOVE WITTGENSTEIN BUT HATE ON PHILOSOPHERS]

TYCDIGS CATCH-UP EDITION (D79-87 BACKDATED)

Oh dear, more than a week without a single post! I was occupied by an emergency trip to the south to consume emergency rations of delicious seafood, listening to great music by yet another beach although I was too lazy to get there in time to actually swim, etc etc.

UNIQUE (D78 INSTALLMENT TWO)

All happy office workers are alike; each unhappy office worker is unhappy in his or her own way.

TALK TO THE HAND (D78)

While poking around on the new Endangered Languages project, I was surprised to come across what is known as "Mardin Sign Language," a form of communication developed among an extended family with a number of deaf members living in Mardin. Following the well-known pattern  of language shift and of most local or family sign languages (which linguists call village sign languages if they develop along with hearing signers), most younger signers are now only passive in Mardin Sign Language, communicating actively by speaking or using the dominant/national Turkish sign language.

A quick read into village sign languages reveals some fascinating stuff, such as a village in Brazil that uses an indigenous sign language to communicate with only one deaf child, and a number of villages in which the majority of residents sign despite a relatively small number of deaf residents. Linguistics make a distinction between these kind of sign languages, which are spoken by deaf and hearing people who share a great deal of cultural context, and "deaf community sign languages," which form in situations such as schools for deaf students in which the attendees have no common language.  A famous example of the latter is Nicaraguan Sign Language, developed by deaf children who were being taught spoken Spanish and lipreading at newly formed schools, of NPR fame.

Given the linguistic mix in Mardin, which draws from Turkish, Arabic and Kurdish, I would love to read more about all the gestures and utterances that this family's interactions are built upon.

EXTRA EXTRA: There seems to be very little written about this (134 hits on google and no Turkish wikipedia page, but look here and here), but apparently there existed a complex sign language of the Ottoman court spoken by the hearing and those called "mutes" alike. While I feel it is fairly well known that the Sultan employed a range of gestures for court communication, I had no idea that there was also such a complex language (related? distinct?) that could be used to recite stories and religious texts and communicate complex ideas. Its deaf users would have been valued as providing an extra layer of security and secrecy, as it would have been difficult for them to communicate with others and they would have been unable to overhear the sensitive information providing fodder for harem and palace drama. Apparently Osman II was the first fluent user and required a number of his court to learn it as well.  Unfortunately, no documentation exists of this language and linguistics are unsure if this language is related to any contemporaneous or currently existing sign languages.

WHY DID WE GO OUT (D77)

I started this tiny, cobwebbed corner of the internet to talk about all the TYCDIGS (Things You Can't Do In Grad School), and to countdown to the days when I will again join the ranks of those who do little else other than read dense social theory, sleep in libraries, annoy the shit out of everyone else not in their little grad club, and engage in elaborate self-hate rituals. To cleanse my soul before departing on said journey, I found it fitting to do as many of the things I CDIGS as possible. In theory a bit like a gap-year rumspringa, interpreted at times by such jejune enjoyments as ALL VODKA WATERMELON ALL THE TIME, which was really only one time but you get the idea.

Enter this article, with the apt and timely (in this NON GRAD life) title "Why Go Out," part of the adorable Toronto lecture series "Trampoline Hall." (Trampoline Hall is the cutest idea ever - gather people in a bar and get a few of them to deliver prepared lectures on topics completely outside of their areas of expertise.) In the end, this little charmer of a speech acknowledges that you do indeed need to "go out." But the first few paragraphs are a great read for anyone who is more than a little tired of it. I love this part:

At home, you can wear your pyjamas. No one is going to snub you or disappoint you. At Trampoline Hall, you could be snubbed or disappointed. The whisky is not cheap. It is less depressing to think the same thoughts you thought yesterday than to have the same conversation you had last week. Few of us will get laid. Why did we go out? My father never goes out. His emotional life is absolutely even keel. He is a deeply rational person. He doesn’t see the advantages.

The same conversation you had last week! If I had a kuruş...

Is my rumspringa peaking early?! But I have the whole summer to get through! Why have I started reading Lefebvre? It is not yet my time! Bring on the VODKA WATERMELON and let me live out my summer in peace! Oh, but Henri understands me.

THINGS OFFICE WORKERS DO (D76)

A grad friend of TYCDIGS sent in a link to this comic about a maladjusted office worker just trying to get by:

Here at this office, we've got some winning coping mechanisms as well

- Blog about meaningless drivel
- See how many cups you can accumulate on your desk (they are sporadically collected, making it a somewhat difficult task. This one is officemate's game)
- Browse internet delivery sites for food until you're not hungry anymore
- Make strange lists and hide them under the computer monitor, look at them again later and laugh hysterically
- Read trashy novels
- Wreak havoc on your internal body temperature by drinking multiple cups of hot coffee while also turning the AC as cool as it will possibly go (also a challenge, because it works rather unpredictably)

Oh the TOWD!

[UPDATE: 17:40: Officemate reminds me that we also
Paint nails, study spanish, study for the GMAT, inofficeworkout, read novels, plan vacays]

SCI FI HANGOVER AND ACADEMIC ROT (D75)

In the wake of 2084: A Birthday party...a piece by David Graeber, Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit, which discusses sci-fi expectation hangovers and why redditors are unfortunately some of mankind's brightest. After listening to promises of ever-accelerating technological advances that would bring us boundless space travel and medically engineered perfection, why is the best we can do post-space race a pretty fucking lame Human Genome Project and really great special effects in science fiction films?

Then turning to the academy, we get a depressing take on GRAD LIFE:

As marketing overwhelms university life, it generates documents about fostering imagination and creativity that might just as well have been designed to strangle imagination and creativity in the cradle. No major new works of social theory have emerged in the United States in the last thirty years. We have been reduced to the equivalent of medieval scholastics, writing endless annotations of French theory from the seventies, despite the guilty awareness that if new incarnations of Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, or Pierre Bourdieu were to appear in the academy today, we would deny them tenure. 

... 

There was a time when academia was society’s refuge for the eccentric, brilliant, and impractical. No longer. It is now the domain of professional self-marketers. As a result, in one of the most bizarre fits of social self-destructiveness in history, we seem to have decided we have no place for our eccentric, brilliant, and impractical citizens. Most languish in their mothers’ basements, at best making the occasional, acute intervention on the Internet.

Here's to the future of eccentricity, brilliance and impracticality, and to those of us with parents with livable basements! Reach for the stars, y'all.

BROFIST TO THOSE GUYS (D72-74)

Last few days were a back to back SF birthday-secluded beach party-baptism at secluded island chapel kinda weekend.

I've been quite lazy on this blogging for the past few weeks. Today will be no different. Today's lazy links posing as a blog post:

- Bath salts don't sound very fun. Even Spin says so!
- The nerdy comment crowd at Language Log debating the language David speaks with the Engineer in Prometheus....love. They even got some 4chan love! (see update #2: "Brofist to those guys")
- Who wouldn't want one of these at home?

ALL VODKA WATERMELON ALL THE TIME (D65-71)

TYCDIGS has had a week-long haitus (from the blog, not from the office, unfortunately) in celebration of my birth. So far the highlight has been a pool party fueled by sunshine, smuggled vodka and cannonballs, but next up is a science fiction themed terrace party with a vodka watermelon and a super secret birthday cake (courtesy of officemate). Yesterday we added to the mix an import from the land of the free to power through the rest of the birthday week.

THE MAN (D63-64)

Love you, Bradbury

When I was a young writer if you went to a party and told somebody you were a science-fiction writer you would be insulted. They would call you Flash Gordon all evening, or Buck Rogers.

Fuck those guys!

GROWN UP (D62)

Way back on DAY SEVENTEEN this NON GRAD was watching a bunch of kids in music videos, but looks like I'd missed the best of them all (thanks again to the very-into-funk friend):




And thanks to one of this blog's GRAD friends for reminding me about this one:




[Edit 15:43: No, I won't link to Fuck You]

PLAYER HATER DEGREE (D61)

Time for a feeeel good mashup! Hope my boss enjoyed the little dance she just walked in on. At least it was in front of multiple stacks of unorganized documents?
    

So here's to an afternoon of late 90's mainstream hip hop videos.

A VERY NON GRAD WEEKEND (D58-60)

This weekend was a hot weather breakthrough, justifying summer dresses and multiple iced coffees, a new breakfast-spot strategy and a transition to vodka-based beverages. Also indulged in Prometheus  and rounded out the weekend by falling asleep to Ceylan's newest. Started off the week right by managing to escape this morning before the cleaning lady showed up to guilt me about the state of my flat.

A very-into-funk friend is always posting great music late at night and thanks to him I'm very into Pete Rock right now. Also: how have aliens changed through the times?

WEEKDAY BEATS (D55-57)

Missing the homeland is quite manageable, but nothing can trigger it like looking at this year's DEMF lineup and photos. Mark Farina, who I recently missed in Istanbul to go listen to some friends play instead (loyal i am!), DEMF classics like Kevin Saunderson, Derrick Carter and Stacey Pullen, and even Public Enemy this year.  Le sigh.

But at least yesterday Istanbul was graced with its first ever Lunch Beat! Thank the Swedes for this straight-edge lunch time party where you have to dance and you walk away with a boxed (or vaccuum-packed!) lunch. A great time, but I cannot confirm or deny that I was there. Office workers of the world, throw off your chains!

The bomb is ticking towards GRAD LIFE.  The departure countdown is upon us.  Enter: WEEKDAY BEATS and the reign of the honey badger.

Scott vs Dick (D51-54)

In the past week I've read A Scanner Darkly and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and all I really wanna do is go back before my birth to give a big hug to my kindred spirit Philip K Dick, and say hey, man, it's all gonna be ok...really! Even though it probably really isn't. I also watched Bladerunner and I'm quite upset the only fake animal that made it into the whole film was a snake (although jr's toys were pretty cool), but I'm also fairly disappointed that I will never get to meet the Harrison Ford of the 80's.

SPOILER ALERT
SPOILER ALERT
Ridley says Deckard is a replicant and it's written in the origami, but some further proof of Dick's hope for humanity is that he wrote Deckard as tough man with a huge soft spot for fake toads and androids. Also he at least wrote some sex into the novel whereas Ridley gave us nothin' aside from declaring one of the androids a "pleasure model" and having her try to kill Deckard with the sheer strength of her theighs
SPOILER ALERT
SPOILER ALERT

As I continue my exploration of California authors, time for the Crying of Lot 49, and then perhaps I'll dip back into some Raymond Chandler.

The weekend is now far behind me but in line with the mission of this blog (the documentation of a NON GRAD life), I will describe it here:  bringing in the first weekend of summer (I so declare) by dancing around to this kind of stuffScot, eating decent Thai food, meyhane-ing, critiquing the form of the fishermen on the Galata Bridge while eating Gavur Dağı Salatası.

TWO SECONDS OF LOVE (D49-50)

Today was not the most productive day at work, but it matters not a bit, because when taking a break from OFFICE LIFE to walk across the street, I made two seconds of quality eye contact with my (retroactively declared) favorite actor while he was sitting in traffic in his big black jeep, talkin' to his abi on his phone.

Also bought a bargain-basement ticket back to the Land of the Free courtesy of Aerosvit and started plotting some summer escapes.

Wanted to post some interesting links or videos for others pushing through office life today, but the weekend calls!

A CALL TO ARMS (D47-48)

What can't you do in grad school?  According to the Dmytro Tabanchnuk, the Ukrainian minister of education, you can't be both a successful grad student and an attractive woman.

Radio Free Europe quotes him as calling the country's most talented grad students "girls who have a less bright, less attractive, and less model-like appearance."

Fortunately FEMEN stayed away from this one. (FEMEN is the bane of my Ukrainian alter-ego's existence, so much so I can't even bring myself to link to them. If you must search for them yourself, beware: NSFW.) Instead, a number of bright, attractive, model-like grads assembled outside of the Ministry of Education in Kyiv. My favorite response in the RFE video is the girl who says "Which approach should I take: to be beautiful for smart? I don't know what to choose." The women also asked Tabanchnuk out on a date, but he has yet to reply.

Loyal readers of the ivory tower, please take this as an opportunity to support our intellectual comrades: look real hot, today and everyday, please.

Which reminds me:



I don't think these girls are in grad school (their literary tastes are much too deliciously diverse), and they are the hottest book-ish types I've seen in awhile. Grad girls, let's step up the game!

THE BOOK (D43-46)

Today in office life: rearranging deck chairs, again and again. Or we could call it an exercise in Keynesian economics.

Remember when that Turkish singer made that really weird music video about Faysbook? I hardly do either, that's why you get no link.  But "I can't get off of the Facebook" is slightly more memorable, addresses all of the things you hate to hate about facebook, and even reminds us of the good old days, when referring to facebook required the use of a definite article and membership was correlated with the cost of your college tuition. I predict this will blow up exactly where you think it will.

MORE THAN MOST PEOPLE (D41-42)

Slacking on blog duty. This is all I've got for today, because I'm too busy eating my weight in fruit and vegetables on the cleanse diet and giggling through The Golden Calf:

Ambiguity, multivalence, misanthropy, long beards, BOW TIE...what's not to adore?

Last night was a little flashback/flashforward to GRAD LIFE - a dinner with a collection of graduate students.  Never fear, I escaped unscathed!

SCATTERED THOUGHTS ON A VERY SLOW TUESDAY (D40)

Sometimes it is the small successes in life that really make you proud.  Today my success is not breaking my CLEANSE DIET.

The opening paragraphs of Ilf and Petrov's Golden Calf, which I've now started and abandoned twice, has been in my mind a lot lately while skillfully darting through traffic as a rabbit darts through the fields of their birth:

You have to be nice to pedestrians.
Pedestrians comprise the greater part of humanity. Moreover, its better part. Pedestrians created the world. They build cities, erected tall buildings, ladi out sewers and waterlines, paved the streets and lit them with electricity. THey spread civilization throughout the world, invented the printing press and gunpowder, flung bridges across rivers, deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, introduced the safety razor, abolished the slave trade, and established that no less than 144 tasty, nutritious dishes can be made from soybeans.
And just when everything was ready, when our native planet had become relatively comfortable, the motorists appeared.
It should be noted that the automobile was also invted by pedestrians. But, somehow, the motorists quickly forgot about this...The roads became twice as wide, while the sidewalks shrunk to the size of a postage stamp.

You can read part of a draft volunteer translation here, but the new one published by Open Letter is really wonderful. I've been giggling to myself through every page, but it may just be the restrictive detox diet?

This deliciously cheesy video/song combo presents quite a dilemma: watch or dance? watch or dance?! Today I've decided on watch.

This summer photo of Ataturk is blocked by Sonic Wall as pornography. The shame!

Poll for the audience - how bad of an idea do you think it would be to create a meme which consisted of photoshopping pictures of Don Draper's face on famous Ataturk photos? Scale of 1-5, please, 1 being horrible and 2 being an absolute must.

AND WHERE WERE YOU WHEN YOU WERE TWENTY? (D37-39)

Cocktail party success, turns out all the dudes loved Poland's number one girly drink, Zubrowka and apple juice. "Wow, where does that awesome cinnamon flavor come from?"

Football madness makes me wish I could be that happy about anything, ever. But I am just so pleased with myself when I at my most cynical and jaded! Perhaps I should have waited until I was out of the impressionable years of my early adolescence to dive into Kafka and Dostoyevski.

I really like these songs right now:

 



Also miss bank's got a new one, and where were you when you were twenty?

DETROIT MARTINIS AND PARTY DRESSES (D36)

Tonight is dedicated to drinks with sugary syrup and trashy party dresses, because contrary to that wretched list floating around from Glamour/The Huffington Post, YOUTH LIVES ON FAR BEYOND 30, and also because I am having a cocktail party in my living room.

Salami breadsticks, roquefort/cream/almond covered strawberries, ginger-lemon-mint cocktails, and a bunch of things that are even better than that (compliments of officemate).

LOVE FOOD HATE FOODIES

ADVENTURES IN SEX SCANDALS (D35)

This goes out to those out there futily searching for my "sex blog":

1. OMG can this be true? You'll never be able to listen to Greased Lightening ever again, so plan on skipping the weddings of any remaining single cousins.

2. Is make-up sex like a cocaine addiction? Shouldn't we be glad that there is a somewhat healthy alternative to class-a dependencies?

3. Actually that is all I've got. Today this office worker gets to leave early! And continue the day's work in a less desirable place with more annoyances and without constant access to the internetssss.

THE PROOF IS IN THE PILSNER (D34)

Could the malt beverage you choose to imbibe truely affect the economy in which you find yourself? Perhaps not, but select the right beer and it could help you package yourself as a more attractive and distinctive consumer with the side benefit of being really tasty.

It is sometimes difficult to pull this off quite the way you'd like if you live somewhere where beer varieties are few or alcohol is heavily taxed, but if you need some help, you could always consult ratebeer.com (the IMDB of beers, but without a trivia section).

One loyal reader recently sent in a number of rankings from ratebeer.com to empirically demonstrate the inferiority of Efes Pilsner:

Guiness Foreign Extra Stout!  97 out of 100! A ratebeer.com user writes: Bottle. Pours dark, dark crimson, very nearly opaque, with a 3-finger creamy and meringue-like light brown head. Long retention and blebby lacing. Aromas of toffee, raspberry, and caramel, with cream and mocha as well. The flavor is sweet toffee and burnt sugar, sugar cane, and roasty and bitter coffee in the finish. Medium carbonation, a bit prickly, with full body. NIce.

Leffe Brune! 92 out of 100! Another user writes: Aromas Frutales con final intenso a vainilla.... Color cafe intenso, obscuro con matices brillantes a la luz. Espuma abundante que perdura hasta el final Al rimer sorbo se siente una deliciosa cremosidad, quiza superior a lo esprado en una cerveza estilo abadia. Al trago la cremosidad cede para que se perciba un cierto sabor dulzon. En general es una muy buena cerveza estilo abadia, facil de tomar y sin tanta complejidad para entender.






And finally, scoring 6 out of a possible 100, and scoring better than 46% of beers of its kind, the pasha of beers, Efes Pilsen Fıçı! One user describes it as: Clear medium yellow colour with a average, frothy, good lacing, mostly lasting, white head. Aroma is moderate malty, grain, hay, corn, sweet malt, vegetables, cardboard. Flavour is moderate sweet and light bitter with a average duration, sweet malt, cardboard. Body is medium, texture is oily to watery, carbonation is soft.

ADVENTURES IN SCIENCE IN THE NEWS (D33)

Sometimes I read things like this and I get angry about the otherwise intelligent people who bring absolutely no rigor to the interesting topics they focus on. Yes, we would love to believe that there is something wrong with the Republican brain, or at least we know that we could sell quite a few copies of a poorly researched pop-science-non-fiction claiming that.  The dude wants to know why social conservatives cling so confidently to myths about non-heterosexual marriage and poor analysis of empirical studies to "prove" things that are far from accurate, such as that same-sex marriages are detrimental to child development. But why oh why does he refute pseudoscience that says that homosexuality is a choice and then imply that the very conservatives that believe this are somehow hardwired for strong gut reactions to homosexuality? #whytheleftwillneverwin

This reminded me of another question I found much more beautiful but much less profitable: how do creationists use different kinds of scientific knowledge to "prove" the problem of the supernatural? 

EEP! That was getting too close to GRAD LIFE. Time for something else.

Apparently self-breast exams should be taking 7 minutes per breast, so don't do them in the shower, especially if you live in a dry climate! It is so hard being an eco-feminist.

"ANYTHING YOU CAN DO I CAN DO META" (D32)

When I grow up, since I probably can't be Umberto Eco, I want to be a semiotically-inspired cultural commentator.

Predicting dating success with language use? Don't agree with this arbitrary distinction between "function" and "filler" words, his research methods or assumptions about the distinction between language and self...in fact I found this clip downright infuriating...but interesting to think about nonetheless.

WEEKEND! (D30-31)

BBQ's, terrace parties and catching up on Game of Thrones while thinking about approaches to rule, political organization and semiotics of the brothel.

Dancing around at a Hakan Vreskala show at the brilliant suggestion of my lovely roommate, but unlike in that video his band was largely comprised of what I believe to be erasmus students....odd?

Strange chance meetings with strange people and having my retrospectively-declared FAVORITE SWEATER stolen while I was waiting to hear 212.

[Edit 12:12:  Sweater found.  Sweater demoted back to "shapeless dark blue sweater"]

WE ALL HAVE OUR REASONS (D29)

Last night I attended an event called "Free Beer". I hadn't been to one of those since college but it was just as fun as I remember. Perhaps even better, and that is because the owner of Cheers is pretty fucking great.

At said event I met a poor soul who was considering the GRAD LIFE. Although he currently has some sort of job in finance (but not as good of a job as his friend, also in attendance, who "used to work at Barclays" and wears "$300 socks" [leading us to wonder what a guy with $300 socks is doing at a Free Beer night]), all he really wants to do is go to school for modern European history.  He even told me what kind of research he was interested in but I had taken a bit too much Free Beer and cannot recall. It seemed sufficiently GRAD-y. I gave him a list of reasons he should not go to grad school, including, if my memory serves me correctly here, that he was single with massive earning potential and would probably bag a much hotter wife if he stayed in finance.

Then came the question, "then why are YOU going to grad school?"

Oh yes!  Well first of all, I will be a hot wife, so that reason doesn't apply to me.  But mostly it is because I am a hopeless nerd with a personal history of political radicalism that guilts me away from real jobs and I prefer to use my few marketable skills to PUSH BACK THE BOUNDARIES OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. Why else?

[Edit 10:57:  Officemate was also in attendance last night and is currently sleeping underneath her desk]

[Edit 15:20: I have remembered a number of other things that happened at Free Beer night, such as meeting and accidentally publically shaming T's nemesis, and then being slowly publically shamed by officemate, who spoke of and then later located some documentary footage of me circa 2005 with fake facial hair]

DAY 28 BONUS - ANOTHER LETTER FROM A READER!

A reader in New York writes,

Dear TYCDIGS,
I am already in grad school and have given up on doing many of the things I used to love to do. I am wondering if there is any way that I can build a time machine and visit my pre-grad school self to tell her not to go to grad school. Problem is, I am a "social scientist" and don't know anything about quantum mechanics or math.

Can you help me?

Trapped in the Tower 

Dear Trapped in the Tower,

Alas I cannot even begin to help you. But some people find momentary respite reading occasionally humorous comics about life as a doctoral student. But then again, those jokes are about people who are studying math and science.  Best write to them instead.

Love,

TYCDIGS

A MULTITUDE OF WORK DAY DIVERSIONS (D26-28)

1. The best work day diversion is the DAY OFF. That was DAY 26.  You may know it as MAY DAY. This was an amazing day with sun and shine and socialists.

2. DAY 27 there was no officemate to entertain me so I just read from her various ereaders and forgot to update about my NON GRAD life.

3. I think that what this city needs is some Swedish Lunch Discos. This would be infinitely more entertaining than my current lunch routine, which involves seeing how many large men I can get to move out of my way on tiny sidewalks as I walk home and back.

4. I have decided to learn how to solve the mighty rubik's cube. So far my knowledge is purely theoretical.

5. Tamerlane chess...practically perfect in every way! Each pawn has a different promotional schedule and there is even a war engine!  And an elephant! And a giraffe! I feel cheated that I've lived almost three decades without knowing about this amazing game. You can apparently play it here but I can't install Java.  Woe of woes!

6. Slate says that different kinds of alcohol do not really get you drunk in different ways, even hand sanitizer! But mixing with diet soda could make you lose it all, so watch out.

FUN AT THE OFFICE (D25)

There may be a rumor that I have a "sex blog".

From another corner of the internet: What do you do if you're the government of a struggling country trying to improve your image in the world and move beyond your Soviet legacy but western European leaders threaten to boycott your very important sport events (EURO 2012!) because of alleged "human rights violantions"? Invoke the Cold War!

The great thing about having a job with long hours and very little work is you can come up with all sorts of pointless ideas and then BLOG ABOUT THEM.

One example: Reading Swann's Way and Herzog at the same time makes me want to create some sort of psychological therapy that involves forcing people with mild neurosis to read a series of works with main characters that are completely neurotic. I think this could either work really well or be a complete disaster. Perhaps this strategy could be expanded with the help of experimental psychiatry. In the meantime...any other suggestions for such a list...please share in the comments.

WEEKEND ONCE AGAIN (D23-24, BACKDATED)

Another great non-grad weekend.  Hanging out on a dark and smokey terrace watching people try to move to deep house, cafe hopping and clothes swapping, sunshine and finally watching some Game of Thrones.

I also went to a Goya exhibit that's in town. Mostly just engravings, two large and unattractive commissioned portraits and some paintings of Spanish children running around in the street. Philistine as I am I found it difficult to enjoy the more tame of Goya's works; I much prefer Saturn Devouring His Son to Maja, naked and clothed. [Note: the most extensive wikipedia article for La maja desnuda is written in...wait for it...Turkish!]

 I really liked the series of etchings called Follies or Proverbs, darkly shaded engravings depicting "folly" of all kinds: Feminine Folly, Folly of Poverty, Animal Foolishness, Loyalty... animated yet subtle depictions of moral ambiguity and dispair.

I was drawn to these two the most, Feminine Folly and People in Sacs. Look carefully in the black sheet the women are using to launch the children up in the air and you can see a dead donkey defying the laws of physics.

Some might say you can see stirrings of surrealism here but I just say how deliciously dark and delightful!

TODAY IN CONSUMERISM (D23)

1. I want her chandelier. And her bathtub and all of her clothes.



2. Melville House Books is publishing an adorable series called "The Art of the Novella." As someone who has recently been able to read a shitload of books mostly because they were all novellas, I appreciate this. Can I have all of these even if I don't read them?! Pretty like candy!

3. I hope it is still ok to like deep house because I am in love. This makes me want to be back huddling in that cold little building on that dirty Berlin waterway.

4. Shoes.

AFTERNOON UPDATE, BECAUSE THIS ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH FOR ITS OWN POST:


5. THIS BOOK

ADVENTURES IN PROUST (D22.2)

Today I started reading Proust's Swann's Way (yes I WILL finish Remembrance of Things Past, unlike my earlier attempt to learn the Arabic script) and I hardly got very far at all without coming across a passage I absolutely had to share with all my imaginary readers.

I typed it out just for you, these three very long sentences!

Even the simple act which we describe as 'seeing some one we know' is, to some extent, an intellectual process. We pack the physical outline of the creature we see with all the ideas we have already formed about him, and in the complete picture of him which we compose in our minds those ideas have certainly the principal place. In the end they come to fill out so completely the curve of his cheeks, to follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in the sound of his voice that these seem to be no more than a transparent envelope, so that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is our own ideas of him which we recognise and to which we listen. And so, no doubt, from the Swann they had build up for their own purposes my family had left out, in their ignorance, a whole crowd of the details of his daily life in the world of fashion, details by means of which other people, when they met him, saw all the Graces enthroned in his face and stopping at the line of his arched nose as at a natural frontier; but they contrived also to put into a face form which its distinction had been evicted, a face vacant and roomy as an untenanted house, to plant in the depths of its unvalued eyes a lingering sense, uncertain but not unpleasing, half-memory and half-oblivion, of idle hours spent together after our weekly dinners, round the card-table or in the garden, during our companionable country life. Our friend's bodily frame had been so well lined with this sense, and with various earlier memories of his family, that their own special Swann had become to my people a complete and living creature; so that even now I have the feeling of leaving some one I know for another quite different person when, going back in memory, I pass from the Swann whom I knew later and more intimately to this early Swann - this early Swann in whom I can distinguish the charming mistakes of my childhood, and who, incidentally, is less like his successor than he is like the other people I knew at that time, as though one's life were a series of galleries in which all the portraits of any one period had a marked family likeness, the same (so to speak) tonality - this early Swann abounding in leisure, fragrant with the scent of the great chestnut-tree, of baskets of raspberries and a sprig of tarragon.

I loved how this passage brought to mind a few people I know who just seem to move and behave in a way that seems to perfectly embody my impressions of them. A friend whose hand holds a pen and writes with all of the whim she brings to everyday life. A relative whose awkward yet confident walk fits perfectly with her musings on everything, especially herself. And then thinking about people who you seem to understand so much better, or at least read much more charitably, after learning previously unknown bits and peices of their pasts or presents. Here I am thinking about an American I thought was a total bitch until I learned she had just lived in Russia for two years. It makes so much sense now (can we be friends plz?)!

DAY TWENTY-TWO - WORD OF THE DAY

Time for a new feature - TYCDIGS WORD OF THE DAY!

Today's word is: demoralized

Google image searching "demoralized", one of the results was this adorable demoralized puppy in a bunny suit. Trying to find the original page, I found that the only result on the first page with the actual slideshow was BLOCKED by Sonic Wall, classified as "Social Networking". I couldn't bring myself to go to the next page, knowing certain disappointment awaited.

Other than that, most of the pictures for "demoralized" kind of suck. Le sigh.

DAY TWENTY-ONE

TYCDIGS NEWS: I have received my first visitor from an organic google search.  This visitor was from Chicago and was searching for "pudendum bare".

EVEN BETTER TYCDIGS NEWS:  I'm thinking of going somewhere to learn how to surf this summer.  Portugal? South Africa? Morroco? Bali? The dreaded Phuket?

DAY TWENTY - INTERESTING THINGS. THREE OF THEM.

1. What do you think...if you were going to make a big deal out of opening a collection of galleries to celebrate the beauty of Islamic and Middle Eastern Art, keeping in mind that the many diverse styles of art the galleries were built to present have long been overshadowed by "European" art which is more widely "understood" and appreciated in the good US of A, how would you celebrate its opening?  Would it be by finding a slightly odd Turkish pianist who first plays peices by European composers before then presenting his own compsitions which, with names such as "Four Dances of Nasreddin Hodja" and "Istanbul Album", are sufficiently Turkish to count?

The Met thought so, but your answer might be a bit different. That's the beauty of this world, so many different opinions.

Don't get me wrong - I loved listening to Say's music and watching him play in the video below and his other work available on youtube, especially as he pounds away while also manipulating the piano strings with his other hand.





2. Lots of press lately about scientists with a lot more political credibility than Timothy Leary who think drugs such as MDMA and psilocybin (the fun part of mushrooms) should be used to treat all sorts of things from anxiety in terminally-ill patients to shitty marriages to alcoholism. Think of all that wasted potential.

3. Turkey wine tip: wine jelly, for the class of wines that aren't even good enough to mull.

DAYS EIGHTEEN-TWENTY (BACKDATED) - A TALE OF TWO AIRPORTS

Berlin was great.

Flew into Tegel, then was informed that the airport is in its last few months of operation.Quite disappointing, as Tegel is the most relaxing airport I've ever been through: check-in, security and your gate are all bunched together so there is very little to get confused about (with a walk of as little as 30m from airport entrance to aircraft boarding), and the shops are so unintrusive you hardly notice them. Of course those are the very same reasons Tegel has become financially untenable, because the airport is not designed to maximize waiting time in areas with lots of shops, and every new security guideline must be adopted at each gate's separate security checkpoint.

Tegel's last day of operation is schedule for June 2nd, 2012, which will be marked by a charter flight in which over 150 lucky golden ticket holders will be treated to a sightseeing tour of Berlin by air by night. This is also opening day for Berlin's new airport ("Willy Brandt"...yes, really).

Sad, indeed! Berlin also has another former airport, Tempelhof, which is quite central and is now used as a park with the name Tempelhofer Feld.

[HT for officemate:  Tempelhof also doesn't have an English language wikipedia page.]

DAY SEVENTEEN - BERLIN CRAM SESSION

Leaving for Berlin tomorrow morning, so very little work can get done, as clearly I need to spend as much time as possible on the internet looking at artists somehow associated with Germany so I can launch an intelligent argument about why officemate should accompany me to art museums.

So many fascinating artists coming out of Germany, and of course Berlin!  Everyone may have already known, but sometimes I'm a bit slow, and learning more details is good.

First up in George Grosz...associated with the Dada and New Objectivity movements in Berlin (who can say no to that?)...fumbling around I found quite a few I really liked, including these portraits of author/poet Max Herrmann-Neisse (1925 and 1927):

   

And then there's Otto Dix, Grosz's pal in New Objectivism...which really makes me want to be a part of something politically alternative and artistic, but alas here I am, instead writing from the trenches of economic development. But Dix...the office's security software seems to think he is a pornographer. Do you think that Sonic Wall just doesn't know art when they see it?  Or are they concerned about the latent potential of the long-passed Dadaist movement to rise once again and destroy everything upon which Sonic Wall has built its empire?!

      

Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden (1926) and Portrait of the Dancer Anita Berman (1925).


Dörte Clara Wolff, a young Jewish woman, decided to try her hand at art and design at age 16, calling herself "Dodo." She eventually produced drawings and paintings, working for a satirical publication titled ULK. In her complicated personal life, she ditched a lawyer for a Jungian, and upon seeking out the expertise of Jung's mistress regarding her tumultuous second marriage, she followed her advice to try out a therapeutic ménage à trois. She emigrated to London in 1936, and her work has only been recently "re-discovered," as they say, with an exhibit currently running at the Kunstbibliothek in Berlin to honor her life and work. HT to the officemate: Dodo has no English language wikipedia page!

       

DAY SEVENTEEN - KIDS IN VIDEO

Three recent music videos starring mostly children.  Some much more talented with others.

"Sixteen Saltines" - Jack White (You'll have to click through to watch this one)

tUnE-yArDs - "My Country"





"Shady Love" - Scissor Sisters and "Krystal Pepsy" [=Azealia Banks]

DAY SIXTEEN

Today I unveil a new segment:


Things I'm embarrassed to admit I first learned about in the New York Times


1. This story about DJ Venus X makes me, among other things, want to live in New York.

Within a year, GHE20GOTH1K was widely recognized as reanimating New York’s underground night life. It was one of the few parties where a wide cross section of the city — gay and straight, black and white, goths, punks, hip-hop heads, artists, music snobs, fashion designers like Mr. Ervell and even the occasional celebrity like Diplo — came to dance under one roof. Ms. Soto said she views D.J.-ing for such a diverse audience as a defiantly political act, and frequently peppers sound clips from the Al Jazeera news network, audio from the riots in Egypt and sound pings from submarines into her sets.
“I’m going to play Al Jazeera in the club, and you’re going to like it,” she said. “And it’s going to be cool, but not weird cool. It’s going to be like Kanye West and Jay-Z cool.”

"It's going to be cool, but not weird cool."

2. Kutluğ Ataman (go to Turkish artist for the NYT?) is using the concept of silsel to piece together a quilt of tiny "letters to Turkey" written on colorful shapes of fabric that will be sewn together during a performance as part of the Istanbul Theatre Festival. The story behind the idea is quite beautiful, although I haven't been able to confirm with a google image search. While Ataman was recently on his way to work on a project in Syria, violence in the area kept him in the Turkish city of Mardin, where he met a woman with an unconventional ceiling.

Once inside the traditional house of a woman known as Nasira Hanim, Mr. Ataman was intrigued by its ceiling.
“It was painted bright turquoise in a zigzag pattern,” he said recently by telephone. “It was very graphic, very contemporary-looking in design.”
“She told me that in the past the Syriani were scared of going outside, fearing for their lives — they were being attacked and killed by others. It doesn’t matter who, but I think she meant in ethnic clashes,” he said. “But because they were trapped inside, they painted a symbolic sky on their ceilings to alleviate their yearning for the real thing.”
That motif was called silsel, a word he did not recognize as being either Turkish or Arabic.
“I researched further and discovered it was Aramaic, the original language of the Bible and what was spoken at the time in that region,” he said. “It seems to have had a double meaning, either the fluttering of wings, or the sky.”

A single word sharing both the sense of "fluttering wings" and "the sky"...a painting on the ceiling to quench one's dangerous desire for freedom.  For anyone in the area, I believe the exhibition opens May 12th at noon in the Galata Rum Primary School (Kemeralti Cad No 25). But don't count on me for anything.

DAY FIFTEEN - MORE COOL CZECHS

I was going to save this post for tomorrow but I'm just too excited not to immediately overshare with my imaginary readers.

Following my re-discovery of Bohumil Hrabal this morning (one of this blog's loyal readers first suggested him a few years ago), I've become one of those annoying people that becomes momentarily obsessed with the art and literature of a country on nothing more (or less!) than a whim.

Look at these paintings by František Kupka and tell me they are not amazing! (You can use the comments to do so)

And have you ever met such a sexy surrealist as Toyen? (Perhaps NSFW)

And omg Antonín Slavíček (this too) and Josef Čapek.

Now how else to expand from Kafka and Kundera? Starting with The Good Soldier Švejk seems a good option.


Perhaps after Berlin I need to go to Prague? 

DAY FIFTEEN - GOOD BOOK

Time for a new feature in TYCDIGS: "GOOD BOOK." These will not be real book reviews, because that sounds too much like work.

Too Loud a Solitude is about a man whose job is to destroy books (as "wastepaper" that has been confiscated or banned) and whose passion is to pour over the classic works and rare volumes he manages to save. He stores them in a canopy above his humble bed, even though he is sure the weight of his collection will one day destroy him, as he destroys the flies and mice that make their way into his underground wastepaper compactor. This one really got me, passing on that physical feeling usually only associated with heartbreak or hunger or loss.

This story was the basis for a 1996 Czech film and beautiful puppet film released in 2007. Would love to see the full versions of both of these.






Looking up some of the book's references brought me quite a few interesting places as well.

It's a pretty short read, so if I don't get anything else to do at work today I might just read it again.

DAY FOURTEEN - HOW AM I DIFFERENT THAN A PERSON PAID TO DO NOTHING FOR SCIENCE

HOW MY JOB IS BOTH SIMILAR TO AND DIFFERENT THAN THAT OF A NASA PILLOWNAUT


Pillownauts are those people that NASA pays to stay in bed as some sort of experiment in low or no gravity simulation.  While wondering around the halls of the office today searching for sunlight, I wondered...how is my lot in life similar to and different from these brave souls who have sold their living bodies to science? Here's what I've got so far.

- We both get paid to do nothing. 

- Pillownauts make more to do nothing than I do. But perhaps not after taxes!

- Thrown off balance by the vortex of energy and spirit known as our respective workplaces, we both are prone to blog about shit most people don't really care about.

- While a NASA Pillownaut is paid to NEVER GET OUT OF BED, I am paid to never leave the office.  But I can leave my chair and hang out in the kitchen. And occasionally I need to get things from the copy machine.

- NASA Pillownauts are contributing to a growing body of knowledge about the effects of space travel on human beings. I am contributing to absolutely nothing.

- When the Pillownauts spend hours upon hours online to numb themselves to the boredom of their existence, they aren't blocked from accessing the best parts of the internet, i.e. tumblr.

- They don't feel guilty, I'm guessing, for watching movies at work. 

But how is my job different than this guy's? Unclear.

DAY FOURTEEN - BERLIN BOUND

This just in from the trenches!


TYCDIGS and comrade FTS are headed for Berlin this weekend. Reuniting with college friends, reuniting with expat friends, reuniting with tasty beers and quality footwear...

Yesterday in NON GRAD LIFE: 

shopping for overstocks and rejects in anticipation of warm weather, wandering, and hanging out at a metal bar relieved that the band actually just played rock.

DAY THIRTEEN - LETTER FROM A READER!

Another letter from yet another loyal reader!

Dear TYCDIGS,

My question for you is a two parter - 
a) must i wait for sex bruises to completely fade before getting laser epilationand b) is the brazillian the new tramp stamp? Especially given the semi-permanent nature of laser epilation?

Kind Regards, 

A Curious Office Worker 

Dear A COW,
This is a very important question. Thank you for giving TYCDIGS the opportunity to engage in a distracting research question with non-rigorous research methods!
Regarding part a) ... As you are a north American of Catholic European ancestry living in a predominantly Muslim country, naturally your first instinct might be to preserve the snowflake-white reputation that us white girls have come to enjoy, and, indeed, deserve. It may seem that going in for a laser appointment while you are decorated with a variety of "sex bruises" would be an embarrassing or inappropriate move. But I am sorry to say, A COW, they are on to us, and they are on to you too.  


Two possible solutions:  1) wear a wedding ring or 2) claim you were daggered.


But do not forget the possibility that the laser attendant is not judgmental but instead jealous.   That laser is mad painful, and if the bitch suspects you're getting more than your fair share of quality sexy-time, she could give you a few extra zaps on your fundament.


Regarding part b) ... I have polled the audience on this one, following up with in depth questioning. Let me break this down by gender. Women have overwhelmingly responded that you should do what you feel comfortable with. That sounds like something women would say.  Some men seem to think you should just take it all off and argue at the same time that tramp stamps can be quite sexy in context. hyfr! But this is my favorite, and most descriptive, reply:

you just need to be conservative
with how much you take off
so, something wide enough to not be a strip?
The place you want the hair gone is the actual vagina
the mons pubis can be a jungle
just leave the pudendum bare
okay, I gotta pass out though

"Something wide enough not to be a strip" - sounds like a good standard. Sexy in the short-term, and yet in the long-term there you have plausible deniability - you were a lap swimmer and not a tramp.

Love,

TYCDIGS

DAYS ELEVEN AND TWELVE - BACKDATED

Hanging out in parks with over-priced baked goods, cafe-hopping with an adorable soon-to-goddaughter and her parents in tow, and too many evenings at Cheers.

I will otherwise remember this weekend with these two videos:






Following the failed bar crawl (maybe next weekend?) a new idea for a themed party:  Dress to be daggered!

DAY TEN - LETTER FROM A READER!

Now time to answer a letter from one of my dear readers.

Dear TYCDIGS,
Should I go to grad school?
Thanks,
SIGTGS

Dear SIGTGS,

This is a very important question in any young or youthful but aging person's life, and the answer can be reached with a complex decision calculus.

If you are interested in gender/race/sexuality/"popular culture" with no background in any particular social science, you should strongly consider going to grad school, unless you have any creative talents, in which case you should consider becoming a blogger, artist, hat maker or cupcake baker.

If you identify as a radical, anarchist of any shade, socialist, leftist, or Occupier but still like to feel better than most people around you, you could probably just go into non-profit or union organizing. Or move to Detroit. But if you can come up with at least two reasons why these options just perpetuate the structures that oppress you and others, and eventually want a shot at making over $50,000 a year, you could try out grad school if you don't mind eventually abandoning everything that led you there in the first place.

If the proudest day of your life was the day you graduated from college, you should most certainly go to grad school.

If you enjoy impulse shopping, promiscuous sexual relations, travelling, sunshine, the possibility that at any given time the next step in your life might bring you to something completely different, shallow analysis of anything at all [=news, non-academic non-fiction, emails from your friends and family], do NOT go to grad school, unless you don't mind losing enjoyment from everything you used to love, which is, by the way, one symptom of depression.

If you've always thought you might want to go to grad school but don't really know what for, resist the urge to study Urban Planning, Comparative Literature, or Ethnomusicology. If you must go to grad school, fork out for a professional degree related to something you've actually done before, and then go get a fucking job.

If you want to go to grad school because you don't know what else you could do with your life, you could become a yoga teacher, or English teacher, or teacher of any kind, really.  But then again, that is also the end goal of going to grad school. So you’ve got to figure that one out on your own.

If you want to go to NYU, CUNY or Columbia, and have never actually lived in New York, then you probably just want to move there, and probably wouldn't really make it anywhere anyway. So why not just try your luck as a barista in a cute mid-western city? Cincinnati is really quite quirky these days.

If you're exceptionally good with numbers, computers or chemicals, the answer is no. 

Did any of this apply to you? 

Love,

TYCDIGS

It's Friday! But the LA/Tehran contingent brought a bit too much LA to this city, and now I'm not even sure I can go out this weekend. At the very least, the recently planned pub crawl must be postponed. I know, this is very non-NON GRAD.