a voice over moment

dear friends,

i hate that part of the tv show where there is a "deep thoughts" voice over. the worst of these of course come in any episode of sex in the city when carrie says "and so, i asked myself are men and women different? then i bought some shoes". but, as i do some work on not-my-book for the sfips today, i find myself listening to lemuria and wondering "are we destined to always like the music we did at 14?". i love the lemuria sound a lot, but perhaps it is because it sounds so much like the music of my youth. pants definitely has a rainer maria vibe.

this also reminds me of several ridiculous conversations (and instead of this nearly defunct blog becoming a place for deep thoughts, i'd like it to remain a place for the recording of minutiae that i may forget when i join the olds):

ridiculous conversation the first (two years ago):

ccd student: mrs. macgregor, is your husband like totally emo?

[i don't even know what that means. except that 90s emo as exemplified by brotherbyanothermother whom i assume they believed to be my husband (ew) is very different than the emo currently enjoyed or mocked by the youths]

ridiculous conversation the second (two months ago, instant messenger):

ms. hilarious: so, ryan romano?

ms. cam: i don't even know. i am not in the mood to make it happen. i just want to get this phd done and move. and here look- its a picture of him wearing a TOOL sweatshirt. can i really be crushing on someone that into TOOL?

ms. hilarious: maybe he got it for free at the record store? and well isn't he a few years older than us? you know how people a few years older than us... like were in high school when we were in eighth grade love NIN way more than us.

ms. cam: right, it could be a period or cohort effect.


ridiculous conversation the third [a few days ago, IM]

ms. hilarious tells me about some scenario precluding two people from dating

ms. cam: god you toronto hipsters are so incestuous

ms. hilarious: i am not a hipster! luke is a hipster! you have hipster musical tastes! i don't even listen to music pre-1975!


anyway, so i like music from the nineties or that sounds like music from the nineties. and i'm ok with it.

cam

week one, in review

dear friends,

well, i have been here just over one week and i realize if i don't start to document some of my day-to-day life i am liable to forget it. i did not actually take the above picture, but i did learn that unruly children are often referred to as fanta-filled-fuckers [etymology: children at pubs being served fanta]. i will try to post actual photos in future, but my dilemma is that my wristlet [my prefered purse] will fit either my moleskin guidebook or my camera but not both. for the timebeing i feel i must continue to make use of the guidebook. there is no use of my taking pictures if i am going to fall in the liffey and never make it back to my cubicle at ucd to post them.

perhaps appropriately, given that's what i am getting paid for, i have been spending the majority of my monday-friday at work. this is an adventure that begins when i catch the bus in dolphin's barn [etymology unknown]. i have grand plans to document my daily journey, so stay tuned for that. it takes well over an hour each way, and so most nights i end up making dinner, eating too many jaffa cakes, chatting with my housemates, and crashing. i am sorry that i only have one good pub story [below]. after thinking about inequality all day, it is nice to come home to the assorted bunch i live with and our beautiful courtyard/garden. caitlin is a friend from undergrad who i am really just getting to know. we've bonded over different friends done-wrong by the same boys, and caught each other up on various members of our class that we have respectively stayed in touch with. sara is an adorable gothy gal from norway who inspead of the love of black and hatred of rom-coms also has an affinity for puppies and flowers. david is doing a phd in molecular bio and richard is an architect from the west of ireland.

my other friend in dublin also went to queen's, but now she is an conservator at the irish museum. apparently this involves vacuuming a lot of zebras and i am looking forward to my behind the scenes tour of the museum of stuffed things that hasn't been changed or improved since the 1800s. colleen and i went out last thursday for an astonishingly delicious dinner at this place and then for a pint at a pub close to trinity. it was there that we encountered two irish dudes in a heated debate about what spooning was. dude #1 did not know, and dude #2 was trying to educate him using a diagram (fortunately of spoons) on the back of a receipt. eventually dude #1 learned the word (he swore he knew about the phenomenon) and dude #2 seemed relieved and was a fan of high-fives. in the end, there was no question that these two would be left to spoon each other.

on the way to dinner, we past a memorable place from my last visit to ireland a set of stone steps in temple bar, where i made friends with a nice irish boy and a friend who shall not be named made better friends with someonelse in the ally. that incident which i will tell you about if you ask [even though said friend would kill me] involved me saying "listen, i don't care if you are regretting playing the skin flute in the streets of ireland, i am tired of this, i need alone time", abandoning those i came on the trip with, making new friends and seeing U2 perform for free. i have not been afraid to do my own thing ever since. although, walking past i realized a lot has happened in the 7 years since i have been here.

finally, i had lunch today with a fellow ra of the sfips (our book, yes i say our even though my name won't be on the cover has been optioned by simon and schuster and is projected to sell better than the book that made sfips a public intellectual). this completed my meeting up with all 3 people i know here on the emerald isle. he introduced me to the wife of this guy, although i am irish politics retarded so i had to google him when i got back. hilariously, the sfips also mentioned the tea-shock [i am now into phonetic spelling] is a good buddy, so perhaps i will get to have jaffa cakes with him sometime. it is a strange life i live.

i did manage to spend most of the weekend in dublin-proper enjoying the shops on grafton street (especially marks and spencer, yes i am an old lady) and looking for some antique jewlery for a friend of a friend. expect next week's newsletter to be filled with such exciting topics as "bloomsday", "how to live it up on your elite university's dime", "old people who make the sign of the cross while passing churches on their bicycles" and "yep, i still miss having water pressure"

if you are taking the time to read this, it probably means i miss you.
cam

true (short) story

dear friends,

someone recently commented to me that when they first met the sfips (that's seminal figure in political science in case you have forgotten) that i work for they were struck by his piercing blue eyes. it put me in mind of this.

this blog is like a russian nesting doll. one story nested inside of another.

cam

an open letter to the prof who has a tramp stamp as his desktop image

dear friends,

like a good little grad student i spent my friday in an all-day workshop on issues of social capital, trust and the welfare state in canada and the us. i was mostly there as a canadian and as political sociologist, but also because the sifps was presenting and the domestic insurgent on my generals committee set it up. on the panel was a prof who i knew of from my former institution. he's in that other department i took classes in. although short, he is quite beloved by the undergrad ladies there and when you catch him and his little ipod and his genius dork glasses rockin' his way back home to the vendome metro, you can't help but acknowledge he's a little spicy.

all of this is just preamble to introducing what i hope is not a full fledged social phenomenon. projected via lcd from his mac (of course) for all the sfips and grad-students to see was his desktop background. random asian characters. like the ones that people think mean 'earth' or 'love' or 'feng shui'. that's right friends... it was like watching a presentation with brief glimpses of some girl's lower back. i am not sure what is the greater offense-- having a ridiculous desktop image projected during a professional presentation (he was a small fish in a big pond and did not bring his game) or lower back tattoos. when discussed with another student who knows the players, it was suggested that one might only be able to take so many undergrads trying to get in your pants before it starts to affect you. this makes me wonder what my undergrad thesis advisor uses as his desktop. i think it might be the above.

i wasted some time google image searching and could find neither his desktop nor a good asian character example for a side by side. but i did find that, which i also hope someday to make the cover of one of my books on women and religion.

if you would like to check out more on tramp stamps, visit the urban dictionary-- this week alone the ol'ud has helped me learn what "afo" and "what it do ma" mean.

unstamped with love,
cam

the week in review

dear friends,

now that i am slowly weening myself off the valium-type drugs, i have the energy to entertain you with some miscellany and to sorta keep up with my new year's initative to write more (both academically and personally).

sunday- carried large pile of books [this will become relevant later]. worked on report on women and religion for the 'seminal figure in political science' (sfips) i work for [this will become relevant later as well]

monday- started to feel old and arthritic. finished report for sfips. decided last minute to apply for this afterall. [fingers crossed for summer in dublin]. went to makedas. [one word resto review: go!] back was really bad by evening's end.

tuesday- pain equivalent to the fiery intensity of a thousand burning suns. decide not to go to doctor. instead buy thermacare. have 3 hour conference call with sfips research team. i painfully pace office because sitting hurts too much. sfips tells us anecdote about hanging out in libya with general khadafi over the holidays.

wednesday- go to health center. nice physician's assistant pete hooks me up with the drugs and says the books i carried on sunday were the likely culprit [grad school injury!]. at cvs i pick up copy of jane magazine. inside there is an interview with elijah wood. he makes reference to miss lavell white's song "if i could be with you", which i promptly purchase on itunes (don't judge-- i was on valium). and besides, it is a good song. i have uploaded it for you.

thursday- putting on socks still quite difficult. discover back pain is not good in winter months or for people who prefer wearing skirts and tights. while on floor trying to put on socks motivate myself by making comparisons (that will likely see me going to destination:hell transportion: handbasket)to daniel day lewis in my left foot. i also remind myself it is not the family way. my dad has had steel beams dropped on him by forklifts and declined tylenol prefering to "walk it off" and my grannie likes to chop wood for her fireplace at 80.

friday- continue to rock the heating pad plugged into my desk-- which makes it appear as though i am plugged into my desk a la the classic disney film "not quite human" starring alan thicke.

saturday- range of motion improves. stay in butler avoiding sock dilemma. watched jesus camp. again, a case of sociologists could do it better. really was hoping to see more interviews with the kids themselves, but that might be my own bias. post generals i am going to start working on a paper entitled "why colarado?" which will attempt to explain why the state is home to so many homeschoolers and mega churches. some recommended reading:

mitchell steven's kingdom of children

james davison hunter's culture wars and evangelicalism: the coming generation

christian smith's soul searching [note well that dr. smith responds to his own bad reviews]

sunday- things much better. can sit and work (or blog)in long stretches. learn about final fantasy's new project-- an invented country-- take that sufjan. my money is on ploughright.

and that's all the micro, macro and meso i've got.

cam