It turns out all I wanted was a club sandwich.

Last week was crazy, as I'm sure you all could guess by my total lack of posting. I was desperately trying to finish a first draft of my dissertation by the beginning of this week. Whew. Looks like I wrote a book. A five-Chapter, 197 page, 74000 word monstrosity. It is now in the hands of my advisors, and I have two options.

1. I can work like a dog on a few articles I'm in the middle of preparing (one requires only a few touch-ups, I think, one is midway through a first draft, one is merely in the conceptual stages).

2. I can put aside the articles and read a bunch of stuff that I totally neglected given the work I was doing on the thesis.

3. Go frisbee golfing. For three months.

It's likely it'll be a combination of 1 and 2, but 3 seems damn inviting. I'm going to be moving this weekend, and probably doing a lot of stuff around the house in the meantime, so the temptation to completely blow off the publishing world, and the published world, is extreme.

A couple of other things have happened since last we spoke.

1. I watched 'Gorky Park' with William Hurt, Lee Marvin, and Brian Dennehy. Disappointing. I was hoping for more "cold war" in this "cold war thriller." Mostly it was just a "thriller", but not all that thrilling, after all.

2. I wached a heckuva lot of the Olympics. It turns out that the women's 10k biathalon is more exciting than one might think. In fact, the action at the Olympics has been anything but exciting, except for that one event. Basically this entry means that I've been wasting a lot of time.

3. I've been falling asleep at around 10pm every night, getting really tired around 9. I'm sure it's correlated with my decision to go virtually cold turkey on caffeine, given some recurrent heart problems. The no caffeine has helped that stuff, but it sure is making we tired as all get-out.

4. I've discovered that the 'blogosphere' is basically a worthless entity. Not blogs in general, but blogs that think they can provide news and interesting content as an alternative to the traditional media. Sometimes they can, but it's basically just an exercise in wading through polemics. Rarely do I find anything unexpected. Blogger X is a leftist, hates Bush, etc. Blogger Y is a conservative, hates Blogger X, etc. Snore. I can't think of any better source for news than the New York Times.

5. Diesel and Dust is not that great an album. It's not nearly as consistently rocking as Blue Sky Mining.

Knownst to us.

I just put my laptop display really flat. It's cool.

I feel like I'm typing in Star Wars.

Grazin' in the grass is a gas - baby can you dig it?

It all started on Monday morning when I found a little package in my office mailbox. Finally, my copy of Diesel and Dust by Midnight Oil had arrived. I ordered it, like, forever ago (along with a book which has still not shown up), and was quite glad to see that it had not been eaten by some sort of mad CD-eating mail gnome. So as quick as a flash, I ripped it to my computer and set to transferring it to my iPod.

But then something strange happened.

The CD wouldn't transfer. The files, I mean. It just sort of hung there, in the air, like it wasn't goin' nowhere. I jiggled with it (and by that I mean did a bunch of stuff that didn't really make sense, but felt good to me at the time). No dice. The thing was messed up.

Anyway, time passes, and it's time to go home for the day. The iPod works, and I listen gleefully to selections from the Best of New Order (which has got to be the most inconsistent band on the planet, by the way). I get home and try to reestablish contact with the iPod. Nothin'. Try to reinstall the software. Still nothin'. Try to restore it. Still nothin'. Eventually, nothin' turned in to the dark, crimson colors of a failing hard drive. The computer told me that it no longer recognized the thing I was connecting it to. Uh oh.

So I took it to the bookstore today where I bought it. It's still under warranty, thank god, so I figured I'd be iPodless for a while, but would eventually get this one fixed. Well, the guy wanted to be thorough. He tried to establish contact with the iPod. Nothin'. Tried to reinstall the softward. Still nothin'. Tried to restore it. Nothin' again. Eventually, his faced turned into the dark, crimson colors of someone who could no longer help me: "We don't do service here. You need to go to the Apple Store."

Well, this put me in a bad mood, but it had also scared me a little bit. I mean, Apple not only makes iPods, it also makes computers. And, as a matter of fact, it also makes MY computer! Ack! What if this happens to my computer! I'm only under warranty for another few short weeks! ACCCCCKKKK!

So I panicked, and dropped $250 on the AppleCare extended warranty.

And that's when my day really started to get crappy.

I went to the web to enroll my AppleCare plan. No dice. According to the internet, my computer had run out of warranty, like, over five months ago. Incredulous! I called the number. They needed a reciept (which, for some strange reason, I didn't have - that's not like me. I hoard reciepts like some sort of reciept-eating mail gnome). Eventually I had the bright idea of calling the bookstore to get a duplicate copy of my reciept, which they had, eventually discovered under some old boxes and in between a year-old half-eaten hoagie sandwich. A fax later, and I had my AppleCare.

Which brings me back to the iPod.

The Apple Store, thankfully, is on my way home. Now, in the meantime, I'm convinced that as soon as I bring in this thing, they're going to take one look at it, realize it's screwed, chuck it out the window and present me with a brand new Video iPod, 60 gig. Anyway, that's what I talked myself into believing. So I park, get the dang Pod, and walk to the store. Finally, after waiting several years for the customer service counter, I begin to tell the tale, take my iPod out of my pocked and....

it works.

Works. All the songs and everything. The sumbitch had fixed itself somehow. How?!? How did this happen!?! I could see my video iPod slipping away, while I had to walk back to my car with this thing, clearly only a day away from a total screwup. However, they did restore it for me, and give me a software update, which means that it should run ok for awhile - the guy suggested it was probably just corrupted software. After 30 minutes of transferring all the music on my computer into the new old iPod, although without the possibility of episodes of Desperate Housewives at my fingertips, I was ready to rock.

Which I did, to Deisel and Dust.

They see your every move.

Well, this is awkward.

There's this little board in our department, right when you come out of the elevator. It says: "Philosophers in Print." And, well, I got lucky enough to have a few articles appear in print over the last couple of months, so I felt like, eventually, my papers might end up there. I though our person in charge of these things wanted copies of people's first pages, so, you know, people could check out all the cool stuff happening.

Well, it's been awhile now since they appeared, and no posting on the board. I felt weird about doing this stuff myself, as if it were some kind of shameless self-promotion, among people who, let's face it, I really shouldn't be spending my time doing self-promotion, shameless or otherwise. But, finally, I got up the gumption to turn in the copies today, a little sheepishly.

The powers that be responded thus:

"They don't put graduate student publications on the board."

So I got all worked up, looked all sheepish, and now I look like a total self-involved jackass for nothing. I look like the jackass. Something's fishy here.

In other news, did anybody see Prince on SNL this weekend? Awesome!

Sweet deliverance.

I finally procured a copy of "Driver's Seat" by Sniff 'n' the Tears today, courtesy of California's favorite Minnesotan. And, well, it's not quite as ass-kickin' as the first time I heard it, but it's definitely above-par. It's a seriously filthy riff, but, well, it goes on...and on...