It's just past 1:30 AM and i can't fall asleep and i'm lonely and frustrated, so I'm listening to The Hot Rock (mostly for the last track, though i think it's one of S-K's best and most underrated as a whole) and, to my not inconsiderable shame (litotes, Ms. Ellis), i'm blogging.  First off Evan's comments on the Now Levin (must) Repay Bush (and no, i don't really think there's any more of a conspiracy than that which normally fuels the engines of capitalist exploitation) ruling are incisive.  Not only is graduate students' work profoundly economic in nature, but so too does their student status make a voice in their work, as well as in their studies, necessary.

So, one partisan board now thinks I'm not an employee. One other important agency, the IRS, still does. Yale itself still gives me an employee number. And they still pay me $2.31 every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday that I teach, because they think that teaching language every day is just that unimportant to the core mission of the university, and that it merits that much disrespect. I have just as many reasons to still fight for a union, and I plan to do just that.

I was glad to read Evan's comments, as well as Josh's analysis (not to mention the comments of Phoebe and Alyssa .  It's also been helpful talking to both Ben and Phoebe about this over the last few days in trying to figure out what i, no loger a college student and not at the moment a graduate student can do to aid the fight against this gross injustice which is a clear attack on any meaningful vision of equal access to education and to any kind of liberative model of learning and academic work and an attempt to invalidate and crush what i've been trying to do for the last six or so years of my life.

 

I was going to post other stuff, like my theory about Grosse Pointe Blank's reworking of the classic scenes and tropes of Heathers and Pretty in Pink, and indeed, Say Anything, (and possibly Pump Up The Volume.)  Or a bunch of other effluvia i want to work out at some point.  But really all i feel like talking about is my frustration at being here right now and at feeling so completely alone.  On the one hand i think one of my fellow unemployed friends was totally correct when she observed that "graduating is horrible."  But i also feel disgust at myself for not having figured something, some kind of a plan out before i left school, and i'm mad at my self for sitting around (or walking around-i've resumed my manic 8 miles a day wanderings for lack of anything better to do) and feeling sorry for myself.  And i miss everyone.  And then i get pissed off at myself for saying shit like that.

 

Alright.  That's enough for tonight, and just in time, because "A Quarter to Three" is winding to a close, and i'm feeling tired.