commodities will save you

Alright. Who stole my copy of Soul By Soul?

I bought a black messenger bag. It makes me look very hip circa eight years ago. But it feels less ridiculous than my backpack, which makes me feel like I'm in high school whenever I wear it.

I bought my books for the core seminar. Luckily I already owned many of the coursebooks, like Harry Braverman's Labor and Monopoly Capital, Lisa Lowe's Immigrant Acts, David Harvey's The Condition of Postmodernity, and Hazel V. Carby's Reconstructing Womanhood, so I didn't have to pay too much for the others. I haven't yet read the Harvey book or Reconstructing Womanhood. I'm ashamed to admit this. Both are supposed to be pretty fantastic. And i took two classes with Hazel and worked for her from April through July of this year. Bookstore didn't have Foucault's Abnormal, but I just saw it at St. Mark's books a couple days ago, so I can get it there. Other coursebooks looked interesting, except for Weber's The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism, which i hope we'll be ripping to shreds.

Beaten white male body on the cover of the Daily News (New York, not Yale.) The cameras construct the crisis through racialized lens. The ruins of New Orleans become South Central Los Angeles circa April 29, 1992 and the reactionary blogs fill column after column condemning the hurricane victims not only for looting, not evcen only for remaining, but for being (black/poor.) Meanwhile Condoleeza Rice has finally ended her prolonged New York shopping expedition and Bush has only now, with the corpses floating through the streets left his ranch and scheduled photo ops and press conferences. This didn't have to happen.

My mother was forwarded this email, which is apparently excerpted from the Washington Monthly.

CHRONOLOGY....Here's a timeline that outlines the fate of both
FEMA andflood control projects in New Orleans under the Bush administration.
Read it and weep:
January 2001: Bush appoints Joe Allbaugh, a crony from Texas,
as headof FEMA. Allbaugh has no previous experience in disaster
management.
April 2001: Budget Director Mitch Daniels announces the Bush
administration's goal of privatizing much of FEMA's work. In May, Allbaugh
confirms that FEMA will be downsized: "Many are concerned that federal disaster
assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program...." he
said. "Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and
the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate
level."
2001: FEMA designates a major hurricane hitting New Orleans as
one of the three "likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this
country."
December 2002: After less than two years at FEMA, Allbaugh
announces heis leaving to start up a consulting firm that advises companies
seeking to do business in Iraq. He is succeeded by his deputy, Michael Brown,
who, like Allbaugh, has no previous experience in disaster
management.
March 2003: FEMA is downgraded from a cabinet level position
and folded into the Department of Homeland Security. Its mission is refocused on
fighting acts of terrorism.
2003: Under its new organization chart within DHS, FEMA's
preparation and planning functions are reassigned to a new Office of
Preparedness and Response. FEMA will henceforth focus only on response and
recovery.
Summer 2004: FEMA denies Louisiana's pre-disaster mitigation
funding requests. Says Jefferson Parish flood zone manager Tom Rodrigue: "You
would think we would get maximum consideration....This is what the grant program
called for. We were more than qualified for it."
June 2004: The Army Corps of Engineers budget for levee
construction in New Orleans is slashed. Jefferson Parish emergency
management chiefs Walter Maestri comments: "It appears that the money has been
moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq,
and I suppose that's the price we pay."
June 2005: Funding for the New Orleans district of the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers is cut by a record $71.2 million. One of the hardest-hit
areas is the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, which was created
after the May 1995 flood to improve drainage in Jefferson, Orleans and St.
Tammany parishes.
August 2005: While New Orleans is undergoing a slow motion
catastrophe, Bush mugs for the cameras, cuts a cake for John McCain, plays the
guitar for Mark Wills, delivers an address about V-J day, and continues with his
vacation. When he finally gets around to acknowledging the scope of the
unfolding disaster, he delivers only a photo op on Air Force One and a flat,
defensive, laundry list speech in the Rose Garden...

I don't think that guy we were shouting "arrest John Sexton" at was John Sexton. Point still stands though. Registration stuff pretty much all taken care of, though i still need to figure out if i can audit a spanish class without having to pay for it.

I walked across the Manhattan Bridge today for the first time in my life. DUMBO, with its yuppie condos with rooftop tennis courts, is pretty ridiculous. The fis markets make the corner of East Broadway and Market Street smell like Ana and Jia Lynn's elevator. There's a point while walking across the bridge where if you look south it actually looks like the Statue of Liberty is standing on the Brooklyn Bridge. And at one point the Q Train was stopped on the tracks and people were staring out the windows at me, which was kind of fun. I'm such a narcissist.

my favorite lower manhattan street name is probably Great Jones. You might say that i have a great jones for Great Jones. My favorite upper Manhattan street names are up in Inwood, where Cummings almost intersects with Siemen Ave., for all the ridiculously prurient 8th grade reasons. The Bronx has some great street names too, like Moshulu Parkway and Nereid Ave. And hell, i mean, what could beat Spuyten Dyvil? Don't get me started on Brooklyn, though - Schermerhorn? Herkimer? Nostrand? Flatbush? I think Brooklyn beats everyone else hands down for great street names.

Have I omitted anything? Let me know!

hurricane

Anya Kamenetz's piece on the Village Voice site is worth reading. Nathan Newman has a series of posts on culpability, and the pork-barrel politics of FEMA relief. They NYT looks at the racialization of hurricane victimhood. And as looters desperately search for food and supplies, the federal government which did nothing to prevent what happened assures us that they will be pacified as refugees struggle to leave the city or attempt to negotiate substandard environments elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the situation in New Orleans continued to
deteriorate. Angry crowds chanted cries for help, and some among them rushed
chaotically at helicopters bringing in food. Although Mayor C. Ray Nagin
speculated that thousands might have died, officials said they still did not
have a clear idea of the precise toll.

"We're just a bunch of rats," said Earle Young, 31, a cook
who stood waiting in a throng of perhaps 10,000 outside the Superdome, waiting
in the blazing sun for buses to take them away from the city. "That's how
they've been treating us."

an ecstasy of fumbling

NYU's registration system is absolutely batshit insane. You get access codes representing spaces in classes which you have to contactdepartmental registrars to obtain. No access codes left means no spaces in the class and no wiggle room. No shopping period, which is good if you're a TA because you're less likely not to lose your job, but bad if your'e a first semester first year student with no idea what you're doing. The online registration system is also reallys cary and says i have a financial stop on my registration, which is odd because my fellowship should cover all my coursework, but i think this is just because i haven't registered for all three courses yet, which is in itself a mess - the third class i wanted to take (George Yudice's Intro to Latin American Cultural Studies) is full with a waiting list, and the other class i wanted to take and got in to (a course on the Sociology of Knowledge) is apparently meeting now not on Tuesday as advertised, but on Monday at the same time as my required core seminar. Gah.

On the plus side, I now have an NYU ID so i can get in to buildings and use the library, not just watch people get arrested outside of it, and i'm wishing i'd taken the arrest too, but i'm sure there'll be more opportunities. I've registered for two of my three courses, and the three of the other four PhD students in my cohort whom i have met seem great. I also met all of the five M.A. students, one of whom I went to high school with and taught in the Bronx with six years ago, so that's pretty crazy, although not really. And late yesterday afternoon as i was walking down East 4th street, i bumped into my friend Sara, who i also went to high school with, allegedly stalked back in the summer after 6th grade, though i deny this outright, and last saw two and a half years ago while hanging out with Victor and Katie up at Columbia when Sara was still a student there. Turns out she's now transferred to NYU. (Sara graduated with me from high school but spent two years before college in Nepal and India and also took some more time after starting school.) I'm excited that she will be around.

I haven't told the pee story yet.

They're now saying that there may be thousands of deaths from the hurricane in New Orleans alone. This is overwhelming.