Timely

I know I'm not the first one to think of the timeliness of this poem by Yeats, but I've always loved this poem. Religious sub-text aside, the imagery is so great! "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold", "The falcon cannot hear the falconer", "What rough beast slouches towards Bethlehem", etc. with all the crap going on in the world right now, it seems particularly apt.

THE SECOND COMING

by: W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Animal Musician

They're here!

From Oregon trip

Planes, Trains & Automobiles

Or more aptly… Automobiles, Light-Rails, Shuttles, Planes, & Buses.

Our journey from Baker City to London has been undertaken with an array of vehicles and has taken us over two days to complete. We drove for about 5 hours from Baker City to Portland on Friday. Checked into our Super 8 Motel near the airport and then returned our rental car to Thrifty down the block, after which we hopped back on the shuttle so we could take the Portland MAX light-rail from the airport to go into town to meet K’s sister for dinner. It was too short a visit, but we had a nice time and had some fantastic Thai food at Typhoon (highly recommended!), but back to the travel story. We took MAX back to the airport and waited for a Super 8 shuttle that never arrived. So we got on the Thrifty shuttle under false pretenses, then we walked from Thrifty to our motel to try to get about 5 hours of sleep.

Next “day”, we got up at 4am (West coast time) and took a 5 o’clock shuttle to the airport. Then it was a two-engine prop plane to SeaTac airport (Seattle-Tacoma) followed by a 30-second tram ride to another terminal where we boarded a “big plane” to Boston (a 5-hour journey). When we arrived in Boston, we disembarked in a domestic terminal which had no direct connection to the international terminal, so we had to exit and take a Logan airport shuttle. After sitting around for a few hours (and having piss-poor salads at Houlihan’s), we boarded the flight to London. A fairly smooth flight with a few hair-raising encounters with abrupt turbulence over London. We arrived near terminal 4 and were herded into shuttle buses to take us to the gate...

...but it seems as soon as we got to England, things went to shit.

There was a little over an hour to catch our National Express coach to Bournemouth, we just needed to get our luggage. We waited for an hour, watching the conveyor belts extrude bags painfully slowly in a piece-meal fashion. Ours never arrived – most probably due to negligence since it was all four bags missing and I know they made it to Boston because I happened to glance out the window and see a couple of them coming out on the conveyor. So we had to go through the rigmarole of reporting our missing bags, during which we missed our coach to Bournemouth. We tried for it anyway, just in case the coach was late, but forgot that we had to take a subway train to the main terminal where the bus station is and then walk about a mile in underground passageways before reaching our destination. The bus had long gone, so we had our ticket changed to another bus leaving an hour later.

It was a tough two hours on that bus, spent wishing that time would speed up just for a little while. I kept nodding off and then get startled awake everytime the bus hit a bump and thinking I was in an airplane that just landed on the runway. But we're home now. A couple of our plants on the balcony are dead. It must not have rained at all while we were gone. Oh, and there's a 6-7 foot massive fissure in one of our bedroom walls. Was there an earthquake while we were gone? Surely not in Bournemouth!

We watered everything and opened some windows to air the place out and then headed to the supermarket to get some basic provisions (plus bathroom essentials for K, since everything was in the suitcases). Now we've taken showers with our ridiculous water pressure and are looking for things to keep us busy and awake until it's at least dark.

The lukewarm welcome from England aside, the weather is absolutely gorgeous today! Just perfect!

Our Penultimate Day in Oregon

We've been having a great time in Oregon, but we're coming up to our last day. It's been an eventful trip so far and we're not quite ready to go back to England. Since it is now a bit late to do a play-by-play of our trip, here are some various events that have taken place since we flew out of Boston:

*Spent the 8th through 13th in the Willamette Valley, most of the time in Eugene, but we did meet up with K's sister at a McMenamin's near the Portland airport after we picked up our rental car. We stayed at K's grandmother's house during our time in Eugene. Went out to eat frequently with various sections of K's family.

*K's grandmother let us move all of our stuff out of our storage room in Hubbard and into her garage in Eugene. We rented a van and did the move in one day. It was great to visit our stuff, but seeing my massive collection of homebrewing equipment made me REALLY miss brewing!

*We spent two days with K's dad and step-mom. And also had lunch with her grandmother (on her dad's side) at Papa's Pizza along with her dad and grandmother-on-her-mother's-side. [It so much easier in Danish or Swedish: Farmor (FatherMother) = grandmother-on-dad's-side and Mormor (MotherMother) = grandmother-on-mom's side and then there's Farfar (FatherFather) and Morfar (MotherFather)]. Got it?

*Wednesday last week, we got a great deal on a massage at K's step-mom's salon: two sessions for the price of one. So K and I both had a fabulous full-body massage (my first professional massage ever). I can see why people don't mind shelling out $50 or so for something like that. If you're ever near Coburg, OR, be sure to pop in to Coburg Hair Studio for a massage from Laurie!

*On Friday the 13th, we left Eugene at about 10am to drive to Baker City with a stop-over in Sisters to have lunch at Black Butte Ranch with K's aunt (on her mother's side). After that, we drove to her ranch to see her new flock (gaggle? herd?) of alpacas. They are somethin' else! I've seen them singly, but never in a herd of 30. They group together like birds and seem just as skittish as birds.

*The drive out to Baker City was gorgeous! Just the perfect American open road with drastically changing scenery. We were virtually the only ones on the road, sort of surreal. We spotted a couple of trees with hundreds of shoes hanging in them. Lots of cows and horses. But my favorite animal sighting was an American Bald Eagle circling down out of the clouds to land in a tree by a lake. Beautiful.

*We got to Baker City around 7:15 on the 13th and after a tour of J-Mom and J-Dad's house, we sat down for a home-cooked meal.

*Since then, we've been partaking in Baker City life: going to some of their great, little independent shops (like Mad Matilda's and Bella's); driving around to look at houses; having lunch and/or dinner at some of their fine eating establishments; and so on. On Saturday, we had dinner at Haines Steakhouse, a classic American restaurant with kitchy decor and servers dressed like they were about to head to the rodeo. Other than that, we've been doing quite a bit of relaxing (much needed relaxation!).

*Went to the Geiser Grand Hotel for the Baker City Rotary Club lunch meeting with J-Dad last Monday, which was a great "small town" experience. Sat next to the town's chiropractor. The meeting was regarding the upcoming Hell's Canyon Motorcycle Rally which rolls into town in June. The Rotary Club will be acting as Baker City's hospitality department.

*On Tuesday, I ended up being invited to the local homebrewing club's monthly meeting. They're called "Good Libations". The meeting was held at one of the members' house, a state trooper who specializes in catching poachers. He also happens to brew some great beer! There were 5 of us at the meeting. We talked about how to clarify beer using finings, then tasted some homebrews that people had brought along (I even brought some of mine which I had rescued from the storage room), and then did a tasting of six or seven different West Coast stouts. Oh, and we voted on who's homebrew was the best. My barleywine won! So they had me select a prize from the prize box.

*On Wednesday, we drove up to La Grande to see the Eastern Oregon University campus and then took the scenic route home, stopping in Union to have lunch at the Union Hotel Fireside Cafe.

*I've been drinking a lot of American craftbrews, particularly beers from the Northwest. K has been accommodating enough to go to restaurants that serve good beer, so I've been quaffing some great suds and reviewing a few of them on BeerAdvocate. Tonight we're going to Barley Brown's, Baker City's only brewpub, to have dinner.

*Today is a take-her-easy/last minute tasks day. We have to pack because we're heading out tomorrow. Our flight is at 7am on Saturday morning, so we're driving to Portland (5-6 hours away) in the morning, checking in to a hotel, returning the rental car, and taking the Max into Portland to have dinner with K's sister. Then comes one hell of a return journey:

7am - Portland to Seattle
8.45am - Seattle to Boston (arriving at 5:30pm)
9:30pm - Boston to London Heathrow (arriving at 8:35am on Sunday)
10:45am - National Express bus to Bournemouth (2 hours)

Needless to say, we will be thoroughly jet-lagged. And I have to work the next day!

[Click on the title of this post to go to our picture gallery featuring pics of this trip]

Can you spot the ghost in this picture?

From Oregon trip

New Pictures

of us. See the column on the right about halfway down.
Click on 'Pictures of Us!'

~K

PCA/ACA Conference 2007

Organizer: Popular Culture Association & American Culture Association
Location: Copley Marriott, Boston, MA
Date: April 4 - 7, 2007

Panels attended:

030 Film Adaptation II: Pop Cultural/Film Adaptation, April 4, 2:30-4:00pm
-Wes Anderson vs. JD Salinger in Film Adaptation
-The Coen Brothers
-The Da Vinci Code: Novel into Film: New Popular Gospel
-Twenty Pages Left and Can't Wait: The Young Adult Novel as Adaptation

087 Conspiracy Theories & Claims for the Paranormal I: Representations of the Paranormal & the Pseudoscience, April 5, 8:00-9:30am
-The Trappings of Science: CSI and Ghost Hunters
-Stranger than Fiction: Photographic Representations of Haunted Houses
-An Anarchist's Miracle: The Anti-Empirical Aesthetics of Conspiracies and the Paranormal

214 Professional Placement II: Thou Shalt NOT - Tips on Successful Presentations, April 5, 12:30-2:00pm
-Presentations & Panel discussion

324 Film & History IV: USA - Contemporary Perspectives, April 5, 6:30-8:00pm
-ABC's Path to 9/11 and the American Monomyth
-Cellular Phones and the New Narrative Immediacy

443 Libraries, Archives, & Popular Culture Research I: Popular Images of Libraries & Librarians, April 6, 10:00-11:30pm
-Hipster Librarians: The Changing Portrayal of Librarians in Popular Culture
-Hidden & Forbidden: Fear and Trembling in the Archives
-Demise and Salvation in a Culture of Fear: An Analysis of the Role of the Library in the Motion Picture Se7en

489 Libraries, Archives, & Popular Culture Research II: Wikipedia & YouTube, April 6, 12:30-2:00pm
-Reference Librarians and Wikipedia
-Wikipedia: The Collective Wisdom of Individual Ignorance
-Is YouTube an Archive, Library, Both, Or None of the Above? (my presentation)
-Internet Memes, YouTube, and Guerilla Library Video

620 Journalism & Media Culture I, April 6, 6:30-8:00pm
-Deconstructing "Post-9/11" Television Drama: The Evolution of Meaning (K's presentation)
-Breaking News: A Comparison of the Television Coverage of the Kennedy Assassination and 9/11 Terrorist Attacks
-Scandal, Then and Now: 18th-Century Britain and 21st-Century America
-Beyond Infotainment: From South Park to Citizenship in the Age of Pop Politics

635 Medieval Popular Culture IV: Special Session: Sword Fighting, April 6, 8:15-9:45pm
-"More Pursuit than study...": Fencing Masters and The Princess Bride
-Viking-Age Combat: Contrasting Hollywood with Historical Techniques

678 Libraries, Archives, & Popular Culture Research III: Community & Aesthetics, April 7, 8:00-9:30am
-The Mysterious Books: Books as Objects of Obsessions & Passion @ Your Library
-The Archivist and Connoisseurship
-The Library as "Third Place" in Academe: Fulfilling a Need for Community in the Digital Age
-Archiving the Collection: The Aesthetics of Space and Public Cultural Collections in the Photography of Candida Hoefer

690 The World Wars in Popular Culture IV: Iconic Images of World War II Revisited, April 7, 10:00-11:30am
-Negroes' Number-One Hero: Doris Miller and Pearl Harbor in American Cultural Memory
-Wonder Women Fetishes and Fantasies: The Image of the Patriotic Female during World War II
-Post-Vietnam Influence on Re-Telling the Experiences of the "Good War"
-On the Front Li(n)es: The World War II Disney Propaganda Cartoons from a Post-9/11 Perspective

699 Eros, Pornography, & Popular Culture II, April 7, 10:00-11:30am
-Gestures, Forms, and Shadows of Sex: Pornography as Myth
-The Rhetoric of Self in Porn Queen Narratives
-Porn Star(ter): Sex, Sympathy, and Success in Jenna Jameson's E! True Hollywood Story
-Do You Wish to Direct Me?: Lynda Benglis' Video Art

738 Ecology & Culture III, April 7, 12:30-2:00pm
-Radiation as a Cultural Talisman in Cold War Popular Culture
-Giving Voice to the Voiceless: A Journalist Writes Environmental Novels
-The PushMePullYou Effect: Attraction and Fear of Wild Animals in U.S. Culture
-Saving the Boys: Ernest Thompson Seton's Wild Animal Stories

756 Science Fiction & Fantasy XXV: Doctor Who III: Just Who IS This Guy, Anyway? Part II, April 7, 12:30-2:00pm
-Changing Tracks Without Derailing: The Difficulties Associated with Regenerating the Doctor
-Bringing the Doctor into the Human Race: Doctor Who's Ambiguous Hero

Comments:
All in all, it was a great conference. We had a fantastic time. Good ol' nerdy fun. This was the first academic conference I've ever been to and my first presentation. From what we heard from everyone, the ACA/PCA conference is the most fun, laid-back academic conference. Many of the others tend to be a bit dry, stuffy and challenging (if you're presenting). And this one is so huge with so many different subject areas and panels. Both of us had successful presentations and a really good experience so we will definitely submit papers for next years conference which takes place in San Francisco. Plus, there's a Paper Sales table at the Book Exhibit Room where they sell copies of some of the papers presented for a $1 a piece. Any presenter who feels compelled, can donate 25 copies to the table. The proceeds go towards the Endowment fund to help people travel to the conference. The last time I checked, there were only 4 copies left of the 25 I donated, so that's cool.

And another finished!

Now we're both done with the business portion of this trip! K delivered her presentation a couple of hours ago, the first one in a panel of 4 presenters. She definitely had the best presentation. The most polished and learned presentation. She delivered it calmy and perfectly within the 20-minute time-slot. The audience and other panelists were tuned right in, nodding and taking notes. At the end, a woman came up to her to ask if she would email the presentation to her. She said that K's presentation really showed her what could be done with linguistic content analysis. Turns out she's a rep for the academic publications section of a substantial book publisher. Um... so that's pretty interesting!

After K's panel was done, I dragged her to a "Special Session" about Medieval combat fighting styles, in particular, Viking fighting styles. There were people dressed in armor and carrying swords. It was a big-time "anorak" session, but entertaining (to me anyway).

So, tomorrow is just cake for us. We're going to go to a couple of panels and then we'll take a trip out to Allston to see the neighborhood I lived in during my junior and senior year at BU. Will probably have dinner or late lunch out there, then head back to our hotel to pack.

It's such a relief to be done with the presentations and it was definitely worth the work. We've had a really nerdy-good time. It's been great to be in Boston again. Such a great city!

Presentation Completed

After several frenzied rewriting and streamilining hours last night and this morning, R successfully completed his conference presentation today at 12:30 EDT. Wait - let me rephrase that. R completely and totally ROCKED his presentation. The room was almost full and I would guess that there were around 30 people attending the session. He says he was nervous but no one would have guessed! His delivery was completely smooth and the powerpoint perfectly complemented his points. He also achieved TWO huge spontaneous laughter moments! (This is quite a feat at an academic conference!) Everyone in the audience nodded along and several took notes throughout his 20 minutes. During the Q&A after all the panelists spoke, R calmly and skillfully fielded several questions as if he did this on a daily basis! The panel chair asked him to please submit a paper again next year...so I have a feeling we will be attending the conference again in 2008!

~K

The Trip to Boston... so far...

Despite my assertion to the contrary ("not in this day and age") K discovered last night that there was indeed an nonsecure WIFI access point in our range here at the hotel. Not sure where it is but they haven't even changed the name of the AP from the factory setting "linksys", forget putting a WEP encryption on it. In laymans terms, we can access the internet for free from our hotel room any time we want. Good signal strength, too. So... our trip so far:

The bus ride to Heathrow and flight over the Atlantic were quite smooth and uneventful. We arrived early. This time I got through without a massive fine, but we did get questioned a bit sternly, particularly about the length of time we had been away and how long it had been since we had actually lived in the US. Having now gotten hastled about that in Miami and Boston, it's quite clear that they are cracking down on this. If it wasn't for the fact that I had applied for a travel document, we might have gotten in trouble again. The agent didn't back off until I showed him the document that proves I have applied for the permit.

When we got outside with our luggage, we were hit by the bracing, cold Boston weather. The England we left behind is actually warmer. I had to buy a sweater to wear under my coat. It even snowed today.

We registered for the conference this morning then went for a stroll around the area. Had a scrumptious lunch at Legal Sea Foods, a bit pricey but worth every penny. Had two pints of really tasty Harpoon ales (IPA and Old Salty Dog). We were absolutely stuffed when we walked out!

Then we went to one of the conference presentations, one about film adaptations. It was not very exciting, but it certainly alleviated a lot of our nervousness about our own presentations. It was a big room with lots of chairs and a handful of people. The 6 panelists were all sitting behind a long table at one end of the room. Every single one of them just read their paper. No Powerpoint slides or even film clips. And here we are building these thought-out presentations with the main goal of capturing their interest, entertaining them, and communicating the concepts in our papers. We're going to some more panels tomorrow, so it will be interesting to see if everyone just reads out loud. Either way, I don't think it will be too bad of an experience.

After the somewhat boring panel, K and I took the "T" (the subway) over to Boston University. It was snowing/raining by this point. Luckily, the conference organisers gave everyone a free umbrella when they checked in. These came quite in handy. I gave K a damp squib of a tour of the main campus during which we got quite soaked. Not the best way to see the campus but it was nice to see it again. Hasn't change that much since 1998.

At 6 o'clock, we met up with the lighting professor that I had contacted a couple of years ago when I was applying to U. of Exeter and U. of East Anglia. He wrote a great recommendation for me that time, even though he didn't know me that well. Since we're in town, we thought we'd go take him out to dinner, so we arranged to meet up after his day's classes. He actually recognized me, which was quite impressive since I had long hair back then. Anyway, we had a nice dinner at Noodle Street (a Pan-Asian noodle restaurant). Unfortunately, he didn't let us pay and was able to grab the bill before we had a chance. It was a nice evening.

Stopped by the BU store on the way back to buy a new t-shirt since my old BU shirt has fallen to shreds. Now we're cozy in our hotel room watching good ol' American television, sheltered from the freezing rain. Bed time... feeling the jet lag!

Going'a Prezen'in

The day is upon us. In a little over two hours, we will board a bus to Heathrow where we will then board an airplane to Boston, MA. Then we have two and a half days of kicking around town, going to other conference panels, and generally fretting about our presentations that we have to do on Friday. When that's done, we have one last worry-free day in the city before getting back on a plane to fly to Oregon for a bit. It's a welcome break from my job and K's PhD (apart from the conference presentation part).