Friday Fun

0725 with iced coffee. I drop my bag at the door and close the office blinds, blocking February’s rising glare and heat. Early morning email and paper-shuffling, putting off grading. I don’t realize it’s a training day until Mala — Cadet Casey — shows up for facetime in camo ACUs and full gear.

She’s angry and tense. Lips pressed in a thin line and perspiration streaming. It’s what passes for a winter morning, but the way she flops in the spare chair and then props a foot up on my filing cabinet, she’s glad for the building’s laboring and antiquated central air. She pops the buckles on the composite shin and thigh pads, up one by one, speaking as she goes.

“Sir,” she says. “I know I’m early.”

Nod. “Hot out there,” I venture. She does the other leg.

“You have no idea.” Blows a stray hair out of her face. It’s not meant in a mean way: I don’t, actually. I’m a civilian. My car has AC. She’s in twelve kilos of body armor, web gear, batteries, distributed information systems, and she’s been going since 0520. I wait for the anger to spin out words.

Cadet Casey, of the neighborhood of Georgetown, Washington, DC, is one of those students, the kind you meet once or twice in a career. Overachiever: handle with care. First day of class, she tells me she went up the chain to get my cow Database Composition section because I tutored Cadet Maas into the Josephson Fellowship at Trinity. She wants some of that.

The Department’s made its own concerns evident in signs subtle and clear, their suasive force underscored by that subtlety. Cadet Casey is the only child of a certain outspoken and soon-to-be-promoted three-star flag officer. Indeed: that one.

Cows are juniors here. Frosh, plebes; sophomores, yearlings; seniors, firsties. I’m an outsider, a civilian, and I’m only slowly learning the terms and names, the protocol, what goes on at a military academy with its decorum, slang, traditions. Things unusual and usual: Cadet Casey isn’t in one of the permanent Lieutenant Colonel Academy Professor’s sections. She’s in mine. Remarkable in her poise, and in the absence of self-regard and self-consciousness common to the exceptional students I’ve encountered elsewhere.

She’s got the armor and distributed computing off, piled in a corner. She sleeves the sweat away again. “Sir,” she says, and chokes the R. I’ve never seen her this discomposed. The tops of her ears flushed red, her jaw set. “I got verbal seven minutes ago that I’m being boarded.”

A board is a combination of investigation and trial; an attempt to ascertain whether and how badly a Cadet fucked up. Military justice, with Cadet legal representation, and often for the minor stuff, it’s dismissed. On the other end of severity, though, there’s the possible prospect of expulsion, separation from the Corps, UCMJ action. Courts martial and sentences at Leavenworth, and worse.

I use my teacher voice. “OK,” I say. I suspect, but ask anyway: “What for?”

When they finally figured out service learning and database pedagogy, the military academies loved it. Air Force at Colorado Springs, Navy at Annapolis, Army here at the Point: we had the cash to send out Cadets, get them interacting with the world, the third world in particular, crafting collaborative and evolving documents with peer communities, getting those communities internetworked — and then, of course, hooking them into the broader observable network. Altruism meets military intelligence via data mining.

She meets my gaze and takes a breath through the teeth. “Honor,” she says.

Mala Casey doesn’t commit honor violations.

I thumb up the browser. “OK,” I say, and hand it to her. “Show me your clickstreams.”

Her thumbs fly. She’s T9ed all her life and it’s remarkable to watch her go as she SSLs in via her thumbs, and even more remarkable to hear the “denied” chirps. She’s stunned. “Give me that,” I say, and do my own thumbing, clumsy, until we’re in on the tiny keypad and then the command line prompt opens up with its vasty open blackness after the colon.

>:_

I seek: who’s up in my student’s clickstreams, tweaking her data, adding and modifying, getting her an honor board?

I get back nineteen discrete IP addresses, all of them geolocated here, plus one through Australia that’s probably Cadet Moser with a porn hider user agent he forgot to turn off. And one student, Mala, who’s got monthly traffic off the chart, local links, many of them from Database Composition students, but many more from yearlings and plebes.

I narrow my query. Nobody greps or agreps anymore, but the engines carry enough historical baggage to recognize the strings I throw. I get a hit: the clickstream that has to be the one that got her the board.

And when I see it, I realize I’m in a whole lot of trouble.

(To be continued)

This is a piece of speculative fiction attempting to imagine what teaching writing with database technologies might look like at some point in the future. The final episode has links to all the intermediate episodes, as well.

As an exercise:

1. Fade in. Daytime, exterior. Distant aerial tracking shot with slow zoom on residential street. Stevie Nicks, “Edge of Seventeen.” Cut to interior of car.
2. Daytime, interior. High school hallway between classes. Close handheld shot following _____. The New Pornographers, “Jackie, Dressed in Cobras.”
3. Daytime, exterior. Empty bleachers at high school ball field. Face shots, dialogue. LL Cool J, “Going Back to Cali.”
4. Evening, interior. Small bedroom. Overhead shot. Sly and the Family Stone, “If You Want Me to Stay.”
5. Evening, exterior. Medium three-quarter traveling shot, from behind, of car on residential streets. David Essex, “Rock On.” Cut to interior of car.
6. Evening, exterior. Medium overhead shot of car in empty parking lot. Firewater, “When I Burn This Place Down.” Cut to close overhead shot.
7. Evening, exterior. Urban sidewalk in nightclub district. Close handheld shot following _____. Grace Jones, “Slave to the Rhythm.”
8. Evening, interior. Nightclub. Distant overhead shot of crowded dance floor. Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” Cut to close handheld shot on dance floor.
9. Evening, interior. Club bathroom, fluorescent lights. Medium shot at sink. DJ Shadow, “Stem / Long Stem / Transmission 2.”
10. Evening, exterior. Narrow alley with dumpster. Side shot, medium distance, slow zoom. Knoc-Turn’al, “Muzik.” Cut to close handheld shot.
11. Dawn, exterior. Urban sidewalk in nightclub district. Distant handheld shot, from front, following _____. Nouvelle Vague, “Guns of Brixton.”
12. Daytime, exterior. Medium aerial tracking shot, slow zoom out, on residential street. Funkadelic, “Maggot Brain.” Fade to black and closing credits.

Plot?
Genre?
Actors?
Characters?

I dropped in to see my attorney, and in the context of our billable discussion I happened to idly mention something I’d seen in the news about Kevin Federline.

She spat her ice cube back into her tumbler of bourbon.

“We don’t speak that name round here,” she said.

End of discussion. The receptionist hastily showed me out, with security behind her.

I should have known better. I’d seen my attorney’s library; her editions of the Pnakotic Manuscripts, the Unaussprechlichen Kulten of von Junzt, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, Justin Geoffrey, the Livre d’Eibon, Remigius and Della Porta, De Vermis Mysteriis, even a facsimile of fragments from the Philetas translation of the Al-Azif. Living in western Massachusetts, with Miskatonic less than two hours away, I should have known better.

I got on I-90 and pointed my car east.

You’d never expect to find a department of Media Studies at a school like Miskatonic, not when its library’s restricted collection is its chief draw, and especially not in a haunted and gambrel-shrouded tiny New England town like Arkham. But there it is, the newest building on campus, all glass and steel in a weird almost non-Euclidean geometry, not curvy like Gehry but just off in its angles.

“Oh yes,” a TA whispered to me. We were talking, quietly, in her cubicle after I’d found not a single professor with an open office door. “K-Fed’s not the only one. They have titles, you know. And ranks.”

Me, clueless: “Ranks?”

Her, impatient: “Ranks. Principalities, powers, virtues. You know. Dominations, thrones, cherubim, seraphim.”

Me: “No. I don’t know.”

Her: “The ranks of angels. Only these aren’t angels.”

And the TA, whose name I swore I would not print, told me of the eldritch elder gods from the shining rhombus beyond which black gulfs lie, and their avatars.

Bono the Unspeakable. The Sentient Toxic Mist that is Nicole Kidman. Steve Jobs, the monstrous nuclear chaos who dances in the madness outside angled space. Katie Holmes, Bride of He Who Must Not Be Named. The Many-Tentacled Toad-God Jon Stewart. Gretchen Wilson, who is The Key and The Gate. The Mother of Knives, Martha Stewart, who is also The One Who Rends Veils. Bill O’Reilly, The Father of Abominations. The Source of Uncleanliness corporeally embodied as Jenna Bush. Chris Rock, the yellow-scarved High Priest Who Is Not to Be Described. The tenebrous daemon-sultan Kato Kaelin, with his great and terrible Herald and Envoy.

And beyond these, there are names one dares not write.

I must type quickly, now.

Margaret coined the name for this dance, but she never showed me the moves. So I finally worked out the steps on my own, and I’m glad to share them here for your use, whenever you’re next at the club. As should be evident from the name, it’s a dance best done to slow, angsty, navel-gazing music.

The Dissertation Flail

1. Go around in tiny circles.
2. Hold your hands to your head like it hurts, thumbs at temples.
3. Go around in tiny circles.
4. Throw your hands into the air, as if in desperation. Do not, under any circumstances, wave them like you just don’t care.
5. Go around in tiny circles.
6. Bang your head, old school Metallica-style, but as if against a brick wall.
7. Go around in tiny circles.
8. Twitch spastically.

And there you have it: eight bars of Terpsichorean glory. Dance, monkey, dance!

My attorney was recently able to obtain, on double super secret background, an advance copy of the new Harry Potter book. After perusing it herself, she passed it along to me, and — as a public service to those of you who can’t wait the few hours until midnight tonight — I offer here a brief plot summary. Spoilers ahead.

After the customary introductory crises at Number 4 Privet Drive, Harry boards the Hogwarts Express, only to find himself on academic probation even before reaching the school when Draco Malfoy overhears him refer to Professor McGonagall as a “milf.” There are the usual worries about Lord Voldemort, and Hagrid reveals that he’s captured one of the animals that serve as the pets of the dementors, a large extradimensional ground squirrel commonly known as the “void marmot” or “nothingpig.” In one of the first sessions of Hagrid’s Care of Magical Creatures course, it’s discovered that the void marmot — Hagrid has named it “Slimpie” — is a remarkably friendly creature. Ron observes how it rolled over on its back to have its belly scratched, causing Hermione to exclaim: “‘Void marmot rolled’ — that’s an anagram for Tom Marvolo Riddle, you-know-who’s name!” Terror ensues, Professor Dumbledore is summoned, and the entire Quidditch season is cancelled, to the immense relief of future movie audiences everywhere.

These are not the only worries at Hogwarts, however. Cornelius Fudge, having seen a recent abstruse and esoteric journal article by Professor Trelawney drawing on continental magical theory from the Beauxbatons Academy and the Durmstrang Institute, declares that Hogwarts must henceforth follow an English Magic Only policy. Professor Snape comes out with a public statement of support for Professor Trelawney (Rowling notes in a wry aside that of course someone whose wardrobe consists of nothing but black clothing would embrace continental theory), leading to an interdepartmental scandal, and the academic battle lines are drawn: Snape, Trelawney, and Flitwick embracing the continental neoformalist post-occlumency position, and McGonagall, Sprout, and Hooch denouncing them from the well-entrenched pseudostructuralist meta-Goshawkian perspective. Parvati Patil and Colin Creevey, under the advice of Nearly Headless Nick, denounce the entire affair as imperialist hegemony and lead a student strike. Dumbledore, in the tradition of academic administrators, does nothing, and Hogwarts is put into academic receivership until Percy Weasley suggests that converting Hogwarts into a networked distance-learning institution would help quell controversy, increase profits, and expand the school’s global reach. Upon hearing this, Hermione completely loses her temper, and declares she’s quitting wizarding to go to law school.

I won’t completely spoil it, though: you’ll have to find out for yourself how it ends.

Ten songs I refuse to be embarassed to admit that I hugely enjoy, and that I turn up loud every chance I get:

1. Michael Jackson, “Billie Jean.”
2. Billy Squier, “Everybody Wants You.”
3. Britney Spears, “Oops! I Did It Again.”
4. Garth Brooks, “Rodeo.”
5. Bananarama, “Cruel Summer.”
6. Drivin’ and Cryin’, “Fly Me Courageous.”
7. Petey Pablo, “Freek-a-Leek (Dirty Version).”
8. Bonnie Tyler, “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”
9. Big & Rich, “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy).”
10. Beastie Boys, “Paul Revere.”

And you?

1. Reading Paul Krugman’s Peddling Prosperity, I had a couple of insights. One was to revise my fairly uninformed and therefore negative opinion of economist N. Gregory Mankiw: Krugman helped me to see he’s a lot more insightful than some other folks, and I’m politically closer to some of his positions than I initially believed. (Yes, even though he’s a former Chair of the Board of Economic Advisors to Bush fils.) More importantly, though, Krugman helped me to stumble across the idiotically belated realization that information workers constitute a high-value market sector not because their work is inherently better, not because their skills are more in demand or somehow more valuable, but because of the high value of the capital inputs to their production: in other words, because computers-as-capital — as one of the factors of production — are expensive, their work is more expensive. For those who work with computers in education, disciplinary vanity leads us to think that it’s our labor as a factor of production that makes that production expensive/valuable, rather than the computer itself as a factor of production. Yeah, I know: like, duh.
2. The abstract geometric tattoo on my right deltoid is almost old enough to vote, so I went and had it re-inked from faded, blurry blue to fresh, sharp black. Once again very happy with it. And I’ve got some new holes in my earlobes.
3. Working on my Computers and Writing presentation, which I hope will make up one portion of my dissertation’s Chapter 5. It’s about identity, branding, commercialization, and weblogs, and somehow all my examples keep being about either Paris Hilton or the crew over at Wealth Bondage. I’ll have to see if I can run it by Dr. Chadwallah and company sometime in the next few days.
4. Tink’s not been quite as fussy about her luxating patella lately, but now that the weather’s heating up, the girls are both shedding terribly, and Zeugma’s being a total mush in terms of needing affection, so the fur’s drifting all over me and all over the apartment. I brushed them both today, and by the time I was done, I had enough to knit myself a third cat. Like a fur golem.
5. Two days ago was the two-year anniversary of my first post here.

Here’s Page 1 and Page 2. I’m still working on it.