Postcards from the Counterculture: A Fosco Lives! Special Report

Unless you live in a college town, you may not be familiar with yesterday's 4/20 holiday (it's "clever" because yesterday's date was 4/20). It's that day of the year when pot smokers come together at 4:20 PM to celebrate "cannabis culture" by smoking up--often in public. It is a particularly popular holiday at two major US public universities (as noted in this article in the NY Times): University of Colorado at Boulder and (wait for it) Fosco's own University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). In fact, the holiday has become so closely associated with UCSC that a picture of UCSC's 4/20 event is used to illustrate the 4/20 entry on Wikipedia. (And yes, the above picture is of UCSC's mascot, the Banana Slug, smoking pot.)

The event has always been unsanctioned by UCSC, of course. However, as the holiday has become larger and more public in recent years, the UCSC administration has become more concerned about the questionable PR. This year, UCSC sent an email to the parents of all first-year students asking them to discourage their sons or daughters from participating. As the email suggested (with keen insight into the mind of today's youth):

"I encourage you to talk with your student about his or her plans for 4/20. Ask direct questions about the choices they make and express your expectations regarding marijuana, alcohol or other drug use. Although students may not initiate discussion on this topic, your opinions and expectations can influence their behavior."

"Golly, Beaver, I sure hope you aren't planning to take the pot on April 20th. Remember that anyone who offers you drugs is not a true friend."

But that was just Prong ONE of UCSC's two-pronged attack on 4/20. Prong TWO was to essentially shut down the campus for the whole afternoon, in an attempt to prevent easy access to the Porter College Meadow (traditional home of the gathering). This meant shutting down the bus routes, closing the West Entrance to campus, and beefing up parking enforcement. Of course, there was added benefit of inconveniencing any non-pot-smokers who remained on campus: "Can't get home? Blame the potheads!"

Normally, Fosco would strenuously avoid an event like this, considering that he considers any group larger than twenty-five people to be an unpleasantly large crowd. And when that group is made up of pot-smoking hippies... well, let's just say that Fosco has aesthetic objections to "cannabis culture." However, this year found Fosco in class at Porter College until 4 PM on 4/20. Essentially, Fosco was a within an easy quarter-mile walk of the whole gathering: could his inner anthropologist resist a glimpse of the spectacle? Would a giant crowd of pot-smoking hippies be enough to convince Fosco to stay on campus for an extra half hour?

Yes, of course, I went to look. You would have too. And this is what I saw...

By 4 PM, the people walking toward Porter Meadow had become a steady line (see Monterey Bay in the background?).


It's kind of like watching pot-loving ants, no? And look at the smoke cloud.


Here's a view of the line looking back from the Meadow:


One thing I didn't mention yet: this was the hottest day we've had this year. It was 97 fucking degrees. (And yes, even with my canteen of water, I was regretting the quarter-mile walk by this point--anthropology is hard.) Of course, the heat did give the Santa Cruz Sentinel the opportunity to use the "twice-baked" pun in their coverage, so I suppose it was worth it.

One option for beating the heat was to smoke in the woods that surrounds the meadow:


Other heat-beating options I observed: umbrellas, parasols, shirtlessness, sweating profusely. These photos were taken around 4:05 or so--note the giant crowd and smoke cloud.



For the first time in the history of UCSC's 4/20 event, there were some party-crashers: local Christian nutballs showed up with signs to protest. Seriously!



Don't these guys have something better to do? Like picketing AIDS funerals? Or throwing blood on abortion doctors?

This guy was my favorite:


Who would have thought that God could hate so many things! Luckily, this guy has made a list for us. Can we go to a closeup? Yes?


Let's just take a moment and convert this sign into a list.

People Who Will Be Judged (Presumably Unfavorably) By God

• Sex Addicts (tough luck, David Duchovny)
  
• Baby Killers
  
• Witches
  
• Dikes [sic] on Bikes
  
• Pencil Neck Weak Kneed Gutless Men (hmmm...)
  
• So Called Christians
  
• Pot Smoking Little Devils (Bingo!)
  
• False Religions
  
• Lewd Women (well, duh!)
  
• Porno Freaks
  
• Homos
  
• [something I can't quite read]
  
• [another something I can't quite read]
  
• Sports Nuts (Seriously?)
  
• Perverts
  
• Racists
  
• Money Lovers
  
• Two Faced People (sorry, Harvey Dent)
  
• Rebellious Women
  
• All Non-Homemakers (wow, I bet these guys get lots of dates)
  
• Party Animals
  
• Drunkards
  
• Jesus Mockers
  
• And Catholics...
  

Whew. I don't know about you, but that's the kind of God I could really get into. Watch out, Sports Nuts.

Anyway... the golden moment, 4:20 PM PDT, finally arrived and the smoke got even thicker:






These pictures don't quite capture the moment adequately--for one thing, you can't hear all of the drums. Consequently, allow me to offer the brief video that I recorded (and uploaded to YouTube):



Sadly, I cannot make this experience available to you in "Smell-O-Vision" because, as my college roommate David noted, the whole thing "must have smelled unspeakably awful." I cannot disagree.

All in all, I managed to stave off incipient heat-stroke until about 4:30 when I gave up and walked back to my car at Porter. I wasn't the only one leaving:




Caption: "We'll always have these stupid memories."

Walking back, I passed the only official UCSC presence at the event:



And what did I learn? Well, for one thing, I thought there would actually be a more communal atmosphere at this thing. I had envisioned people passing joints and conversing. Instead, everyone just broke up into their own friend groups--and most of them weren't actually very nice about it. I had kinda been expecting to be offered some smoke (not that I would have indulged), but that didn't seem to be the vibe. I've been to much friendlier football tailgates. And I've had more pot offered to me at concerts.

For another thing, I wonder how many actual UCSC students were there. Walking down, I was in front of a group from Berkeley. In the Sentinel coverage, they interviewed students from everywhere but UCSC: UC Berkeley, UC Davis, CSU-Monterey Bay, Cabrillo College. N.B., some kid from Berkeley was named in the Sentinel coverage as "Skittles." Delightful! Also suprising: I didn't see anyone I knew there. I've been at this school for three years and have a pretty large circle of acquaintances: colleagues, grad students, current students, former students, etc. Of course, it's possible that my students saw and avoided me...

Random 4/20 observations:

• You could not pay me enough to eat the vegan food being sold onsite by the Hare Krishnas.
  
• Hippie guys are not very attractive.
  
• God is surprisingly wrathful. That's probably bad news for my afterlife plans.
  
• Too many people brought their dogs (which are prohibited on campus). And too many of them were pit bulls.
  
• I thought there would be more music (of the non-bongo variety). Where were all the people I saw walking with acoustic guitars?
  
• It was SO FUCKING HOT.
  

All in all, I think I learned some important lessons. And I hope that I have created a precious anthropological record--especially for those of you who wonder what undergrad life is like nowadays.

Oh, and of course, I will NEVER do this again.

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UCSC Tapas!

Some brief updates on life here at UCSC:

• The giant UCSC campus 4/20 pot festival approaches. Watch the video from last year. This year, the Admin plans to get even more difficult about the whole thing (and I guess it is bad publicity for the U): UCSC has already contacted the parents of first-years. As the email to parents notes:
  

  "I encourage you to talk with your student about his or her plans for 4/20. Ask direct questions about the choices they make and express your expectations regarding marijuana, alcohol or other drug use. Although students may not initiate discussion on this topic, your opinions and expectations can influence their behavior."

  If only UCSC would contact my parents. I would love to have that conversation.
  
• Sad news from budget-cut land: UCSC's uber-liberal Community Studies Department may get the axe. Sure, it's a crazy radical major that creates community activists, but then again, community activists do more good in this world than almost anyone else (especially white trash governors).
  
• This past week, Fosco discovered the beauty of the Porter Koi Pond. Did you know that koi live 25-35 years? That's longer than most dogs, cats, and Community Studies departments. True.
  
  Sadly, there is this old story about two UCSC fratboys who caught and grilled one of the koi several years ago. Luckily, those frat boys are now dead.
  

Aren't they gorgeous?

Tops and Bottoms

Don't be dirty-minded... we're talking rankings, not sexual role preferences.

You may recall that Fosco loves rankings (especially of cities). And because Fosco is not alone, the media has realized that rankings always make popular news stories.

So what's new in the world of rankings? Well, there's a bunch of Bay Area-related news to share.

First, the good news: California's 14th Congressional District is the happiest in the nation. This district covers most of the Peninsula south of San Francisco and stops just north of Santa Cruz. Because Fosco lives in Santa Cruz and Oz lives in Daly City, Fosco ends up driving the length of the 14th District several times a month. He must admit that everyone in it sure looks pretty happy--and rich.

Speaking of rich, the district contains most of Silicon Valley, including Google, Apple and Mmm Carpets. However, as this article in the Santa Cruz Sentinel notes:

While higher income and greater opportunity associated with these districts didn't hurt their standing, Amy Neftzger, the lead researcher with Gallup's partner Healthways, said money didn't necessarily translate into happiness. Work, she cautioned, took a toll on physical and emotional health in many parts of the country.

Any guesses as to the least happy congressional district? No, not Indiana's 2nd, but close. It's the bleak Kentucky 5th, on the border with Virginia and West Virginia (median income $21,915).

But not all is pleasant in the Bay Area. As this piece on SFGate notes, San Francisco is one of the ten WORST cities to be unemployed in.

Forbes has compiled a list of the 10 best and 10 worst U.S. cities when it comes to stretching unemployment dollars -- calculated based on benefits versus the cost-of-living. Sadly, San Francisco is the fourth worst city to be on unemployment, better only than New York, Miami and Phoenix.

Phoenix? It turns out the problem there is stingy unemployment benefits (imagine that!). This is how it was all calculated:

In San Francisco, the maximum unemployment benefit is $450 a week, and the cost of living is $113,576 a year. That means the benefits only cover 20.6 percent of the cost-of-living, making getting by on the checks in San Francisco a pretty bleak prospect.

Sigh. And lest you think that the top of list is populated by cities that you would prefer not to live in (employed or unemployed), you should know that both Boston and Seattle somehow made the Top 10.

Let's wrap things up with some college rankings. According to this piece in the Sentinel, surfline.com has named UC Santa Cruz the second best campus for surfing in the nation. The top? UC San Diego. No surprise there, really. The worst surf campuses weren't ranked, but I'm pretty sure the University of Oklahoma is near the bottom.

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UCSD Cancer Scare

Take notes, UCSC students: this is how protests are supposed to work.

This is a picture from a protest last week at one of UCSC's sister schools, UC San Diego (UCSD). You see, there is some evidence for the existence of a cancer cluster in one of UCSD's buildings. Apparently, there have been eight cases of breast cancer reported by workers in this building since 2000.

Now this is an upsetting story, but it gets even more troublesome for Fosco with the revelation that the offending building is the home of the Literature Department. Fosco's program at UCSC is also a Literature (as opposed to English) program, and so he feels a kinship here. Not to mention that Fosco knows several people in the UCSD program--including one of Fosco's intellectual heroes. These are Fosco's peeps that are in danger!

According to an epidemiological research report commissioned by UCSD, there is a very low probability that this type of thing happened by chance:

the observed incidence of invasive breast cancer in the Literature Building was about 4-5 times the expected incidence in the California general population.

As the report goes on to note (with typical scientific detachment):

Estimated relative risks in the range that was observed suggest that the cluster was worthy of closer epidemiological scrutiny.

So what exactly is going on in UCSD's Literature Building (I mean, besides reading, writing, and cut-throat departmental politics--all the usual things)?

Here is the offending structure:

From the outside it does indeed look safe, unless you are easily-pained by bad architecture. The epidemiological report ruled out mold, water contamination, and chemical causes. Rather, the potential culprit could be electromagnetic fields from the elevator banks. Of course, it's hard to tell for sure: the fact that a recent study has demonstrated no link between EMFs and breast cancer further complicates matters. Even so, UCSD has already taken some steps to reduce exposure to the elevator fields--just to be on the safe side.

However, students, faculty, and employees remain concerned that UCSD's response remains insufficient. I can't blame them--if I worked in the building, I would be demanding that UCSD either

• demolish it
  
• go all "X-Files" and quarantine the whole place (complete with guys in hazmat suits).

Of course, with the UC budget crunch, neither of these things will happen. UCSD is making a high stakes bet here: if the cluster is not a coincidence and if it's not due to the elevators, there will be blood on the hands of UCSD administrators.

All I know is that UCSD better not have been taking out "dead peasant" insurance policies.

Whether this cluster is indeed a coincidence or the sign of a real problem, this is a terrifying story that hits too close to home. I don't know what I would do were I a grad student at UCSD; I would hate to think that my advisor and beloved departmental staff were risking their lives by working in the building. Luckily, if UCSD is anything like UCSC, the grad students are probably unaffected--considering that none of us have offices in the Lit building (or anywhere else, for that matter).

Any UCSD students out there who can offer a "local report" on this story? Holla atcha colleague.

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UCSC on Colbert Report

UC Santa Cruz researchers have named a local elephant seal after Stephen Colbert. You can read all about "Stelephant Colbert" in this UCSC press release--humorously titled "I am elephant seals (and so can you!)" Well, the shameless bid for publicity paid off because last night on "The Colbert Report," Stephen led off the show by acknowledging UCSC (sort of) and his eponymous elephant seal:

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Stelephant Colbert the Elephant Seal

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Paul McCartney Appearance

Funny Political Videos
More Funny Videos

True, Stephen does actually call us the "University of Santa Cruz"; but that's close enough, right? And how about the graphical shoutout to the Santa Cruz Sentinel? This may be the most national exposure Santa Cruz has had since it was "Murder Capital of the World" back in the 1970s.

You know, last year Fosco had tickets for the hike to the beach at Año Nuevo State Natural Reserve to see the mating elephant seals. Sadly, it was pouring rain on that day and Fosco just let the ticket go to waste (as if he would hike two miles in the rain!). Maybe he should try again this year--especially since it no longer seems to rain in Santa Cruz. Imagine the great pix of Stelephant Colbert that he could get (because I'm sure that elephant seals all look very different from each other--just like Jonas Brothers...).

From the Annals of Delayed Warnings

There was a pretty large-scale vandalism attack last night at UCSC, with all kinds of nasty stuff. The culprits remain unknown, but (sadly) there are plenty of possible suspects, including

• former tree-sitters
  
• animal rights terrorists
  
• disgruntled deer
  

Luckily, however, the UCSC Public Affairs Office wants to keep the campus community safe. Well, sort of.

From the warning email sent out to the campus community today:

A number of acts of vandalism occurred on campus early this morning, including broken windows, damage to UCSC vehicles, and graffiti.
[...]
In addition to these acts of vandalism, a number of "road spikes" were found on Meyer Drive. UCSC Police have inspected campus roads and believe they have found all of these spikes, which are designed to damage tires of moving vehicles. But they are urging members of the UCSC community and public at large to use extra caution while driving through campus.

Road spikes? Yikes! I'm glad the UCSC community received this warning.

EXCEPT... the warning email was sent at 4:45 PM. For those of you who are keeping track, that's approximately FIVE HOURS after Fosco drove through campus today (including Meyer Drive) to run several pre-vacation errands. Thanks for the heads up, though.

Death of the Lorax

He was shortish. And oldish.
And brownish. And mossy.
And he spoke with a voice
that was sharpish and bossy.

"Mister!" he said with a sawdusty sneeze,
"I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees.
I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues."

Just days after giving up on mediation, the UCSC tree-sitters quietly left their perches and the bulldozing began. For 13 months, protesters had been occupying several giant redwoods on the proposed site of a new UCSC biomedical building. Today, construction began clearing the site.

In some ways, this makes Fosco very sad, as

1. He loves redwoods (especially 100 year old ones, like the ones being razed) and doesn't want to see them cut down.
   
2. He is completely uninterested in anything biomedical and wonders why we need another building for it.
   
3. This is another defeat for campus activism.
   

And yet, at the same time, Fosco has to note that THIS WAS THE STUPIDEST PROTEST EVER.

Think I'm wrong? Then tell me just what this protest accomplished? By my reckoning, the tree sitters

• alienated the entire Science Hill community with urine/feces dumping.
  
• isolated themselves from the rest of the student community through their extreme actions (and their actual physical isolation).
  
• provided an easy target for caricature and eye-rolling.
  
• had absolutely no effect on UCSC's LRDP.
  

Seriously--the protesters couldn't even get something out of mediation! Not one thing! Instead, after mediation broke down, the protesters gave up the protest entirely. So what do they have to show for their 13 months? Maybe a couple of woodticks.

Nice work, UCSC hippies.

How to educate a generation on $10 a day

Well, it looks like Harvard is almost broke. Apparently, the once mighty endowment is down 25-30%! Even worse, the university

is also reportedly trying to dump 1/3 of its private equity holdings to raise cash, which would be a seriously distressed move.

If these rumors are true, we should expect to see:

1. A giant "Harvard Yard SALE!"
   Everything must go!
   
   
2. A slowdown in construction of Harvard's new Allston Campus (as seen below).
   
   
3. More pesky fundraising letters to Harvard alums. Sorry, alma mater, I gave all my extra money to fight Prop 8.

Alas, it is not just the storied Ivy League that is in trouble. Here at UCSC, we were informed by email today that the UCSC Provost has

advised principal officers to implement a $4.5 million budget reduction for our campus.

According to the same email:

In the meantime, I've directed principal officers to implement all reasonable cost-saving measures and to engage their staffs in identifying creative ways to invest limited resources as efficiently as possible. I invite you to share with them your thoughts and questions, as well as your own suggestions for belt-tightening. We will thoughtfully consider every reasonable suggestion.

In keeping with the spirit of "reasonable suggestion[s]" for "invest[ing] limited resources," we received a message four hours later from UC President Mark G. Yudof. President Yudof invites us to join him for a discussion of "the value of public education." Oh, but here's the good part:

Why, that's just crazy enough to work!

Boo!

It's Halloween. That holiday that seems like it should still be fun when you're an adult (but isn't).

Fosco was on campus this morning and it occurred to him that Halloween at UCSC is a lot like Mullet Appreciation Day at WalMart: there's a difference, but it's hard to notice. I would estimate that only 1 out of 3 students wearing a weird outfit today was actually in costume. After all, this is a campus where some guy dresses everyday as Spike.

Fosco plans to spend tonight in bed, loaded with NyQuil.

But, before Fosco hits the hay, he'd like to offer you some scary pictures of Isis (who is, after all, a black cat). The first two pictures are only scary because Fosco's camera phone is crappy and Isis is speedy.



The final scary Isis picture is one of my favorites--I love it when she stands on her hind legs and I love it when she looks in the mirror. But what does she see... inside?

What's long, yellow, and sexy?

It's been slightly over two years since Count Fosco arrived here at Redwood U. Last week, he finally had his first encounter with the charismatic and reclusive university mascot. Here's a photo to prove it:


Note how the banana slug can simultaneously appear both wise and ferocious. Suck it, Sparty.

Still Feeling Weird...

Last Friday, Fosco found himself in a situation that he never would have imagined: watching gay bareback porn in the presence of one of the most famous and distinguished faculty at UCSC. It was part of an extraordinary talk by an absolutely brilliant guest professor.

Let me assure you that as fascinating and enjoyable as gay porn is, it is surprisingly unpleasant to watch the creation of a devil's dick from the semen of seventy-three men while in a room with 25 of your academic colleagues (including The Haraway). Eek. Just... eek.

Academia is such a hoot sometimes!

[N.B.: there is no accompanying picture to this post that would make any amount of sense.]

Look for the Union Label (on your midterms).

Did you know that Fosco is a member of the United Automobile Workers? Indeed! All UC teaching assistants are members of UAW Local 2865.

And good news! Yesterday, the UAW and UC reached an agreement on a new contract for teaching assistants, eliminating the need for a (very intellectual and extremely weird) strike by graduate students. Even better: the new contract includes the pleasant surprise of a 5% pay raise! That's one more nice dinner a month for Fosco and his boyfriend Oz. Or, more likely, four more books a month for Fosco.

On the other hand, Fosco is a little disappointed not to strike. He had already spent so much effort creating a sign concept:
See, it says "Fuck UC"! Isn't that cool? I've already had it silk-screened on 300 t-shirts.

And I had been working on some protest songs, including a version of Tesla's "Signs" that substitutes the name of UC President Dynes for the word "signs." It goes something like "Dynes, Dynes, President Dynes..." Well, that's as far as I got. But it was going to be killer.

A Fosco Lives! Exclusive: Horowitz To Be Named UCSC Chancellor

The UC Regents will announce the appointment of a new UCSC chancellor tomorrow. Sources close to the Regents have revealed to Count Fosco that conservative agitator David Horowitz is the surprise choice to fill the vacancy opened by Denice Denton's suicide last summer.

Horowitz's appointment is particularly interesting given that he has recently called UCSC "the Worst School in America." His lengthy indictment of the humanities division UCSC can be read secondhand via the liberal Canadian Dimension (in good conscience, I just can't link directly to Horowitz's website). Horowitz expanded his critique of UCSC in an interview on FoxNews. Horowitz singles out noted professors Angela Davis, Bettina Aptheker, and Donna Haraway as particularly threatening.

Horowitz could not be reached for comment, but sources close to the Regents suggest to Fosco that Horowitz's tenure at UCSC is likely to marked by a return to traditional principles of academic freedom. Horowitz is expected to insist that students have the opportunity to learn the benefits of free and open markets. Additionally, Horowitz has publicly pledged to allow students freedom from professors with vaginas (one of the most dangerous threats to academic excellence).

Horowitz and his partner Jason will host an inaugural reception this weekend at the Chancellor's residence.

Smoke Factory

Here's a satellite picture of the Santa Cruz area today:

Okay, not really. But it feels like it.

I hope the fires don't threaten the historic site of the first UCSC Pot-Lympics.

Every silver lining's got...

a Touch of Gray.

We're trying something new this weekend at Fosco Lives!: color scheme tweaking. Fosco is a fan of the ol' black background, but it has started to look a bit like the standard Blogger template that it is.

But drastic change is not the place to start--especially since Fosco prefers content to style... So here is the first tweak: a gray blue red background. Let's see how that works.

[N.B.: the Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics site in the link above is hosted at UCSC. Go figure.]

Two Truths and Lie: Haunted by Mormons.

Remember this feature? Where I offer three titbits from the news? One of which (in some small, small way) has to do with lying? Here we go...

• Those two giants of social science research, the Associated Press and MTV, released the results of a major study today on "young people and happiness." By young people, they mean 13-24 yr olds.
  
  Here's something interesting and no entirely surprising:
  

  Young people who are non-Hispanic whites are happier than blacks and Hispanics by a wide margin: 72 percent of whites say they are happy with life in general, compared with just 56 percent of blacks and 51 percent of Hispanics.

  Well, as long as the white kids are happy...
  
  Even better news:
  

  In looking to the future, 70 percent say they want to be rich - and nearly half think it's at least somewhat likely they will be someday.

  I remember thinking that when I was a teen. I wish some cynical blogger had burst my optimism back then.
  
  Fosco finds the following result most telling:
  

  And contrary to popular views of technology as a source of stress, many young people would be more stressed out without technology, with nearly half saying they never turn off their cell phones - even when they're trying to chill out.

  As someone who almost never turns his cell phone ON, Fosco now understands why he hates young people so much.
  
  
• You may remember the horrible suicide last summer of UCSC's Chancellor Denice Denton. There were several unpleasant aspects to this story, including some possible relationship issues between Denton and her partner Gretchen Kalonji (as well as the possibility that idiot student protesters may have contributed to Denton's depression).
  
  The story got sadder this weekend, with the Kalonji is suing Denton's estate because she received nothing in the will nor from Denton's life insurance policy.
  
  Now Fosco has no idea what to make of this case. Clearly there is a cautionary lesson here: if you're in a long-term relationship, you should change your will to include your partner.
  
  But this is what is bothering Fosco:
  

  UC officials declined Friday to comment on what Denton's benefits were and how they were dispersed, but according to [a Denton family attorney], Denton didn't leave the insurance money to anyone and the policy has been split between Mabee and Denton's estranged father in accordance with UC protocol.

  Again, it is clear that Denice Denton probably should have named a beneficiary of her life insurance policy. However, why wouldn't the UC system pay that life insurance to Denton's life partner of nine years? If Denton and Kalonji were legally married (you know--that thing that straight people can do?), wouldn't Denton's life insurance money go to Kalonji without trouble?
  
  Gay people just keep getting hosed.
  
  
• The 2008 US News College Rankings are out! Princeton continues its dominance; Fosco's alma mater Harvard is still pretty good.
  
  But what of UC Santa Cruz? Apparently, UCSC is about where it usually sits (#79), but now it is TIED for #79 with... MORMONS. That's right, Bringem Young University is tied with ultraliberal UCSC.
  
  You know how Fosco feels about Mormons, so you can appreciate the irony here. I've been thinking of ways to resolve this problem: can UCSC challenge BYU to a tiebreaker?
  
  Suggested tiebreakers that UCSC would win:
  
  • bong painting contest
    
  • Diet Coke chugging
    
  • blow-job-a-thon
    
  • evolutionary biology quiz
    
  • surfing
    
  • voting for change
  
  That's my school! Go Slugs!

From the Annals of Not Blogging

Why was Fosco absent from blogging for so long? He has promised some explanations. Here's one now.

Fosco couldn't blog because he was busy... writing student narrative evaluations. Here's the thing. When it was created by a bunch of hippie academics, UC Santa Cruz did not use letter grades! The policy was described in an assessment conducted in 1994:

UCSC opened in 1965 during a time of unprecedented university growth, student protest, and introspection. The founding faculty, dissatisfied with traditional forms of grading, opted for a system that was intended to provide a better understanding of what a student had achieved in a course, while downplaying the competitive aspects of learning. Faculty-authored narrative evaluations were adopted in lieu of letter grades. UCSC instructors would write a personalized narrative evaluation of each student's academic performance in all courses in which the student earned credit.

How progressive! How admirable! How... much work for the instructors!

Because, of course, guess who writes the narrative evals...

If you answered "the TAs," you are correct.

Wait. It gets dopier. In 2000, UCSC added mandatory letter grades for its undergraduates... in addition to narrative evaluations. So, as a TA you have to prepare TWO different types of evaluation for each student: a letter grade and a written narrative evaluation.

Now Fosco hates to complain about life as a TA (after all, isn't it all part of the apprenticeship process?) But it does take a remarkable amount of time to sum up the performance of a student in a narrative, especially since an evaluation has to

• contain enough detail about the student's work in the course to make it clear that you know who he or she is.
  
• follow a specific format (there must be a sentence describing each major assignment in the course).
  
• avoid making any reference to personal attributes of the student or your impressions of the student's behavior. You can only talk about the work itself.
  

In the end, you write extremely formulaic evaluations that you attempt to enliven with novel adjectives. The Thesaurus is a good friend during eval writing.

What makes this process even worse is that throughout it you have the gray feeling that no one (not the student nor any prospective employer of said student) will EVER read this evaluation.

Are you curious? Here's a sample:

Lindsay's performance in the course was generally quite good. She attended lecture and section almost without fail and occasionally participated in section discussion. Her first paper, a comparison of Captain Singleton and Oroonoko, showed good close reading skills and evidenced room for improvement in argument development. Her second paper showed great improvement in extending a close reading; however, the thesis was not as strong as it could have been. Lindsay’s final exam was her best work of the quarter and showed a deep understanding of the course material.

This one took about, say... 30 minutes to write. Ouch.

Fosco's Professor Crush of the Year

You know how some professors are just so brilliant and eloquent that you develop a huge crush on them? Like when George Michael Bluth had that thing for Ms. Baerly (incidentally, one of only two good performances in Heather Graham's career)?

Meet David Marriott, Associate Professor of History of Consciousness here at UCSC. He's both a theorist and a poet. His "French Hegel" seminar was one of the two greatest intellectual highs of Fosco's life.

You know how ghosts and haunting are hot in the humanities right now? You should check out David's book Haunted Life.

Here is a poem from David's collection Incognegro:

Bridge

laws of the city for nothing gets lost,
the unwritten laws of the dead for the dead,--

I feel old here, defeated,
lean, unshaven, sick and limp,

surprised at the flesh sagging,
reacquainted with my indifference to sex:

too old to change, too young to love anybody but myself--
listen, then, to my story:

of how the streets are narrower, the buildings smaller,
than remembered; of how a tree in a park was rescued

from the developers of mainland classical culture.
Who are they, standing around doing nothing?

Ten years of my life lost to the weight of things,
the constant reversals, the humbling taste of glory,

and think of the rooms, the tiny shared rooms where family gathered,
a loss barely glanced at in the light of day.

Amazing, huh? I recommend checking out the whole collection. Instead of blogging during the Spring quarter, I served as co-president of the David Marriott Fan Club with my friend Juliana (a distinguised poet in her own right). We're having a bake sale this fall to raise money for our activities.

Back to School: Facing West from California's Shores

OK, I'm done blogging about The Accident (barring new developments). That's because school's back on. This is going to be a seriously academic quarter for Fosco: no teaching, three seminars, a seriously cool Foucault reading group.

I've only been to one seminar so far, but it reminded me of one of the reasons that I like UCSC. Look at this seminar room:

Where else can you talk about literature while staring at a stand of majestic redwoods? Well, except for other colleges/universities where redwoods grow.

Interestingly, on Day 1 in my American Renaissance seminar, we read a charming little poem by prancing homo Walt Whitman. I wasn't familiar with it, but it's kinda fun:

Facing West from California's Shores

Facing west from California's shores,
Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,
I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity,
the land of migrations, look afar,
Look off the shores of my Western sea, the circle almost circled;
For starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of Kashmere,
From Asia, from the north, from the God, the sage, and the hero,
Long having wander'd since, round the earth having wander'd,
Now I face home again, very pleas'd and joyous,
(But where is what I started for so long ago?
And why is it yet unfound?)

Of course, Whitman never actually made it to California, but that makes it more interesting, no?

It's the end of the quarter. Do I feel fine?

Whew. It's over. The Fall Quarter is finally over and, now that Fosco has slept for a week, it's time for the recap. Ergo, we have Fosco's post-quarter wrap-up...

1. Fosco was warned that the quarter system is noticeably different from the semester system and it's true. The problem is that 12-14 weeks of work are condensed into 10 weeks of class. This isn't a major issue with lecture; however, it is extremely problematic for writing a paper--it turns out those missing weeks are necessary.

2. I spent most of the quarter writing what turned out to be a thirty page paper on the Slovenian theorist Slavoj Žižek and his Hegelian-Lacanian rehabilitation of the Cartesian Cogito.

I spent most of the quarter reading almost all of his oeuvre, vacillating between repulsion and ambivalence. I think I ended up somewhere near ambivalence.

Following Ted's admirable example, I will excerpt a couple of paragraphs from my paper here. These paragraphs occur near the end of my argument as I transition to my conclusion:

Žižek’s third objection to Heidegger contrasts with the first two in that it lacks sustained development in his work: in fact, it appears only in an endnote. However, I want to claim that this criticism of Heidegger is the most telling in that it exemplifies most clearly Žižek’s project and reveals him at his most strangely hermeneutic. In an (endnote) discussion of the differences between Heidegger’s early and late phases, Žižek notes that both phases share a similar style: “they are both ‘deadly serious’ […]. What is missing in both cases is joyful irony, the very fundamental feature of Nietzsche’s style” (Ticklish 67 n.16, emphasis in original). As Žižek never elaborates on this apparently meaningful feature of Heidegger’s style, I do not want to develop an argument here to justify this criticism (although it is certainly easy enough to imagine one). On the contrary, I prefer to read this criticism as a symptom of a preoccupation of Žižek’s own project. While this endnote functions as a denigration of Heidegger’s style, it also serves as a celebration of a philosophical style of “joyful irony” and “playfulness” (as one possible opposition to the “deadly serious”)—a style that Žižek ascribes (rightly) to Nietzsche. However, at the same time, there is another practitioner of joyful irony present in this endnote: Žižek himself. After all, it is Žižek who conducts interviews with himself (Metastases 167-217), discusses cultural differences in toilet design (Plague 4-5), who begins his most philosophically-accomplished work with a discussion of film noir (Tarrying 9-12), and who, even at the height of pure philosophical seriousness, interrupts his explication to recount a dirty joke (too many examples to cite). It is Žižek who titles chapter divisions things like “It’s the Political Economy, Stupid!” or “Toward the Theory of the Stalinist Musical.” And it is Žižek who (unfortunately) in the first paragraph of the introduction to Enjoy Your Symptom! exclaims (in an homage to Thomas de Quincey) “How many people have entered the way of perdition with some innocent gangbang, which at the time was of no great importance to them, and ended by sharing the main dishes in a Chinese restaurant!” (ix). How many, indeed.

Why is Žižek trying so hard? At the beginning of this essay, I quoted Denise Gigante’s characterization of Žižek: “rather than importing interdisciplinary texts and events to his own theoretical perspective, he functions as a ‘vanishing mediator,’ mediating between various theoretical points of view” (153). While I agree with Gigante that Žižek does function as a mediator between theoretical points of view (while refusing to provide an identifiable “Žižekian” theoretical conclusion), I would insist that there is nothing “vanishing” about Žižek’s performance of mediation. Rather, Žižek’s style is calculated to prevent his vanishing—when you are reading Žižek, it is impossible to forget that you are reading Žižek. Žižek’s pose here is interesting in that it seems to gesture toward what Foucault identifies as one of the fundamental characteristics of hermeneutics: “one does not interpret what is in the signified, but one interprets after all: who posed the interpretation. The basis of interpretation is nothing but the interpreter, and this is perhaps the meaning that Nietzsche gave to the word ‘psychology’” (278). In a very real sense, Žižek is offering this possibility to us, his readers. By mediating, yet refusing to vanish, is the ultimate activity in interpreting Žižek actually literally interpreting Žižek?

Yeah, I know: it's hard to believe this is what I get "paid" to do.

3. I think my first experience as a TA for an English class was successful. My students were pretty amazing, actually. I was particularly thrilled by the student who approached me after our final section and said "Thank you for not being an asshole." I'm thinking about making this the primary tenet of my pedagogy: don't be an asshole. It's not bad advice, actually.

Of course, it has been five days since I turned in final grades and I've already gotten one student complaint... Does that make me an asshole?

4. Next quarter, most of the faculty in the Literature department will be located in the new Humanities building. As far as I can tell, this is the UC's devious plan to ghettoize the humanities. After all, the new building has no ceilings (it was over budget by that point...) and no sound-proofing in the walls (true!). Even more interesting, the story making the rounds has it that History of Consciousness Professor Angela Davis has likened the new building's concrete interior to that of a prison. And she should know. For some reason, I don't think the sciences have to deal with facilities like this.

Watch this space for some non-academic updates in the next few days...