Troll's Wonderhome

7:47pm: Why Iraq holds nothing on Academia
This is an angry and bitter post rather than a darkly humorous one. Now, 'ere I go farther, don't get me wrong. Civil wars are grim, and the threat of death or dismemberment for both US forces in Iraqi, civilians, and enemy combatants is a pretty stark thing. But you know, I *still* feel more optimism for events there than I do for my academic job.

I come to this realization after watching the news media natter on and on about Iraq -- particularly the penchant for stressing the complexity and negativities of events there.

Now, stipulated things in Iraq are a horror, but frankly when it comes to secterian disagreement, short-sightedness, pig-headed mistakes and outright stupidity, my university can trump it.

Much like the American adventure in Iraq, I teach at a university that was established abroad to "revolutionize" education around an American model. As a bastion of American values, it would lead the local country (and then surround areas) to reform and better themselves.

Now, if this sounds arrogant, it is. But truth be told, local education at the university level could use some improvement, and I figured it was a project worth standing behind and commiting myself to. Although I was far from happy about the venal attitude of many of the Americans involved, and reserved about the project's isolation from the local area, there was good to be done.

Several years in to my tour of academia, however, I've finally realized: I'm not sure it's going to make it. So what's my rundown on the dilemma? Unfortunately, it's that American ademica has some problems -- and running a university with second- (or even third-) strings on a limited budget isn't going to work. Here's some of the key problems:

* PROBLEMS IN PLANNING.
With a very small competant "leadership" cadre, there's simply never enough time to get anything done. Necessary reforms take forever to undertake, and are constantly late or met only half-way. Even worse, there's a lack of interest and will to enforce reform -- or to punish those who actively undermine or resist them. Anyone trying to play by the rules quickly discovers that it's much easier (and more profitable) to simply cadge, dodge or avoid the rules as much as possible. Even worse, it's often more effective, which leads to many turning to "stop-gap" measures to affect _some_ possible good even to the detriment of the system. This said, few in the university community are willing to accept the (limited) delegation of power that these figures might be willing to make in some cases.

* TURNOVER.
Generally, expatriate staff tend to last only 2 or 3 years. While there's a long-term cadre, it's been burnt out over time. This deepens problems in planning, since every year anywhere from a quarter to a third of the expatriate staff turns over -- and the new people have to be brought up to speed, and their own contributions and ideas have to be assimilated. In a given academic year, September and October are essentially lost to this. So even more time and effort are spent "rebuilding" and training new faculty every year, in a seeingly never-ending cycle. There's not only not enough faculty, but not enough faculty "on the ground" to affect the kinds of changes needed.

* SECTARIAN DIVISIONS.
The university is deeply riven by long-term divisions between faculty (as well as staff and adminsitration). Some of these are normal in an American academic setting -- humanities and business faculty often clash, or the faculty and the administration. Other elements are unique and discouraging. An increasing number of faculty are expatriates, hired because they're willing to commit to stay longer and because the university can pay at local market rates (about a third of an expat's going salary). Unfortunately, this often results (or leads) to a local faculty cadre with absolutely no training in liberal arts, with no real interest in the core functions of the university, and/or deep dissatisfaciton with the disparity in pay. To give you an idea of the problem with this, about 50 percent of those teaching the basic "liberal arts" core program did not attend a liberal arts program; most of them have not taught in a liberal arts program previously. You can imagine what kind of core program is the result.

Ergo, as the university "localizes" its faculty to save on resources, problems emerge. Naturally, the end result is that expats turn on the locals, or divide into factions. Worse, many senior faculty are among the most egregious offenders -- not in terms of empire-building (which would be natural in the US) but in terms of not participating actively in university life outside of their empires. This means that functions such as faculty governance and committee leadership fall to junior faculty -- which are not always the most adept to run these positions, which

* TRIUMPH OF THE LACK OF WILL.
Few people care, and often they care about their own slice of the empire. This becomes most readily apparent in faculty committees, which are wildly inefficient and rarely achieve any concrete results. It also becomes a problem when it comes to problem solving. At least one in five of the major programs are in need of dire reform, but neither they nor the university's leaders are intrested in addressing the problem -- it's cheaper and easier every year to ignore them. Yet, of course, the end result is to fritter away money and resources that could be better spent elsewhere, or used where they are far more effectively. Inefficient or uneffective faculty are kept on since the evaluation process is ludicrous.

* LOSING HEARTS AND MINDS
In theory, the ace in the hole should be the student body. The problem is, in the US as where I teach, that the mentality has changed. Instead of members of an academic community, students are now consumers in an "educational experience." As such, they have little motivation to join in. Those that do usually fight to either preserve their own preferences (favorite faculty, etc.) or focus on costs to the exclusion of anything else. The better students, with a real interest in academia, tend to burn out early and "turtle up," refusing to commit to academic reform unless it's a personal favor to a faculty member. The result, frequently, is attempts by individual faculty to address a specific issue -- whether we speak of sexual harassment of students, quality of education, unfair marks, etc. -- result in a faculty member running ahead of their student support, being cut off in the resulting internal disputes, and failing spectacularly. As a result, faculty quickly learn to keep their own heads down.

* MORALE, THE HIDDEN KILLER.
All of these problems encouraged the key problem of morale. Doing your job effectively means fighting the system -- or growing to loathe it. The salary inequities poison local faculty attitudes; this, in turn, poisons many expats against them. Bad, even outright malicious faculty are kept on. The student body learned early on not to take sides in the issue, and any attempt to fix problems by well-meaning faculty results in few gains -- so the latter become bitter in turn. While often kept on because they remain good in the classroom, the end result is to diminish the pool of those seeking to maintain a high-quality university. Even worse, the word quickly goes out that anyone with a hint of ambition should avoid the university at all costs. This is unfair, since it has many good qualities for a pre-tenure professor, but it's hard to avoid the bias of bitterness.

* RESOURCE SCARCITY.
In theory, with enough money, all of this could be overcome. The problem is, the original founding of this educational adventure was badly handled. Even leaving aside questions about the situation of the project and the way it was structured, millions were wasted on luxuries for the upper administration or tossed away with little thought ot long-term viability. Now comes belt-tightening -- so faculty salaries have gone from wildly generous to less-than-US-market, classes become too large, and emerging faults and problems receive band-aids instead of effective repair. By now, repairing osme of the problems would essentially involve massive restructing -- something anathema to the distant Board of Trustees, which has proven both unwilling to contribute to solving the problems constructively but also unwilling to allow the university's own "local" authorities to do so either.

What's funny to me, looking back, is how much this seems to parallel Iraq -- another adventure in American arrogance. Alas. For both my university and the US mission in Iraq's flaws, there was some potential good that could have been realized. In both cases, the ultimate question emerges as to what's the exit strategy that causes the least damage?

What's even more amusing to me is, now, hearing my fellow academics natter on about how "the government" is evil, callous and cruel and caused the ongoing problems in Iraq -- and yet regard themselves as an intellectual elite of pure and shining heart and vision. Yet if this group (if perhaps a less than flattering selection from it) can so befoul and weaken a small liberal arts college, the fate of the world should be entrusted to them? Kissinger was right. Take a dozen random names from the phone book before you take a dozen academics to run something.

11:12pm: Sweet. Google rocks.
This is too cool.

Now, I hate the OCC (Office of Computing and Communications) where I work. It might be because the piece of crap they call a computer in my office, made from spare 1980s-era East German parts, crashes frequently and repeatedly. It might also be because they have the work ethics of cannabis-smoking tree sloths. Hell, it might even be because they don't support Mac or Linux, since they're braindead morons who worship MS and its many products.

Heh.

Now, if I had a wish in life -- after copious moolah for me, a patent on cold fusion, dictatorial powers and some more freakin' height (goddamn genes) -- it'd be for the scumsucking monkeylovers in OCC to contract cancer and die slowly and horribly.

Yes, yes, that sounds horrid which is why I'd really only wish for all their skin to slough off, exposing their nerves. Because people are too close-minded to allow me to wish cancer on people. There, happy?

Anyway, the point being that Google is now allowing institutions and corporations to use e-mail via Google, for free. Oh, happy day: what better way to ensure that the university boots the OCC in the nuts and saves money at the same time?

Death. Death to information resources here at work and their inept minions. Fire up the torches and sharpen the pitchforks, boys, Google's gonna help me kill the monster. BWAH HA HA HA HA!

2:58am: The Quest of the Sofia Airport
There's many things I like about Bulgaria, but the airport is not one of them. I can only assume the EU commissioners either arrive by car or fly in blindfolded, because 5 minutes in the airport would have doomed Bulgaria to admissions lightly after Tajikistan.

It'd make a rather good video game, actually -- or possibly knightly quest. There's several distinct dangers and tests one faces.

The first, upon arrival, is the Seatbelt Test. 50 years of Socialism and 15 years of post-Socialism have resulted in a respect for the rules taht would do Tammany Hall proud. 30 seconds after the plane has touched down the cell phones are out, the seatbelts are off, and your neighbors are crawling over you to pull down their bags. This is rather quixotic, since the airport (unless you're lucky enough to land at the new terminal) still uses busses. Hint, people: make sure you're the last person off. Why rush? The bus won't leave without you, and you can hit the underside of the luggage bins to look for coins (if you prefer the video game simile) or lake-dwelling sword-tossing maidens (if you prefer the knightly aspect).

Upon arriving in the terminal, you face the challenge of The Queue of Non-Queuing. Generally, there will be 3 or 4 customs booths open. Strangely, the new fashion seems to be to have two people in each booth, while a series of "The Glamorous Young Ladies of the Bulgarian Customs Police" watch on incuriously. The challenge and struggle you'll face here is the fact that the queues work in unpredictable fashion, and it's considered the height of savviness to cut in before the unwary. This would be no worse than, say, a visit to a McDonalds in Sofia, except for the brilliant strategy of Air France, British Air and Lufthansa to have as many planes arrive and depart from Sofia as simultaneously as possible. This means that instead of just the 100 from your plane to deal with, you might have 200 or even 300! I suspect it has something to do with the difficulty setting.

Next, the most difficult task: Can You Find a Baggage Cart? Curiously, the Sofia airport has hundreds of baggage carts, which (after a brief experiment back in 2004) are free to the taking. However, you have to find one first. Although airport management and Bulgarian law apparently provide for an approximately a dozen customs officials waiting for the first person to ever voluntarily declare goods, there seems to be only one man who collects carts and returns them for use. This means that there's generally about 2 carts available for any arriving plane. Generally, obtaining one of said carts involves beating off businessmen and babas with your hand baggage while you wait for one of the periodic arrivals of 5 or 6 carts. Given that I always arrive with about 50 kilos of baggage, it's a must. This is really the boss level (or, if you prefer, the climax of the tale).

Once you've obtained a cart, it's the periodic wait for luggage. This is really no worse than anywhere else in the world, with the vague exception that the belt eats luggage. No, really: the quality of the machinery is not up to par, and straps, locks and any protrusion can become trapped in the belt or (occasionally) ripped off. Luckily, for the new terminal, the airport authority hired those keen chaps that designed the Denver luggage system that obtained such fame and notoriety a decade ago.

Finally, and perhaps anticlimatically, you merely have to dodge the taxi touts at the door, and make your way through the thousands of people waiting in the arrivals area, many with signs. This is, again, not that bad -- Dulles is usually just as awful -- except for the fact that most people seem to pass the time of waiting for an arrival by standing in an immobile line, making it as difficult to move a baggage cart past them as possible.

Bitter? Me? Oh, my, no.

1:15am: Herbert West, Reanimate me.
Heh. Let's try this again.

Oh, sure, I couldn't be bothered to actually update my blog the first go-around. But hey, now I've got the dissertation finished. Anything's possible.

Besides, perhaps posting on yon blog will distract me from my fantasies of walking around my workplace with an MG-42 and blowing away my co-workers. Oh, sure, it's funny until you see me on CNN. So there.



HRB Index: 99 (AUBG Reset).

Current Book: The European Powers, 1900-1945

12:36pm: Another contract, another year.
Well, go figure. Apparently, I must be good at my job: I got a contract to teach for another year. Should be interesting... since I want to finally freakin' finish grad school in the fall, I'm going to teach minimal courses, but the spring I plan to go nuts, depending on a student survey I'm running. The probable classes, for those Interested in What Zorak Zoran Teaches:

Fall 2004:

Nationalism

Historical Methodology

European Political Ideology in the 20th Century

Spring 2005:

Terrorism

European Diplomatic History

The Two Yugoslavias

Europe in Flames, 1936-1949.

Ain't that special. Heh.

Current Book: S. Andrew Swann, Revolutionary

2:04pm: I dun caught me another!
Mah! Get out mah kettle! Another wun o' these heah students has dun plag-i-arized!

Now, the sad thing is, whenever one of these weasely students plagiarizes, I get an image in my head. I saw Secret Window recently, and loved it. So now, I see John Shooter pop up and say in my head, "You stoll mah storeh" whenever one of these ijits plagiarizes.

Maybe I could beat the student in the head with a shovel and bury 'em in a corn field. Beats the Dean's List!

1:55pm: I Hate NATO Day
Grr.

Okay, last week, Bulgaria got into NATO. Great! Good for them. Maybe the US will give them bombs to drop on someone or something. (Sorry, but as far as I'm concerned, NATO's got a dubious lifespan these days: alliances without a clear conception of threat and all that, y'see.) Okay. Great.

They have a bunch of big celebrations for it an all. Wonderful!

They get scantily clad dancers to gyrate locally to celebrate it. Whatever.

They play "Ode to Joy" in Sofia to celebrate it. Hey, snazzy.

They have a national holiday. Cool.

The university cafe is closed and I can't get a sandwich or coffee or anything last Friday.

Ma, get mah gun. I'm-ah goin' to Brussels. GODDAMN NATO! Some things go too far...

11:57am: How low can I sink?
One of the fine things about living abroad is that standards shift. My attitudes about cheating mutate. My thoughts about US foreign policy get grumpier. And my taste in various things shift about.

There's no more telling index of this than movies.

As the tight-fisted descendant of tight-fisted Scotsman, in the US I rarely see a non-matinee, and -- let me tell you! -- it better have some damn werewolves or something in it. Since there's about one movie a year that fits the bill, I don't see too many movies.

In Bulgaria, I'll see anything.

I mean, for the gods' sake, I saw Deuce Bigalo: Male Gigalo here. I saw Charlies' Angels. And Charlies' Angeles 2.

Y'see, it costs about $1.25 to $1.60 to see a movie here, normally. The theater is actually very nice. And if I get a gut-buster popcorn and a coke, then I'm out the grand total of 4 leva, which comes to around $2.50, tops. (The dollar's fallen: I used to see movies for fifty cents to a buck, and that thar popcorn would be about a buck-eighty).

Anyway, this inane ramble is getting to one point: Gothika. Y'see, a friend said, "Let's go see this!" And I shrieked and insisted it was a festering pile of dung. They insist that friends liked it. I pointed out that in this region, people also like killing each other with rusty spoons.*

* Don't worry, I'm not going all Robert Kaplan, I just like making fun of Seselj.

HRB Index: 79 (-10 from relaxing and sleeping in, +5 from dissertation stress, +1 from screwing up spaghetti sauce last night, -2 from finding a store that sells Stoli, +1 from awful anticipation of seeing Gothika.)

Current Book: Young's The Colonial State in Africa in Comparative Perspective. Always wanted to read it, found a copy on sale. Yes, I have odd tastes in light reading.

12:30am: Hur, hur, hur.
I'm a lazy bum. But I finally got around to uploading a picture. Hurray.

Given my constant cranky state, I chose this fine picture from Hokura's website. Of course, I haven't asked his permission. Then again, I don't speak Japanese, so it'd be a bit tough.

Pay him back by going to his site and marveling at his kick-ass images. Hokura rocks. Trolls rock.

4:38pm: What shall my iBook theme be?
JPi recently souped up her shitty Lombard (blech!) and made a cool Mars icon for it. Sweet!

My damn iBook pisses me off so much, it's becoming very tempting to scrap the thing and get a nice new (slaver, slaver) 14" G4 933Mhz. Yum. it ain't a desktop machine, but it's a close cousin. Wow, I could actually run OS X! I could have a decent-sized HD! I'm giddy with the very thought.

That means I'd have an extra iBook -- I can renew Apple's "we'll repair the damn thing any time it breaks" plan, and it seems to make more sense keeping a spare than the $200 I might get if I sold it.

So what should I do with the old one? It's very tempting indeed to make some jazzy decorations for it, of one sort or another. Of course, if it got *too* Jazzy no doubt Apple would say "bite me!" with regards to the warranty. Hmm.

But since you can scrape off the white paint and replace it, it is sorta tempting to do something crazy...

4:38pm: What shall my iBook theme be?
JPi recently souped up her shitty Lombard (blech!) and made a

4:21pm: I dun bagged me wun!
Yee-haw! A plagiarist, that thar is!

Gods. How stupid are these kids? Listen to this one.

Okay, I rant over and over again in class: do not plagiarize. I may catch you. Then you'll be in a world of hurt. And it's not like the US, where the little bastards can use a credit card to buy their papers on the web: we're talking Eastern Europe, these kids don't have the funds for this.

So I start going through student papers. I hop on my e-mail, because some of 'em send it to me by e-mail instead of a hard copy. I start rummaging through the text. Huh. Not really on topic. Hmm. Not quoting the documents. Well, this puir wee bastard is off to C- land. (I'm a very easy grader).

At some point, I do my Standard Plagiarism Check. Low and behold, but I get a hit! Hmm. Let's try another sentence -- oooh, another site! After I hit 3, I give up.

Mind, it was very well done for a cut and paste paper -- usually, the things are blindingly obvious, since the transitions are god-awful. This 'un had actually gone to some trouble to smooth out the transitions, or got lucky in what they cut and pasted.

Sweet! So it's off to the Dean's Office on Monday for the both of us. That's one. I wonder if I can get four -- that's my record for a semester. Sadly, I don't have as many papers as I did in other classes. But I always could get lucky!

HRB Index: 86 (-3 from catching plagiarist; +1 from being insulted at how badly the plagiarism was; +4 from freaking out about getting work done)

Current Book: Between the Devil and Deep Blue See by Someone ZorakZoran Forgot. Non-fiction, on the social life of sailors in the 18th century. Waaaay too much Hobsbawmian influence. : P

11:37am: I long for a giant robot body...
... so that I might crush all that lay before me. Grr.

There's nothing like grading midterms and papers to cheer one up. Oh, wait, having friends from SEE. That's always good. Don't get me started.

Actually, it's very funky being at an undergraduate university over the spring break. There's no one actually around -- perhaps a half-dozen faculty, and a half-dozen students. Very empty. Very nice -- whenever I get a kink in my back I go for a job around the floor, up and down the steps. And I can do this without knocking over puir wee freshmen, which is always a plus.

It's Martinitsa time in Bulgaria, and like a fuckin' idiot I bought tons for friends in the US, then didn't mail them. Crap. I have a huge stack of mail, and haven't send any of it out yet -- mostly because I'm bad about writing postcards this trip. Then again, where are my damn postcards? Bah! I never get postcards. Grumble, grumble.

Okay, I'm outta here before I start *really* getting cranky.

HRB Index: 84 (-10 from good friends; +8 from grading midterms; -5 from seeing pleasant highs on the midterms; +5 from grading papers; +3 from stupid grammatical mistakes; +15 from shitty friends that crap on you; +4 from having a big-ass pile of laundry that I'm going to have to handwash or something)

Current Book: The Beak of the Finch. Just finished it this morning.

Current Mood: Gradin' papers

Current Music: Power of Seven - "Oni Fever"

2:06pm: I am the God of Hellfire
Being a history professor usually bites.

No, really. I mean, we get less respect than the average drug dealer. We're faced with classrooms of apathetic little faces that somehow think that studying business is useful, studying area studies is cool, and studying history is a dreary bore. Most of the time, the little buggers can barely keep from sleeping.

And then come midterms.

BWAH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

See, the best part of this is I'm a pretty nice professor. Hell, I don't require people to roll on in to lectures. Attendance? Screw it. If you don't want to show up, don't show up. Heck, I won't snap at people that don't pay attention, that talk in class (as long as they're not bothering others, and so forth).

Because my exams are chiefly based on the lectures.

So I'm highly enjoying scenes like the following:

STUDENT: Zorakzoran, I was reading the textbook.

ZZ: That's good.

STUDENT: And, it's not the same as the lectures.

ZZ: That's right.

STUDENT: Huh?

ZZ: Why would I do that? You can read the book. Why should I lecture on it? Instead, I use the lecture to talk about other things.

STUDENT: (Oh, crap, I haven't been coming to lecture or paying attention.) Well, uh, what books could I read to better understand the lectures?

ZZ: Which lecture? I usually draw on two or three different books per lecture.

STUDENT: The best one.

ZZ: Try Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.

STUDENT: Okay, which chapter.

ZZ: Oh, the first three or four hundred pages gives a good overview.

BWAH HA HA HA HA!

I'm an evil bastard. And I love it.

HRB Index: 64 (-5 from anticipation of evil fucking midterms; -2 from having nice friends).
Current Book: Ian Kershaw's The Nazi Dictatorship

1:59pm: Mighty chef was Zorakzoran
I don't think I'm a bad cook, actually. I'm a cookie-bakin' fiend. I do reasonable pasta -- I can even make it from scratch (but don't, because I'm also a smart guy. Man, is it work.) Granted, I'll eat just about anything I make myself because I have the tastebuds of a ravenous crow, but when I cook for others I do like to put some work into it, the odd microwave burrito aside.

Having suffered, however, yet another culinary disaster, I thought it prudent to not merely share it with others, but to decant it in epic verse:

Hear the tale of Badchef Ricebane
Destroyer of another meal.
Hear the tale of wasted foodstuffs
Vanquished by fate's awful seal.
Mighty chef was Zorak-zoran
Angry troll with his flamehair.
Cooked he did a hundred inners
Satisifed with tasty fair.
Came one night that he was sleepy
Had not slept the night before.
Zorakzoran he still was hungry
Lunch he'd had but not much more.
Coming home he turned on oven.
Placed a pot on top it so.
Filled the pot with steaming water.
Boiling rice in bubbling flow.
Thinking he that much time had he,
Sat upon his bed to read.
Book he'd read a dozen times 'ere,
Concentration did not need.
Soon his mind was away slipping,
Falling into numbing bore.
Fear the horror of this good chef,
For alas he soon did snore.
Nine hours he slept and more was needed,
But he woke with weary sigh.
"Funny" thought he to his ownself,
"The lights are on," his muttered cry.
Yet apartment filled with fog was,
Obscuring daylight streaming here and yon,
"Fucking hell!" his brain responded,
"I fucking left the oven on!"
Not just burned was tasty rice dish,
Cremated into bits of ash.
Scots ancestry soon was shrieking,
"Dammit for that rice paid cash."
Soon on door was puzzled landlord,
Wondering to apartment's fate.
"I smelled smoke, what are you doing?"
Windows opened, but too late.
Hear the story of the Ricebane.
Think of tale while there you sit.
Zorakzoran a fine good chef is,
As long as keeps his mind on it.

Hear my tale of woe and sorrow,
Lost 30 cents of rice I had.
Luckily my growing hunger,
Overcomes my feeling sad.
So off to lunch I am now going,
Because my pot is filled with muck.
Worst of all I've burned rice before,
When will I learn, the silly fuck?

HRB Index: 71 (-3 being amused by burning rice, -2 for good night's sleep, -2 for nice chat with friend evening before, +2 for spending time doing stupid poem and not writing dissertation)

Current Book: Article by Peter Fritzche, "History and Nostalgia."

4:40am: Sleep deprevation is my new drug
It's 4:40 AM in the morning. Glurmp.

Having stayed too late at work, and finding that my office floor is very hard and uncomfortable, I resolve to just work the rest of the night, then work through Friday. Hurrah! This being Bulgaria, however, there's no damn vending machines for Coke around. Argh. Must do it on willpower and heavy metal music alone.

Unfortunately, the quality of my work suffers. After editing course descriptions, I re-wrote the department course descriptions in gansta-rap. Erk.

Very annoyed. Had invited a friend I don't see much over for dinner; they, naturally, bail the day before because they're busy. Which would be okay, I suppose, but they're always busy. WTF is it about people in the region that they go on and on about how important friendship are, yet are (in my experience) ludicrously bad about keeping up with people? Fuck it. Fuck 'im.

Very amused. One of the local student rags -- and here, the student rags have all the edge of a wet noodle -- is running a great project I was involved in (in the role of evil foreign advisor). It rocks, I can hardly wait to see it. If it comes out, given the organizational skills of the region. Heh.

Ah, shit. 20 hours before I can go to sleep. And why is it that when I play "3D Space Cadet Pinball" on my piecer Windoze here in the office, I do better when I'm sleepy? I've never broken 8 million before. Maybe my hands are ordinarily too hyper to react quickly... and the sleep slows them down. Perhaps I could convince AIR to fund a study on it. This means I can be sleep deprived all the time. Hmm.

HRB Index:76 (+4 from being dinner-ditched; -3 from cool project; -3 from being so damn sleepy I couldn't shoot straight.

Current Book:None, oddly.

12:34am: Ah...
Any day when one gets to quote the Beastie Boys in class -- "Looking down the barrel of my gun, of my gun, sonofabitch get with me, get rich. " -- is a good day indeed.

Urge to kill... fading.

HRB Index: 78 (-3 from quoting great music damn students have never heard)

Current Book: No book. Zorakzoran sleepy. Go bed soon.

Current Mood: Zorakzoran sleeeeep on dessskk

Current Music: Disturbed, "Shout"

11:52am: I am the archangel of death. The time of retribution is near.
Here's a rhetorical question!

At the university, I schedule a class. No one bothers to tell me it's at the same time as a very popular lecture series. Sadly, attendence in the class is mandatory (discussion seminar). I don't want to fuck about with changing the date and such.

So I get limited enrollment. Oh, well, it's a shame, and I'd love to go to the lecture series, but hey. But an annoyance.

So why, week after week, do dumbshites have to ask me, "Wow! What a great lecture! Why didn't you go?! You should cancel your class and go to these!"

Now, I don't ask for much in life, being a basic believer in Conan's philosophy for life. But y'know, it'd be goddamn nice if someone would fucking give me credit for trying to teach well now and then. You'd think after the first couple of times I grimaced and said, "this annoys me," people would learn. Fuck no. Hopefully, last evening when I endevoured to put my fist through a concrete pillar when the third person asked me (my knuckles are healing nicely) would suggest to them in the future this is a bad idea.

Good god, how I want to blow this place up.

At least I got to bake cookies last night. Sadly, however, I always forget that while getting crafty calms me down, screwing up crafts always annoys me. So the damn @#$@! oven (and, I must admit, the freakly Turkish brown sugar) means my cookies are not as good as they should be. Which enrages me even more.

There's a target range in town. I'm going to start practicing for when I finally snap.

HRB index: 81 (+10 for stupid people telling me about good lecture I can't go to, -4 from baking cookies, +1 for stupid oven burning my cookies, +1 for stupid brown sugar that doesn't bake right, +1 because I can't buy more chocolate chips here, +1 for spilling my coke in the class, -9 for having alarmed student buy me a beer, -1 for having student send me nice e-mail afraid I was going to start biting people like a werewolf).
Current Book: None. Read part of Lois Bujold's Civil Campaign in the shower this morning, though. No, really.

12:19pm: Do Americans Have a Culture
One of the annoying things about being in Europe, from time to time, is the oft-repeated assertation that Yanks have no Culture.

As far as I can tell, this is a product of penis envy: Europeans, having lost their empires, denied the routine joy of bombing third world nations, and generally resenting having an American monolith lurching bizarrely through international relations, can at least say, "Those fucking Yanks at least have never produced a symphony." The assumption that Americans have no history seems to tie in nicely (leaving aside Hobsbawm and Ranger's point that, given that culture changes so rapidly that any society today only bears rough resemblance to their ancestors of 200 years ago).

Of course, part of the assumption inherent is that Culture is Kultur -- high culture, of art, of symphonies, of literature. America, the logic goes, produces McDonalds and MTV and video games, all of which are greedily sucked down in Europe but which can be denied any kind of "high" culture status, which neatly allows one to absorb what America produces while denying it any legitimacy.

Finally, there's an "ethnic" assumption granted as well. Jazz, the reasoning goes, isn't American -- it's African. Cajun cooking isn't American (or, for that matter, Cajun) -- it's French. And so forth. In the worst extremes, individuals' ethnic origins are highlighted -- "Ah, see, a Bulgarian invented the computer! Of course, he was a US citizen, but sod that, we claim the invention by right of DNA!"

With all that in mind, it is of course nonsense: the US has, of course, produced "high" culture -- albeit less of it (it has a shorter history) and without enshrining it in the way that Europeans have. We've never created a Kulturstaat; in part because of the functioning of our government (look at the struggle simply to maintain the NEH, let alone create a "national" culture), in part because of an aggressive sense of egalitarianism that often insists on reducing anything to the least common demominator; and in part, perhaps, because the country is so damned big.

In any case, the constant kvetching by resentful Euros can grate, so here's a though: what "high culture" figures can people suggest? Naturally, they have to be dead, and preferably (this being Europe) the common rabble shouldn't enjoy their work too much. Being a lowbrow type myself, I can think of a few figures, but who else...?

For composers, you have Gershwin, Copland and Bernstein.

For literary figures, I'd suggest Melville, Hemingway and Poe (alas, Lovecraft won't fly -- I did try him. A second-rate figure, though I love him so.)

For artists, I'm stuck. Norman Rockwell hasn't been dead long enough to become high-brow.

For architects, I can think of Sullivan and Wright.

Who else? Who am I missing here?

HRB index: 82 (-6 from good workout)
Current Book: Gordon Craig, Germany 1866-1945 (Writing a lecture)

1:01pm: Saw cow, will go crazy
Someone just sent me a stress test. Apparently, due to the fact that dolphins appear to look very similar to cows, I'm very stressed.

I concur. Time to start putting spare cartridges in extra magazines.

More to come later. I need to go bake something. Baking cookies relieves my stress. But I'm fat, so I can't eat the goddamn cookies. Argh.

HRB index: 88 (+8 from seeing picture of leaping cow)
Current Book: Detlev Peukert's The Weimar Republic (Typing up a lecture for class in less than two hours

1:15pm: A hand-washed laundry day.
Argh.

There's a lot that Bulgaria has going for it. The Washington Post thinks Sofia is the new Prague (though it's not full of snobby Czechs, so I'm not sure I quite get that one). The food is good. The weather very nice. People are fairly friendly. They send people off to die in Iraq to show what Good Friends they are to the US. And so forth.

But laundry, aye, there's the rub. And I do mean that literally. When I took an apartment with no freakin' washing machine, I figured, "Eh, how bad can it be."

Now, before you start saying, "Aw, crap, you baby, whassumatter, gotta take the laundry to the laundromat," let me note that there *is* no laundromat.

Oh, yeah. Hand-washing.

While a perfectly understandable practice for the 15th century or so, I must admit it palls more than a bit in the 21st. And how. After some one and a half hours of sweaty, wet labor, I managed to clean approximately a dozen pairs of socks and underwear; whereapon, putting them outside to dry, they promptly froze. I'm debating whether or not it would be more efficient to let them stay outside, or try and bake them over my radiators.

Good gad.

HRB index: 80 (+5 laundry, +3 discovering library has no goddamn copy of Wachtel's most recent book, the silly shits)
Current Book:Istvan Deak, Beyond Nationalism

11:38am: Wooden ships are cool.
Ah... after a long week, I finally got the time to go see Master and Commander: and better still, after I buy my ticket, my giant-sized popcorn (hey, I skipped lunch) and a coke (so much for dieting), I paid the equivalent of US$3. Ha.

Despite the weirdness of seeing one of those bastard hobbits from LotR stretched out to man-height and walking around the ship, a good time had by all. Wooden ships blast each other. Russell Crowe makes fun of Napoleon. America sells ships to Europeans to use against each other. Whalers get sunk, meaning they can't harpoon my ass. What's not to like?

Ah... urge to kill... fading...

Of course, now I have to write more lectures today. Urge to kill. Rising.

HRB index: 72 (-5)
Current Book: Perry Biddiscombe, Werwolf!: The History of the National Socialist Guerrilla Movement, 1944-1946

8:33pm: Why can't I do the Pimp-Daddy Spock?
I have no idea what that means, exactly, but someone I knew in college used to say it all the time when they were annoyed. I think it has something to do with Spock getting cute girls on Star Trek.

So, another day at the office. This time, in a desperate attempt to get work done, I barricaded myself in by carefully shutting the door and blasting Liszt through my headphones so no one could find me.

So what do I get for my pains? One lecture done.

ONE GODDAMN LECTURE?!

And this on the damn French Revolution! I hate the French Revolution!

And yet two days ago, I got four or five lectures done. WTF?!

I decided to quickly resolve the problem, and it comes down to five things:

1. Wreckers.
2. The ambient lack of a strong work ethic, since the cursed Socialists came and stole everyone's work ethic here. Or the Turks. One of them. At least, that's what I'm told by students.
3. More wreckers.
4. All the dieting is making me weak.
5. Evil wreckers.

Curses.

HRB index:77 (-1)
Current Book: Norman Davies, Europe: A History (for class, of course)

9:25pm: I will kill, kill, kill to the music
As the HRB draws ever closer -- because I'm going out of my gourd being here -- I thought a soundtrack might be useful. Quickly going through my CDs, I've determined an optimum mix to represent the beginning credits, various stages of horror and depression, the process as I machine-gun people, the epic battle where the cops chase me, then end credits.

Much work remains to be done, of course; with only 80 minutes for a potential soundtrack, perhaps I'll have to consider a "Music inspired by ZorakZoran's HRB," but I suppose I should stick to the fiction that "inspired by" songs are written after the artist saw the movie in question.

Without further ado:

Credits:
1: Battle Without Honour (Tomoyasu Hotel)
Depression and horror:
2: Scarecrow (Ministry)
3: Dead Souls (Joy Division)
Increasing anger:
4: Thieves (live) (Ministry)
5: Angry Again (Megadeth)
6: Right Now (Korn)
Decision to shoot colleagues and/or students:
7: Wrong Way (Sublime)
8: Come Out and Play (Offspring)
9: Jamie's Got a Gun (Aerosmith)
10: Closer (NiN)
Slow-mo as I blow away annoying colleagues:
11: Terminator opening credits (Terminator)
Exciting chase through university as I shoot colleagues:
12: Skin of My Teeth (Megadeth)
13: Astrocreep (White Zombie)
Horrific scenes of Carnage:
14: Dead Bodies Everywhere (Korn)
Cool extended shoot-out with police where I never seem to run out of ammo:
15: After the Flesh (My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult)
Police come in after me:
16: Oh My God (Guns and Roses)
End credits
17: Southside (Moby)

Now, clearly, I need to do some editing on here to get some hot new tracks, so suggestions are clearly welcomed.

Current Book: Oscar Jaszi, The Dissolution of the Habsburg Empire

HRB Index: 73 (+8 today)

8:33pm: Cursed wreckers
Yeah. So I start a blog. Then I never update it.

I blame wreckers. It's their fault.

So I'm in Bulgaria, and finally teaching again. And after 3 weeks, I'm almost caught up with most of my work. Sort of. Maybe. If I do another 48 hours of work from Thursday to Sunday.

Kill me.

On the brighter side of things, as it were, I'm doing so much work and having so little time to eat, I've lost a couple of kilo, which is welcome: I'm quite nervous that if I don't lose weight quickly, I may be vulnerable if they relax whaling regulations.

I'll blame the wreckers for that, too.


Current Book: Oscar Jaszi, The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy