Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Take Your Bags and Shove 'em

Now that things have come to a stop, however briefly, I'd like to take the opportunity to express my dislike for the term 'unpacking'. I've only started hearing this term used to describe taking apart and analyzing an idea or text since I started grad school.


Whene
ver I hear it, I think of people on airplanes with rolling luggage, removing items one by one to reveal whatever looked suspicious on the x-ray.









I think of something roughly and rudely rammed into a too-small container.



Worst of all, I think of...of business school. Is that what I'm doing with myself now? Am I in business school? This type of jargon makes me fear that I am.

High school was all about juxtaposing and
simulacra. University was about context and worldview, meta- and post-.

Information studies borrows from other fields or makes due with combined words: access, informatics, and closure. Unpacking seems to have been borrowed from linguistics?

Dear teach,
examine, explain, analyze, interpret or pick apart, but don't unpack because I won't be joining you.

Monday, December 8, 2008

Growth...or Regression?

5 years ago I saw this place peeking out from behind several other hideous buildings.
I found out that it was a love hotel decorated as though it were X-mas every day.
I thought it was one of the silliest things I had ever heard. What kind of weirdo wants to f%&k in such a tacky, wasteful place?
I thought "The Japanese are a very strange people that I will never understand."
Now I'm beginning to see the appeal. The problem is, I don't feel that I've changed that much. What's different? Do I take myself less seriously and therefore have a more playful and wondering attitude about everything?
Am I developing a fetish?
Are they just way ahead of me on the curve (as they are with many other things) or have I fallen behind?


Friday, December 5, 2008

A Poem


Come find me,
I'm lonely.
I live in
The Li'bry

There's nothing
To hold me
Except for
The ivy