Today centers around 2 salient facts: Cable internet access was enabled in the apartment, and I “led” a class discussion of Edward Said’s controversial (and influential) book, “Orientalism”

Actually, I was desperately trying to come up with good questions for said discussion when we got a ring from the cable guy. Up he came, fiddled with the cable a bit, plugged in a cable modem, made a 5 minute call to headquarters to enable the connection, and there we were. Oddly enough, he left me only a receipt: no documentation, no charges. Peculiar.

Then I went back to formulating discussion questions. Not east. They’ve got to somehow get at the essence of the topic, while forgoing judgment, and engaging everybody in the discussion. Make them too broad, and the discussion goes nowhere. Make them too narrow, and nobody will have anything to say. A balancing act.

Meanwhile in my other class, we had a discussion that essentially centered on how one can write history based upon problematic sources. The issue in early Islamic history is that we really have no original documents from, say 622-750AD. What we do have is the Quran, and a large supply of hadith, narratives of things the prophet or his companions did or said, via some chain of transmission. Since none of these documents are provably from the period they ostensibly describe, there is the question of how much of it is retrojection (projection of current circumstances into the past) or downright fabrication (indeed, with hadith, there is a whole field in Islamic theology devoted to distinguishing the good ones from the bad).

For the discussion itself, which started at 5PM, the professor began with a presentation of Orientalist art. You don’t need to see a lot of it to see many of the traditional Orientalist myths cropping up: the exoticized Orient, the eroticized Orient, the timeless Orient, and so on. The discussion actually more or less ran itself, though my questions proved less helpful than I’d hoped. One of the things we did get at though was the sense that Orientalism as a discourse influenced on many different levels, and in different ways. The fact that two individuals are embedded in the Orientalist discourse does not, a priori tell one a whole lot about what those individuals actually did or thought. This is something that many of Said’s critics maintain he discounted, but his actual position seems reasonably nuanced.

After the discussion, I went home and cooked some more spaghetti. Seems like Wednesday is spaghetti day. This time I think I undercooked it though. Despite having eaten spaghetti for at least half my meals this last week, I’m still not sick of it. What I am sick of is discovering that the still unripe fruit (nectarines and peaches) that I bought is rotting from the inside. Ditto for my avocado. Not cool.

So the Orient is cabled, and I’m tired.

A solid hour into French this morning, we turned to the topic of ‘verlan’, the language of French youth originating in the impoverished slums around Paris. Basically, ‘verlan’ reverses the sound of words. We read a rather neat poem which alternated back between ‘verlan’ and regular French. A few examples:

Ar-a-be -> beur

Fre-re -> reuf

Me-re -> reum

And so on. Essentially, the sound is reversed. Supposedly it was originally constructed so that ‘les flics’ (the police) couldn’t understand it, but it has since taken on a life of its own. It’d be as if gangsta’ talk here had become common among youth from all backgrounds. Not bloody likely, given that we’re such a melting pot and all.

My other course was a seminar, in which we discussed a very methodical book on the Ottoman empire subtitled ‘structures of power: 1300-1650.’ The book itself featured chapters entitled ‘The Army’, ‘The Palace’ and ‘The Provinces.’ It’s funny how sometimes structure conveys substance: this is a case where the author clearly believed that one could subdivide power under the Ottomans into a discrete set of structures. The result is a fascinating, but heavily skewed book, which gives a very elite perspective on Ottoman history. The obvious subtext is that if you weren’t involved somehow in one of those categories, you weren’t a part of the power structure. This seems highly simplistic to me: informal structures of power are often as important as formal ones, and the notion that power can be transmitted unidirectionally on an empire of millions of inhabitants seems a bit thin.

At any rate, we had our discussion, and then it was back to the apartment for me, to prepare for tomorrow’s seminars. Plenty more reading to go. I’m now on the cusp of finishing the spaghetti I made last Wednesday, which is also an achievement of sorts.

Okay, not really a bank holiday. Actually today was read-lots-about-the-Ottoman-empire after-wasting-too-much-time last-weekend-day. But the morning French was fine, and aside from an impromptu rainstorm, I can hardly complain. Also, my furniture has been rearranged for what had darn well better be the last time.

I did make a pilgrimage to a bank this afternoon to open up an account. It’s not that I’m dissatisfied with my bank, but they don’t have any ATMs within a hundred miles of here, nor branches or anything else for that matter. West coast banks for west coast residents. Which I am no longer. So I’ve now added one more card to the bulging wallet.

With a good deal of effort, I did manage to post my reading response for tomorrow’s seminar only an hour after it was due (apparently others are even worse, as I was the 4th out of 14 to post). And now, some sleep.

As you may have noticed, there’s been a slight reorganization here. The good news is that it allowed many things that needed to actually be done. The bad news is it took most of today.
A lot of the old cruft is gone. The new design uses server-side includes, so mass changes should be much easier now. Aside from being shiny and new, hopefully it’ll be a lot easier to update more regularly. Yes, yes, I suppose that last part is wishful thinking.
In any case, myownlittleworld.com is being phased out. I’ll probably keep it as an alias for the new site, but that’s the extent of it.
Otherwise, I managed to squeeze in a bit of genuine work as well. Still don’t know how to satisfactorily arrangeme all the spiffy new furniture I’ve gotten from Ikea. And wireless keeps cutting in and out. Definitely looking forward to having the cable guy come this week.

The downside of sleeping well is sleeping in. So it took a while to have breakfast (the waffle iron was having an identity crisis) and to get everything ready to leave. I think I wound up with a large percentage of grandma’s refrigerator, but hopefully it’ll be to a good cause (starving students and all that).

The plan was for grandma and I to make a quick stop at Ikea on the way down (or rather, make a detour, so it would be on the way down), pick up a lamp base, office chair and desk, and then get dropped off at my place. Of course, it turned out that the only Ikea that claimed to have the lamp base was in Elizabeth, NJ, a good bit farther than the other Ikea we’d been to, in Paramus.

On the way down, we stopped at the little mall between Hartsdale and Ardsley, wherein I received a haircut from the barber who according to one person was ‘dying’ for me to come by. A little literary license I think, as he seemed to be doing just fine. A nice clear Saturday morning, with sun and blue sky, does that.

Getting to Ikea would have been easy, save for a mistake we made leaving the parkway. This was compounded by the fact that New Jersey specializes in making each exit unique, so it took a fair amount of creative route-finding to wend our way around part of the Newark airport and back onto the correct route. Ikea itself was packed, as expected. The chair and lamp base were easy enough to find, but the table (noteworthy because it has adjustable height legs) proved difficult. Even once I found it, I had to get it in a smaller size because they were out of the larger sized tops. It took a bit of ingenuity to fit everything in the car too.

From Elizabeth to Manhattan was no great distance, but the traffic at the Holland tunnel was most unpleasant. And when we finally did come up in downtown Manhattan, we were both somewhat disoriented. Even once we were correctly oriented it took over an hour to go the 3 miles to my apartment. This is why I don’t like to drive in the city. Impracticality.

It took a bit of doing, but we managed to haul everything up to the apartment in 2 trips, thanks to a hand from the roommate. Then it was out to a late lunch in a funky bar/restaurant which had fine food, but miserable lighting.

My roommate had discovered that a favorite band of his was having a concert, so, feeling spontaneous, I tagged along. It was a venue called “The Knitting Company” down in the former garment district, and it had something of a gritty feel. When we left, we were asked to please not talk much in the streets because the neighbors didn’t like that sort of thing. Odd.

Anyhow, once I proved I was over 21 (first time I’ve had to do that) and paid my $14, we went in, and the concert began. There were three groups, and the first was easily the most experimental. Like all live rock, it was too loud for my taste, and it was tough actually catching the lyrics, even though the band, which combined a string bass, two electric guitars, and a drum seemed to have a rather thoughtful lead. They called themselves Shearwater.

The second band was a lot louder, and a lot less interesting. They lacked variety.

The last group was the once my roommate was hoping to hear, Magnolia Electric Co. Theirs was a somewhat more country feel, and, when I could catch them, occasionally good lyrics. They had a good rapport with the audience which also made it more interesting.

An interesting experience all-in-all, but next time I’ll take musician’s earplugs. Have a hard enough time hearing some things as it is… Next up: finish assembling the new furniture.

So I wake up this morning and it’s raining. No, really raining. As in, “I don’t want to go outside because I’ll melt” style raining. Yeah, that’s the raining.

So, since Friday is a no-class day (apparently, no professors want to teach Friday seminars), I stayed at home. This was fine so far as I was concerned: sit in my chair, read, pontificate, and above all, stay dry.

Lunch was a dullish affair, and around 2PM I headed off for a film screening in my building. The film? Syriana. Yes, those of you who remember my original blog (since deceased, several times) may remember I began it with a comment on that movie. And indeed, I did.

Watching it a second time through didn’t really change my perceptions. The problem with the movies is that it presents caricatures. The corrupt oilman, the messianic fundamentalist, the go-getter agent and so on. In reality, you don’t need any of these idealized types to get exactly the same mess. Indeed, bureaucracies as Adolf Eichmann readily demonstrated, are far more effective at accomplishing evil than madmen and other ‘bad’ guys. The fact that the Arabs in Syriana are either westernizers or religious nuts (or merciless soldiers) doesn’t really help much. It confirms the stereotype of ‘Good Muslim, Bad Muslim’ as Columbia’s Mahmoud Mamdani nicely puts it.

After the film, I had to pay my dues in the rain, going back to the apartment to pack up my odds and ends, and to the Grad Office to pick up my stipend. Nowhere to deposit it yet, but I’m sure that’ll change. I found my grandmother (as we’d prearranged) in the Physics building listening to professors explain their research to an assembled batch of graduate students. I caught something about ‘molecular machines’ before leaving. A bit above my head…

The idea was for me to go up to Westchester and spend the night with them, and this we did. Unfortunately, a lot of New York was also going up, so the trip wound up taking a while, and involving a lot of unplanned detours, as we sought to avoid the general backup on the main highways. Don’t try leaving NY at 4PM on a Friday. It won’t work.

The evening was spent in a rather relaxed fashion, eating dinner, talking, and clearing up a whole queue of little odds and ends. Just in time for the next installment I’ll warrant. Hopefully tomorrow can finish the apartment-furnishing saga that is now almost in its 3rd week.

“I never could get the hang of Thursdays” say Arthur Dent, of “Hitchhiker’s” fame, and I agree.

Had the early morning French, and everything after it was something of a blur. Not exactly a memorable day. Lots of reading. A little writing. Some desk organization. Walked a bit around the neighborhood in the afternoon looking for a bakery, but failed to find one that actually had bread (bakery apparently can mean patisserie in the part of the world).

Wednesday is noteworthy because I have back-to-back seminars in the afternoon. Theoretically five-and-a-half hours of history goodness. Got up early to finish up a reading response for one of the seminars. Need to learn how to schedule myself better.

The first seminar, dealt with different approaches to constructing early Islamic history. I guess the idea that philology explains history is definitely out of vogue right now. One fellow we read was a wonderful philologist (studier of words), but wrote a pretty worthless history. Inevitably ‘Orientalism’ took over the discussion. The main problem seems to be people using the term who haven’t bothered to define it properly. As our professor pointed out, were it not for Orientalists, many of the compilations and translations that American, European and Middle Eastern scholars depend upon would not exist. So just using an undefined label as a slur is not a very effective attitude.

The second seminar seemed a lot lighter. This was in large part due to the fact that two of the articles we had to read were utter garbage. I’m sure Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington have made legitimately intelligent statements before, but “What Went Wrong” and “The Clash of Civilizations” are about as valuable, informationally, as the official pronouncements of the North Korean press corps.

What’s depressing is that people actual do take some of this tripe seriously.

After the discussion (which was actually about pseudo-cultural explanations, not about bashing Lewis and Huntington, fun as that might be), it was back to the apartment for me. Wanting to have something novel for dinner (ie not rice), I gave spaghetti a try. Wow. My first time cooking spaghetti, ever. Seems to have turned out okay. The hardest part is getting all the spaghetti into the pot, since it’s not really big enough. The best part: I have at least 3 more meals waiting in the same pot. Simplifies cooking a bit.

Main event of the day was my first real seminar (last week’s ones were all preliminary). Unfortunately, we were stuck in a lecture class, which altered the dynamics considerably. The day’s question: how and why did the Ottoman Empire come into existence. It’s a question that becomes a lot more complicated when we realize that the empire doesn’t really keep any records until the 15th century.

One attempt to answer, which we read for today’s discussion, dealt mostly with literary sources, poems, legends and the like, that purport to give the origins of the Ottomans. It’s fascinating because the historical analysis itself gains a somewhat literary quality. And the fact of the matter is that we really don’t know. It could all be true, or almost none of it true. But either way, we’re left with the issue of explaining why a small Anatolian principality became one of the most powerful and long-lived states in the world in a few short centuries.

The rest of the day was preparation for tomorrow’s classes.

Not sleeping enough didn’t help me in class this morning. New York City is definitely weighing on me. Darn it, I want to find a place where I can be alone, even if just for a bit.

Instead, I get to read two books and an article. Didn’t exactly finish. Which means I’ll have to get up early tomorrow to do so. Thus repeating the cycle. Great.

Also, I’ve had to listen to 9/11-related garbage all day. Yes, I realize it’s the 5th anniversary. But if I hear one more smug self-serving politican trying to make hay out the event, I’ll lose any remaining sympathy I have for the sorry imbeciles that live in this country. They elected these morons.

And yes, I do miss California.