transartorialism

but i think you can still register at the polls.  in any case i am bringing all my utility bills and lease and ids that i have.

if you live in wisconsin, today is the last day to early vote for the recall election!  so vote today or vote tuesday!  i can’t live with myself if walker stays governor.  quite literally because he slashed my health care.

for the joint 19th century transatlantic/world lit class we had a student conference to end the semester this saturday, where we all cobbled together pieces of our drafts of our final seminar paper (or in my case, started the seminar paper and awkwardly read the first seven pages) and dressed up (except i didn’t get the memo and wore jeans and a sweatshirt) and sleepily encouraged one another with questions and comments during panels after each round of papers.  like most conferences there was no coffee despite the ridiculously early start time and the sheer length of the day-long conference session, where minutes stretch to hours.

i hadn’t met about half the students in the other class, so it was good to get an introduction to them.  during one of the question and answer sessions, one woman was asking really spicy questions, and i woke up and listened to her.  her vowels had that tell-tale lilt that always makes me cock my ear up here; it was just barely there, but i could tell.

at the break i asked her if she was from the south and she admitted, embarrassed, that she was from alabama; i told her i was from rural tennessee and both of us shifted into our lilts perhaps consciously.  we were talking about being from the south and from rural families when another woman from kentucky came up to us.  then my new fellow southerner she-pronouned me, and my heart broke in a thousand pieces but then came back together again instantly and i didn’t know what to do.

it happened again later that night at a party—at the moment where the perpetual 2:30 am my mind is at these days met with the real 2:30 am plus a few drinks—someone who i was talking to about where they grew up (california) she-d me.  i called them out on it and she got really awkward and not apologetic but sort of like, “i know i know i’m sorry i didn’t mean to i feel really bad” but i just didn’t care and neither did she.  we both just felt bad and then we talked about something else.

i started grad school wanting no one to know i was trans even though i knew that was probably not going to happen, or at least to be able to tell people on my terms.  but i feel like that is what these little pronoun slipups mean; that people think of me as trans and then it comes out when they misgender me, despite the fact that i’ve never looked less like a woman in my life. somehow everyone has come to know about it through other people, even though both of these people don’t really know me or talk to me frequently.  it is so alienating and disheartening, especially coming from folks who are transplants themselves to this wisconsin cold, to this winter with no end.

the other day in rhet/comp class i learned that feminist ryan gosling started in a women’s studies capstone class here at uw-madison.  the “hey girl” thing was apparently a joke between the two folks who started it.  they had no idea it would get so popular!

In October, i asked myself, “I wonder what it would be like to live in Wisconsin?  Probably a lot more cheese.”

Also, whoa, 10th grade Neil was a lot more precocious than I remember.

read martin chuzzlewit, made a preventative/”i’m not traditionally sick but need to go” doctor’s appointment, got a free flu shot with sarah, and then got free vegetables from the uw student farm.

now i’m in the coziest library on campus…procrastinating.

and then there this going on this weekend.

As part of Capitalism Awareness Week, you are invited to a special event here at UW-Madison.

The Revolutionary Case for Capitalism
by Dr. Eric Daniels
Wednesday, September 28th at 7:30pm
2650 Humanities

Despite capitalism’s enormous success in producing material abundance and political freedom, it faces a crisis—one that may lead to its demise. Capitalism is perishing because its supposed defenders lack a real defense. In this lecture, Eric Daniels explores the most common arguments in favor of capitalism. He finds that they all break down in the face of the popular argument that capitalism is immoral and destructive—because it is selfish. Dr. Daniels explains that only Ayn Rand’s crucial insight—that capitalism is the only moral social system because it is based on “the virtue of selfishness”—can truly defend capitalism. He illustrates the need for a moral, and not just an economic, defense of capitalism.

Dr. Eric Daniels is a Research Professor at Clemson University’s Institute for the Study of Capitalism. He previously served as a postdoctoral fellow and visiting assistant professor at Duke University’s Program on Values and Ethics in the Marketplace, where he was nominated for a teaching award. In addition, Daniels has taught at the University of Wisconsin, where he earned his doctorate in American history. He has lectured internationally on the history of American ethics, American business and entrepreneurship, and the American Enlightenment.

in the south, in seminars, we say “i’m going to piggyback off of what [fellow student] said,” when you are going to sort of one-up and/or expand a comment someone else just said, which is probably just fake politeness because we all know what’s going on when someone says that.

up here, people says, “i’m going to telescope that, Neil, and say [insert smarter analysis here].”  it’s weird and more direct and honest, i guess.