Tuesday, June 21, 2005
(7:47 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Tuesday Hatred 6
By way of a preface, I include this conversation, which just happened:Anthony: "So what's with that new theatre down the street? They're going to be doing some pretty artsy stuff."I hate how hard it is for me to concentrate on working at home. If I were in an actual office, social pressures would keep me seated at my desk, at least -- here at home, I'm just walking around, going to my room to play the piano, harrassing the cats, etc. I've probably put in the equivalent of two full workdays, but that was over the course of four days. So if I'm going to do this freelance thing for a longer period, which is not certain but is desirable, I'm going to need to get into better habits.
Me: "Yeah, they're going to be doing some Shakespeare thing. That's the ultimate in artsy."
Anthony: "Yeah."
Me: "Well, actually, Shakespeare is kind of middlebrow nowadays."
Anthony: "They need to do some Brecht."
For example, reading Rebekah's post on lazy temp workers, I definitely recognized myself in her insistence on being the one to do actual work. The only times I have been able to maintain that kind of work ethic at home have been when I was so overwhelmed by schoolwork that there were just no other options, or during the "state of exception" that writing a paper brings into my life. Doing the first draft of the Derrida translation was like that as well, except that I was putting in the equivalent of 12-hour days at some points. If I end up doing some mysterious other translation this summer, that would probably help productivity on all fronts: I would concentrate more on getting my work done (again, assuming I had more freelance stuff to do) so that I could complete the translation. I like doing translation. If a normal academic thing doesn't work out, maybe I could get by doing translation jobs for a while -- something like A Thousand Plateaus would probably pay fairly well.
I hate how lonely weddings make me feel. Justin and Kim's wedding was very nice, and I enjoyed the reception/party afterwards; that only ended up making it harder for me to identify the low-level depression that intensified before peaking out in my going to bed at 9:30 last night. The same with Fred and Bethany's wedding -- it was the nicest ceremony I'd ever been to, and there were a lot of good friends there. Still, after the reception, which ended at about 6:00 by my memory, I didn't want to go home to my empty house (every weekend, during that summer when a huge proportion of my friends lived at my house, they would also all leave every damn weekend), and I thought to myself: Maybe I could hang out with Natasha? No, she's married, so it's "weird" for us to hang out like we used to. Maybe Andy wants to go get a drink? No, he is going to see his girlfriend. Maybe I could go hang out at Fred and Bethany's? No, they just got married and are probably pretty busy. Maybe I could go home and sit by myself? Yes. But it was one of those things where hanging out with someone wouldn't necessarily help.
I hate it when people try to start a discussion thread on a topic on which they very clearly have an opinion, but they pretend that they are open-minded and just looking for suggestions. Then they always act disappointed when no one jumps up and confirms what they had in mind in the first place. Such discussions rarely go anywhere.
I hate being in air conditioning unless it's absolutely necessary. It feels great when it's ungodly hot, but otherwise, it strikes me as ridiculous and, yes, childish. It's the same as when someone uses too much seasoning or sauce -- childish. I base these opinions on my resentment toward my sister when we were kids, because she was a "full-blast all the time" kind of girl when she was little, to the point where she was willing to freeze on the days when it was too cool for the air conditioner, like the point wasn't to regulate the temperature, but to have this machine running that intends to make her comfortable. She's still what they call "high maintenance," but not nearly as bad. The amount of syrup she uses on her pancakes now strikes me as perfectly reasonable, for instance, and my parents' house has central air, so she doesn't have much personal control over it.
But anyway, I really do hate air conditioning generally. This is going to sound ridiculous, but I have come to like the Great Lakes Region weather, and I'd just as soon go through the cycle of seasons more naturally. Even the ridiculous bitter cold doesn't seem so bad, and I find it kind of fun to sweat a lot. Obviously, there are limits -- I'm more than willing to go for the air conditioning if it's over 90, and I certainly want my house to be warmer than the outside air during the winter, but I like there to be some correlation between what my body is experiencing and what is going on in the atmosphere, particularly in the atmosphere in this general region of the world where I've spent my entire life. This is a good thing, given that I've decided to stay in Chicago for at least five more years.
Here's something kind of abstract, but I think I hate it -- reading something on Atrios, I thought kind of at random that I wished 9/11 had never happened, not only for the sake of those who died that day, but also because of the ugliness and destructiveness that has resulted in our country since that time. I get the feeling, though, that there are many people in this country who, deep down, are glad about 9/11 precisely because of those things that I identify as ugliness and destructiveness -- they probably think of it as a "wake-up call" that broke us out of our decadent slumber, to a new state of values and unity and, best of all, sacrifice. One wishes that we did have an official state religion, so that we could sacrifice animals or little styrofoam "bread" wafers -- as it stands, the only sacrifice the American civil religion will accept are human sacrifices.
