I know - it's a bad joke.

Scott McLemee has created a meme, and I was one of the folks he passed it on to in his column. Before I show you my answers to the meme I have to say that this is actually a hard one. With all of these meme's you try to strike a balance; you want to appear intelligent but not as if you are stuck in books. That balance is easy to fake with the "Desert Island Book Meme", but not so with Scott's meme. Here it is pretty much all out there, you'll know how boring I am and how limited my focus is. So, let's get on with it.

(1) Imagine it’s 2015. You are visiting the library at a major research university. You go over to a computer terminal (or whatever it is they use in 2015) that gives you immediate access to any book or journal article on any topic you want. What do you look up? In other words, what do you hope somebody will have written in the meantime?

There are two things that come to mind. First, a history of the failure to discover, or create whatever the correct terminology is, the Grand Unified Theory. I'd feel more comfortable in 2015 if we aren't able to explain everything in a language I can't understand. I'd also prefer if this written by Peter Steeves after he creates his time machine. The other book I'd hope to find is a non-Zizekian discussion of Deleuze's relationship to Hegel and French Hegelianism.

(2) What is the strangest thing you’ve ever heard or seen at a conference? No names, please. Refer to “Professor X” or “Ms. Y” if you must. Double credit if you were directly affected. Triple if you then said or did something equally weird.

Man, oh man, I wish I had a story like Brad's (go to paragraph 6). In comparison I don't have much of anything. I remember being particularly incensed when Stanley Hauerwas told someone not to waste their time with the secular philosophers doing work on St. Paul. I think his exact words were, "These are just bored Eastern Europeans." He was referring to Zizek, who is from Eastern Europe, and Badiou, who is from France. Hauerwas is very American so I don't know if he realizes that France is actually in Western Europe or if he just, as I suspect and as a rather respected former student told me, he hasn't read these bored Eastern Europeans. Nothing really strange though that I can think of.

(3) Name a writer, scholar, or otherwise worthy person you admire so much that meeting him or her would probably reduce you to awestruck silence.

My problem is that I tend to actually talk to much when meeting a scholar that I admire. Most of the ones that would do this to me are dead now, but the prospect of studying with Philip Goodchild still scares the shit out of me.

4) What are two or three blogs or other Web sites you often read that don’t seem to be on many people’s radar?

I'm not a good blogger, and I don't really want to be known as a blogger either. Moreover, I don't often find myself at other serious blogs or looking over Daily Kos or Instapundit. The only reason I like our little Weblog here is because of the people it's put me in contact with. So, the only blog that I can think of that needs to get wider attention is the H was O for its delightful nihilism. That being said, there are a few blogs and websites that I read that are thankfully not on the radar of most people. I'm talking the livejournal's of Evangelical Christian college students and messed up High School hipster kids. My advice, pick any LJ that has a lot of friends and start surfing. Sometimes I'll do that all night.

Well, that's all for me. Thanks Scott for linking again to The Weblog and I hope I lived up to the awesome responsibility of your meme. Does this word have any relation to the French?