“Is this your first time?” she asks, looking down, eyes lined with disdain.
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The Roughly But Not Exactly 30 Best Songs (Or Ones That Are Reasonably Good) of the Year (Updated)
Christmas Reading
On top of David Graeber’s big book and this tome on the 9/11 Wars, @GrahamHarman‘s Meillasoux book just arrived. Will be forced to read, alas, and will probably enjoy quite a bit. I’m sure @HodgyTweets is tremendously upset about this.
My Peculiarly Long UPS Shipping Experience
I bought an iPhone case recently. I thought I would get it in a few days, but I’m not one for complaining. Confused about what might be holding it up, I checked UPS’s helpful website to see how my case was progressing through America and stumbled upon one of the strangest shipping routes I’ve seen yet. Now, sadly, UPS doesn’t feel a need to provide a map to see the actual progress of your package, largely, I’m sure, because you’d be confronted by strange and schizophrenic routes like this one (Deleuze).
Starting in Nashville, TN, the case proceeded to Knoxville, TN. That’s reasonable, after all, you can’t expect these people to drive forever, or fly, or however it is that packages even get moved these days. Trains? Do we do that?
After Knoxville, my case made its way to Virginia, stopping over in Roanoke, a city I’ve never heard of but appears to be reasonably sized. I don’t know anything about Virginia. I’ve never cared. After researching, I learned that Roanoke does happen to be the site of Virginia Tech and maybe UPS made its drivers take the day off to comemorate the police officer who was killed in another awful shooting at Virginia Tech. Rest in peace, sir.
I used to not like police officers that much because I think it was a “cool kid’s club” thing to do, but most of the ones I’ve met in Boston are quite pleasant fellows with appealing accents, so I have to say I’ve been relatively mollified.
The next day, the iPhone continued its Odyssey to Laurel, MD — yet another city that could probably not exist without changing much about my daily activities besides my reception of iPhone cases. My case decided to stop over a day in Laurel, maybe the sights are nice, who is to say? Laurel is near the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, so maybe my iPhone case needed to do a little bit of ballistics research with some of the nation’s top minds.
Next, it traveled into my mother’s ancestral state: New Jersey, deposited in some UPS building in Saddle Brook. Saddle Brook was really only a quick stopover though because then the case proceeded on its way to Shrewsbury, MA.
From Shrewsbury, you might imagine that we could make the straight shot to Cambridge, the final haul, allowing this poor UPS driver to take a little bit of time off, but I think as you can tell that would be a little too easy for UPS.
Instead, UPS decided it would move on to Watertown, MA in order to, who knows, maybe check out some of the great tourist spots like the old home of Boston frontman Tom Scholz or visit UPS’s friend, TV and movie heart-thief Eliza Dushku. Watertown is a relatively pleasant place I’m sure, but my iPhone is feeling awfully naked, and has felt that way for roughly a week. If I drop it again, onus is on you, UPS.
At this point, they were all tired out of driving and ready to take a weekend break. I suppose on Monday I’ll see if we finally unite at the Mail Center in Harvard Yard or if instead my iPhone case and its UPS courier decide to take a little more time and visit Martha’s Vineyard before returning to the city for a long work week. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Can We (Still) Be Rancièreans and Žižekians?
My first official journal bit, co-authored with Thomas Hodgman in the student portion of this issue of the IJZS, is now available. Read it here if you haven’t already. It’s a marginally exciting time to be Brad Bolman. I think a book review or two might make it out this year as well.
Here’s a more permanent link.