Adrian Mole: The cappuccino years

At 10:00pm not-quite-four-year-old Daniel runs through the house like a madman, or a young cat. So he does most nights.

So Samuel used to do. But now he must rise for Kindergarten, and has conditioned himself to retire before eight o’clock.

Abel, at thirteen months, sleeps last. He has taken a turn toward ultraviolence.

Adrian Mole is in his fifth book. He is thirty years old. He has two sons. One of them, he recognizes as his son. The reader recognizes them both. Adrian isn’t the most self-aware diarist.

It’s the 1990s. Blair is the new Prime Minister. Adrian works as an offal chef at Hoi Polloi, a Tory restaurant. In his spare time he scripts an unsold radio serial, The Windsors, about the Royal Family. Princess Diana’s death scuttles Adrian’s plot. Adrian’s own life seems plotless, notwithstanding his acquisition of sons.

His parents also are chronic failures – after a livelier fashion (even what with Adrian’s father’s depression). The most impressive figure in this book is Adrian’s mother, who unexpectedly succeeds as a ghostwriter, spinkling pages with unsolicited references to Germaine Greer (author of The Female Eunuch).

“Philistines” always succeed where Adrian fails.

Adrian considers writing to be his vocation. Thus he wastes time agonizing over semicolons.

Pity. He is eloquent.

I sometimes wish I lived in pre-feminist times when if a man washed a teaspoon he was regarded as “a big Jessie.” It must have been great when women did all the work, and men just lolled about reading the paper.

I asked my father about those days when we were preparing the Brussels sprouts, the carrots and the potatoes, etc., etc. His eyes took on a faraway misty look. “It was a golden age,” he said, almost choking with emotion. “I’m only sorry that you never lived to see it as an adult man. I’d come home from work, my dinner would be on the table, my shirts ironed, my socks in balls. I didn’t know how to turn the stove on, let alone cook on the bleeding thing.” His eyes then narrowed, his voice became a hiss as he said, “That bloody Germaine Greer ruined my life. Your mother was never the same after reading that bleeding book.”

Bear in mind that Adrian is on the liberal end of the political spectrum.

I reflected on his feelings as I chopped vegetables for our “hobo’s stew.”

The Muses fail me

I also write fiction, most of which is stillborn.

Here are a few of last year’s false starts.

I’d had as much as I could stand of Art and Libby Tungsten and of Tungstens generally when “Brainy” Tungsten strode into the parlor.

You’re probably curious what the insufferable “Brainy” will do to ruin the narrator’s good temper. Alas, this character is a dead end. Having come upon the scene, “Brainy” just stands in place, tantalizing us with his name, refusing to confirm or discredit it.

Another passage:

It was rainy and bleak. I’d been crisscrossing the city for hours and didn’t know where to get off the bus. The neighborhoods looked rough. To dismount might be fatal. It would be wetting, at least.

“You can’t ride all night,” the driver said. “You must get down.”

“I don’t know where to.”

“Then do it here.”

The half-dozen other passengers were stony-faced.

Note the pared-downness of the Bulwer-Lyttonian opening. What to do when inspiration presents itself in the form of plagiarism? Make it more prosaic, e.g.:

Should I stay alive or not?

That time was both very bad and very good.

Another treadmill

Some church friends who no longer run indoors have given us their old, ornery treadmill. The motor has a mind of its own. It goes faster than I instruct it to do. Yesterday, I had to keep reducing the speed until the display said I was running ten-minute miles; but surely I was going much faster, and when I dismounted, I was so tired I almost collapsed. I have no such trouble when I exercise out of doors.

Still, I’m glad to have this contraption. What with Halloween, Thanksgiving, our COVID quarantine, and the cold, November was the first month since July of 2020 in which I gained rather than lost weight.

Some days, I’m within 15 lbs. of my final target. At least, I think I’m within 15 lbs.; like the treadmill’s display, our scales are inaccurate, probably because the floorboards in this house are not evenly laid out. Each day I must take different readings until I get the same reading several times. Never before, in my personal experience, has the mode of any series of measurements been a more useful average than the median or the mean. Live long enough, and everything happens to you at least once.

Never been overweight? Just wait. Never been overweight and then lost that weight? Just wait.

In the seventh or eighth grade, I wrote a story about a thin man who drinks some delicious chicken noodle soup, decides that his life has been lacking, turns into a glutton, and becomes hugely and famously fat. At the apex of his fame (and size), he stops liking chicken noodle soup. He ends up thinner than before. I was reading a lot of Ray Bradbury when I wrote this story.

Spotify has compiled the statistics of my usage in 2021. I listen to Spotify more hours than 97% of all subscribers. Money well spent. I listen to Vangelis more than all but 0.05% of Vangelis’s listeners. Vangelis is whom I often choose for Samuel’s napping-time.

Aftermath

Cleaning the apartment took its toll.

Mary aggravated a shoulder injury.

I strained my lower back. It immobilized me for a couple of days.

Karin said, “My back always hurts.”

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I’ve been reworking my best dissertation chapter into an article. My committee advised me to try to publish that chapter’s argument in “one of the very top journals.”

I’ve decided to take this entreaty seriously – even if my committee members tell the same thing to every student who finishes the Ph.D.

Tonight, I remarked to Karin that I thought the article would take several years to complete.

She looked horrified.

It never ends!

Submission

I turned in the dissertation. The last days of writing it were just awful. I felt like Daffy Duck trying to write the end of The Scarlet Pumpernickel.

The dissertation is about as looney as The Scarlet Pumpernickel, too.

No, really, it’s pretty bad.

Karin & I will begin our journey to Ithaca tomorrow (Friday). We’ll spend the night at an Airbnb near Cleveland and arrive in the Finger Lakes region on Saturday.

I’ll defend the dissertation on Thursday at 3:30.

An announcement has gone out around the philosophy department so that faculty can decide whether to attend the defense. I hope no one does, except my committee members. Then I hope they give me the chance to revise a lot of Chapter IV, and maybe the other chapters, too, and to take a bunch of things out. Really, the dissertation is pretty bad. I shudder to think of its being uploaded to ProQuest in its current state.

Chapter IV

You will have seen by now that we lost our semifinal to the Koreans.

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Once again, I’m terribly, distressingly behind on my dissertation. I’m writing the last chapter, Chapter IV.

Last night, Karin urged me to explain it all to her so that I could organize my thoughts. I talked for about forty minutes. Then I said, “All of which brings us to the beginning of Chapter IV.”

We didn’t get very far after that.

The entire dissertation, revised in response to my advisor’s comments, must be submitted to the other readers by Sunday night.

Los pibes

The last bits of my dissertation, not counting revisions, need to be turned in around the beginning of next week. Meanwhile, I continue to apply for academic jobs. It amazes me that so many are posted so near to the beginning of the next school year.

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After starting slowly, with a draw and a defeat in the first two group games, Ecuador has progressed to the quarterfinal round of the men’s U-20 World Cup in Poland.

Ecuador’s opponent in the quarterfinals: the USA.

(I’m not saying that one side is morally better than the other, but one is like Luke Skywalker and the other is like Darth Vader.)

Los pibes, as the youths are called, seem especially bad at kicking penalties. They missed one against the Japanese, whom they outplayed and should have beaten, and another against the Italians, whom they also outplayed and with whom they should have drawn.

They did convert two penalty kicks against the Uruguayans. They used two different shooters who followed the same strategy: shooting low and centrally into space vacated by the goalkeeper.

Not very inspiring. I hope the quarterfinal doesn’t have to be settled with a shootout.

Progress report, pt. 2

The nightmare of this dissertation continues. I simply can’t write these arguments quickly enough to meet the deadlines. The arguments are too difficult. Too many complications arise.

There’s a certain chapter that, every day, I expect to complete, and then I work on it and it just keeps going on and on.

Progress report

Two chapters completed; one deleted; two others and an introduction still to receive finishing touches (which will involve pages and pages of writing).

I am considerably deprived of sleep.

The good news is, on Tuesday, I did not have to serve on a jury. But it took the good people of the court until late Monday night to figure that out.

The locked room

It’s the middle of my spring break.

The pace at which I’ve been writing isn’t bad.

But, oh! To keep up this pace through the end of March! And, if necessary, the beginning of April!

[Sigh.]

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I’m also nearing the end of The Locked Room by Sjöwall & Wahlöö, which is about a “locked room” murder and a bank robbery. (I already finished The Locked Room by Paul Auster. How different Auster’s solitary existentialists from the social pawns of Sjöwall & Wahlöö!)

Sjöwall & Wahlöö are laying out their hippie credentials even more nakedly than before. Their protagonist, Chief Detective Inspector Martin Beck, is about to have a love affair with a hippie woman.

Their Sweden, meanwhile, continues to be a capitalist hell-hole with a socialist veneer. Landlords and factory owners ascend ever higher upon the backs of laborers. Bureaucrats run the social services so as to inflate unimportant statistics, while their rank-and-file workers, ill-treated and underpaid, quit the service professions and are replaced by nitwits – the only people that those professions have become able to recruit. (This is in the early 1970s.)

The series is getting a little preachy. Which isn’t to say it’s wrong.

It’s all grimly humorous. And there’s a great little joke about how a group of police, armed with guns, tear gas, and an attack dog, burst into an unlocked room.

Our church membership class, pt. 2

This’ll be my week of spring break – “do or die” time, as far as my dissertating is concerned. I’ve already had so many “do or die” weeks, I can’t count them, but this one really is the “do or die” week.

Don’t expect great things on the blogging front.

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We looked at the Missionary Church’s constitution in today’s membership class. We spent much of the time discussing whether it was constitutionally all right for members to drink alcohol. I thought Article of Practice 7 was pretty clear:

The Scriptures clearly command that believers are not to be conformed to the worldview and lifestyle of the world of which they are a part, but, on the contrary, are to function as salt to prevent the spread of moral corruption and as light to dispel spiritual darkness. It is therefore imperative that they set high standards for their personal and collective life including the following: …

[That] their bodies be treated as temples of the Holy Spirit thus making it inconsistent with both Christian testimony and sound principles of health to injure their influence or bodies by the use of tobacco, intoxicating beverages, narcotics and other harmful products.

[Pages 10–11]

But no. Apparently, various pastors in the denomination have decided that there’s some interpretive wiggle-room. They claim that as long as members stop short of drunkenness, they may drink away.

To which I reply: Article of Practice 7 condemns injury through the mere use of intoxicating beverages, whether or not intoxication is achieved. So the drinking had better not kill any brain cells.

I didn’t spell all of this out during the class itself, but I did go so far as to say that the constitution tells believers not to eat fried chicken (another “harmful product”).

The reaction to this was a collective Huh. Then the pastor said that our congregation was going to interpret the constitution so as to allow anything that the Bible permits. So drinking is allowed, but drunkenness is not.

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Tonight, Karin & I used Hulu to watch the very last episode of Detectorists. What a lovely show. I’ll leave it to you to find out whether the metal detectorists find their gold.

There’s nothing more satisfying to watch than when these detectorists put up their detectors after a long day of detecting and head off to the pub for a friendly pint of beer.

The documents in the case

Karin is combing through my academic printouts, alphabetizing and punching holes in them and storing them in binders. This is very helpful: I’ve been reminded of several articles that it’d be good for me to read or reread.

Occasionally, she finds an amusing personal document mixed in with the other papers.

There are some birthday cards that I never managed to send off. (Reader, don’t be surprised if you receive one.)

There are voided checks, old letters, business cards (“So-and-So, Independent Beauty Consultant”), and legal documents from Ecuador.

There are response papers that I handwrote – handwrote! – for a course that I took in my first semester of grad school. The early papers got Cs and Bs; the last one got an A＋. The professor for that course went on to supervise my dissertation.

My writing was less technically proficient then, but more inventive.

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Congratulations to Ecuador’s Sub-20 men’s team, which just won its first South American championship and qualified for the Pan American Games and the U-20 World Cup.

Another ambitious read

Karin has “beaten” the Rugrats in Paris video game.

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A tutee of mine, writing about Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, is quite taken with the titular character’s virtue.

I, not so much. But the assignment has piqued my interest in Fielding, and I’ve decided to read Tom Jones. Afterward, I’ll be able to watch the movie in good conscience. It’s supposed to feature Albert Finney prancing up and down the countryside as a young man.

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The Elders saw me tonight at Barnes & Noble. They asked if I’d read much of the Book of Mormon lately, and I had to say I hadn’t.

I promised to discuss more of it with them on Wednesday.

Before then, I must turn in a dissertation chapter, or two, to my adviser.

Brianna is taught the consequences

Ziva’s adoption-day was yesterday; she and Jasper were allowed to share a can of tuna. She’s lived two years with us. We love her very much.

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Today, I worked on revising my dissertation chapter on the Rawlsian quest for political stability. This chapter has been scrambling my little brain.

Rawls offers many different characterizations of his key ideas. It’s bad enough, having to explain which characterization of an idea is the most important one for him; explaining others’ confused interpretations is downright dizzying.

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As I was engaged with these tasks, Karin’s little sister, Brianna, knocked on our door. She’d missed her school bus – again – on purpose, to talk to her friends (Brianna is a twelfth-grader). Also, she hadn’t wanted to walk home. Instead, she’d walked in the opposite direction, to our apartment.

Karin was away for the evening and couldn’t drive Brianna home.

Karin’s and Brianna’s mother refused to come over and drive Brianna home. “Why are you punishing Brianna in this way?” Karin asked her. “I’m not punishing Brianna,” her mother said. “I’m merely helping her to learn the consequences of her actions.”

I was inclined to agree with my mother-in-law. But, in this case, the consequences of Brianna’s actions fell squarely upon me. (Farewell to a peaceful evening during which to write.)

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“Gather up your school things,” I told Brianna. “We’re walking to your house.”

Of course, Brianna is capable of walking by herself (though, notoriously, she doesn’t).

But what could she say? It’s much easier and nicer to be kicked out of someone’s home when that person goes with you on your journey.

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On the way to Brianna’s house, we saw the friendly Mormons driving down the street. They waved at us and drove away.

Goodbye, Mormons, I thought. I wish you’d offered us a lift.

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The walk to Brianna’s house took fifty minutes. When we arrived, Brianna’s mother was in her car, pulling out of the driveway. She stared at me. “Thank you for walking my daughter home,” she said. Then she drove away, to go shopping.

I hadn’t quite expected my mother-in-law to offer me a lift home; I suppose that if she had, it would’ve interfered with Brianna’s learning of the consequences. Still, I was a little irked that she didn’t.

All together, my round trip was five miles. A few years ago, that would’ve been a cinch to walk; but now, I’m old and fat. My limbs are sore, and I am tired. These, also, are among the consequences.

Freeriding

There’s good news, for one semester at least: the faculty, staff, and students of my university will be allowed to ride the city bus for free. I plan to ride as often as possible so that this policy will be extended beyond the fall.

I paid my last bus fare today and rode home from downtown, where I’d attended the Friends of the Library Public Book Sale. I’d bought nine books in five volumes for four dollars. Six of these books are inside two omnibuses by Ngaio Marsh. “She Writes Better than Christie!” is the blurb on the front cover of one of the omnibuses. (No, she doesn’t.) The Friends of the Library Public Book Sale is about the only place where I ever find Ngaio Marsh’s books; curiously, no books by Dame Agatha were available today.

I’d been dutifully reading two chapters, daily, of Dame Daphne, but yesterday I lapsed. I did write four dissertation pages, however. (I still should be able to finish reading Rebecca in two weeks.)

I also am reading one chapter, daily, of The Late George Apley. I should get through that book by the end of August.

P.S. I saw at least two copies of Children of Monsters: An Inquiry into the Sons and Daughters of Dictators, by Jay Nordlinger, in the “Politics” section of the book sale. You can get a copy cheap if you go in today before 6:00pm. (Here is what I wrote of the book a couple of years ago.)

The nighthawk

Last night, I had one eye on philosophy and one on Karin and the kitties and one on the NBA Finals. I watched Stephen Curry drain his nine three-pointers (a Finals record). I am for Curry and his Warriors when they play against the Cavs; and, it seems, so are the referees. Perhaps, when the series moves to Cleveland, the calls will go the other way.

The game finished before 11:00pm. I finished writing around 2:15am. Karin and Ziva had gone to sleep. Jasper was begging for attention, and he’d torn open a bag of Doritos.

I wonder how long I’ll keep going to bed so late. Apparently, when they’re tired enough, writers lose their inhibitions and become more able to add words to the page. It certainly has proved true with me in the last month or so. This has been one of the most productive periods of my career. For years, I used to reserve the night hours for entertainment, thinking I’d be too tired to get anything done, but that was exactly the wrong way of going about it. (I should’ve known better since I write so many of my blog posts late at night.)

Progress

I sent my advisor some of my dissertation, and we agreed to put back into motion the degree-granting machinery. This will require filing this or that petition and “bringing on board” this or that new committee member.

During the last week, my advisor and the departmental secretary did some of this “legwork” for me at Cornell. So far, everything has gone straightforwardly (they report).

“When would you like to defend?” my advisor asked me.

“In December or January,” I said, playing it safe. (Some of the dissertation’s chapters need quite a bit of work.)

From Karin, I secured permission not to attend our church camp in Michigan this year. So: no major distractions outside of work (except for the World Cup). Also, Jasper and Ziva should be happy not to be left on their own this summer.

Instead, it looks as if Karin & I will postpone our next big trip; and, when we do take it, we’ll go to Ithaca.

A visit to Bethel

The snow is gone, and with it – at last – the LimeBike that obstructed my sidewalk all winter long.

This is hardly the end of our trouble with LimeBikes. On the contrary.

Not long ago, Karin & I noted a LimeBike that had been abandoned halfway up a narrow outdoor staircase.

To view South Bend’s grim future with LimeBikes, look no further than to China.

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Yesterday, I visited the man who was my boss when I worked in the library at Bethel College. We had lunch together in the cafeteria. He insisted that I finish the Ph.D., and he asked me to regularly send him my dissertation drafts. It was most kind of him. I wonder if this will help me to finish the degree.

I greeted the other faculty that I saw in the cafeteria. Some were pleased that I was there; others weren’t. I can tell when they aren’t pleased because first they pretend not to notice me, and then they coldly ask, “What brings you to campus?”

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All last week, I was sick; and now I worry that Karin has caught the bug.

Xmas’s eve’s eve’s eve

One third of my vacation is spent. I didn’t write as much as I should’ve done. I can’t even claim to have rested well.

My cold persists. Its decline, while slow, is at least steady. (Karin’s cold yo-yos up and down.)

Ziva has been discreetly vomiting – we think she’s trying to work a furball out of herself. Tonight, Jasper did a tremendous vomit. He scarfed down his quarter-cup of supper (he isn’t used to dieting yet). What goes down (like that) must come up. Karin took pity and gave Jasper a little more food.

Thanks to my “Secret Santa,” I’ve received the first four volumes from my wishlist. Just eight more volumes to go.

Festivities begin tomorrow with a full night and morning of partying at Karin’s dad’s house. Then, we’ll spend Christmas’s Eve at my Uncle John’s & Aunt Lorena’s house. As always, I look forward to the mini-wieners and other snacks to be served there.

The Peruvians got an early Xmas present. Paolo Guerrero’s ban was reduced to six months. He will play in the World Cup. To the authorities, he offered up the old “coca leaf, not cocaine” defense.

Thanksgiving

It’s my Thanksgiving break, so I stayed at home. Karin went to her job. I read all morning. I missed the armed robbery that occurred at IUSB. In the afternoon, I performed some chores and wrote in my dissertation. Ziva and Jasper were glad to have me with them.

In the evening, I watched Grêmio defeat Lanús, 1–0, in the first game of the Copa Libertadores’s final round. It wasn’t a beautiful game. I turned it off after the first half and watched Midsomer Murders with Karin. In that show, there was one especially nice camera shot. It was from the point of view of a murderous shovel.

For tomorrow’s holiday dinner, we’re planning to eat Greek food, not Chinese. Then we’ll go to Karin’s grandpa’s house to play Phase 10 for several hours.

I’m grateful, this Thanksgiving, for my wife and kitties.