Escapes (and perceptions)

Since I moved to this town, I foster dogs. I think it was the 6th? 7th? foster that I ended up keeping. She had little/no hair due to various skin illness issues, had a bit of her ear chipped, and was terrified of everything. In the 3 years I've had her, she's grown her fur, is a tiny wee killer (two skunks, numerous small rodents, a possum, an attack on a deer, half a cat, many squirrels), and is massively curious about everything. The shelter listed her as a German Shepherd but there's no sense of "oh, hey, I quite like my human" in her. None. Humans exist to feed her and take her for walks/runs. She is also an escape artist/runner. I live in a house with no fenced yard and so I try take her on walks or put her on a long leash so she can run about in the big park in my back yard. As I am mostly sleepy, generally in my own world, type person and Dog is always "Kill NOW. What can I kill?", there's many times she's run off/escaped.

Today, I think was Dog's most epic escape (so far) (there's time) (my heart might not take more inventive escapes well). Taking advantage of slip in the ice/snow, she did a runner. I went around calling her name. No noise. No sound. Nothing. After scouring pretty much the whole neighborhood, I heard a whimper from near the House of Horror*. Turns out Dog had gone underneath HoH and got stuck. Of course, this didn't prevent her from trying to sniff/explore/etc so we ended up in a situation where Dog was fairly deep underneath this falling down/half fallen down house, it was getting dark and I knew the folks around there wouldn't do well to having some random woman wandering around in their territory.

So, of course, I did the sensible thing. I went home, got my mobile and rang the Fire department to ask for help.

Hahah-no! I crawled under the HoH, expecting any moment the house to fall down OR someone to shoot us, grabbed Dog, took her off her stupid leash and then, grabbing a wriggling Dog like a rugby ball, got us out of there. I walked almost a mile with 35lb Dog in hand. For much of this time, Dog was convinced she had to escape NOW and was wriggling like an eel.

We got home safe, I poured myself a stiff drink (whiskey. The good stuff) and I thought about the incident. If this were New Zealand or Nepal, I'd have tried to ask for help from one of the people whose houses were near the House of Horror. I'd have gone and knocked on their doors. But since this was Southwestern USA, I didn't. Not only didn't I go knock on neighbor's doors, but all the stories we read about strangers shot in garages, driveways, and so on came to mind. The whole time I was crawling under a falling-down house, I wasn't as much worried the house would fall on me or that I'd get a scrape (and probably end up with Tetanus--could still happen!) but that someone would notice the noise and start shooting. I was terrified to the extent that my arms and legs were trembling. This fear is, of course, more about me than about how the people here "really are". I"m sure the folks here would have helped too (maybe) but I didn't even feel I could ask them. There's a different kind of self-making when I am in SWVA than when I am in Nepal or elsewhere.

*House of Horror is a falling down house that exists at the end of my lane. Around it are abandoned/occupied trailers, a campervan, and various pickup trucks. The one time I was near there, a bearded gent came out and told me to "keep your daw-ug away from here" (this was in Year 2 and the dog was Harold, an adorable scamp of a thing) and I've never been back/near since.

On Johnny Walker(s)

Things are heating up on the uni front, with job searches (I'm on two search committees) and slight panic about dodgy technologies during teaching--again, the usual. I have thoughts about the new season of Agent Carter but will wait till it's over before sharing them. In the meantime, here's a classic: my granddad wasn't much of a Bollywood films person (my best memories of him are of us watching cricket and arguing over tactics) but he loved his Scotch. And he loved this film (Pyaasa). The guy who plays the comic barber in this clip is Johnny Walker (the actor, obviously). His story is pretty unusual too--a rags to riches tale often found in Bollywood fantasies but not that often in real Bollywood life.






Unlike the majority of Nepalis, I don't understand Hindi too well. I can get by and can make sense of what's being said (sort of) but the nuances of dialogues pass me by. That being said, this film is one of the best and it's pretty revolutionary for its time. The hero ends up with a prostitute. He denounces materiality and capitalism (well, not in *those* words but...). The songs are divine. If you get a chance, do watch it.

Here's a more romantic song: Hum Aapke Aankhon Me (which I reckon is: in your eyes, I'll place my heart)

And here we go again...(or, welcoming y'all to 2016 with a rant)

It's been a while and this is the semester I'm supposed to get myself organized and get my papers together and get stuff published/sort out another book/etc etc. Hence, it's obviously the best time to start this up again! For now, this will just be observations/random snippets that don't fit on Twitter/things I feel I wanted to get off my chest. The usual, in other words.

It's been a pretty snowy few days. We were promised blizzards and such and I think we got about a foot? a bit less? of snow here in SW Virginia. I discovered that some random pieces of plastic in my garage and realised they were sleds. Dog and I went sledding today.

On the academic side, I'm struggling with a paper that received a relatively favorable (I thought) R&R a few months ago and then, when I did the R&R, it was rejected. I admit I was not the best pleased by this--I thought it was one of my better pieces and discussed stuff that normally doesn't get talked of/about in IR/Political Science/whateveritismyfieldis (IR I think) (maybe). It also took a lot of time and the whole year was basically wasted on this paper while a straight up rejection would have meant I'd have tried (and hopefully published) it elsewhere by now. But, hey, that is academia especially when you do weird stuff on a mainstream-y topic.

I have also been in quite a few meetings and discussions lately and was thinking about a few things with regard to racial/economic/etc ideas of "diversity". Apparently, my university is all on its way to becoming inclusive (their word) and promoting diversity. So far, this has led to some interesting practices that I've noted, one of which is my "Academic Rant of The Week". Here goes (with the caveat this is my observation and not a generalization. In case that caveat is needed. I mean, this is a blog after all so obviously everything is my observation):

Apparently these days, it's totally ok to say things like: "hey, I"m a white guy, I"m not supposed to understand X (critical/non-white theorists/etc)" but if you say "hey, I'm a brown girl. I don't give a flying fuck about that one line in Plato and Aristotle" or even "Look, yes, Plato, Aristotle, blah blah but surely Z and Q are saying interesting things too?", you don't know how to "do political theory".

I'm so so close to going on a mini rant about this in a context that's best not ranted in so...here we go. In many ways, this is about "the canon", right? The canon of political theorists who are all aligned in some dark, dingy, library shelf somewhere and where "we" are all supposed to get our ideas from. But, I went to university in a setting where they didn't give much of a damn about these fellas. One of my theory professors was one of the very few (still one of the very few) folks who asked us to question the mainstream historical narrative of the establishment of the Australian nation-state. I did read Plato, etc and especially a lot of 20th century theorists but we read them in two ways: 1. to see what they themselves might have "hidden" or what we could perhaps discover underlying their accepted thoughts and in relation to the time/context they lived in, and 2. we read these theorists alongside local/Indigenous fictions/films to note how what they said could be questioned. Thus, you question the foundations of "political theory" while also knowing that these fellas (and, of course, it's usually fellas) make up what counts as those "foundations". I don't understand how this is any better or worse than reading a bunch of Plato/Aristotle/Whoever. It's just different. And, I'd argue, if you want real diversity, then you need to acknowledge that not everyone might have had the same/similar educational backgrounds and ways of learning. Indeed, diversity isn't just about adding a woman or adding a person of colour.* Diversity of thought about what is "political theory" might also be helpful for the institution and for students.

Well. I do feel better now that rant is over. Next time, I dunno. Agent Carter? How Dog sleds?

* I have a different rant about this but will save it for another time.