I am having one of those breakdown moments.
It's the end of the semester...like, really.

I just got home and checked my student email and was overloaded with all this shit.

Deadlines about when to register for next semester.
I don't even know what the hell I am doing next semester. Do I sign up for thesis guidance? How many credits do I take? Do I get financial aid? Who is going to be my second adviser?

THEN
I got an email from the library telling me that two of the books I am using for one of my research papers were RECALLED. What a bunch of bullshit. Someone else needs the books so they get them?? What the fuck. They missed out. I have them because I need them...I don't just take out shit tons of books for the fun of it. Why is it that because they, the late bird, want the book I have to return it early? You'd think that maybe at least my option to renew would be taken away. I might be able to handle that, but no, I gotta give them back on Monday...three weeks before my paper is due. Maybe once I return them I can recall them and get them back.

AND THEN
another email from the library...I supposedly have a book that was due today. But I swear to whoever that I returned that shit. I take books very seriously. I respect them and keep track of them and godamit I returned that shit. And, I have no proof. They don't give receipts or anything that says you returned your books. You put them on the desk and walk out. So I have no proof and therefore will either have to pay for the damn book that is floating around somewhere in that giant library or have my library privileges revoked, which ultimately is out of the question.

For those students out there...you surely understand. It seems like everything that can go wrong usually does when you have 4, 20 page research papers to write. Like I don't have enough shit on my plate right now I have to worry about all this other shit. Ug. I am sooooo mad.

Battle @ Buffalo
910 Main St.
7:30pm
$5
Family Friendly!

Hey Kids

THIS SATURDAY
OCT. 25
Battle @ Buffalo
$5 (they upped it a dollar those bastards!)
910 Main St (between Hyatt's Art Store doors)
7:30ish to 11:00ish





Please note me & (e:heidi) in the background :)

I am currently reading an article called "'How Do I Rent a Negro?': Racialized Subjectivity and Digital Performance Art" by Brandi Wilkins Catanese (Theatre Journal)

and she talks about this website:
Rent-A-Negro.Com

I think it is a really fascinating look at race relations today...I should be reading instead of posting, but I thought I would share. Take a look around at all the different tabs, it's worth it!

This is one of their products from the store

Ok, I'm going to try something out here. This is a response paper (two pages, double spaced) for my class, Afrotopias. It is in response to the book
Punctuation: Art, Politics, and Play by Jennifer DeVere Brody

This is a pretty good example of how I write "academically". I think that this might work because its not really based solely on the book and I think can be understood without having read the book. Let's see if I'm right :)

Oh, a quick note: When I say "queer quotation marks" I am talking about the function of quotation marks to question a straight forward meaning or objectivity of a word and find alternative or multiple meanings within that word/idea.


The connections between Jennifer DeVere Brody's book and other texts and articles we have discussed this semester are many. Brody speaks of the performance of punctuation, of memories that have appeared to have disappeared, of community and art, and of repetitions, silences and improvisation. However, something that we have not (explicitly) covered this semester are notions of citizenship and nation, which Brody addresses via the hyphen.
    
Last semester I wrote a paper arguing that George W. Bush used the rhetoric of "patriotism" to fabricate a nationalist "American" identity after 9/11 (note queer quotations). Similarly, Brody shows the ways in which post-9/11 America was constructed as a unified, non-hyphenated body of citizens who stripped themselves (and each other) of their allegiances to other nations. But what is perhaps more interesting and important is Brody's use of "The Race for One" and/as "The Race for None" and how this logic was/is located in a linear, seemingly progressive line of temporal evolution. To consider the implications that (most) white Americans have already forgotten(?) their hyphenated European identities while (some/many?) people of color have not, serves to reinforce the notion that white people and whiteness is more "evolved" than black people and blackness. Furthermore, this "lag" in the linear progression of time serves to separate and therefore hinder the ideal (white) America that means to create a "race of one" that ultimately is a "race of none" (read: white).
    
Brody also argues that the hyphen serves as a "space of friction," (87) a moving performance that "always act(s)" (85). I would like to consider the implications of this notion through Theodore Roosevelt's argument that, "Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance" (Brody, 88). What interests me in Roosevelt's statement is the naturalized/naturalizing connection that Roosevelt makes between one's spirit and soul and one's physical/geographic location. To be sure, Roosevelt not only assumes that love for one land necessarily requires the "forgetting" of another, but also that America/ns have always already insisted/required/forced "outsiders" to remain just that. I am reminded here of the article last class that pointed out that enslaved black women's bodies were used as experiments for "science" because they were simultaneously viewed as different yet similar to white women's bodies. Although America has continuously insisted on the "differences" of people of color, the moment their sameness is viewed as useful, they are condemned for claiming such differences. Also, to argue that Roosevelt, like George W. Bush, cannot conceive of a diasporic identity that reaches across time and space, history and borders of all kinds, is only the tip of the iceberg. This kind of "friction" is, as Brody argues, "impossible,"(85) yet powerful.
    
To conclude, as Brody argues, it is not enough to argue that the American ideal of unity, or "the race of one," is void of racial distinction in favor of an "American" identity, but rather that this ideal is based on, grounded in, and perpetuated through a notion that whiteness and white America is a "race of none". Far too often, as could/can clearly be seen when speaking of "race" in the upcoming presidential election, as well as the primary, it was clear that speakers meant black. Whiteness continues to be cast as neutral, normal, and even natural and hence, lacking racial classification. Therefore, the American vision of a non-hyphenated, unified "one" is always already the "race of none": whiteness. Interestingly enough, the performance of whiteness might actually show its face here, as those who assimilate to white norms, standards and values are closer (is it ever fully achieved?) to the American ideal than those who maintain (openly) their hyphens, their (physical/spiritual) moving between (artificial/fabricated) borders. Finally, Brody posits the question, "Is this shifting space actually liberatory?" (107). Is the use of the hyphen serving only to reinforce these artificial boundaries and borders that have been erected for the sole purpose of segregation, or should we be moving toward a "unity"(queer) that dissolves these borders and seeks to un-cover/dis-cover the "me" in "you" and vice versa? Are we at a space that allows for this type of radical thinking/acting and what implications would it have on the politics of community and solidarity?