Jacob Bender's Blog, page 13

Basic New Years Resolutions

Come New Years, many folks form grandiose resolutions to lose weight, eat healthy, exercise, cut all carbs/fats/sugars/etc, get in shape, find love, write a novel, win the superbowl, start a political revolution, and/or burn this mother down.  Yet not only do so many of us fail at these massive goals, but even find ourselves actively regressing.

It's not that I want to discourage grandiose goals, far from it--the more ambitious, the better.  Rather, I would just like to suggest a few...

I Really Want To Root For Oregon This New Years...

...you know, have a team from my Pacific Northwest win the first-ever college football playoffs and finally humble the arrogant SEC.  But then, arrogant sadly describes Oregon too, doesn't it.

But even laying aside for now the character failings of the Duck's obnoxious fan base, part of why I'm finding it difficult to root for Oregon this year is because their grad student Union had to straight-up go on strike this month in order to win a compensation package that is still even worse than...

Happy Holidays

Fall semester 2011, I had this soft-spoken Muslim student, a refugee from Iraq.  Didn't speak much.  I asked her idly one December day, during a workshop, if there was a Muslim equivalent to Christmas; she said yes, the Day of Ashura, which in 2011 fell on that very day, December 5th.  Everyone in class immediately felt bad that she was in class (though we were also kinda impressed).  I told that had I known about it, I would have totally excused her absence.  She jus...

My Way

Once in awhile, you can post Frank Sinatra's "My Way" unironically.

For this was hands down my hardest semester ever you see--and it was entirely self-inflicted.  I took four graduate-level classes (five if you count Teacher Training), including two seminars, one of which was the infamous Walt Whitman seminar.  This was all in a frankly reckless bid to finish the last of my doctoral course work in only two years flat.  I was advised explicitly against such a foolhardy load by my...

Hamlet as a Christmas Play

Embedded within Andy William's Holiday supermarket-radio standard "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year", lurks the line: "They'll be scary ghost stories/and tales of the glories/of Christmases long, long ago..."  In what is otherwise an unadulterated work of Christmas schmaltz--so sugary sweet it'll rot your teeth--that line has always jumped out at me like, well, a ghost, for as long as I can remember.  

"Scary ghost stories"?  Since when is that a Christmas tradition...

On Joy

A bunch of us grad students were gathered around our Thanksgiving table, remembering a recent meeting where the ice-breaker had been "Tell us something that brings you joy."

It was a surprisingly difficult question--and I only half-facetiously said "I can't remember!" at the time. As we went around at that earlier meeting, folks said things like playing with their kids, or reading for pleasure (remember that?), or playing sports, or playing or listening to music or what have you.  None of...

Robi Draco Rosa AKA Draco Rosa AKA Draco AKA Robi Rosa AKA...

Robert Edward Rosa Suárez is perhaps the most important Puerto Rican singer you've never heard of. 
During my mission in Puerto Rico, the local teenagers (upon accurately deducing that us young white were all probably Rock fans), would, in excited, reverential awe, share with us Robi Draco Rosa's cult-classic, 1996's Vagabundo (which I've fanboyed about previously here).  Its heavy guitar, exquisite musicianship, fear of death, and perfect balance between Rock and Latin, was like no...

My Letter to the University of Iowa Board of Regents

Recently the grad student Union here at Iowa made its offers to the Board of Regents--it included such standard fare as 4.5% raise and better health insurance, as well as much more overdue demands like eliminating grad fees once and for all.  Then, at a meeting on Monday that was well attended by the Union, a rep for the Board of Regents offered their counter proposals, which included eliminating full-tuition reimbursements for quarter-time grad students, no salary increase, and not even...

Weezer: Bring Back Matt Sharp!

A sort of Confessions of an ex-Weezer fan.Following a surprisingly high number of positive (if still qualified) reviews, I did something I haven't done in nearly a decade: I gave the new Weezer album a chance.  

Courtesy of YouTube, I have now given several listens to Everything Will Be Alright In The End.  Part of me wants to just let myself like it, to kick back and enjoy it on its own terms, and quit trying to compare it to their '90s output (even as lead-single "Back to the...

David Foster Wallace on Voting

Bracketing aside for now whether you were maybe gladdened or saddened by last night's Midterm election results, the record-low voter participation indicates that the majority of Americans were pretty indifferent towards the whole ordeal.  On the one hand, it's hard to fault the apathetic: amidst the relentless barrage of hateful political-ads rife with inaccuracies, ad hominum attacks and other assorted logical fallacies, amidst all the long-broken campaign promises and the candidates so...