Friday, March 31, 2006

e-Librarianship

My first attempt at electronic booktalks, soon to appear on http://www.oremlibrary.org:


Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things That Aren't as Scary, Maybe, Depending on How You Feel About Lost Lands, Stray Cellphones, Creatures from the Sky, Parents Who Disappear in Peru, a Man Named Lars Farf, and One Other Story We Couldn't Quite Finish, So Maybe You Could Help Us Out by Nick Hornby, Neil Gaiman, Jon Scieszka, Jonathan Safran Foer, and more, with an introduction & almost half a story by Lemony Snicket.

Warning: this book does not contain tedious stories. And just what are tedious stories, you ask? In his introduction to Noisy Outlaws, Lemony Snicket explains that tedious stories are "something you may have to read in school." The stories in this collection, on the other hand, are wacky, hilarious, adventurous, and above all, loads of fun. If you liked The Series of Unfortunate Events, Coraline, or The Stinky Cheese Man, this book is for you.


Inexcusable by Chris Lynch.

"The way it looks is not the way it is." Keir, a straight-A high school graduate on his way to college on a football scholarship, has been accused of something horrible: raping the girl he loves, Gigi Boudakian. In Inexcusable, Keir recounts the months leading up to this devastating moment in hopes of convincing you--and himself--that he is innocent. Chris Lynch writes a fascinating first-person narrative in this twist on the all-too-familiar story of teenage date rape.


Dark Sons by Nikki Grimes.

Am I replaceable? In Dark Sons, Nikki Grimes tells the parallel stories of Sam, whose father has married a white woman and started a new family with her, and Ishmael, who watches painfully as his half-brother Isaac replaces him in the eyes and heart of their father, Abraham. Grimes's poetic verse breathes life into the Biblical story of Ishmael as well as the modern story of Sam, as both boys struggle to find their new places in their families and with God.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Family

About two years ago, I wrote:
Yes, there is a sense of identification when I read E.M. Forster or listen to Elton John, but there’s always this nagging feeling that they wouldn’t really consider me one of them. I don’t think I’d fit in at a Village People concert any more than I do in elders quorum or on a basketball court. The fact of the matter is that I’m as distanced from gay men as I am from straight men.
I've mentioned here before that I no longer feel so distanced from straight men, and I'm happy to report now that lately I'm not feeling so distanced from gay men either. See, a couple years ago I didn't really know any gay people except for the few I'd met in group therapy sessions and Evergreen conferences, and (a) I'd never identified with any of them because we had nothing in common except attraction to men; (b) those had been brief acquaintances in artificial circumstances; and (c) the people who run those groups had discouraged us from getting to know one another outside the group setting because inevitably if gay men hang out together they're going to have sex. You know, because we're all just uncontrollable hormone dogs.

In the last year or so, however, I've gotten to know (to varying degrees) several gay men--some online and some in real life. Two of the real life gay friends I've made are a couple who live in Salt Lake, who shall henceforth be known as Harty and the Decorator*. Harty loves to read, which is sort of a pre-requisite to be my friend, and Dec has a dry wit that equally qualifies him. What I'm trying to say is that we have more in common than just being gay. Besides being pleasant people, Harty and Dec are more or less in the same stage of life as Foxy and I--they're a few years older than us and Dec has kids a few years older than S-Boogie, but the two of them have been together for a little over a year now, which puts them in the "young couple" stage of life. At any rate, Foxy and I have enjoyed hanging out with them several times over the last couple of months.

Harty invited me not too long ago to join FHEfamily, which is a group of people who meet every other week at the University of Utah to discuss issues related to gay Mormondom. The group is unique, I think, in that it comprises a wide spectrum of gay Mormons--there are a few on the Evergreen side of things who intend to either live a life of celibacy or marry heterosexually, there are some on the Affirmation side who maintain faith in the Mormon church while embracing their gay identity, there are others who have completely abandoned Mormon beliefs and consider themselves Mormon only culturally, and there are all sorts of others who don't fit into any of those categories. I enjoy FHE because it gives me a chance to exercise the political activist in me and educate myself more about things like Senator Buttars' anti-GSA bill so that I actually know what I'm talking about when I get on my gay political soapbox.

Last night after FHE I went to IHOP with Harty, Dec, and a bunch of other people from the group. I'd like to say that I felt completely at home and comfortable, but the truth is that I rarely if ever feel completely at home and comfortable in groups of more than three people who are not Fob. Or even in groups of fewer than three people who are not Fob. I'm just not a socially adept sort of fellow. So last night I was thrilled to hang out with Harty and Dec and the other guy I already knew, and I also enjoyed getting to know a couple of the others, but there were also guys in the group who I would probably never hang out with otherwise because we have nothing in common. I also felt a little bit like a closet heterosexual because I didn't introduce myself as "Hi, I'm Master Fob and I'm married to a woman" and I'm sure everyone assumed I was either single or with the guy I was sitting next to and it was just one of those things that didn't matter enough to make an announcement but at the same time I felt secretly different from everyone else because of it. I'm not making sense here.

The point is (you'll notice I often feel the need to explicitly state my point), just like straight men, gay men are people. People are people. I get along with some more than others. I feel accepted by some more than others. It is silly to spend my life making assumptions about what people think of me because of their gender or sexual orientation or life choices or whatever.

One of the things I've learned from my new gay friends is the term Family. The reason the group is called FHEfamily is because Family is gay code for "gay." Maybe you already knew this, because apparently it's common knowledge, but I'm still learning my queer lingo. One gay friend of mine recently remarked to another that he doesn't like the term Family because he doesn't feel any familial connection to gay people. I, personally, prefer another friend's definition of family: "Family is who you love." By that definition, some of my family is gay, some are straight, some are bi, some are guys, some are gyns, some are old, some are young, yadda yadda yadda. This conclusion seems rather trite and obvious now that I say it, but the reason I say it is because, even though I probably could have said it a couple years ago, I'm only now beginning to learn it. Forgive me for being a slow learner.

*Apologies to Harty and Dec for the horrible blogonyms. I tried.

Monday, March 27, 2006

Gyn 2006

There is a gaping hole in the English language, and I am here to fill it. Observe the following:

Man/Woman
Guy/
Boy/Girl

Did you see the hole? See, when you want to refer to a male who is older than you, you call him a man. When you refer to a male who is younger than you, you call him a boy. When you refer informally to a male peer, you call him a guy. Females, on the other hand, can only be placed above you (woman) or below you (girl). Yes, there's "gal," which I in fact used as the female equivalent of "guy" in my post yesterday, but that was only because I hadn't yet written this post. The fact is, "gal" is simply a lazy "girl," and therefore not appropriate when referring to an adult. I, personally, would be offended if you called me a gal.

I hereby propose the solution:

Gyn (pronounced "jin")

I invite you to join me in the revolution by using "gyn" in your everyday speech. Whenever you would say "guy" but you're talking about a female, say "gyn." For example:

  • "I met this gyn the other day, and wow, she had the most amazing biceps."
  • "And then these two gyns walked in and the first gyn said to the second, 'Dudette, did you just fart?'"
  • "Hey, you gyns, stop picking your noses and get over here!"

Show your love for equality, the English language, and me by using "gyn" in your next blog post. Thank you.

This Public Service Announcement has been brought to you by the Foundation for a Better Gyn. We are unrelated to the Foundation for Better Gin, the Foundation for Better Jinn, the Foundation for Better Gyms, and the Foundation for Better Gynecology.

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Democratic Religion

We'll call this my svithe for the week.

Today a visiting high councillor spoke in our ward about how we should be grateful that we don't have to make decisions for ourselves because we have prophets to make them for us, and how we are unfaithful if we do not obey every single word of advice given to us by a prophet, area authority, stake president, bishop, or home teacher, to the letter. Really, I am not making this up or exagerrating. That's what he said. I was happy to be distracted by S-Boogie's new markers.

Believe it or not, this post is not about everything that I think is wrong with the Mormon church. Actually, this post is about one of the things I like about the Mormon church: its democratic approach to religion. Now, you may be saying, "Hey, wait, isn't the Mormon church governed by a patriarchal hierarchy?" and you're right, it is, and the emphasis a lot of Mormons put on that hierarchy bothers me. However, the church--and even its hierarchy--is built around the idea that any and every person can receive personal revelation from God, and therefore nobody is more of an authority on theology than anyone else. People serve in positions of authority, but not because they're any more important or knowledgeable than anyone else; in the Mormon paradigm, God calls you one day to be a bishop and the next to be a janitor. It is assumed, therefore, that any individual with access to the scriptures and, more importantly, the willingness to pray and listen to God, can be as much of a theologian as the next guy or gal. I've read that the church was even more democratic in the days of Joseph Smith, but I don't have any facts to back that claim up at the moment, and it's irrelevant anyway.

What does all this mean? It means that I have to sit through a talk by a guy who I think is an idiot. But it also means that Sister Smith down the row from me, who thinks that same guy is the best thing since buttered toast, gets the chance to hear his talk and be edified. And it also means that after that I can go to elders quorum and enjoy a lesson taught by a guy who I think is a genius, even if everyone else in the class thinks his stories about dating Dallin H. Oaks's daughter are a waste of time. It means that a bunch of imperfect people can get together and share our thoughts about God, with the assumption that we all have the right to have those thoughts.

I suspect there are other churches out there who take such a democratic approach to theology without requiring their adherents to subscribe to any set dogma (this is probably why so many ex-Mormons become Unitarians), but for now, while I'm still participating (albeit reservedly) in the Mormon church, I enjoy what democracy they have to offer. I'm grateful that God gave me a mind and that he expects me to use it to make decisions for myself, not to let others do so for me. And I'm glad I'm not alone in feeling this way.

Saturday, March 25, 2006

Washington It Is

The University of Hawai'i regrets to inform me that I have not been accepted into their English PhD program. This makes the decision to go to Washington and be a librarian easier. When my bruised ego speaks up I slap him around a bit and remind him that a very intelligent friend of mine was rejected by nine PhD programs last year.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Recommended

Foxy J brought a letter to me at work this morning letting me know that the University of Washington School of Information has recommended me for admission to the Graduate School. I am happy.

A Case of Mistaken Identity

For the last few months, I've been reading blogs via Mozilla Thunderbird's RSS feed. It's nice that I know when a blog I read has been updated without having to check several times a day, but I've noticed two things: I follow comments less, because to comment requires opening the link to the post in my browser, and since I'm not checking blogs several times a day I don't notice if other people are commenting; and sometimes I confuse whose blog I'm reading because the posts are all in the same place and aren't distinguished by the different templates that grace the actual blogs. I was confused the other day, for example, when Absent-minded Secretary, who lives in Pleasant Grove, Utah, had gone to California for a church meeting; then yesterday it threw me for a loop to learn that Mandi, who I had no idea was a poet, announced that she would be doing a reading at BYU; what really got me was this morning when Foxy J blogged about losing the power cord to her laptop, as she had not previously informed me that she had lost the cord, nor, for that matter, that we had a laptop. On the other hand, it's always amusing to hear from Th. about how things are going with his new husband, King Zippergut.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Do you know what a red metal barrette looks like after it's been through the digestive system of a toddler?

I do.

Still Waiting

The mail lady came. Nothing. The UW School of Library and Information Science says they'll contact you by mid-March. Today is March 21. I'm not as anxious to hear from UH, but still I'd like to know eventually what my options are. And worst of all, the package I ordered from Amazon arrived in American Fork on Saturday (according to tracking) and today is Tuesday and I still have not seen it.

But Foxy J is still not home, which leads me to believe more and more with each passing minute that when she returns she will come bearing good news.

Waiting

S-Boogie and I just walked down to the end of the block and back (meaning she and I walked about a third of the way and then she said, "I want hug," meaning she wanted me to carry her the rest of the way), and the mailman still hasn't come.

The good news is that Foxy J is still not home, which might mean that she passed the 50-question pre-test on the Jeopardy tryouts in Salt Lake and has moved on to the mock game part of the tryouts. The other good news is that S-Boogie looks pretty cool in her new shades.

The line between sharing and pushing

may have been crossed.

I promise I won't leave it up for long.

Saturday, March 18, 2006

The Gay Batman


When asked about writing a new comic book series about the Midnighter, a character who has been popularly dubbed "the gay Batman" (because he's a vigilante and he's gay), Garth Ennis says, "I always thought Batman was the gay Batman."

Love of My Life (An Ode to Intellectualism)

Without you baby,
Feels like I sampled true love
But the shit didn't clear.

--Erykah Badu, "Love of My Life (An Ode to Hip-hop)"

I've started reading a book called Why White Kids Love Hip Hop: Wangstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, and the New Reality of Race in America. The author has an interesting premise, which is that white kids who love hip-hop are neither a sign of whites appropriating yet another black artform, nor a sign--as ultra-conservative moron Bill O'Reilly suggests--of the downfall of civilization as we know it, but rather this trend is a sign that the boundaries between race are slowly fading away. Basically he seems to be saying that white kids in Nebraska blasting 50 Cent in their pickups point toward an idyllic future in which we can all hold hands and sing (or rap) "Kumbaya" together across America. Okay, I admit I've only read the Preface, the Introduction, and the first chapter, but that is my impression thus far.

I agree that it's a good thing that race is not necessarily a determinant of what music one can or cannot listen to, particularly being that I am one of those white boys who listens to rap, but I don't see how white people listening to rap is any different from white people listening to rock or jazz or blues. Pretty much any kind of music that has ever been popular in America descended from Africa in some form or another.

This is all sort of beside the point, the point being (as usual) me. I started listening to rap in high school because that's what was cool in Hawaii and particularly among my group of friends and particularlier to my best friend, who determined what I thought was cool, from clothing to sunglasses to music. At the time I listened to mostly what was on the radio: Puff Daddy, Notorious B.I.G., Coolio, Snoop Dogg, and their ilk.

When I came to college I started buying CDs, and naturally I bought CDs from the artists I'd been used to hearing on the radio at home. My roommate, who was big into groups like the Police, U2, They Might Be Giants, and the Aquabats (read: white music) teased me incessantly for my taste in music--or, as he saw it, the lack thereof. This frustrated me to no end. Here I was doing what I'd been taught was cool, and suddenly I was in Utah and it wasn't cool anymore. It was, in fact, not cool. I was torn between shame for being uncool and pride in knowing that I was the only guy on my floor in Deseret Towers who knew what cool really was. I also found it interesting that my roommate and his friends loved the Beastie Boys and even had a sense of nostalgia for Vanilla Ice, but Puff Daddy was an insult to musicianship and MC Hammer was corny (I'd have to agree on that last one). My roommate always found it amusing when I accused him of being racist in his musical taste.

After my mission, when I decided to become an Intellectual--largely because I began to court an Intellectual--I began to feel embarrassed by P. Diddy's unclever rhymes about bling and homeboys and bitches and hoes. I even started to find his formulaic sampling of hits from the eighties, well, formulaic. I still liked the beat of hip-hop and the flow of rap, though, so I decided that rather than abandoning the genre, I'd find some artists within the genre that I could listen to and still feel intellectually and morally superior to the masses (because feeling superior, of course, is the ultimate goal of all Intellectuals). I started with the Fugees, who creatively blend genres in their music and make intelligent and meaningful references to religion and politics in their lyrics. From there I branched out to artists like them--Common, the Roots, Erykah Badu, and their ilk. Having done so, I am now part of a community of like-minded individuals who value the aesthetic and literary properties of alternative hip-hop. There are twenty-three of us in the United States.

Morals of the story:

1. I don't know why I like black music more than white music. I just do. I'm not a wigga or a wangsta or a wannabe and I'm not trying to appropriate black culture or take anything away from them.

2. I'm observing an odd trend in me: I tend to put myself in positions of being a minority within a minority. I'm not satisfied with being gay, for example; I choose to identify myself as a gay man married to a woman. I read young adult literature, but not that popular crap like Harry Potter (which must be crap because it's popular, right?); I only read literary young adult fiction. I listen to hip-hop, but not the hip-hop generally considered cool by kids who listen to hip-hop. No, I'm better than that. In my subconscious mind there are three tiers: normal, cool, and superior. And obviously the smallest sub-minority must be the superior elite, so obviously that is where I need to be. Yes, I realize how silly this makes me.

3. My desire to be superior and my desire to be liked are often at odds with each other. With my roommate and his friends, for example, I really wanted them to like me, to think I was cool, but at the same time I was proud of my difference, my secret knowledge that made me superior. Guess what? Nobody likes people who think they're superior. Especially when their reasons for believing themselves superior are stupid.

4. I have gone to great lengths to be not cool, but superior. This is why I feel the need to explain to people the difference between Talib Kweli and 50 Cent, that the hip-hop I listen to has nothing to do with that gangsta crap. This is also why I get irrationally defensive and pout for two days when you tell me while I have Lauryn Hill playing in my car that all rap seems to have transparent lyrics, nothing deep.

5. Going back to #3, I'd rather be liked. So I'm going to shut up now. I like my music not because it's better than yours or even because it's better than 50 Cent. I like it just because I do. The end.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

F to tha O to tha Bizzle, Biatches!

Last night Tolkien Boy, who is known for keepin' it gangsta, told me about Gizoogle.

Check out Rappa Fob's 'Hood over here.

I'm impressed. My favorite changes are the names it gave to some of my links, like Edgy Killa B-U-Double-Nizzy and Pusha (aka Freelancer).

Monday, March 13, 2006

Master Fob's Miracle Diet

I've started a new diet. It's quite simple: I chew my food. Besides forcing me to slow down enough to realize I'm full before I heap on three more servings, chewing also burns calories and prolongs the enjoyment of each bite. It's a bit counterintuitive, I know, to think you can enjoy food more by eating less of it--I've long been a believer in the If It's Good Shove In As Much As You Can theory--but letting that chocolate-dipped cheesecake bite sit on your tongue for a couple seconds before swallowing actually is not such a bad thing. It still takes mental exertion to remind myself to chew, but I know the diet is working because only a day after I started my brother commented that I looked thinner.

The next step: breathing between bites.

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Vote 2005: The Results Are... Still Not In

Recap: In 2003, Master Fob graduates with a BA in English, then goes straight into an English MA program. At the same time, he starts working at a library and digs it. As he comes to identify himself more and more as a librarian, he begins to wonder why the heck he's getting an MA in English instead of a Master's of Library Science, which he will ultimately have to get if he wants to go anywhere in the world of librarianship. Fobby is not one to act impulsively, though, or rather he is not one to impulsively unmake a decision that he may or may not have made impulsively (perhaps because to unmake impulsively would be to admit that the original making was impulsive). At any rate, he finishes the English MA, in the process deciding definitively that he wants to be a librarian, not an English professor.

Then, in 2005, Fobby rather impulsively gets a job teaching English at the local college as an adjunct professor. He loves it. In December, he impulsively decides that he wants to apply for graduate school. He's leaning toward the English PhD route but still can't give up the vision of himself as Master of the Library, so he does what any sensible person would do: he lets his blogreaders decide. Depending on how you count it, the vote was something like 8 to 5 in favor of English, so Fobby applied to 2 PhD programs and 1 MLS program. Secretly, the only program he cared about was the English PhD program at the University of Washington, so when that was the first program he heard from and what he heard from them was "We don't want you," he was devastated.

The Story Since Then: Besides being the type of person who likes to pretend he is not impulsive, Fobby is also the type of person who does not allow himself to be devastated by anything for very long. Devastation and depression and all other forms of unhappiness have been deemed unproductive by whatever powers control Fobby's mind, so on average he only allows himself to be sad for about five and a half minutes before deciding to do something else (we'll save a discussion of the psychological healthiness of this practice for another day). In the case of being rejected by UW's English program, Fobby allowed himself to be profoundly sad for six minutes, in which time he posted about said profound sadness, then he went for a walk with S-Boogie. Then he came home and took a short nap and started thinking of how he'd envision his future now that UW's English PhD program was no longer part of it.

That's when I realized that I'm not enjoying teaching all that much this semester. (It's also when I realized that I'm tired of talking about myself in the third person.) Always having lesson plans and grades hanging over my head stresses me out big time. Considering the fact that, on top of my family and whatever career I have, I will always be trying to squeeze as much writing time into my life as possible, a career like librarianship where I go home at the end of the day and I'm done would be a lot nicer than one like professorship, which never ends.

And really, I love working at the library. I love books. I love information. I love order. I love working as a reference librarian, doing detective work to help patrons track down the name of that poem they heard once in third grade. I love the idea of working as a collection developer, deciding how many copies of the latest Louis Sachar novel to buy for the library. I love the idea of being a cataloguer, figuring out whether to put Persepolis in the 741s with graphic novels or in the 955s with books about Iran (yes, Katya, we still use Dewey here; I'll adapt to LOC when I work at an LOC library). When I was 16 I created a database to catalog all my comic books, tracking character appearances chronologically across various titles. If that is not librarian material, I don't know what is.

I worry that this renewed zeal for librarianship is a defense mechanism, a way to tell UW's English program, "Screw you, I didn't want you anyway," and a preparation to say the same to University of Hawaii's English program if they reject me too. If UW's MLS program rejects me, I'm afraid I'll be out of defenses. I might just have to come up with another impulsive plan.

Friday, March 10, 2006

Celebration

The federal government has rewarded Foxy and me for procreating and feeding a child with a nice tax return above and beyond anything we ever gave them, so to celebrate we finished paying off our car and went to IHOP for brunch. It was yummy. I highly recommend the Cinna-Stak French Toast. I also highly recommend procreation as a method of getting a big tax return.

Monday, March 06, 2006

Block (not blog) Party


Stop whatever you're doing and go see Dave Chappelle's Block Party right now. Seriously, it's a cool movie. Even Foxy J says so, and she's not particularly into (read: obsessed with) the Roots, Common, Erykah Badu, and the Fugees in the way I am. A big chunk of the movie is a hip-hop concert, and a big part of the appeal for me was seeing my favorite artists perform my favorite songs, but the movie is a lot of other things too: it's a comedy show put on by a funny, funny man; it's a story about a bunch of random people from Ohio who got randomly invited to a big party in Brooklyn and had the time of their lives; and it's a taste of a part of Black American culture that is not represented by gangsta rap (read: this film and the music in it have nothing to do with last night's Best Original Song).

I should probably mention that Block Party is rated R for strong language (read: even though Foxy J was pleased that there were not as many F bombs as she feared there would be, there were more than a couple; neither Dave Chappelle nor hip-hop are known for squeaky clean language).

My favorite moments:
  • Seeing the faces of Central State University's marching band when they found out they would be going to New York with Dave Chappelle.
  • Seeing the marching band perform "Jesus Walks" with Kanye West.
  • Seeing Common lead a prayer with the other artists before the show.
  • Seeing Dave talk to the scary old hippies who live in the abandoned cathedral next to the block party site. I was impressed throughout the film by what a charismatic people person he is.
  • Seeing the Fugees' first performance together in 7 years. This was, of course, the main reason I saw the film. Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean, and Pras rapped "Nappy Heads," then Ms. Hill sang a beautiful rendition of "Killing Me Softly" despite the fact that her voice is not quite what it was ten years ago. It makes me a little sad to confirm that the raspiness and the narrower vocal range are not a one-time thing from her 2001 MTV Unplugged performance, but the fact is that when she started with the Fugees she was 18, and now she's a 31-year-old mother of four, so it's natural that her voice will have changed. She's still one of the most powerful singers and most gifted emcees out there (and certainly the only artist who excels to her level at both). She's still Lauryn Hill and to see her performing with the up-close-and-personal feel of a close-up shot on a giant movie screen is Master Fob's dream come true.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Urgent News Bulletin

S-Boogie: [singing] A-B-C-D-H-I-J
H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P

Daddy: What happened to E-F-G?

S-Boogie: They got broken.

Sometimes It's Nice to Be Wrong

I also assumed that Dave Chappelle's Block Party would not be playing in Utah anytime soon, particularly not on its national opening weekend.



(Because seeing a movie I want to makes up for the planned course of my life being forever altered.)

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Unrecommended

Just received via email:

Thank you for your application to the University of Washington Graduate School. Your file has been carefully reviewed by the graduate admissions committee in the English program. Unfortunately, I must notify you that the committee has decided not to recommend your admission and I have accepted that decision. The number and quality of graduate applicants to the University of Washington is extraordinary and these difficult decisions are reached through careful consideration of all applicants to a given program. In many cases, enrollment restrictions are also a factor, limiting our ability to accept all qualified applicants.


There are many things in life that I suck at. I deal with these incompetencies by focusing on my strengths, such as my ability to excel in education and work. I focus on these strengths perhaps too much, to the point of taking them for granted. Each time I've been rejected for a promotion at the library has been a slap in the face reminding me that it's ridiculously pompous of me to assume everyone else thinks I'm as great as I think I am.

It was stupid of me to assume I'd get accepted into UW's English program. It's a good program. As the letter points out, a lot of very capable people apply to it. Still, I assumed I was good enough (which definitely makes an ass of me, though I won't drag you into this). I've spent the last two months picturing myself as an English PhD candidate at UW, and now that future is not going to happen. Stupid stupid stupid.

I have yet to hear from UH's English program and UW's MLS program, but right at this moment neither of those possibilities matter. The UW English program is the one I cared about.

When I'm feeling calmer I'll look back at this post and be embarrassed by my melodrama. Oh well. Maybe melodrama can be the one thing I'm good at.