What in the hell …

I think that’s why I haven’t been able to sleep, caffeinated soda too late at nite. Having typed out all of the following I feel sleepier, as will you if you read it. I’m happy to help with ending others’ insomnia, as attested to here. Just now I’m too lazy to break this into multiple posts, so a mish mash of things… (more…)

Hell if I know. I think it’s connected to the relationship between politics and economy, sovereignty and capital and patriarch. Here’s more notes, numbered to try to separate out points, not to give any impression of systematic grasp. (more…)

Like has been on the hectic and stressful side for a bit now, I’m just overcommitted really and it’s tiring me out. This happens to me a lot. Whenever it does, I invariably (let my house get messier and) cook a lot less, or rather, my cooking become entirely functional (we need to eat to not be hungry, how I can accomplish that with as little effort and thought as possible). Then, when I recognize what’s going on, I take some time out of other crap and do a bit of cooking that’s more deliberate, sort of gratuitous. That isn’t necessarily any more work, actually, it’s more what the goals are. Last week I made a couscous salad. I like to use steamed grean beans, cuz the water can be used for the couscous, give it a bit more taste and whatnot. I also use onion, peas, chopped tomato, and some rosemary and a dash of salt or soysauce. This time I didn’t have any green bean so I did green peppers, sauteed instead of steamed. It wasn’t quite as nice but it was pretty good. I made it for expediency’s sake anyway. It’s good cold or warm, and it keeps a while. Well, last night on the busride home I decided I was going to cook properly. I got some broccoli, steamed it, threw it on a bed of the couscous, and sauteed some bok choi (sp?) with olive oil and soy sauce as a side dish, with blood orange sections as a sort of half course immediately following. It tasted really good and it was actually wicked fast to cook, faster than most of my “let’s just get some stupid food on the table and into our damn stomachs” kinds of meals. After dinner I fixed a desert of banana quarters with chocolate chips and a dash of vanilla flavor and cream, baked for maybe 10 minutes at 350, to melt the chocolate. I also made crème brûlée which will be dessert for tonight - it was planned to be for last night but I didn’t realize how long it needs to set and cool and it was late and we needed to get to sleep. I’ve never made proper crème brûlée before. It was fun. I was a bit nervous about how it turned out (I’m a tense sort generally and new situations that I want to turn out well - like fixing a new recipe - evoke that), plus I just wanted to taste it. So I had a bit of the custard from one of the dishes just now, sans the burnt sugar on top. It was awesome, if I do say so myself. It should be, of course. The dishes hold I think 4 ounces, so they’re pretty little, and each dish contains 1/4 cup of heavy cream, 1/2 an egg yolk, and 1/2 a tablespoon of sugar. I’m actually tempted to buy this crème brûlée cookbook, though I’m a bit put off by the title of one of the author’s other books - Your Shirt Is Not an Oven Mitt! because my t-shirt is an oven mitt, and another t-shirt (a clean one of course) is often a towel for keeping tortillas warm, thank you very much Ms Puente. In any case, food glorious food, as they say.

You may have already heard, but someone’s been messing with marxists.org in an electronic kind of way. Jerks. It’s a great resource, and it sucks that it’s being messed with. Makes the site hard to use. (more…)

From the little stuff I’ve been reading lately by historians and the time spent around some historians, I get the sense that at least some developments in the field of history are attributed to social circumstances - women’s history and gender history as responses to feminism and queer liberation, ethnic and immigration history as part of responses to civil rights and more militant groups, etc.

I could be wrong, but my sense is there’s not been a lot of recent work on the IWW, compared with other moments. There was work in the 60s, which I believe Dubofsky credited to the new left. Bruno Cartosio told me he and others in the Italian new left, around the Primo Maggio journal, turned to the IWW as a resource for non-leninist organization. I’m curious as to what the various and interconnecting trends might be related to the relative lack of work on the IWW. Have to think more on that.

There wasn’t just one, of course, as the IWW was a heterogeneous group. Here’s one which is identifiable, though, or at least reconstructible. (more…)

Another work in progress. (more…)

Via Angela, I found edu-factory.org, which contains the following statement (more…)