� from "How Far to the Other America?" by Brent Cunningham, Columbia Journalism Review, May/June 2004

It is a good article. And look, you can also read it online.

Along the same lines, in a way, is a self-aggrandizing anecdote told by the self-aggrandizing guest speaker we had in class last night. Guy is in a meeting with a client of his whose business has been lagging and whom in his capacity as Globetrotting Biz-Dev Visionary he is trying to advise. But the client is stubborn, and he keeps saying that success is just around the corner, success is just around the corner. Finally our speaker the GB-DV is thoroughly chafed from this prolonged contact with the status quo, and his visionary-ness causes him to explode with righteous passion. "One of these days," he exclaims to the client, "you�re going to wake up and find out that this damn thing is round!" Heavy, no? OK, no. Here are the words our guest speaker used most often: opportunity, messaging, challenge, power, information, transform. For a moment it looked liked things were going to get more interesting than that, but then I realized he hadn�t actually said, "black whore," he said "black hole" and had bad enunciation. God I�ll be glad when this garbage is over. The speaker was talking about how we need to be champions of internationalization in our workplaces, catalysts for change, agents of transformation from within, and then when he opened it up for Q&A the majority of the questions were about how one goes about getting an entry-level job as a tech writer in the first place, now that one has shelled out a couple grand for the certification and needs to start making more money in order to pay it back. Which made me feel a little bit righteously passionate myself and wanting to strangle the UW as a certificate-granting entity: how can they be so arrogant and clueless about scheduling the speakers they do? They think what we want most is localization lessons and gossipy autobiographical ramblings from people who got into the field twenty years ago and have no idea what it�s like now � no idea that it�s exceptionally difficult even above the entry level � and although in the Q&A sessions and on the evaluations and in our plaintive e-mail to the program coordinator we resist it, they are not listening.

Speaking of not listening, the chick at the desk behind me is on the phone with her sister talking about how much all their friends� houses are worth, how on earth so-and-so can afford it down to figuring out how much they are left with after mortgage payments, car payments, and school tuition for their kids. My own dignity as a human being is tentatively on the upswing. I anticipate that the curve will grow steeper at the end of the weekend once my final class projects are through and maybe even close to vertical once my contract is through, which since the deadline is externally imposed will be in about two and a half or three weeks. Next Tuesday or Wednesday I�m going to the drop-in advising center at the community college and find out what I can find out. It doesn�t look they�re open to being sweet-talked out of the prereqs, but I am willing to try the charm-and-checkbook offensive and see if I can get anywhere. Worst case scenario: I have to temp for a few more months while I take enough baby math � since it�s been so long since I�ve had any � to prereq myself into anything useful. I�m not even allowed to think about any of that until after this weekend�s homework sprint, though. I should not get ahead of myself in general so that�s about enough of not enough of that.

I�ve been listening to Pulp, don�t ask me why, and last Saturday at the Mountain Goats show Edwin and I were talking about why it is that Pulp never really hit big over here, nowhere near like they did in Britain. There�s no musical reason for it, and lyrically they�re both alternative and populist � some of the songs, I am thinking for instance of "Common People" and "Disco 2000," could practically have been written by Bruce Springsteen. Both bands even have a "Glory Days," and I would submit that Pulp�s version is more Springsteenesque than the Mellencampy one penned by the real Jersey Guy. Edwin�s theory is that the American listening public tends to be put off by the degree of "cultural specificity," he said, in Pulp lyrics � St. Martin�s College, fine, but then again there was John D. up on stage biting off the bitter end of a reference to Cincinnati, and the whole crowd up front cheered, specifically, in response to it; we have not all been to Cincinnati and know what it�s like to want to get the hell out of there, but we do, each of us, have our own private Cincinnatis and our own sense of that kind of wanting. Edwin also had a great story from years ago, when he was at St. John�s College if you please and mostly out of curiosity had gone to the May Ball. It was a restrained and formal affair, and since most of the other attendees were those among his fellow students who were very well born and accustomed to that sort of pomp, he felt out of place. So he wandered outside to something called the Disco Tent, where the DJ put on "Common People" and upon hearing its opening chords the future lords and ladies went insane with delight. In their tuxes and ballgowns they swarmed to dance, which they did as if their lives depended on it, pumping their fists in the air and shouting out the lyrics anthemically � as though the song ratified and (yes) dignified their existence, rather than more like the other way around. Yet Edwin reports that the scene was devoid of the vaunted British sense of irony, and I believe him.

And am I the last person in the world to figure out that it was Patty McCormack playing Adriana�s mother on "The Sopranos"? Adriana�s mother is Rhoda Penmark! � genius, that is sheer genius.

Everyone else is starting to trickle out for early holiday-weekend quits � for most of the day they�ve been standing around talking about how they are going to do this, which constant noise level here in the low-walled cube farm has made it difficult for me to get much done. Now I can concentrate, so I will.