Category: Navel-Gazing

I can smile in the face of mankind.

“Most of the time, I’m halfway content. Most of the time, I know exactly where it all went.” Maybe it’s the impending holidays. Maybe it’s dissertoral stress. Or maybe it’s the weather, or something like that. Still, it was one of those weekends…So, in light of that, Bob Dylan’s “Most of the Time” meets Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I never would have chosen this sort of hermit life for myself. But, given this is the hand I’m currently playing, at least there’re great movies and great music on my side.

Eight is Enough? Doubtful.

Way to shield the hated heat. Way to put myself to sleep. Ghost in the Machine is 8 years old today. [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.] Time to take a break? Nah…I can still reach my destination (tho’ it’s still a ways away.) Until then, as always, whether you’re a long-time reader, a first-time visitor, or (most likely) just a lost Googler, thanks for coming by.

Careful with that Axe, Gill.

“The Accused is a role that demands the ability to transmute technique into the expression of the passionate intensity, psychological pain and pure hatred that drive the character to her gruesome deeds. And in 2007 it also demands a strength of interpretation that can transcend the stylized Americana that makes this work feel museum-piece valuable and dated at the same time. Ms. Murphy managed just that in an impressive role debut on Friday night.“

My sister Gillian draws a rave in the NYT for her Fall River Legend on Friday, as excerpted below: “Her auburn hair drawn tightly away from her face into a gleaming skullcap, her pale face tight and impassive above her high-necked dress, she embodied (to borrow the title of a famous piece of feminist literature) the madwoman in the attic — the Victorian antiheroine who incarnates the rage and anxiety forbidden by a sexually repressive, socially coercive society. There is plenty of dancing for the Accused in ‘Fall River Legend,’ but it is testament to Ms. Murphy’s acting that the movements became a seamless part of a succession of memorable emotional moments: her little shudder as the details of the violent acts are read out at the beginning; her suppressed amusement and momentary triumph at her father and stepmother’s fear when she first picks up the ax to chop wood; her disbelieving, scarcely allowable pleasure when the young pastor (Sascha Radetsky, also strong in a role debut) offers her love and compassion. By the time Ms. Murphy, alone onstage at the end, threw back her body and opened her arms in a final, anguished embrace of death and her fate, she had made her character simultaneously tragic and real.“

I was at City Center for both the Friday and Saturday evening shows over the weekend, and while Balanchine’s “Ballo Della Regina” honestly didn’t make much of an impression on me, I found “Fall River Legend” quite spooky and memorable. Suffice to say, all sharp objects and implements will be well-hidden next time Gill comes over.

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner.

“For those who attempt it, the doctoral dissertation can loom on the horizon like Everest, gleaming invitingly as a challenge but often turning into a masochistic exercise once the ascent is begun. The average student takes 8.2 years to get a Ph.D.; in education, that figure surpasses 13 years. Fifty percent of students drop out along the way, with dissertations the major stumbling block. At commencement, the typical doctoral holder is 33, an age when peers are well along in their professions, and 12 percent of graduates are saddled with more than $50,000 in debt.”

By way of Little Bit Left, a new site by a Columbia colleague that’s well worth adding to the blogroll, the NYT surveys the sad plight of the modern ABD. (I’ll be 33 at my current expected finish date, seven years after starting, and my cohort’s attrition rate has been significant, so it seems the stats bear out in my case.) “Those who insist on dissertations are aware that they must reduce the loneliness that defeats so many scholars…’It’s easy, especially in our field, to feel isolated, and that tends to slow people down…There’s no sense of belonging to an academic community.‘” Oh, I dunno…Berk and I often have very scintillating conversations…progressive citizenship, New Era consumerism, socks, squirrels, you name it.

A dot.com boom?

With the aid of an eagle-eyed reader, whom I met at my friend Steve’s wedding in Louisville last August and who saw it on sale, I went ahead yesterday and procured ghostinthemachine.com. The blog’s been here at .net for five and half of its almost eight years, and is pretty well-established here. (Put another way, it seems like GitM already has all the readership it’s ever going to get.) Still, I figured it couldn’t hurt to finally pick up the .com addy I’d been eyeing since ’99, and which now bounces to this site. At any rate, if you’ve been using ghostinthemachine.net to get here, go ahead and keep doing so. But, if .com strikes your fancy more…well, now that works too.

Events and Anniversaries.

A hearty congrats and best wishes to grad school friends Ben and Vivian (he of The Oak) on their nuptials this past Saturday at the scenic Brazilian Room in Tilden Park, high above Berkeley, California. (I was in attendance, but otherwise didn’t have much of a chance to take in the Bay Area this trip. I’ll be back soon, tho’, as Hiram Johnson and I still have some unfinished business.) Also, a very happy birthday to my mother, who turned 60 on Saturday. (And, really, what says “I love you, Mom” more than an alarm clock that speaks in the dulcet tones of Stephen Fry?) Finally — not that it’s anyone’s business, but it’s important to me — today marks the one-year anniversary of a crushingly bad break-up, after which it’s safe to say life took on a decidedly negative turn. But, hey, the earth has gone around the sun once more, I’m still standing, with my health and lil’ Berk in tow, and GitM lingers on. So, onward and upward…Now back to your regular fanboy musings and progressive diatribes.

My Father’s Father.


Charles Francis Murphy, 1923-2007. Yesterday (which was also my mom and dad‘s 40th wedding anniversary, and the eighth anniversary of my own, briefer nuptials), my grandfather passed away at the age of 84. A former miner and longtime veteran of the US Geological Survey, for whom he worked as a cartographer for the bulk of his career, Grandpa spent his life making maps and friends all over this great big nation, before settling down in Lovettsville, VA, and later, New Bern, NC. Father of six children and grandfather to eighteen, he and my grandmother enjoyed their 63rd wedding anniversary this past February. He will be missed.