To be an educator in these times requires one to navigate a certain apocalyptic mood. I don’t care who you talk to—primary, secondary, or post-secondary teachers—these days the good folks who decided to make education a career choice have had to weather waves of dire news and tidings of doom. Much of this mood can be traced to the spooks of finance capital, of course, and the way these deceitful shadows have poltergeiszed state governance. Because education is a component of the commonweal, and because the weal is not well (financially), cuts in public education funding are now widespread. This has resulted in all sorts of “bad news” for educators, from public high schools to universities.

Most of us in education know that there is a tacit understanding about teaching: because it is bodily and interpersonal, because so much of teaching occurs in that strange, ineffable space between bodies and minds and feelings, it cannot be reduced to a science. Teaching is often compared to magic, as so many “inspirational” Hollywood films attest. The labor of teaching is often invisible. The tacit, cultural agreement about teaching has thus been “measured” in terms of results: let me alone with your student and, if all goes well, she will be educated. Of course, that’s not how education actually happens, but the cultural fantasy of education is nevertheless akin to magic (a very, very bad movie starring Michelle Pfeiffer comes to mind, as well as a good but troublesome one titled Precious). This fantasy flies until the economy goes south—then accountability measures come into play, and these come, almost always, from those who are not teachers. When the world is uncertain, we retreat to the solidity or certainty of the number.

To preview: doing politics means that one must intone the motto, “never waste a crisis.”

Back when Adam Smith was contemplating The Wealth of Nations, and long before this well-meaning (and by most accounts a decent) chap could have ever witnessed what Marx did, “political economy” was considered a bad thing. The notion meant that civil society had been infiltrated by the political (understood as state regulation) and thus had been sullied. Today, of course, “political economy” refers to a perspective on media and culture that examines the way in which the economic, broadly construed, participates in the production of culture (or superstructure). “Political economy,” in other words, no longer has a negative connotation. All of us start from the premise that economic matters are shot-through with the political—that questions of power are unavoidable. Today, political economy represents a particular perspective on cultural production keyed to economic influence (quite the 180, I reckon). We have yet to come to terms with the fact that education is similarly political.

Education has never not been “political,” however, in recent times one might say the meaning of “political education” has been in negotiation. Most teachers would take the notion of “political education” as a given—that politics, broadly construed, is deeply embedded in educational policy. A cursory review of educational policy from the nineteenth century in this country reveals that politics and education are something like an Oreo cookie: the act passed in congress that established land grant institutions in the 1860s was unabashedly political and tied directly to the Civil War (it was part of an economic recovery strategy, to be sure!). Somewhere along the way both educators and the “public” alike came to position that education is an apolitical pursuit, that teachers would somehow be “transmitting” pure knowledge devoid of power. This notion is absurd, of course, but there is no denying that the ideology of “objectivity” dominates our educational fantasy in the United States; all of us who teach, from Kindergarten to the college classroom, labor under the ideal that what we present to students is in some way, fashion, or form a version of the truth.

Of course, anyone who has spent time in the classroom knows that “the truth” is not what we’re teaching. We’re teaching thinking, or styles of thought. We’re teaching skills. Most teachers subscribe to a certain ideology of “independent thought,” meaning that we are concerned with teaching students to think for themselves. Educators come from across the political spectrum, but in my experience all of us are generally concerned with the well-being of students and their ability to adopt and use the tools human beings have developed to navigate daily problems. For example: in a fifth grade classroom, a teacher is probably much more interested in having a student solve a mathematical calculation than identify what president passed a progressive reform. This is a political interest, undoubtedly: it’s about empowering someone regardless of class affiliation or racial or gender affiliation. There’s no doubt in my mind that teachers inflect their own cultural politics in the classroom; teachers are human beings—that’s gonna happen. You cannot “hide” that—people, especially young people, are very perceptive and they’ll smell out your cultural politics no matter what you do. But regardless of a given teacher’s cultural politics, at the end of the day, we all aim toward engendering thinking. If Jack and Jill are reading, we’ve done our job.

This is to say, I think most folks who want to pursue teaching as a career are idealists. Teachers are not rewarded with money. Period. Everyone knows this. And most who teach know this (and those who don’t are quickly weeded out). We see ourselves as doing an important kind of cultural work that isn’t measured in terms of number or degree or money. There is a certain romanticism to teaching that entices new teachers. That romanticism involves, I think, precisely this ineffable “magic” that is not reducible to the number, to “the account.”

With these assumptions in mind, I’m troubled by two trends. First, I’m troubled by the ascent of the “for-profit” university in the United States, like the University of Phoenix. The educational model of for-profit universities is that one can “purchase” an education—that you pay money and endure an online series of courses and emerge with a degree. Notwithstanding the fact that for-profit universities are actually more expensive than traditional universities (or community colleges), there is simply no way one can equate an in person, classroom experience with a virtual class or words on a screen. Learning is bodily; so much of what is “taught” in a classroom in not reducible to words (on a screen). The assumption underwriting for-profit education is that feeling, something experienced by bodies in space, is not part of the educational experience. Call me sentimental, but love, broadly construed, is part of teaching. When I think about the most transformational classroom experiences in my education, it had something to do with love, the kind of feeling of care a teacher imparts to a student that is not possible in an email message. Hell, you can blame my conviction on Ruth Bailey, my third grade teacher. She’s the teacher who taught me multiplication tables in third grade, and who made me want to come to class after recess because she was going to read James and the Giant Peach aloud.

Second, I’m troubled by the ways in which politicians believe teachers should be made “accountable” economically. The inspiration of this post is a new policy that has apparently went into effect at Texas A&M University this fall. Goaded by a “conservative” group in Texas politics—and apparently with ties to state Governor Rick Perry—faculty at my neighboring university will now be judged on the basis of their economic viability. As this story details, professors at A&M will now have a “bottom line” assessment: monies professors have brought it from grants will be added to the amount of tuition revenue their teaching brings in. Their salary will be subtracted from this sum, yielding their value for the university as a corporation.

When I first read about this new measure of “accountability,” I thought it was some sort of satire from The Onion. That it is true is, well, astonishing and simply hard to believe. Yet, that it is true is also cause for deep concern among those of us who have chosen education as a profession: when teaching is reduced to the number, when the idealism of teaching is evaporated into degrees, when what we do is reduced to the dollar, who will want to teach? Or rather, when “accountability” is reduced to the account, what does teaching become? In primary and secondary education, “no child left behind” has transformed education into teaching for the test. Is higher education going to become teaching for the dollar? I don’t mean to be alarmist, but, such a measure of a teacher’s worth at the university level seems to me, in a word, absurd.

I don’t disagree with the notion of accountability, in general. But to use the measure of the dollar seems antithetical to the reason teachers become teachers in the first place.

” . . . and so, I think it went well. They seemed happy.”

“It sounds like you did an amazing job.”

[checks pocket watch] “So, I guess I need to bring up an uncomfortable topic before we end the session.”

“Um, ok.”

“I’ve decided I am going to take a break from therapy. I’m in a good place—”

“This is about the hearing.” [back stiffens, she sits erect]

“Well, yes, of course it is. It’s been a lot to take in. Nothing compared to what you’re dealing with, I know, I know, but I—”

“I wish I didn’t invite you. If I knew this would be the result, I wouldn’t have—”

“I know, I understand. I mean, neither of us expected what happened. But because of it, you know, the nature of our relationship has changed. I mean, I feel more like a colleague or friend, and it’s just—”

“What did you think coming the hearing was going to accomplish for you?”

“________, you know, I wanted to be supportive.”

“You asked if you could come. I think—”

“You kept bringing it up in our meetings, so I thought you wanted support, and I wanted to be supportive, and of course I was curious, given what I study, and I—”

“Well, I don’t think you’re being very supportive now.”

[angrily] “This is not about your feelings, _______. The roles here are getting mixed up. I don’t pay you $100 an hour to work-through your feelings.”

“True. But we have to work through this, together. That’s what therapy is about.”

“But I don’t want to work through it. I mean, this is not garden-variety resistance—I’ve been with you for five years. I’m just emotionally exhausted, and I want to put this to the side and focus on my work and—”

“I think you’re being very underhanded about this.”

[stifling an f-bomb] “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

“To move to a higher level of healing, health, and maturity, the right thing to do is work with me through this.”

“I’m sorry ________. Let me be very clear. Over these many years my time with you has been tremendously helpful. I’ve learned I’m a “feminine” soul, and a sensitive person, and empathetic. And I’ve learned some of the triggers for my insecurities. I’ve just learned a lot. You have helped me to learn alot about myself, and I’m very grateful for this time, this time we have had together. And I wouldn’t change that for anything.”

“Good. I am happy to hear that. And my door is open to you, when you’re ready to come back and work through this. [stands] Well, enjoy the rest of your summer” [accepts check].

“Goodbye.”

[curtly] “Bye bye.”

[T]he great canonical meditations on friendship . . . are linked to the experience of mourning, to the moment of loss.

—Jacques Derrida, The Politics of Friendship

This past weekend was a social one. Strangely, in many moments, surrounded by the friendly, I felt estranged—or at least a certain kind of distance. This was not a continuous sense of apartness, just the fleeting sort of alienation in which one thinks to oneself, after eating a brain-bud of cauliflower dipped in something fattening, ” I don’t think there is but one or two people here I could call if I were in jail.”

I don’t regularly have such thought experiments in a crowded room, but for some reason my mind went there. Well, y’all know I do know the reasons, but I’m not about to be that disclosive on a public blog. Even so, think about it: finding yourself in jail is embarrassing, whether it is for the right reasons (civil disobedience) or the wrong ones (DWI). Whom would you feel comfortable calling? For most of us, I suspect, we could count the friends we trust with that sort of embarrassment on one hand.

Different scene, same weekend: I happened to be in a crowded living room—a space of intimacy, the space of friendship—and I noticed the virtual’s sporadic colonization of the meat: instead of looking at and speaking with others present, three guests were staring down at their laps into the liquid crystal portal of an iPhone, connecting to the absent other (or rather, presencing them, as if to expand the living room to ghosts of [an]otherwhere).

I have been in intimate conversations when someone suddenly attended their mobile “networking” device. This is increasingly common.

I realize that in our now “networked” culture, the norms of public intimacy are changing—few would question this. But as unique as our smart-phoned socialization is, I tend to recoil to my (post)structural habits: such feelings of alienation (however minor) amplify already rooted modes of intimacy. Last year, in preparation to a visit with a friend’s class at another university, I read Derrida’s The Politics of Friendship, and it’s been murmuring in the background of my mind all of this time. In preparation for an essay revision this weekend, I’ve been reading Joshua Meyrowitz’s No Sense of Place, a classic and incredibly prescient rumination on the ways in which electronic media are reconfiguring our understanding of intimacy, public and private. My social experiences this weekend somehow made these two books have a conversation with each other in my head.

Many years ago I ruminated on the topic of friendship, by way of Aristotle. Thousands of years ago “The Brain” characterized friends into three camps, which really reduce to two: there are the friends for whom you wish the best, and then, friends of “utility.” The lingo of social networking has really brought such distinctions into naked relief: on Facebook, you have “friends” in your social network. The majority of them are friends of utility. These are friends who you would never dream of calling when you are in jail. A very small minority of one’s Facebook friends are real friends—those whom you would call and detail things that reveal an innermost (human) flaw.

I got to thinking: what are the ethics of networked friendship? Friendship implies a complicated apparatus of logics over a plane of intimacy. All of us know that “friending” someone on Facebook is, at some remove, a routine gesture: “Oh, yes, I know this person. Why not?” But the word “friend” itself carries with it a certain meaning that is not evacuated by the superficial gesture. For example, about a year ago I went through my “friends” on Facebook and deleted those people whom I rarely spoke to in “real,” meat space. One of them emailed me immediately, professing hurt. This was not a person I would ever dream of asking to bail me out of jail. Yet, she protested that I had violated some sort of tacit bond. And so I “re-friended” her. (Case in point: I would not expect her to read this blog.)

This networked dynamic of intimacy is unquestionably yoked to the conception of “friend.” The word itself carries a certain force, an intimate force that afflicts us with a profound unconscious gravity that the electronic interface encourages us to ignore. I’m just not sure how to make sense of it. In some ways, I suppose I am privileged (as are many of you) by having grown up in a non-Internet era—I can feel, in my body, in my bones, the difference between interpersonal or perhaps “vocal” intimacy and that of the digital kind. Perhaps there is a distinction to be made between “analog” and “digital” forms of intimacy, and the ways in which either mode configures friendship. For example, “friend or no friend” versus degree of likeness might be a way in which we could differentiate the two. Understanding friendship in terms of degree, seems to me, the meat-space norm, contrasts starkly with the “yes” or “no” province of the digital.

That said, there is something about the character of friendship (for me, at least), which resists the binarist view. Friendship is (and should be) messy. For those of you unfamiliar with Derrida’s book on friendship, a large portion of it is dedicated to examining the political theories of Carl Schmitt, a German thinker whose most famous essay, “The Concept of the Political,” defines politics as an essential discernment between “friend and enemy.” Derrida upends such as distinction, as you might imagine, in The Politics of Friendship. But his point is not to dismiss Schimitt. Rather (at least as I understand it), his point is to show how Schmitt lays bare the way in which the political depends on such a binary—how the friend is conceived of the Aristotelian sense of “utility,” how “friend” is coded as a “like me” that evacuates difference. That the notion of “friend” entails a certain kind of contractarian thinking that abhors the degree.

Or as George W. Bush made famous, “you are either with us, or against us.”

Such a logic seems to be underwriting the Facebook “friend” mentality. If I neglect to add you as a “friend,” then I am in some sense your enemy. With Facebook and similar social networking interfaces, we are witnessing the emergence of a new form of blackmail. Although I would readily ascent to the objections of my more Foucauldian/Deleuzian, Tornoto-school media ecologist colleagues that new technologies open new possibilities for friendship (few of us would deny, for example, that Facebook has only made it easier to keep in touch with those friends we would call from jail), still, new intimacies trend toward new alienations.

And this brings me back to the notion of intimacy and interface: to what degree is social networking pushing us into a Schmittian understanding of friendship? To what extent has our rapid connectivity rendered our connection as such a valued mode of intimacy? Or worse, as the authentic signature of depth? To what extent does engaging at the level of “status statements” come to replace the laughter of two friends having lunch?

I don’t know. I’m just thinking aloud.

One of the fundaments of Derrida’s essay is that friendship is “cultural cannibalism” (to borow a term from Penelope Deutscher) When we have a friend, that friend is “appropriated” as part of ourselves. This is why Derrida suggests that to think about friendship entails a certain mourning: when we lose a friend to death, we experience the loss as a loss of self. We “consume” or “eat” our friends—they become a part of us. This is inevitable. The ethical reckoning is the realization that the incorporated friend “is not me,” that he or she is different, a discrete or unique being that we cannot say is “one” with our being. And yet, when I look to my Facebook homepage, I see I have incorporated hundreds of “friends,” many if not most of whom I could only mourn in their sameness or continuity with myself—that is, that I “know” them, that they are part of who “I know” and therefore part of self. In my accumulation of “friends” on Facebook, because of the term itself, I confront a strange guilt.

I think Aristotle was wise. For him, a true friend is one for whom you wish the best—sometimes at the expense of your own happiness. That is a respect for uniqueness. Social networking blurs the distinction that we must necessarily make between levels of friendship to be ethical persons, the distinction we must make between friends with whom we share a life—our sadness especially—and those with whom we are commingled for utility or circumstance. The irony of the binarist logic of friendship is that it forces an enemy when there need not be one. “Friending” on Facebook participates in an underlying logic of discrimination that, I’m coming to realize, is more alienating than I first supposed; it is premised on the possibility of an enemy, a zero. And publicizes it.

back to ramen

I’m sitting, again, in the car repair shop. Not two days after I got my car out of the shop (replaced a bad water pump and timing belt for a tidy sum of $994.00), the “check engine” light came on again. I ran the car by Auto Zone for a free computer reading, and I’m hoping it’s a camshaft sensor that was knocked loose during the last repair. If it’s the actual camshaft I will have officially evacuate what little savings I have left after this past year (car repairs, unexpected hospital bill from two years ago, air conditioner repair, and other more-than-normal expenses have taken their toll). Since last July, repairs have cost me almost eight grand. I have a 2001 Volkswagen Golf 1.8 Turbo. Do not buy one of these.

Yes, I know I could have bought a new car by now. But, this one’s almost paid off. And once you start pouring money into a car, you think, “well, if I spend this then it will last me two more years,” and so on. It’s the psychology of car repair, I suppose. Then, before you know it, you’ve spent so much you cannot justify a new car—you ain’t got anything left for a down payment. And so, I will not get a new car next year as I had planned. Must wait two years to justify . . . .

I’m still researching what I want. My inner fetishist wants the Volvo C30. You know, I have this thing for Swedes. But I realize that repair bills for this thing will be akin to my Golf five years in (after the warranty expires; reliability ratings for the c30 are mediocre). So, I will probably shoot for something more, you know, practical, since the sport car hatchback want isn’t really a need. Subaru?

take it to the scene, like a teaching machine

Today was the second day of class. I had my graduate seminar in rhetorical criticism yesterday, and things seemed to go well. I’m very excited I only have six students. Six! In eight years as a professor I have never had a graduate class with only six students. This makes me happy to no end, and a more intimate experience will be very nice for a change.

My undergraduate course on “Celebrity Culture,” of course, is the opposite: 190 students and counting. On the first day I lecture about the seedy side of celebrity, for the most part. I talked about the death of Michael Jackson, cultural fantasies (namely, tragedy), and rounded it all out with a discussion of narcissism and the Octomom. Some students looked bored. Some looked shocked. And so—with nods to Ellen Goodman—it goes.

de-privation

Bad news about the budget trickles in slowly at UT—it’s like a slowly moving tide that has finally gotten just below the knees. They say we’ll never get up to our neck. Regardless, the university is doing all sorts of things to brace for cuts Gov. Perry has threatened. Folks have been “let go,” mostly staff. Some programs were cut or dissolved. A new “early retirement incentive” program pays you a lump sum has been installed. Faculty identified as “research inactive” will be forced to shift from a 2-2 to a 3-3 teaching load (whoa, won’t it be fun determining what “research inactive” actually means!).

One of the more unfortunate decisions that has been made concerns raises: merit pay raises have been frozen for, um, three years. The administration has decided to give out bonus checks in November to the most productive faculty to improve morale (based on the average of last two year’s performance. Notably, unlike salary enhancement, bonus checks are taxed as supplementary pay (%25)—and you don’t always get that back with returns.

Despite intentions, this approach is manifestly terrible for morale. It’s the kind of decision someone who makes six figures believes makes people happy—just like the stimulus check Obama sent when he got to office. It feels like a bone (and not a spirited one). Most folks would much rather just continue the freeze with the hope merit pay may return down the road. My colleagues and I voted to keep our ratings for as many years as it takes until we can turn them into real raises. I’m sure many departments are not doing that. And my worst fear: that this bonus system becomes the reward system, permanently. A friend and colleague says that this kind of crisis opportunity is never reversed in the business world, and insofar as the university is now a corporation, we should not expect things to be different. I hope he is wrong.

Finally, every faculty person I know would give up merit pay to save some staffers. No one, of course, was asked.

Now, I’m not whining—or if I am, it’s not because I think something can be done, or because I think this or that person is at fault. The problem with systemic crises is that the response is usually also systemic. Sure, someone not thinking right came up with this bonus idea, but that idea is also part of corporate culture in a broader context. I imagine for those of you teaching at state colleges and universities, this is all familiar. Every school is addressing the cash-flow problem in various ways, none of which are pleasant. And, in a meeting with the dean this week, there’s not much we can do because we don’t know what the legislature is going to do. Arts and education usually get whacked. Perry is apparently sitting on a major budgetary crisis in an election season, so gosh knows what’s gonna happen. Frankly: I hope the Longhorns do well this fall; the better they play, the better chance we’ll have in education . . . .

fall rush

Fall semester always seems busier than spring semester, much of which has to do with the bang of beginnings and the whimper of the end. It seems like every deadline is in the fall, every demand for service hits the heaviest in the fall, and so on (May, however, is Defense Month). If I ever get some sort of semblance of a sabbatical—some kind of leave, which I really really think would stave off burn-out—it seems to make the most sense to take it in the spring. In spring, there are less demands on one’s time. Well. I am cramming this weekend to make some grant and fellowship deadlines, so I’m thinking ahead. Yes, with a project like mine (NEH review termed it “ghoulish”) I don’t have a chance, but I gotta try just in case by the time I finally finally finish the damn book the “weird” will be normal and I can spend a semester writing the next book . . . .

Ugh. Whatever. Blah. Gotta try and write tonight.

Well, the life of the 30-something academic is so exciting!

I admit at one level I feel pathetic continuing to update my adventures with home repair or, as Rob Persig might write, The Art of Air Conditioner Maintenance. On the scale of life’s many pains in the arse, this really does rank low. I know. My grandmother is on her deathbed. Writing about that would be much more relevant to everyone–including me. And I fear that will come. That is important writing.

But sometimes, I feel a kinship with Andy Rooney. Really, I do. We share some issues with eyebrows. And we delight in the art of the frivolous complaint. (Needless to say, I am one of those people who love Andy Rooney. I know most folks find him annoying; I find him incredibly endearing. I’d love to go to a ball game with the guy.)

This week a colleague and I edited essays for a special “forum” section of a journal in my field, I tied-up loose ends on course prep for this week, and had a couple of orientation meetings. While all this was going on, my patience was tested in respect to my air conditioner. Just to be clear: thankfully, the air conditioner is working. We’re having triple digits in Austin, so more than a few people have expressed concerns about my “safety.” No worries folks: it’s chilling. The problem is that it’s chilling a bit too well—so well, in fact, the air handler is sweating water into my guest bathroom ceiling. This is bad for two reasons: (a) it has created water damage; and (b) it encourages mold. I’m fiercely allergic to the latter, so getting this problem resolved is becoming a top priority.

As I’ve already detailed in previous posts, this problem has been going on since late May. Because it makes no good sense to get angry about this, I’ve gone the route of comedy. I’ve discovered, in fact, going with the comedic frame has really been, well, sorta fun. If I only tackled all my irritations in this way—I think I’d sleep better. Anyhoo, for this route, I’ve employed an Olympus “Digital Voice Recorder” and a handy earpiece; I’ve grown quite fond of this little recorder (about the size of a credit card). In the state of Texas, it’s legal to record conversations, telephonic and otherwise, as long as at least “one party” consents. I’ve decided that I constitute that party who consents. And so for the past month I’ve been recording my conversations with AHS, technicians, and customer service representatives. In general, the conversations are not very funny or interesting. It’s the shear volume of them that invites a giggle.

So, (shout out to my bud Gretch), here’s the rest of the story: in May a repairman installed a new air handler to fix the water leak. The air handler, however, was the wrong size. It’s 1.5 tons, while my condenser is 2.0 tons. While one part of the “leak” was fixed (bad fitting), the new air-handler created it’s own water problem—it can’t handle the power of the condenser. The company that installed the wrong size air-handler, Dave’s Heating and Air, refused to come back out to address the problem. AHS called out their lawyers on him, apparently. Dave’s then agreed to come out, however, it’s been a weeks-long headache: they don’t call back, they schedule to come out, and then break the schedule. Here’s how it went:

1. Wednesday, August 18th: Pam from AHS calls to check up on the situation. Dave was supposed to come on Monday the 16th, however, Kayla from Dave’s called on Monday to say he wasn’t going to make the appointment. Here’s her message. I phoned her back and left a message that we rescheduled for Dave to come out on Thursday between 9:00 a.m. and noon. Let me just say that, through this whole ordeal, Pam has rocked.

2. Thursday, August 19th (approx. 2:40 p.m.): Dave was supposed to be out in the morning before noon, but . . . he never showed. I had to be somewhere at 4:00 p.m., so I phoned Dave’s as we neared the 3:00 p.m. hour to inquire. “Kim” answered and reported there was another emergency, and that we needed to reschedule. I reported I’d be home the next day, on Friday, but that I had an appointment at 1:00 p.m., so I’d only be around until 12:30 or so. Kim said Dave would be out before then. Here’s the call.

3. Friday, August 20th (approx. 10:50 a.m.): Dave didn’t show on Friday morning, and I was concerned he wasn’t gonna make it. I told Kim I’d have to split by 12:30, so I assumed Dave would be there before noon—and it was looking like more of the same. Instead of calling Dave’s, I decided to call Pam at AHS to put on the pressure. Here’s the message I left.

4. Friday, August 20th (approx. 11:45 a.m.): Kim from Dave’s phones to tell me Dave is on the way. She said she had me “down” for an appointment between 10 and 1:00 p.m. I reminded her I had an appointment at 1:00 p.m., and would need to leave by 12:30. Here’s the call.

5. Friday, August 20th (approx. noon): Not two seconds after I hang up with Kim, Pam from AHS phones. She reports that she called Dave’s and put on the pressure. She also told me that she was no longer able to help me resolve the issue, and has punted the case up to “executive office” and escalated the case to “our research department.” I tell her that Dave is apparently on the way, and fill her in on the back-story a bit. She says I should expect a call next week from the “research department.” I am sad to see Pam go. She seemed to give a flip. Here’s the call.

5. Friday, August 20th (approx. 12:15): To use a southern idiom, low and behold Dave himself arrives at the door, with only fifteen minutes to spare. I decide to be as nice as I can be, and to probe Dave a bit about his side of the story. Dave says that AHS is the one who ordered the wrong part; it’s very clear that he is passing the blame on to AHS. At first, when he’s inspecting, you’ll hear him trying to figure out how to do as little as possible. He suggests adding a second condensation pan (which is ridiculous). I finally offer to hire a carpenter to open up the ceiling and patch it up. He then agrees that putting in the right size part is the way to go. Here’s the recording.

6. Friday, August 20th (approx. 12:30): Dave leaves. He reiterates he will call AHS to order the correct size handler and have it installed. Now, let me just say this: Dave’s diagnosis is the original diagnosis he gave back in June: we’d have to open up the ceiling and install something that is much larger than the original. He told me the exact same thing the first time he came out. He also said that AHS is the one who ordered the smaller 1.5-ton (that is, wrong size) air handler the first time. While he seems like a nice fellow, I’m not so sure this is AHS’s error. I suspect he is the one who ordered the wrong size in the first place. It will be interesting to see how AHS responds. Thankfully, I now have Dave “on tape” saying that it was AHS who ordered the wrong part. I also have Dave’s customer service reps—Kayla and Kim—distorting the truth on tape. Memory is choosy. Recording, well: recording imprints what was actually said. Here’s Dave’s parting remarks.

FEMME EN FOURRURE – PLUMP BISQUIT from Top Billin on Vimeo.

Picking up where I last left off, my ever-persistent attempts to have my air conditioner repaired continue in this triple-digit Austin heat. The short version of the story thus far: in June I discovered my upstairs air handler was leaking water into the ceiling, creating water damage. Dave’s Heating and Air was called out by my home warranty company, who replaced the air handler with a new one—but the leaking continued. AHS subsequently called out two additional, different companies, both of whom concluded thusly: the air handler Dave’s installed is 1.5 tons, while my compressor is 2 tons. Consequently, the air handler cannot really “handle” the strength of the compressor’s chilling, and is thus generating condensation like the proverbial sex worker in church. AHS wants Dave’s to address the problem, since they made the mistake. Dave’s, however, doesn’t want to do the job. AHS called their lawyers out, and Dave’s reluctantly agreed to come back out.

Or, at least, that’s what Dave’s was telling AHS.

On last Wednesday (August 11th), my fearless AHS representative “Pam” phoned to tell me that Dave’s agreed to come out and within the week. Of course, Dave’s did not call on Wednesday to make an appointment.

On Thursday, however, I returned from a screening of Inception to discover a business card from Dave’s on my patio, as well as a caller ID indication that they phoned about 6:30 p.m. in the evening.

1. August 13, 2010 (approx. 10 a.m.): On Friday I decided to call Dave’s to inquire about their visit on Thursday evening, when I wasn’t home. I got Kayla again, whom I confess I lost my temper with. I tried to suggest that if they are going to come to my home, they should make sure I’m here and give me due warning. Kayla tried to suggest that she had set up an appointment with me for Thursday—which, of course, was not true (I have, er, all these audio recordings to prove it). I’m not sure if her memory is choosy, or if there’s an attempt at deception here. Either way, our conversation was interesting. It ended with a familiar statement: Kayla will get with Dave and get back with me. Here’s the call.

2. August 13, 2010 (approx. 11:30 a.m.): I called AHS and left a message for Pam after I got off the phone with Kayla. Pam called on her own, however, to follow-up. I reported the phone call I had with Kalya that morning (notably, I misremembered some of the details; isn’t memory choosy in one’s favor?). Pam vowed to contact “contract relations” again and to put pressure on Dave’s to make an appointment. Here’s the call

3. August 14, 2010 (approx. 8:30 p.m.): Kayla phones to let me know Dave can come by on Monday the 16th to diagnose the problem. Here’s the call

4. August 16, 2010 (approx. 3:45 p.m.): Kalya phones to say that Dave is running behind; we reschedule for Thursday morning. Here’s the call

There is a great song for my experience. With a smile:

Many years ago my friend Mirko and I were in a shopping mall. We walked past an Ambercrombie & Fitch store, dance music blaring from the entrance. I’ve always felt a bit sheepish walking into this kind of store because, well, I’m too old to lurk in this kind of space and, frankly, the clothes have never appealed to me. Nothing is more annoying than having to scream at a check-out clerk because you cannot hear him or her (usually a her) because of the BOOM BOOM BOOM of the store tunes. (I confess I know this because I used to go to A&F once or twice a year to buy a cologne I really liked ["Woods"], which they discontinued). “Look!” said Mirko, pointing to the billboard-size graphic plastered on wall at the store’s entrance. “Maschalingus!” he said.

“What?”

“Mas-kel-ling-gess,” he replied slowly, with a smirk. “Doncha wanna lick his armpit?” He pointed to the graphic, which depicted a shirtless, toned, hairless, young man with his left arm raised; he has virtually no underarm hair, which is not usual for U.S. men. Women, yes, but not men. Mirko explained that A&F frequently featured men’s arm pits in their ads.

In the years since this pit-sighting, I’ve noticed a preponderance of pits in A&F advertisements—so much so the raised pit seems to be something of a signature for A&F (oh, and the hairless body and relative absence of women). I first became aware of A&F’s advertising ever since a controversy broke over the A&F quarterly catalog (I bought the issue that was forbidden for folks under 18, primarily because Slavoj Zizek wrote the ad copy, but also because of the half-naked people); like Calvin Klein, A&F pushed the envelope by using naked people to ironically advertise their clothes, and I found their approach amusingly queer. I never noticed, however, all the pits. That is, until Mirko pointed it out. And now that I’ve pointed them out to you, you’re going to notice them—like, everywhere.

At a recent wedding I was discussing A&F’s pits with some friends, and more than one seemed surprised. “Really? Arm pits?” So, I thought I’d discourse here a bit about pittage—or rather, what is termed mascahlophilia, the love of armpits. Let me go on record to say that I find this “love” amusing and am not personally prone to being aroused by armpits (usually the opposite), although there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a classic example of the “fetish,” a term usually reserved for shoes or breasts in Western culture. For some reason A&F advertisers have decided the armpit would be their signature advertising fetish—or at least one of them (there’s the whole Aryan controversy to contend with as well, of course).

So why did A&F advertisers choose the armpit? The answer has something to do with the concept of the fetish itself. Papa Freud first theorizes the fetish in his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexaulity, in which he examines the strange attraction of a piece of fur as a kind of substitute for childhood memories of the parental crotch (which is hairy and unlike that of the child’s):

The replacement of the object by a fetish is determined by a symbolic connection of thought, of which the person usually is not conscious. . . . No doubt the part played by fur as a fetish owes its origin to an association with the hair of the mons veneris . . . . Symbolism such as this is not always unrelated to sexual experiences in childhood.

Well, of course, there’s plenty room for doubt about some sort of actual memory of mum’s (or dad’s, or whomever’s) crotch. But Freud’s point is that a snatch of “fur” can trigger a memory of such a region in a way that is not conscious. In his book Fetish: An Erotics of Culture, Henry Krips continues:

The function of the fetish is as much that of a screen as a memorial. That is, it stands in the place of that which cannot be remembered directly. It substitutes for that which is and must remain repressed (verdrangt). As such, the fetish is also a site of disavowal (Verleugnung), and specifically of contradiction: we know that fur is not pubic hair, but even so, in a way that is never clearly specified, we know that it is . . . .

And, so, there you have it. Why the armpit? Because, it is both a reminder and a screen from the act of sexual intercourse. The classic (if not tired) reading of A&F’s use of armpits is that it is a classic metonym (metōnymía, “a change of name”). If A&F cannot show a nude crotch, the armpit is a good substitute: it’s culturally regarded as somewhat “dirty,” yet not offensive. It can be shaved to make it appear “clean” and devoid of “fur,” and still, it does the trick of innuendo—just like shoes might do in other contexts. (For example, Carrie Bradshaw has a thing for Manolos in a show titled Sex in the City). If you’re going to market clothing to the Great Teen-Age and you wanna use sex to sell, the last stop on the way to pornography is . . . the armpit.

Needless to say, any google search of “armpit fetish” will turn up countless hyperlinks to websites devoted to mascahlophallation and mascalophilemia. It’s a little noticed undercurrent in our culture, but once that undercurrent is pointed out, you start to notice it is ubiquitous in the advertising world.

The deodorant industry thus takes on a new valence. Of course, smelling someone’s underarm odor is, for most folks, unpleasant (especially in the workplace, and especially if it’s not your own). But sometime in the 20th century visual rhetoric came into the picture, so to speak. The “Dry Idea” brand of deodorant advertised their products under the slogan, “never let them see you sweat,” and commercials began to air in that linked confidence with dry pits. Somehow wet pits have come to signify a lack of self-control—a form of incontenence.

And so, well, there you are. Pitiful bloggin’, I know.