chrisdellavedova.com

Friday was a dark day for the Georgia Bulldog Nation as UgaVI passed away just shy of his tenth birthday. Uga VI had the best winning record of any mascot in the school’s history. He will be missed, particularly in the season that Georgia starts at the top of many pre-season polls.

 

 The Georgia Red Coat Band - "Glory, Glory": Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Not thinking things through is sort of the story of my life. I prefer to call it charmingly impulsive, others (the glass half-empty gang) call it recklessly impetuous. Either way, I’m here today with all limbs intact, so who are you going to side with?

When I was setting this blog up, my friend Nichole was my model and I pretty much fashioned everything after her site. This meant being very open about who I was, no mask of anonymity for me to hide behind, no sirree bob. I’ve regretted that once or twice since then largely because I have to be nice. I can’t slag people off like some of you are prone to do. I can’t moan about my family, or Dr. O’C’s family, or Dr. O’C for that matter - not that I would want to, of course. It would just be nice to be able to do so with immunity. Alas, in addition to not thinking things through, I’m also just lazy. That is why I can’t be bothered to change things up to become reasonably anonymous. One day…

My letting it all hang out style also means that I don’t blog much about work. As that is pretty much all I’m doing these days, it means my material is fairly limited. I really don’t know how either of my employers would feel about being the subject of a blog post. But I do know that some employers have been rather humorless about their portrayal on the interwebs.

Which is really a shame, because I would love to tell you about one of my employer’s (not mentioning any names) recycling policy. Before you think I’m some sort of vandal or Republican, let me just say that I’m all for recycling. In fact, I spent most of my time in Britain digging out all of the non-recyclable things that Dr. O’C used to put in our recycling bins. She’s got many gifts, my lady, but reading the side of recycling bins isn’t one of them. She didn’t seem to be able to grasp that putting a shitty nappy in the plastic recycling might gloop the system up a bit. (Brings a whole new meaning to the “This Bottle Made from 100% Recycled Consumer Waste” label, doesn’t it).

But I think sometimes people take the whole recycling thing a bit too far. At this unnamed employer, they basically run a zero tolerance recycling program. You recycle. End of story. The cleaners double as detectives and if they find anything in your trash can that could have been recycled, then a yellow card is placed on your desk. As well as the offending item, presumably. If it happens again, you receive a red card. It’s not entirely clear to me what happens then, but I’m fairly certain that I’m going to find out. I mean, in the spirit of scientific inquiry and all.

If I had a little bit more of a veil of secrecy in place, I could also tell you about another one of my current employers, who operates a strict no food or drink in the lobby or elevator policy. Strict to the point that some of my new co-workers have regaled me with stories of being called to the building superintendent’s office where they receive mind-numbing lectures on the costs of cleaning dried cola beverages from marble floors. Each of the employees have asked the obvious question - how did you know I was eating in the elevator? The answer - surveillance. Surveillance that makes the Bush Administration drool. Security at this building is not watching for thieves and terrorists, they’re watching for people eating lunch on the fly. So, now when I go to work I get that same warm feeling as I do when I’m unlucky enough to have to fly through the U.S. - that comfort that comes with excessive and ineffectual surveillance. The same part of me that wants to shout “oh my god he has a gun” in the TSA line at the Orlando airport wants to take a big old bite of a jelly and cream filled donut as I’m stepping into the lobby.

Actually, jobs aren’t easy to come by these days, so I’ll probably repress my spirit of rebellion and just accept. The problem will come when I get them confused. With two jobs I run the risk of forgetting where I am at any given time. I’m pretty sure it’s all going to blow up in my face on the day I dump my recyclable food waste in the elevator.

 

 Van Morrison - "Who Was That Masked Man" [2:55m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

“A bluejay hectors from the felled Catalpa tree.
Doctorate in science and a theologian’s dream
The dragonflies are trying to lecture me.
The seahorses as if we were in the sea.”

-R.E.M. - “Beat A Drum”

Time for the announcement of the winners in my Happy Blog-day contest. Dr. O’C has again drawn names from a hat (and again I have prevented her from cheating).  A drum roll please, Zach.

Right, could be waiting a while for that. Whithout further ado, the winners are:

NATUI

Jessica

and…

Jason

I’ve decided, however, that even the losers should get lucky sometimes - it’s the socialist in me. I can’t afford the postage to send everyone a CD, but I’m going to upload the playlist and the album art to a special secret place here on chrisdellavedova.com. If you didn’t win but still want the tunes, then shoot me an e-mail and I’ll send you the link and you can make your own “Best of chrisdellavedova.com” CD.

Brad, the mysterious winner of the Mono in VCF contest, hasn’t turned up to collect his prize. The fascist in me has decided that he has lost his chance and the winner is now Angel. Congratulations, there’s nothing wrong with second place.

 

 R.E.M. - "Beat A Drum" [4:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The whole two job things is great, in theory. That was, until I walked out of the house yesterday morning. He followed me to the door with an expression of hopeful confusion and just wrecked me for the morning.

Working two jobs with a long commute, there will likely be days that I go to work before Zach gets up (today, for example) and days that I get home after he’s gone to bed. This wasn’t part of the plan. But it’s for a finite period of time and hopefully allows me to have more time with the boy, in the long run.

I can’t abide anymore Eagles, so rather than their long run, how about Emmylou’s (courtesy of Steve Earle) ”Goodbye”.

 

 Emmylou Harris - "Goodbye" [4:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

“I’ve had a rough night, and I hate the fucking Eagles, man.”-

The Dude

While I tend to be pretty much in lock step with The Dude’s philosophy, I’ve got to part ways with him on The Eagles. Thinking about Stevie Miller the other day set me off on a sonic amble down memory lane. Miller ’s band and The Eagles were the music of the first year of my first jab at college. I want to hasten to add that this is not because I was in college in the 1970’s. In fact, in the late 1980’s The Eagles were neither at the zenith of their popularity nor at the cutting edge of rock music. In comparison to the cloying Top 40 pop that was favored on my small town radio station, however, The Eagles represented freedom - sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.

Which is pretty much what I was looking for when I left home for the first time. I was 17 when I turned up, clueless and friendless, at a private school in upstate South Carolina. I found the drugs and rock ‘n’ roll pretty quickly, especially considering that it was a Christian school. As for the first part of the equation, well The Eagles penned the script for my first “real” relationship at that school. They understood the initial attraction:

“One of these nights
One of these crazy old nights
We’re gonna find out
Pretty mama
What turns on your lights…”

Through the good times:

“‘Cause I gotta peaceful easy feeling
and I know you won’t let me down…”

And the bad:

“Let me tell your brother, she’s been sleeping
In the devil’s bed.”

In hindsight it is not surprising that a relationship with emotional depths that could be easily summed up by a seventies country-rock band was doomed. Appropriately, The Eagles wrote the ending:

“You see it your way
And I see it mine
But we both see it slippin’ away.”

They understood my need for anger:

“You never thought you’d be alone this far
Down the line
And I know what’s been on your mind
You’re afraid it’s all been wasted time…”

And ultimately, my acceptance:

“Oh, Gonna try and love again
gonna try and love again”

My love affair with The Eagles ended shortly after that Freshman fling. My musical tastes have changed a bit since then, as have my romantic. In fact, I take a fair bit of pride in saying that my relationship with Dr. O’C transcends the skills of your average So Cal rock band to define. Though, that being said, there’s a Steve Earle song that has a lot to do with our courting. And that New Order track…

I was listening to the new Portishead album with a new friend at my new job and we were both astounded by how good it is, in spite of the fact that the Bristol trio is getting on a bit. It seems that rock bands, as they age, can go one of two ways. The lucky ones mature musically and release progressively richer and more challenging albums. Portishead is aging in this way, as is Nick Cave, Jeff Tweedy, Radiohead, and so on. The other road is that bands and musicians get bloated, megalomaniacal, and rest on their musical laurels. They produce carbon copies of their hits and don’t challenge themselves to get better. And they sell out. The best example of this latter class is The Rolling Stones. You know how else fits in this class? The Eagles.

The Eagles laid dormant, excepting mediocre solo albums from some of the members, for about two decades until they reunited for a live tour in support of, well, nothing. They released a new record in 2007, but gave Wal-Mart exclusive rights to sell the record. I knew at that point that The Eagles were the worst kind of that latter class of aging rock icons. I’ve never heard the latest record, so can’t judge it musically, and I never will because there’s no worse way of selling out that selling out to Wal-Mart. In fact, they sold out to the people that they describe in their own song:

“Some rich men came and raped the land,
Nobody caught ‘em
Put up a bunch of ugly boxes, and Jesus,
people bought ‘em…”

I guess the Eagles wrote their own soundtrack as well.

That being said, I still want to jump, Beau & Luke Duke style, into the nearest pick-up every time I hear the opening chords of “Take It Easy”.

 

 The Eagles - "Try & Love Again": Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

“In the winter time
When all the leaves are brown
And the wind blows so chill…”

I was thinking this morning that what my site needed more than anything else was more Steve Miller. What better way to fill that requirement than as accompaniment to a smugly self-satisfied post about the Australian winter.

One of the 900,000 things that worried me about moving to Australia was the timing. By arriving in late April we would be coming into late autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. What made this worse was we had just trudged through another soul-destroying British winter. Well, as was the case with most of my anxieties, this one proved groundless. Thus far, as this gratuitous baby photo attests, the winter in Oz has pretty much exceeded the “summer” in Blighty.

Now if you’ll pardon me, I’m going to go sing “Rock ‘N Me” on the beach.

 

 The Steve Miller Band - "Winter Time" [3:15m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

If you are a man, have reproduced and live in North America, most of Europe, Asia and Africa - then chances are you woke up this morning to be greeted with a breakfast of runny eggs and burnt waffles and, depending on career choice, a new tie/hammer/hand gun. But if you’re me, you were awoken with a prod, an “it’s your turn to get up with him” and a stale scone as a morning meal. (Insert adagio violins here.) You see, Dr. O’C managed to hit both the British Mother’s Day and Australian Mother’s Day in one year, and reaped the rewards of both. I, however, missed my first Father’s Day in Oz last September and am missing my first rest of the world Father’s Day today. Suspicious timing for the move, hmmmm?

Despite not even receiving a new pair of socks in recognition of my ability to keep a defenseless child alive for nine months, I’ve gotten a bit reflective (sappy) about my role as the pater familias.* I’ve been thinking about how much things have changed in the nine months since Zach came into the world, how much my tolerance for another human being has grown. No matter what the scamp is doing, no matter how frustrated I get with him - whether it be for trying to eat the dog’s food or puking on my head I’m still delighted to have him around. I understand why parents put up with endless shit from their kids, why they bail them out when they’re in trouble and why they defend them beyond the point of reasonableness. For me there is something about looking at my child’s face and seeing a little bit of me and a little bit of the woman I love looking back at me. When I see that familiarity, no matter what the boy is doing - smacking my iPod repeatedly on the table or chasing the dog whilst roaring like a maniac - I can’t help but be in his thrall.

What was I writing about? That’s right, Father’s Day, which it is everywhere in the world except Oz, Luxemborg and Nepal (oh, and New Zealand). If you’re not in any of those places and if you’re a father I’d like to wish you a Happy Father’s Day. To my friends, “real” and cyber, around the world - Happy Father’s Day. But particularly to my own Dad. We’ve had our ups and downs over the years. One of the gifts of becoming a father is that I now understand him better. Love you Dad.

 

 Johnny Cash - "A Boy Named Sue" [3:59m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I’ve got an extra copy of the Mono in VCF album that I reviewed the other day on A Free Man. I’d like to give it away to a reader and thought we could play a little game of “Name That Tune”. Have a listen to the song I’ve posted below. If you can identify the song name, artist and album then you’ve won a chance at the Mono in VCF record. Leave your answer as a comment and I’ll draw one winner next Friday (June 20). A hint - the album that this song was featured on, in a byzantine way, has something to do with my review.

UPDATE

My contest design for this one is clearly flawed. I’ll have to work on that, as I have another little contest in the works. Just this time I’m going to change the rules halfway through. If you want the Mono in VCF disk, leave a comment and I’ll draw a name from a hat on the 20th. I’m fully expecting vitriol from those who answered the question already, but we’ll see if we can’t work a little something special out for y’all.

 

 Name That Tune!: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Regular readers may remember about a month of whinging and hand wringing about my lack of employment, demoralization and general shittiness. Funny, that. Just a week or so after taking on one job I’ve now been offered, and am likely to accept, a second. The writing gig is only part time, so I’ve been looking around for little bits to fill in the gap. Well, the little bits turned out to be fairly big bits when I got a phone call today offering me a full-time teaching position at one of Adelaide’s universities. So, in a couple of weeks I’ve gone from a state of panic about my potentially permanent unemployment to having one and a half jobs. I am a hugely relieved underwhelming correspondent today, folks. There was a fairly loud voice in the back of my head seeking to convince me that once I walked out of the lab that I was doomed to a life of McJobs.

One of the things that I learned during my somewhat less than successful post-doc was that the traditional academic career path wasn’t for me. It wasn’t just the creeping feeling of dissatisfaction that greeted me every day I walked into the lab. One day, I was looking through our departmental website and realized that there were nearly four times as many post-docs as there were lecturers. I’m no mathematician, but it doesn’t take one to figure out that there are not a lot of jobs out there for your average Ph.D. In fact you’re pretty much waiting for the rare new faculty position or for an emeritus professor to wake up dead one morning. Even when a position opens up you’re competing with scores of other desperate Ph.D.’s, most of whom want it worse than you. From that moment on I pretty much new that I would never hold a faculty position and I started thinking about alternative careers in science.

That’s scary business. One of the many problems with getting a Ph.D. is that you get institutionalized. You spend so much time in academic institutions, dealing with academics that you may as well tattoo on the leather elbow patches. You’re not really prepared to work outside of the university environment and in many cases are discouraged from doing so. When I told one of my Ph.D. supervisors about my decision to abandon the tenure track toil, there was a definite air of disapproval. It’s hard to even know where to start. Apparently, a good place to begin is to move continents with a family to feed and house and no job prospects.* Necessity is the mother of invention, or is it Frank Zappa?

As I write this post, I can say with some relief that I might have nailed it. I’m in a position right now to explore two of the aspects of science that I’m passionate about - communication and education. I’m going to be able to make some decisions about my career path and hopefully, in the long run, tailor a position for myself. I’m going to get a taste of the “real world” while still being able to relax in the cozy arms of a university. Best of all, I’m going to be able to support my family at the same time. May not see them much for a while, though.

Nonetheless, right now, for this moment in time, it’s pretty damn good to be me.

*A good suit doesn’t hurt.

 

 R.E.M. - "Hope" [5:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Today’s a bank holiday in Australia, apparently in recognition of The Queen’s birthday. I’m not sure which queen we’re honoring. The current monarch Elizabeth II was born in April and  the last ruling queen, Victoria, in May. (Lest you worry - this is Wikipedia info, I’m not a closet royalist). Whether it’s in honor of one of those two monarchs or just some campy Sydney cabaret singer, it means we get a long weekend. We’ve made the most of the old gal’s day, spending it watching men in shorts that are far too tight run around and beat the shit out of each other in the midst of winter. God Save The Queen.

Arizaphale, who despite us trashing her parents’ car does not seem to hate us, invited us to join her family at an Aussie rules football game. It was a local match between the Sturt Double Blues and the North Adelaide Roosters (check out the bobble heads on the latter’s website). Now, I’ve only really seen this sport very late night on ESPN and I don’t think it’s a fair representation. It’s fast-paced, slightly brutal and the players seem to wear no (and gents, I mean no) protection. At the local level, it’s fantastic because you can sit right up on the field, all the better to cringe along when some poor sap gets planted head first into the grass, and during the quarter breaks everyone goes out to the turf for “a kick and a catch”. Zach, as you can see below, has already begun training.

Now for something completely unrelated. The observant of you may have noticed that my blogroll has disappeared in favor of a trim and tidy list of my favorite recent posts. This is not because I’m getting all snobbity nor a result of my extreme narcissism, just that it was getting a bit unwieldy. You’ll find the whole beast behind the “Must Reads!” tab at the top of this page. Have a look and see what you think. I’m still fiddling a bit, so any feedback would be gratefull received. Dr. O’C, a bit resistant to change of any kind, has already given me an earful.

“May she sedition hush
And like a torrent rush
Rebellious Scots to crush
God save the Queen.” 

 

 The Good, The Bad & The Queen - "The Good, The Bad & The Queen": Play Now | Play in Popup | Download