Day 9: Stupor Mario

cardiomachine: 20 mins excitebike, 15 mins ellipsical
(William Tydeman's The Medieval European Stage, 500-1550)
stretching: yes
pushups: twenty
crunches: thirty
breakfast: top sirloin, one egg, half Ara's apple, vitamins
lunch: Musical Offering Cafe -- lentil vegetable soup, salad, bread
apartment clean?: particularly

There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even passively take part, well, not for three days, but then it's of course back to business as usual. And while putting your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus, would make the machine stop, it would also result in hurt feelings all around, and potential physical injury -- and so, the owners of the machine have kindly cordoned off a specific time and place in a "free speech zone" that will keep protestors away from the dangerous gears. And in that zone, when you use your safe, inoffensive, glib, and generalized chants and signs to protest the machine, you've got to indicate to the people who run it, the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine could theoretically be prevented from working at all, if it ever came to that, though of course it will not.

Seriously: exactly what member of senior management ever shook in his boots for a strike that had a predetermined end date? With all due respect, I am glad I am not teaching this year -- because, though solidarity would compel me to cancel my classes in honor of the strike, I would do it grudgingly. (I hope that going to the library and gym doesn't count as crossing the picket line.) This kind of nonsense is more of the typical snakeoil that makes a continually abused body of students, educators, and staff feel like "well, at least I'm doing something."

Either strike or don't; no real strike could be as safe and pleasant as this one is promising to be. I wonder what Mario Savio would say.

Today, I broke my promise to myself that I would not read any emails at all related to the budget crisis. And it cost me work hours on my dissertation -- what could have been time spent in a worthwhile and relevant scholarly pursuit was instead squandered on an endless, facile, discourse. Which is exactly why I made the promise to myself. And I will not break it again.

But I kept the promise that counts -- and I think I took out my frustration on the exercise bike.