Chris Kern

03:51 pm: It's been a while since I've updated. I'm teaching this summer as a lecturer -- 2 classes a day, kind of a heavy load, but the money is good. After that I'll be in my 5th year of grad school; the plan is to get a grant to study in Japan in 2010. This year I'll be finishing my course work and taking my candidacy exam; I also have to make firm plans for a dissertation topic. At this point it looks like I'll be doing it on the 湖月抄 (kogetsusho), which is a 17th century commentary on the Tale of Genji; it was the first commentary to be printed alongside the text and was the most widely read edition of Genji until very recently. There hasn't been anything written in English on it yet.

I'm also moving at the end of the summer; I like the place I live now but the price next year would be $850 a month plus parking and electricity, which is too expensive for me, especially for a studio. I already know where I'm going; the cost there will be $780 total (with all utilities and including HD cable and internet), and the apartment will be about twice the size of what I have now. It's also right next to a Giant Eagle and two asian grocery stores, and it's right by a bus stop that goes to campus, so it should work well. 5 other people from my department live there so it's quite popular.

I've been watching The Wire, which is a good show -- I only watched season 1 so far but I think I like it better than The Sopranos. It moves slowly, but I think the payoff is worth it.

10:07 pm: This is a hilarious (and kind of gross, kind of delicious) site:
http://thisiswhyyourefat.com
(I would not recommend this for people grossed out by meat)

I think my favorites so far are:
- Burger made with two meat pizzas as the bun.
- "Happy meal" pizza (a pizza made with two McD's cheeseburgers, fries, and chicken nuggets as the topping)
- Bacon chocolate chip cookies
- A bacon double cheeseburger with bacon-grilled cheese sandwiches as the bun

Right now the first entry on the page is the Thurminator, a burger at the Thurman Cafe in Columbus.

12:45 pm: This seems to be the tentative plan for me:

Now - Summer (09): Continue taking Chinese, decide on a dissertation topic
Summer '09: Teach the intensive Japanese courses as an Instructor
Fall '09: Work on grant applications for foreign study
Winter '10: Take candidacy exam
Fall '10-Summer(?)'11: Research year in Japan
Summer '11-???: Finish dissertation, find job.

Phew.

09:40 am: Luckily I was able to get my car fixed at the dealership last night; they also fixed a couple of other things that I had been meaning to get looked at so it's all good.

03:17 pm: Arrgh, my car won't start and I couldn't get it jumped; now I have to get it towed. At least I'm thankful for two things -- first that my living situation is such that I don't need to use my car very often, and second that Progressive's insurance covers things like jumping and towing.

But probably I won't get the car back until at least Monday since the dealership's service area closes at 5:00.

skuldnoshinpu, let me know if you go to the store tomorrow. That's what I was going to do when it wouldn't start.

10:56 pm: I'm reading Lord of the Rings again -- it's interesting to read the book carefully again after having recently been perusing Tolkien's letters. Tolkien was a devout Catholic, and he considered Lord of the Rings to be a work of Christian fiction; in one letter to a reader he said that LotR was not ultimately a story of good and evil, but a story about "God and his sole right to divine honor".

This is not particularly explicit in the book but there are a lot of little hints, so to speak, scattered around the book, some of which are explicitly connected with Christian theology by Tolkien in his letters. For instance, when Frodo accepts his quest after the Council of Elrond, it says that Frodo felt as if "some other will" was using his voice; this is meant to represent the grace of God.

I always find the Christian themes and connections of LotR interesting because typically, fantasy fans are non-Christians, so to have one of the founding works of the genre written by a devout Catholic is kind of interesting.

10:20 pm: The Bengals finally won their first game of the season; of course I wasn't watching.

Also Atlanta today had a time of possession of 45:15 against Oakland. If you don't watch football that may not mean much, but it's staggeringly bad; I haven't found confirmation on this but it may be a new record for ToP in the NFL. And this was a home game! How did Oakland win two games?

08:56 pm: I just saw on the news that AEP is considering a surcharge on our electricity bills because of the costs involved in restoring power during this previous power outage. Nothing is decided yet, but that seems sort of like a store charging you extra money because they were out of a supply you wanted.

07:44 am: After OSU's disastrous loss to USC last week, they beat Troy with their usual Tressel-coached small margin this week. Conference play starts vs. Minnesota next week then we've got the tough game against Washington.

The Bengals shocked everyone on Sunday by actually playing the Giants competitively. The offense looked like they had their old spark back, and the defense actually made some key stops. Unfortunately they lost in OT due to terrible play calling (run it up the middle twice in a row?) and so they're 0-3, but at least the game was fun to watch.

02:43 pm: 9/11
The incoming students this year that I'll be teaching were in elementary school when 9/11 happened.

I'm getting older.

10:47 am: The college football season started this weekend. OSU played their first game vs. Youngstown State (a 1-AA team) yesterday; it was a good chance to see the team in action. They looked fine, although it's hard to tell vs. a cupcake team, and they didn't even keep the starters in for the first half. The big test for OSU will be the third game against USC.

The worst part was that Beanie Wells, our Heisman-candidate running back, got hurt. There's no word on the severity yet, although X-rays came back negative.

The upsets are already starting, with Virginia Tech losing to East Carolina and Pittsburgh losing to Bowling Green. Michigan looks to be a mediocre team this year; losing to Utah (not really an upset, but generally people would hope for better out of Michigan.)

The pro football season kicks off on Thursday. The Bengals look terrible this year; the worst I've ever seen them since I started following the team.

07:10 pm: A tale of health anxiety and urgent care
On Thursday, I was eating a Trader Joe's peanut butter cup and I sort of half choked on a small piece of it -- it was like when the food goes down the wrong pipe but there was about a 10-20 second period where I had to struggle to breathe in, and for a while afterwards I coughed and cleared my throat and could taste the peanut butter when I did that.

Anyway, on Friday I noticed that I was having discomfort swallowing (sort of a tight throat) so I decided to try calling OSU's nurse line, which I had never done before. Of course the nurse line isn't going to take any chances so they tell me to go to Urgent Care. I thought this was an overreaction, but I tend to be anxious about health-related things so I went anyway -- luckily insurance covered the visit so there was only a $25 copay.

They took an X-ray(!) and didn't notice anything stuck in there, so they sent me home and told me that my throat was just irritated because of the choking.

Today the clinic called me and told me they lightened the X-ray and examined it, and noticed swelling around the epiglottis. They asked me how I was, and I said pretty much the same -- her response was to go to the ER(!!). However, what she eventually said was that I should go to the ER if it gets worse; if I have difficulty breathing or if I have difficulty swallowing even liquids. Otherwise I should wait 3 days and come back.

Seems like a big to-do over what is essentially an inflamed throat, but I guess inflamed throat can be life-threatening if it interferes with your breathing. Now I just have to figure out how to avoid worrying too much about this. :)

(Of course, when you've more or less been told "Pay attention to make sure you don't start suffocating", it does make it hard to ignore it.)

05:06 pm: It's been a while since I updated with life stuff. I'm looking forward to the Autumn quarter starting since this summer job is very boring and I'm not doing much else. The problem is that I need to be deciding on a dissertation topic, which is not easy. I have some ideas, but I don't know which ones will best turn into dissertations, and reading other dissertations isn't helping all that much.

This year I'm on a fellowship to do Chinese, which means I better do really well in Chinese class or I'll be in trouble. This gives me an extra year of TA funding, so an extra year to "waste" in Columbus studying.

Preseason NFL football has already started; the Bengals look to be on their way to another ~.500 season, but we'll see. For NCAA, OSU is ranked #2 in the preseason AP poll...we'll see how that goes.

04:40 pm: A sad day for my apartment view
Some pictures, so I'll put this behind a cut:

( before and after pictures )

12:02 pm: LOL
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ll-lia-FEIY

07:03 pm: Rampant inflation currency devaluation shouldn't be funny, especially in Zimbabwe, which has enough troubles already. But it's hard not to laugh reading things like these in newspaper articles:

On the streets of Harare, one banana now costs 10 billion dollars.

Buying anything is a ‘bizarre experience,’ said Lucy Chimtengwende from Bulawayo, who spent $12 US on lunch recently, with the bill in local currency being an astonishing 1.1 trillion Zimbabwe dollars. The menu had no prices on it, she told me by phone, prices are quoted to you and are constantly changing.

Takudzwa Nyauchi, a professional in Harare, cares less about politics than his monthly salary of 300 billion ZWD. “I can’t keep on surviving like this. I have a wife and three children to look after and also the extended family back in the rural areas,” he said.

Biti was today granted bail after paying 1 trillion Zimbabwean dollars (USD$100) and surrendering his passport and the title to his home.

08:35 am: I got a Netflix account, at least through the free trial. I'd like to watch more movies, particularly more "classic" movies, but I never want to actually buy them, so this might work. There are also TV shows that I want to see (particularly The Sopranos and The Wire).

07:46 pm: I saw WALL-E today; I thought it was excellent. Possibly the best Pixar movie I've seen.

I saw the new Indiana Jones movie when I was visiting my parents; it was OK. It followed the normal structure of all the other Indiana Jones movies, but I think the Crystal Skulls don't work as well as the Christian items from the previous movies (or at least 1 and 3). It's definitely not as good as Last Crusade or Lost Ark. (It's been too long since I've seen Temple of Doom so I can't really compare.)

09:37 pm: Apparently McCain has pledged to institute something like the British Parliament's Prime Minister's Questions if he is elected President. This would be pretty interesting -- if you've never seen PMQ, this youtube video is pretty representative:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsAa9VmwOaI&e

That would be interesting to watch although I wonder how much it would add to the political process.

03:46 pm: I'm heading out to Florida tomorrow to visit parents and then other relatives -- I'm driving. It's a 16 hour drive total; luckily I can stay with some relatives on the way so I don't have to pay any hotel charges, but it's still going to be expensive because of gas. I'll be back July 5.

Also, I have a HORRIBLE headache since I woke up this morning. It's one of those behind-the-eye headaches that bothers me almost every time I blink. Ugh.