Swiffer Theory

A guest entry by Carrie.

I feel I need to take the opportunity to share with you all a strange realization I had just this morning while assembling my new Swiffer Wet Jet, a “power mop” I asked my mate to purchase for me to ease the terrible burden of mopping 1500 sq. ft. of bare floor. I am fully willing to admit that this division of labor (me mopping the floor and Jon purchasing the mop for me) is gendered in the utmost of traditional ways. For some reason, which I prefer not to examine too closely, it feels better to me that I received this mop as a “gift” rather than purchasing it for myself. I think Jon’s purchase of the mop makes it seem to me that my mopping labour [editor’s note: she is already internalizing Canadian spellings!] is getting more recognition than I might otherwise perceive if I bought the damn thing. There’s a definite psychology to the gendered reality of domestic home engineering. Just to be clear: Jon vacuums all of the floors before I mop — the gendered division is a really a sub-division of various kinds of cleaning tasks. They still suck, though.

In any event, the gendered conditions of the mop’s purchase and use are not nearly as interesting as the creepy design of the device. After a mere ten minutes assembling the mop and gazing at it rather quizzically, I’ve decided that this device has distilled the fundamental technological tools of women’s reproductive systems and cycles into a plastic and aluminum “power mop.” Let me explain. The mop’s key feature is that it doesn’t require you to use a pail of soapy water: cleaning solution and everything are contained within the mop unit itself. It’s truly an all-in-one device. As I opened the package of thin, wafer-like papery mop heads that the mop user is supposed to just stick the grippy, rubbery strips on the mop head itself, I realized that these mop heads are simply enlarged sanitary napkins, also known as menstrual pads. For those of you reading this blog entry who are familiar with different brands of sanitary napkins, the material on the mop head that comes into contact with the floor is the same material that covers Always brand “dri-weave” menstrual pads. The back side of the mop pad uses that wispy, slightly adhesive feeling lighter plastic fiber material that often covers the back side, and/or sides, or older or off-brands of maxi-pad: that material that never quite sticks to the filling of the menstrual pad, and ends up being really uncomfortable and kind of shifty in the pants, or gets caught up in the folds of feminine flesh. The mop pad even has something resembling “wings,” but there’s nothing to stick them to. I don’t fully know how to explain my reaction to the realization that I was putting a menstrual pad-like mop head on my new mop, except that I have been marveling in the mop makers’ re-appropriation of the unique textile and fiber construction of menstrual pads and baby diapers.

The mop’s gendered re-construction of the female reproductive system doesn’t stop with its re-appropriation of the menstrual pad. It also re-purposes the design of the baby bottle, and in particular, the rubber nipple, in its design of the made-for-the-Swiffer-Wet-Jet cleaning solution bottles. The bottles attach directly to the mop, and are applied by sliding the bottle, with its flat rubber nipple cap, arrow side down into the sharp looking cleaning-bottle mop seat. The assembly directions detail in clear warning-label language not to put your bare hands into the parts where the bottle goes because of the device’s sharp, yet mostly hidden parts. I really don’t see anything that looks even remotely sharp on this part of the device. But like a young infant with newly emerged sharp little teeth, the Swiffer Wet Jet can bite your unsuspecting soft parts and draw blood. After I slide the bottle in upside down, the mop appears ready to go (I also had to add 4 AA batteries — this is a “power” mop).

What does this mop say about gender and reproduction, and the merging of domestic cleaning technologies and throw-away products like plastic menstrual pads and rubber nipples? What do I make of the fact that my mop sprays its precious cleaning fluid in a half-moon pattern onto the dirty floor? I feel a kind of familiar connection to this mop, because I’ve seen all of its parts before. At the moment, I simply marvel at the ways my Swiffer Wet Jet recycles menstrual pad technology and the old stand by, rubber nipples. We’ll have to see how it works.

Editor’s note: after mopping the dining room and kitchen floors, she said the mop “fucking rocks.”

New BS Oped + More Tapes

First things first: a new Bad Subjects OpEd on the EU vote is up. Short and sweet, I searched for the profound but only found the suggestive.

Now, I have to say I am totally blown away by the response to the tape post. I got a bunch of awesome emails and comments. This must really be a thing. I wonder if it would be cool to listen to other people’s half-baked band demos? What would happen if Dave Noon and I traded high school tapes? Or better yet consumed them together. Also, how gendered is this? There are women who do this sort of thing but was it mostly a “guy thing” to amass such bizarre recordings?

I did forget to mention that I have about 6-8 hours of video footage of my undergrad band. I know where that is. It moves every time with me without question, but it’s best not watched. . . . In that category, we also have the official yearbook video from Carrie’s high school.

Coming soon: I’ve been memed!

Plus: in-law arrive tomorrow night. More vacuuming is in the near future; and I may be a little scarce for a few days. We’ll see.

Farewell to a Medium; Or, Destroying My Library

Yes, that’s an obligatory reference to Benjamin’s essay on unpacking his library. But it’s a different story, you see.

At some point when I was moving around during my undergrad years, I dumped my entire collection of cassette tapes into a giant box. the kind you put your kitchen dishes into. ALL of them. Immediately prior to that dumping, I can’t say that the tapes were very well organized. There were many unlabelled tapes, and many tapes lived happy lives in the box while separated from their covers. Now, for several years that the collection was in this absurd condition, I continued to use it. For instance, I would listen to tapes in the car as I drove around town or went on road trips.

However, it was the compact disc that dealt the biggest blow to the collection. I stopped acquiring tapes, and curiously, not long after that I stopped recording stuff to tape myself. And so the collection sat, in its giant box. I actually can’t remember where it lived in our tiny Urbana duplex but I think it moved at some point from an “out in the room” phase to an “in the closet” phase. there it lived. When we moved to Pittsburgh, I promised Carrie I’d go through the collection. In the meantime, it sat in a storage room in our basement.

Five years later, as we were moving to Montreal, I again promised Carrie that I would go through the tape box. If we bring it along, I said, I’ll dispatch it in August before school starts. In the meantime, it sat in the living room. It had to. There isn’t a lot of backspace in our apartment. In preparation, we picked up a few shoebox-sized boxes in pretty colors to house the tapes that would survive the purge.

And so the box of tapes sat in the living room until this weekend.

It all started because I wanted to dig out an old tape of one of my former bands. There’s a story behind that, but for another post. In the process, I started going through the tapes. Once I found the tape, I broke off the project and spent the afternoon digitizing the song I was looking for. But having begun the project, it seemed fitting to follow through. Together with Carrie on Sunday morning, I went through a mountain of old tapes. We wrote down the ones we intend to replace on CD(1) and the rest we tossed unceremonially. Since many of these tapes are between 15 and 20 years old, it’s not like they sound good.

Still, there was a lot to keep. For starters, a small segment of my collection was well preserved inside special tape boxes I’d inherited from my brother. They have the 1970s faux-wood on them and everything. These tapes fall into two categories: 1) recordings of bands I’ve been in; 2) bootlegs of bands I liked in the late 1980s. Mostly Pink Floyd and King Crimson. A little Husker Du, though. We kept that stuff, along with anything else that was deemed not replaceable and of some interest. A small collection of tapes of you’ve-never-heard-of-them bands that my you’ve-never-heard-of-them bands played with over the years. Mix tapes from friends. Albums of defunct local bands that I liked. Two tapes that actually contain software programs for the Timex Sinclair Computer. And a pink copy of Led Zeppelin IV, which I think came out during its first run and belonged to my brother. Those three things will wind up in the Museum of Quirky Communication Technologies. I also found a 1990 Paul Wellstone for Senate pin. How cool is that?

There was the pile of unlabelled tapes. And cryptically labelled tapes. Those had to be listened to. Most of them were crap, but there were some gems. Someone had recorded a right wing speech, complete with audience heckling. Sounds good. Keep it. Lots of demo versions of songs from my undergrad days, including alternate arrangments. Kind of cool. Keep em. Carrie’s spoken field notes from her undergrad thesis on striptease. Keep it.

The most freaky tape, though, was a recording of a high school day I made, probably in early 1989 but it could be early 1988. There is no relevant written information. I know it’s winter because I trudge through a snowbank.

It starts with me struggling to get my car started in the morning and goes from there. I could only stand about 10 minutes of it (I skipped around) but I sound like, well, a geeky high school kid. Lots of banter with other kids who are in other rock bands in the school, lots of ironic wit about other people. I seem to have a lot of friends, but I can’t quite place about half the voices. I know it’s Jon York when he says that his father was the first thing he saw in the morning, but I can’t quite tell who’s narrating the story of the student council meeting where Anthony Meyer made a plea for our friend’s Really Weird Band to be included in the winter games battle of the bands.(2) Yeah, ours was a big world full of important things. Like Youth in Government. At one point, I stop by the principal’s office to make sure he gets the list of people who will miss school for it, which of course includes me. The deal is that the voice on the tape is clearly me. But of course it’s also not. That’s how recording has always worked, and yesterday was no different in the grand design. At least I had the decency to edit. there’s a lot of cutting from scene to scene. I think it’s only passing times and so forth, but there may be a class in there.

Needless to say, the tape inspires a feeling of abject horror in me, but I cannot stand to throw it away. I also can’t stand to listen to more of it. Somehow pictures from that time are less disturbing to me.

So it is now stored away with the rest of the collection. There’s always the possibility of using it as source material for granular synthesis or something.

—*—

What is most striking to me about this mass of tapes, though, is the continued conviviality to the compact cassette form. Cassettes were easy. They never sounded great, rewinding was boring, and they deteriorated easily, but they were incredibly easy to use. I liked recording, as did my bandmates in high school and college, and so it was a big casual part of our lives. Record practices, record shows. Take the hand held recorder to school for a day and record what it’s like to be a student at my high school, or at least what it’s like to be me in that subject position. Borrow some friends’ instruments and play with the 4-track. Record a speech, record a theatrical scenario my friends and I dream up, record field notes, record meetings, record classes. Record anything I wanted, whenever I felt like it, with little effort.

Somehow, even though it’s all much better sounding and much more powerful, in the process of acquiring, learning and using all this digital recording equipment I now have has turned recording into A Big Deal. It is a A Big Deal to record something at home, to have a home studio, and to make stuff that sounds good. It’s true that I could get some kind of portable digital recorder — which I may do (or I can just borrow a voice recorder from a colleague) — but I was absolutely shocked at how I thought about recording now vs. how I thought about it then. It’s a bigger part of my life, I guess, in that it’s a skill I have. And yet, I do a whole lot less of it than when I was a kid messing around with a tape recorder.

1. And just like that, I’m a record industry statistic. As they run out of baby boomers to replace their vinyl collections on CD (which artificially propped up CD sales in the 1990s), here’s me about to do that for a segment of my tape collection. Of course, most of the really important stuff I had on vinyl, which I still have.

2. A cynic would point out that academic gossip pretty much sounds that same: “we fought for this really good project to get in the collection, but they just wanted crap.” Or “what idiot is programming the conference this year? it seems like they’re edging out critical work.” You know how it goes. . . .

Hokey Tenure Post

You may or may not recall my post from last fall about tenure (linked here in case you missed it), but the gist was that after 5 years of epic labor, it all ends with a giant, kindergarten-like arts and crafts project. And then waiting, a lot of it. For those of you who aren’t academics or aren’t yet tenured, here’s how it ends when it ends well: with a single-page letter on letterhead with official notice, some language the lawyers made them put in, and then sincere congratulations and wishes for future success (which is probably code for “please don’t become dead wood. We would be very sorry if that happened.”)

I know this because while I was away in Holland last week, the letter finally arrived: the official letter that grants me tenure and promotion to associate professor. My colleague Darin Barney, who was in the same situation as me, emailed me the news and instructed me to go have a drink immediately. I think I read his note at about 7:30am Amsterdam time, so the celebration was delayed (I had respondent duties later in the day). But I did indeed celebrate.(1)

And I intend to continue. Back in Minnesota, I once had a drummer who repeatedly got his girlfriend to take him out for expensive dinners around his birthday. She would take him out, and then the next time he would offer the same rationale: “it’s my birthday.” We reckoned that his birthday lasted an entire month. So I am officially declaring the summer of 2005 a “drummer’s birthday.” The celebration will go on for as long as I can possibly extend it, though I promise not to make Carrie take me out for tons of expensive dinners.

As for how it feels to get tenure, that would depend upon whom you ask. If you go to the Chronicle of Higher Education website, you can find people who are really depressed or confused now that they have tenure. Check the “first person” columns and the discussion boards.

Me? I’m just happy.(2) As I said in the fall, the reward of the profession is the chance to do the work. So I will. Of course, I can also go off on some self-indulgent tanget with no scholarly purpose, like starting a blog (d’oh!). Knowing that it really is a choice from here on out is cool. Now I get to rethink what it all means. Or not, as I see fit.

1. The first drink was, appropriately, to “fallen comrades.” It’s not a war, but every year the process has its casualties.
2. Of course, there’s the dark side of the business, as Dave Noon reminds us.

It’s Space Cake, Not Spice Cake

Welcome to the official “I’m jetlagged or there’s no way I’d be up at this hour” edition of Super Bon. It’s too early to work and anyway I was going to take the day off (except for answering a slew of emails). So here’s a long, detailed blog entry instead.

We returned last night from our eight day journey to Europe happy to be home(1) but pleased to have gone. A week is a weird amount of time to spend in a place–just long enough to begin wondering about the non-touristy side of things and too short to do anything about it.

Business

As you may recall, we went because I had a speaking gig at a conference; it was called Transformations in Art and Culture. The whole thing was very interesting. The keynotes were each fascinating in their own way. Lisa Parks is doing this absolutely wild research on the destruction of telecommunications infrastructure as preparing the way for so-called globalization. It’s exactly the kind of thing I would like, seeing as it covers both destruction and infrastructure. Steven Kline I’d never met or read before, and he’s unique as far as I can tell — he speaks the cultural studies speak but does research in the media effects tradition. This of course was occasion for us to have an argument and I have promised him I will read any three things on effects research of his choosing to see if I change my mind. Nice guy, generally on the right side of things, even if we don’t agree on specifics. I didn’t actually meet the other keynote, Janneke Wesseling, but she was an art critic who had really harsh things to say about the state of art museums in the Netherlands. I liked it because it’s the first time that I’ve heard someone who has status in the museum world say publically that she thinks they have lost their way. I do too. In the Q&A I asked her about what she’d like to see, and her example of a good art museum was the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. I grew up with this museum, and until I left Minnesota, I didn’t realize that the Walker was not a “run of the mill” art museum. For a year, Carrie and I actually lived a block away from there.

The second day of the conference was presentations by the working groups, made up of a faculty leader, a postdoc and a grad student (in slightly different configurations). that was also just great. Although I absolutely loved the work of the sound studies group, I probably learned more from the group dealing with globalization and the Roma in Eastern Europe. Mostly because I know so little about the Roma.

All in all a great event — lots of opportunities for talking during and after, which is what I love about small conferences.

Perhaps more interesting to readers of this blog (you know who you are)(2) is the fact that there was a Rob Schneider movie being shot elsewhere on the premises. On the second day, I walked right through the shoot and there he was directing traffic. Carrie saw it, as did Lisa, so it’s not just me. It appears to be a sequel to “Deuce Bigalow, European Gigolo.” We’ve never seen any of his movies, but now I think I’d better see at least one.

The other ‘work” part of the trip came on Wednesday in Maastricht, where I gave a guest lecture to an STS (Science, Technology and Society) working group at the University of Maastricht. That was just great. I met a bunch of wonderful people, including my host Karin Bijsterveld with whom I’d only ever corresponded (she was also at the NWO even in Amsterdam). Karin is the kind of person with a drawer full of projects she wishes she had time for — on top of her current work and all of which are fascinating — and she has a really sharp, creative mind. Between talking with her, talking with the other faculty there, and the audience response to the actual talk, I’d say this was one of my most useful guest-speaker trips ever. I have tons of notes for the mp3 project, which will be very useful this summer.

Carrie also did some work, but she can narrate that herself if she wants. She interviewed people about the Theo Van Gogh killing, and the video. We saw the video and I am quite certain it pushed all the right buttons, even as its substantive critique — that religious fundamentalism can harbor sexual violence and patriarchal relations between men and women — is pretty “garden variety.”

Play

Amsterdam is a whole lot smaller than I thought it would be. We could walk amost everywhere, though if we were tired or in a hurry, we could talk the trams around. We did the usual tourist things, I suppose, if not in the usual sequence. Since our plane got in at 6am and we couldn’t check in to our hotel until 2pm, we wandered around in a daze and began what I call the “Nazi Atrocity” tour of Amsterdam, first with the Anne Frank House. The thing about this place is that it’s the kind of thing tourists do, and yet it’s got an authenticity to it that I rarely find. Walking through there was quite moving and they handled it very well. Perhaps the thing that blew me away most was a copy of Otto Frank’s identity papers (Anne’s father). His mother’s maiden name? Sterne.

After that, we walked around a bit. Descartes’ old house is actually around the corner (but you can’t go in), as is a lesbian/gay monument.

The next morning, before the conference, we hit the old Sephardic Synogogue and Jewish History Center, which had an amazing exhibit by a Russian photographer who travelled around with the Soviet Army during WWII. the only problem is that in the Jewish History museum, you don’t find out that much about Amsterdam’s Jewish community. You find out a lot about Jews (I went to Hebrew School for several years. I know everything I want to know). Worse yet, it conflates antiZionism and antiSemetism, including a photo of a 2002 demonstration against Israeli violence against Palestinians as an example of contemporary antisemitism. Not cool. End of Nazi atrocity tour.

Other touristy highlights:

–the Amsterdam history museum, which was fascinating but also exhausting. Lots of detail, and lots of combing over old oil painting for clues to the history of the “golden age”. I think I pay too much attention in most museums. I want to look at everything and inspect it carefully. The thing is, the place is designed for you to browse a bunch of stuff and just do that once in awhile. I can’t seem to do that. The highlight, though, was a working stereoscope with street scenes from the 19th century in all their faux-three dimentional splendor.
–the canal boat tour, which we liked so much, we actually went twice. The second time was just to ride around in a boat on the canals.
–I was surprised that I actually liked the Van Gogh museum even though I’m not that fond of impressionism and
–the most touristy thing we did was the “museum of cats” (I can hear the groans all the way from wherever you’re sitting. just be quiet for a minute.) Yes, it was totally a tourist trap, but the fact of the matter is that once you get past the smell (someone’s “thinking outside the box”), they have some amazing stuff, and we scored a couple cool posters; one for my office.

Of course we ate a lot. The only things worth reporting, though, are the best filled doughnut I have ever had, and the best ice cream I ever had (the latter in Maastricht).

Speaking of Maastricht, I did a little touristy stuff there too. I can’t remember anymore what the oldest structure is that I’ve ever seen, but the city wall from 1229 might be it. There was also a chuch that had materials from 1000AD in it, and some gravestones built into the floor. Freaky.

Actually, I think the best part of the whole trip was probably just getting around, looking at all the buildings and moving through the narrow medieval streets. The most disurbing thing is that like most downtowns at this point, it’s kind of a museum of itself, crossed with a shopping mall. Hey, they have a Mexx, just like downtown Montreal!

I also took my first train trip of my life (round trip Amsterdam Maastricht), which I just loved. Can’t believe I waited this long to do that. The views were great, and I also worked through Agamben’s The Open: Man and Animal, which is the first Agamben I’ve read. Fascinating stuff, though with a disappointing ending. I may have more to say when my head’s not spinning from the trip.

By now, you’re probably wondering where my schtick about the coffeeshops is. What coffeeshops?

——-
1. I don’t know if other pet owners have this phenomenon, but whenever we go on a big trip, we start missing our cats right away. It’s probably because we’d actually have some leisure time to hang out with them if we were there.

2. You may recall the anonymous football fan. I think I’m going to develop a whole cast of characters. We now have anonymous Rob Schneider fan.

Last Thought on the Way Out the Door

A couple years back, I called my American Long Distance provider to inquire about calling card rates for various parts of Europe. I was put through to the international division. The rep I spoke with was happy to help me but had never heard of Prague or Zagreb.

Today, I call Fido Wireless to activate our European roaming.

I am absolutely certain that I told the rep I was calling to activate European roaming.

I tell the rep we are headed to the Netherlands, with stops in Amsterdam, Utrecht, and Maastricht and we’d like our phones to work in all three cities. A snippet from our subsequent conversation:

Rep: “Your North American roaming appears to already be turned on.”
Me. “The Netherlands aren’t in North America.”
Rep: “Oh.”