MMM...Donuts.

In case you didn't know, I'm from North Carolina, a state that has a pretty serious donut pedigree. Krispy Kreme, the standard for all mass-produced donuts, was started in Winston-Salem. (Don't come to me with your weak-ass Dunkin' Donuts. They may have good coffee, but their donuts are crap).


But in Carolina Beach, about 25 minutes from Wilmington, lives the best donut in the world. It beats Krispy Kreme with a stick and then humps it through it's hole (did I have to go there? Yeah.). Anyway, this bad-ass donut is a Britt's Donut, and if you've ever had one, you know the truth of which I speak.

Britt's is down on the boardwalk in Carolina Beach, surrounded by some pretty questionable looking stuff. I've got love for CB, but it's still pretty red. Sorry, but it is. Britt's is worth the trip though. We usually make one trip down there when we stay at the Seaside Club, and whenever people find out we're going, they place orders. Everyone loves Britt's. The thing about Britt's is that they make donuts right, by hand. They roll them themselves, right there in front of you, and fry them in these big cauldrons of oil that look like something I want to own. They flip them with big sticks and get them out of the oil with those same sticks, making a big stack of donuts that reminds me of the little ring toy that little kids have (you remember what I'm talking about)?

These donuts are the best straight out of the oil--best eaten right there on the boardwalk either with a styrofoam cup of milk or a Pepsi (no coke) with crushed ice. Soooo good. But if you take them home, they won't be as good. As Mrs. Britt told my mom this year, "Our donuts don't keep 'cause we don't put no crap in them." How true.



Britt's is only open during the summer, so you've missed it if you haven't been yet. But if you find yourself in southeastern NC or northeastern SC next summer, make a trip. It's worth it.

Debate

So next Friday the first presidential debate is going to be held in my town. I'm not going to go on a rant about who I think should be the next president because god knows there are enough people doing that already, and 99% of them shouldn't be talking (I take that back--even if they're saying stupid stuff or saying things for the wrong reason or saying things that don't even really matter, I think I would rather have them talking than not. Being involved, even if it's for the wrong reasons, is better than apathy, right? Right? Hmm.).

Anywho, the debate is coming to Oxford, and the whole town has gone to hell. You think Wilmington went nuts when 3 inches of snow fell? You ain't seen nothin until you've seen a small Southern town that can barely deal with the increase in population that students cause when they return in August deal with the circus that's about to descend with the debate. It's nuts. For the past few months they've been paving and re-paving every parking lot they can find (and maybe it's saying something about how long I've been here that I didn't think it was strange to have a bunch of gravel lots on and around campus), putting up a whole mess of new poles from which to hang banners proclaiming the debate (as if you could NOT know) and all the red-white-and-blue paraphernalia from each of the surrounding counties' 4th of July celebration, and erecting miles upon miles of chain-link fence. Seriously. They've completely surrounded the debate site, and some of the roads that lead to it, in 8-foot tall chain link fence. It looks classy. Very antebellum. Today I saw some people putting a covering on it, like that green mesh stuff they put around tennis courts.

So they've done all that, they're blocking off the main entrance to campus and about 1/2 a mile of the road leading into campus, they sent an email out today essentially begging people not to drive to campus next week. If you pledge not to bring your car all week starting Monday, the school will give you a $10 food credit for any on-campus eatery. They're doing this for the first 2,000 people to sign up. That's $20,000 worth of income they're giving up.

Trust me, there's a lot more I could talk about (don't even get me started on the fact that my house is within a mile radius of the debate site and I'll probably be locked down by the Secret Service--or at least scoped out, or the snipers that will be posted on campus rooftops, or the fact that the KKK has announced that they'll be at the debate, you just won't be able to pick them out. No robes, no hoods, but they'll be here. That's much creepier. I know it's not 1960, but still). The thing is, this debate isn't going to do any lasting good here. Sure it's a feather in the cap of the administration that the University of Mississippi (I really hate the "Ole Miss" name by now), but it's not like we're the only place. Top professors, researchers, or students aren't going to say, "hey, that school hosted a debate. I really wanted to go to Harvard or Yale, but I think I'll go to the University of Mississippi instead." Having the debate isn't going to make this school suddenly jump up in the rankings. It's not going to create a surge in funding for academic resources or faculty lines. It's not going to give Oxford a Target. Or a decent beer selection.

What it is going to give us is a big hangover. 'Cause I'm gonna get DRUNK.

Be Vewy Vewy Kwiet...

I'm hunting jobs. Hopefully I'll have more success than Elmer.

The job list for English Departments came out on Friday, and by now I've gone through the first postings and printed off the jobs I think I'll apply for. I'm putting the bar pretty high--there are just over 40 jobs right now that I'll send applications to. It's a daunting thing--there are some jobs in places I'm not sure I'd really want to live, but then again I can pretty much be happy anywhere, as long as I've got my wife and my dog with me. And I'm somewhere where I can do things outside. Ideally, if we're not on a coastline, I'd like to be somewhere that has a nice University golf course that I can join and start playing golf again. That would be an acceptable alternative to the coast, especially since there aren't many jobs on the East Coast. There are a few in Taxachussettes and a couple in Conneticut, but not much beyond that. There weren't many at all in Virginia, NC, or SC, which made me kinda sad. But there was also one in Atlanta, which would be pretty cool. We have lots of friends in Atlanta, and it's a pretty fun town.

Anyway, deadlines aren't until early November (except for one job I saw that had an Oct 15 deadline), so there's some time until I hear anything at all. But it's starting.

We're going to need a bigger boat.

I don't know why I said that, but it sounds ominous. Scary. Ohhhhh.

Long time no...post

So I realized it's been over a month since my last post, but I have a good reason. For over three weeks, from July 24 to Aug 13, Sarah and I were traveling. It was awesome, if a bit long. I've realized as I've gotten older and set up a home of my own that, even if I'm tired of being in Mississippi, I'm much more comfortable and much happier in my own home. I love Wilmington and everything that comes with it, but after two weeks of living in my parents guestroom, I'm ready to come back to my own space. I just wish this space was closer to Wilmington. Someday...

Anyway, our trip was a whirlwind of visiting and seeing. We left Oxford on a Thursday to drive up to Murray and stay with Sarah's parents for a few days. They did us the HUGE favor of watching our dog, Mercer, while we were gone. They love that dog--Sarah used to joke before we got married that they approved of me primarily to have access to my dog. It might not have been a joke. Anyway, we spent a great weekend with them--golf, lake, relaxation. The Wurglers' house is great for relaxation--there's not a whole lot to do in Murray, so it's a lot of sitting around and reading, and you don't even feel guilty about it because there's honestly nothing else to do. Probably the highlight of the trip was Sunday lunch after church. Not too long ago Murray got this Thai place called Jasmine which, though it holds no candle to Indochine, serves a pretty tasty noodle dish. Every time we went to Murray we would go to this place after church, but then they made the terible decision of being closed on Sunday afternoons. Thankfully they have seen the error of their ways and reopened, so we got to eat there for the first time in a while. It was pretty good.

(This is where I realize I'm not going to be able to summarize the entire trip like this, so here's the faster version).

Left Sarah's parents' house on Monday morning. Get to my grandparents' house just east of Asheville 7 hours later. Spend night. Leave next morning, detour to Fayetteville to have lunch with Fatty, finally get to Wilmington Tuesday evening. Spend the rest of that week eating (INDOCHINE), sitting on the beach, and, on Friday, taking Sarah shopping (you're welcome). Saturday we moved into the Seaside Club for a week full of HEAVY food, too much sun, too much alcohol, and utter happiness. This is my favorite picture from that week:
That's my gorgeous wife, looking happy and being completely oblivious to my sister flipping her off. Classic. And classy.

So we move out of the Club the following Saturday, spend a couple of days recovering, and leave for Atlanta on Monday. We stay with some of our best friends, Brandon Wicks and Katie Rawson, in Atlanta until Friday, and while we're there I get to visit my other good friend in Atlanta, Wes, and see his new house and awesome home-brew tap setup. (PS, if Wes ever invites you over for one of HIS beers, take him up on it. You won't be disappointed). We leave Atlanta Friday morning to get home 2 hours before the in-laws return with our dog, who I miss terribly.

So just about every sentence in the above two paragraphs contain at least one blog post of their own (many of them could spawn multiple) but I can't sit here and do this all day. Revisions and job searching calls. But at least it's Friday. Maybe I'll post another tomorrow. I'd like to get back into a more consistent habit with this blogging thing, so we'll see how it goes. Until then...

FINISHED!!

Sort of. I've just finished a full draft of my dissertation (so now I'm on a high). Go me.

The only thing is, I know I still have a lot of work to do on it (I kinda left the Poe chapter hanging and I'm going to have to substantially change my intro because what I wanted to do over the course of the diss changed, which I knew it would), so I can't be unreservedly excited. Now I'm nervous that I'll have to change A LOT - that all the work that I've done isn't good enough. I'll probably feel like that until I let someone read the whole thing and not just certain chapters. I know some chapters are good--I've already gotten feedback on them--but it's different when you have to think about the whole thing as one big unit.

Anyway, regardless, I can work with what I've got. If it's not ALL brilliant, a lot of it is.

As Fatty would say, I'm awesome.

All-Stars

I'm sitting here at a quarter to twelve watching the All-Star Game go into the 13th inning. This is a helluva game, and if you like baseball but didn't watch it, you missed out.

I do feel bad for Dan Uggla though. He's had some tough extra innings, that one.

Come on NL!

Girl Talk

I was listening to NPR's rundown of the "Best Albums of the Year So Far," and one particularly caught my ear-- "Feed the Animals" by Girl Talk. Girl Talk doesn't sound like somthing I'd listen to, but it's not what you think at all.

"Girl Talk" is one guy, Gregg Gillis, who samples all sorts of music (most of it from the 90s on) and mashes it back together in amazing ways. Now I've heard other sample mash-ups, but nothing like this. What this guy does is absolutely amazing. He takes songs from all kinds of genres and puts them together damn near seamlessly. Most of the vocals he takes from rap, but the background music comes from nearly everything--Prince, Fergie, Metallica, Gwen Stephanie, Tone-Loc, Temple of the Dog (Yep), all sorts of other stuff I recognize but can't think of now, but literally, everything. I'm not well-versed enough in music technicality to be able to talk intelligently about what he's doing or why it works, but it seems like he's got a knack for finding extremely divergent musical forms that share basic beat and tonal forms--the music just plain out works. I think this is why most of the vocals are rap-based, the cadence and beat of rap is most easily superimposable over other musical styles.

Seriously, go listen to this yourself. It's incredible, and fun as hell. You can listen to the whole album on his Myspace page for free: http://www.myspace.com/girltalk. The album works either as separate tracks or as a single long mash (I think I'm using that word right, but I might not be).

Also, you can buy the ablum for whatever you want--seriously. It's for sale online and you just name your own price. Anything at all allows you to download the album, at least 5 bucks gets you the ablum and some bonus stuff, and at least $10 gets you all that plus an actual CD. I think that's a cool way to do it. It's here:

http://74.124.198.47/illegal-art.net/__girl__talk___feed__the__anima.ls___/