Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

I had no idea it had been so long since I caught up with LJ, but here's what's currently happening with me, for anyone who might still be interested:

1) I've finally settled into my new full-time job at the publishing house, more or less. I started as a full-time permanent employee (rather than the part-time temp I'd been for the previous 2 years) at the beginning of July, and after months of high stress adjustment I'm finally beginning to feel like I might be doing an alright job here. It's also nice to have health insurance again, after doing without for a little more than a year.

2) I'm NOT teaching as an adjunct this semester (first time after 5 years that my course failed to make its enrollment quota), but I'm booked to teach again in the Spring, and that course already seems to be well-enrolled.

3) I'm adjusting to a non-academic work week and calendar, which means I'm enjoying the luxury of being paid to work a certain number of hours per week, and when those hours are up I'm not supposed to work anymore but rather go home and do something else, but also that I'm realizing those long vacations at Christmas and Fall and Spring break are a thing of the past. Gotta use those saved-up vacation hours if I want to take off more than December 24th and 25th to visit the family in Wisconsin.

4) Consequently, I will be taking a few vacation hours off to drive to Iowa for a science fiction convention a week from this Friday, in order to visit some RL friends and enjoy the chance to kibbitz about SF and fanfic and all those good things.

5) But I will not be spending the time and money to fly to San Diego for the annual American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature meeting the week before Thanksgiving. I have a very good and dear friend from seminary who lives in California and whom I've not seen face-to-face since the AAR/SBL meeting in Denver in 2001, and she'd offered to let me share her hotel room for free if I'd come out to CA for this meeting, but with no university underwriting my trip or even giving me time off to attend, it's just not feasible this year.

However, just because I think it's fun to know what's going on in the world of super-serious and starchy religious scholars (yes, just like I used to be!) here are some of the papers and sessions dealing with science fiction and assorted other popular culture phenomena that I actually regret I won't be able to listen to and talk about at this year's American Academy of Religion meeting:

A) From the "New Religious Movements Group", I'm sorry to miss the following two papers from their "Emergent and Alternative: The Breadth of New Religions Study" session from 4 to 6:30 PM on November 17 --

Joy Laycock, Decatur, GA -- "Gathering Data with the Vampire: Analyzing Causes and Effects of an Introspective Survey by the Vampire Community"

Paul Thomas, Rockhurst University -- "Interstellar Ishtar: UFO Mythologies as Myths of Origins"

B) From the Ethics Section, I'm sorry to miss the following paper (as well as all the other papers dealing with ethics in the films Children of Men and The Queen and the TV ethics of The Sopranos and news coverage on Comedy Central) from their "Hooray for Hollywood?" session from 9 to 11:30 AM on November 18 --

Barbra Barnett, University of Chicago -- The Science Fiction Dystopia: Battlestar Galactica's Contribution to Contemporary Discussions of Human Dignity"

C) From a session on "Ecology and the Moral Imagination" at 3 PM on November 18, I sort of regret having to miss the following paper on Octavia Butler --

Felicity Brock Kelcourse, Christian Theological Seminary -- "Imagining Otherness through the Eyes of Octavia Butler: Dystopian Futures as Cautionary Ecological Tales"

D) And from the November 19 late afternoon session by the "Religion and Popular Culture" Group, I'm rather sorry to miss a whole SLEW of papers on the theme: Evolutionary Controversy and a Side of Pasta: The Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Subversive Function of Religious Parody" which actually inspired me to finally go and LOOK UP "Flying Spaghetti Monster" online and no longer be puzzled by all those cute LJ icons.

Oh, well. Instead of listening to all those papers and having to change planes TWICE both ways flying to and from San Diego, I get to fly non-stop to Milwaukee for a very little amount of money and spend Thanksgiving with my family, including my brother's new boyfriend from Long Island and my brother's former step-son who got evicted from his apartment and is now living in my parents' basement.

Should be fun!