an american beardmonster in .... florida.

sorry for the absence. upon finishing my dissertation, i almost immediately returned to the states. hard to believe that was over a year ago. i relocated to my old hometown, living with the parents for a while. i got a job as a welding inspector for a fabrication shop that builds boiler components for the power industry, for which i was grossly underqualified in most departments. the job works crazy hours, and i was promptly bumped to night shift, working 7p-7a, 5-7 nights a week. i have averaged 65 hours a week this year. this summer i got moved back to days, so life has been a little more normal. i moved into my own apartment, got a truck, a motorcycle, and a ladyfriend. all in all, life is good but something has been lacking. namely, my intellectual life. when you're working 12-13 hours a day, 7 days a week, it's hard to find time to read philosophy. and as the one of 3 people in the shop with any college education at all (my MA makes me the most educated person in the company), it's been difficult finding philosophical conversations. that said, it's time for me to pick this thing up again. expect a lot of meditations on marx, labor, and nihilism, as well as musings on stoner metal, various steel alloys, and custom/vintage motorcycles. for now, I will leave you with some pictures of what I've been up to

origin story...

This blog was conceived out of a conversation with my colleague and housemate. We decided that we should create blogs to document the progress of our MA dissertations. I know it's a little late in the game for it, but I assure you, we're not that far along. So the purpose of this blog will be two-fold:
1). To hold myself accountable for how much work I'm doing. If i post up what I've done at the end of the day, it should encourage me to get more done. And it'll let me see how much I've accomplished and how much more work I should be doing. Ideally, we'll get some more comrades from the program and see if we can't get a sort of ring going.
2). To get feedback on my work and ideas. Going back to the previous idea, if we can get enough people together, we can encourage each other and have a free exchange of ideas and opinions across the board, much more easily than if we were going back and forth. Of course, anyone else who reads this is free to comment as well.

That stated, this is not my personal blog; it is strictly related to my academic/philosophical endeavors. As such, rants about my personal life, popular culture, and non-research related topics will be kept to a bare minimum.

And, for those of you who don't know, my dissertation is on Walter Benjamin and the Situationists (primarily Guy Debord). I have not yet figured out exactly how to problematically frame this critical analysis.

Now, back to work.