Play It As It Lays Several day-long car rides this season have got me just as many steps closer to figuring out something that always troubled me. I'm human. I laugh. I cry. But when the candle burns at both ends either simultaneously or from one minute to the next, the awkward jump never ceases to startle me. In private it is no big deal. I woke up one morning on a cloud until I stopped in a Shell station to pay the cashier. I asked him how his day was going, he said "fine except for this," pointing to an enormous stitched abrashion that circled his crown like a centipede. It was a car accident, but he's alive and that's what matters. "Gave me a new look on life." After hearing that the music I had been listening to seemed like the trite excesses of my boring suburban existance and I spent the rest of the day brooding to AM classical. In private I can shut off and stay off, but in public I can't. Consider those times at a party when your joking around then someone says something that triggers a tragic memory. You sit back, maybe noticably silent, and it is irritating that the humor continues its course but you're at the dock caught up internally by your private past. So you step out for a smoke or to the bathroom to collect your bearings and then rejoin the group.
I never lament my passion or intense feelings. I may hide them and protect them for obvious reasons, but the privacy of my fire only adds to its value. Perhaps this is why in retrospect a quick-change is something poetic, an exciting reminder of the vast spectrum and complexity of human emotions. (though, living in the moment it is another botherersome insecurity with which to deal.)
Individually we may bear-- if not enjoy-- the ride but publically we need to tip-toe around the feelings of our companions. A good conversation can't be a see-saw with one side blissful and another contemplative. We ride the same wave or part seperate ways
Monday, January 20, 2003 01:19 p.m. I'm not much of a gadget-y person, but if that screen were a monitor and a keyboard came attached to a flotation device-- I'd be sold.
Monday, January 20, 2003 12:08 p.m.
Ladies Night for the Right
Speaking of hard up, AFF is really hurting for the ladies. Next thing you know they'll be organizing events at Ani DiFranco shows and facials at Elizabeth Arden.
Monday, January 20, 2003 11:31 a.m.
Chief Ramsey With the Conch
City Paper's cover feature, "Boss Hogtie," is a must read, describing in great deal the chilling exent of police brutality handling September's protest at Pershing Park. My friend Alexis is interviewed describing the long wait hand-cuffed in a bus, incompentency and misinformation regarding a "fine" detainees need to pay, and the grade school-like teasing comments officers made. Less fortunate detainees were hogtied for hours on the floor of the police academy gym. It's infuriating. And this is DC, ghetto city, so it's not like they have nothing better to do.
Monday, January 20, 2003 11:01 a.m.
That Explains Everything
Monday, January 20, 2003 10:25 a.m.
Twelve Years and $ 14.6 Billion Dollars Another section of The Big Dig opened up for use yesterday. Interstate 90 was successfully rerouted so that drivers can go straight to the Mass Pike out of Logan Airport. A longer journey will lead you directly to Seattle.
The remaining phase, moving I-93 underground, has an estimated wrap-up "early 2004," meaning we should expect to see that project come to head after another five years. It's the "largest public works project in American history," but "public arts project" is also appropriate. There are few things as beautifully ideosyncratic as the crains and trucks parked for the evening and illuminated by city lights
Sunday, January 19, 2003 10:13 p.m.
Tying It All Together in One Anecdote
A friend reports the largest collective he observed at yesterday's protest was a group that calls itself "Dykes with Tykes." This made me smile.
Sunday, January 19, 2003 10:33 a.m.
Drawing the Line
T.A.T.U's "All The Things She Said" is a weird pop song with hysterical vocals over obligatory Eurotrash rushed sythesizers. It's the sound of a nervous breakdown and an orgy at once. What makes it even more bizarre is the two Russian Siamese kitties that make up T.A.T.U (tee-aye tee-yoo) are madly in love with each other (or at least pretend to be for PR's sake) and the song's lyrics are about running away -- to the chagrin of their parents -- so they can be lesbians together. You can enjoy the spectacle of their music video on the official website. It includes an unforgetably intense makeout session in the rain between Julia and Lena, dressed in schoolgirl kilts, and seperated by a fence.
I think it's great, and not for the reason's you'd expect. It's normalizing "bisexuality," something that is normal to begin with. There's an economic explaination for bisexuality, begining with the principles set out by Carl Menger. He theorized something that is at once obvious and overlooked: the concept of a hierarchy of values. Given one unit of water in a desert, you're going to drink it right? Well, add an additional unit and you can take a bath too. Add yet another unit and hey, now you can wash your car. But washing your car is subordinate to your first two values.
You can take the hierarachy of values idea and apply it to all your romantic interests. Going on the scale of 1 - 10, let's say a six is the margin for "do-able" and an eight is "dateable" So, Janet Reno don't cut it as a six. But what about Orlando Bloom? Maybe he's no six, but he inches above Reno on your hierarchy. Now imagine you're a little hard up and the "do-able" cut-off dips a few points. An evening with Orlando Bloom is not as unthinkable as it was before.
But back to music, I'm also crazy for Esthero's Breath From Another. It's the soundtrack to the femme fatale lifestyle I could never bring myself to lead, but may certainly fantasize about in the comfort and privacy of my vehicle.
Friday, January 17, 2003 02:40 p.m.
Party, I mean, Protest The website for Shirts Off is up.
Thursday, January 16, 2003 11:21 p.m.
Virginia State Sodomy Laws Strike Again The reappointment of circuit judge Verbena Askew is on hold becuase she's a lesbian. The enlightened delegate Robert McDonnell informs us, "There is certain homosexual conduct that is in violation of the law."
Thursday, January 16, 2003 10:39 p.m.
Who's the Doormat?
Alina found this article in the WSJ explaining wealth and high-quality child care won't beat out stay-at-home parenting in producing academically successful kids.
Compared to the challenges of motherhood, rising up the corporate ladder or throwing swanky cocktail parties seems so terribly ... pedestrian. That social pressures exist persuading women not to admit they'd ever want a family is telling of our morally-backward female intellectuals. Like puritans to sex, they apparently believe a biological urge is something to be ashamed of. I do not. Not only will I have children, I plan on raising them too.
Thursday, January 16, 2003 10:24 p.m.
Science Censorship Index reports scientific journals are censored by unreasonable, frenzied post-9-11 federal restrictions. Federal agencies request the right to review works before distribution or publication, and to remove data even if it comes from public sources
By their reckoning, Earth's "day in the sun" has reached 4:30 a.m., corresponding to its 4.5 billion-year age. By 5 a.m., the 1 billion-year reign of animals and plants will come to an end. At 8 a.m. the oceans will vaporize. At noon – after 12 billion years – the ever-expanding sun, transformed into a red giant, will engulf the planet, melting away any evidence it ever existed and sending molecules and atoms that once were Earth floating off into space.
Thursday, January 16, 2003 09:49 p.m.
Attack of the Giant Squid I'm inexplicably fascinated with the concept of giant squid. Last time I visited the National History Musuem (actually, not so long ago-- to see the incredible Cirque du Soleil 3-D IMAX) I stood and stared in awe at a glass encapsulated specimen for a good seven minutes. No, I'm not checking books out of the library on the subject, but I will read articles like this BBC News piece on squid attack in France when they turn up
Thursday, January 16, 2003 08:24 p.m.
Like Dorothy Parker With Scene Points
I've fallen spell to Mary McCarthy's mystique after reading a number of salivating reviews of her life and work. Paul Monk, in this essay lists a number of her notable admirers.
Arthur Schlesinger Jr, for example, declared: I absolutely adored Mary. I was transfixed by her. She was so beautiful, so witty, so much fun to talk to. Carmen Angleton declared: She was very beautiful both witty and sparkling like something out of Shakespeare, something out of Midsummer Nights Dream. Others remarked that she looked primeval, like the Venus de Milo, She was like a goddess in our midst and She was like a black-haired Grace Kelly...
The ferocious intellect was described by a wounded Alfred Kazin as a wholly destructive critical mind but praised by Isaiah Berlin for its masculine quality strong, direct, cutting tough and utterly honest. Norman Mailer called Mary McCarthy our First Lady of letters. The combination of glamour and ferocity was inimitably described by William Barrett. He observed that she was one writer whom the notoriously spiteful and egomaniacal New York intellectual circle could not intimidate in any way. I see her, he commented, in the image of a Valkyrie maiden, riding her steed into the circle, amid thunder and lightning, and out again, bearing the body of some dead hero across her saddle.
Thomas Mallan in November's Atlantic notes she considered de Beauvoir a self-absorbed nun, loathed Lillian Hellman, and detested getting lumped into a genre on account of her gender.
Largely absent from her decades of political writing is any reflection upon the civil-rights movement or modern feminism. The first seems never to have engaged her much; the second was mostly an irritant. She told one French publication, "I don't mean that I disagree with the goals of equal pay, and so on, it's the domestic side that I find so repellent. I can't see the point of devoting yourself to the constant emotions of competitiveness and envy. And I don't see why people should dislike serving." Her most famous novel depicts a group of Vassar graduates who for the most part are regressing, surrendering a largeness of outlook and levelheadedness that came naturally to their mothers
I've been searching high and low for essays or stories online, but damned Bono act, none have surfaced.
Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:23 a.m.
Disaster Waiting to Happen Rwanda released 40,000 genocide suspects because of prison overcrowding, expecting local communities to try them. "We estimate that if a million people died, another million or two million people had a role in what happened. It would be impossible to try and punish all these people," said Prosecutor-general, Gerald Gahima.
Tuesday, January 14, 2003 01:15 p.m.
Protest Lieberman: Rent Caligula
Joe Lieberman would make the most annoying president ever.
Tuesday, January 14, 2003 12:58 p.m.
Internet Tax Kicked to Curb
Imagined Reason magazine headline: Christopher Cox Rox! Well, he does. He's pushing a bipartisan measure to ban Internet access taxes. The bill was introduced to the House this week
Out of the unwholesome cauldron of junk science, they have conjured up lawsuits over something called “toxic mold.” These suits charge that poor home construction allows the growth of dangerous molds that seriously damage homeowners’ health—a potential bonanza in pain-and-suffering or punitive damages.
Mold litigation has advanced with startling speed, despite cautions from the Centers for Disease Control that toxic molds, if they exist at all inside houses, are extremely rare. The press has fanned the flames, spreading panic—and stoking litigation—by publishing more than 6,000 articles about toxic mold over the last two years, including a splashy New York Times Magazine story with a cover photo of the author in a hazmat suit. Much publicized lawsuits by Johnny Carson’s former sidekick Ed McMahon and movie heroine Erin Brockovich have fed the frenzy. But nothing has inflamed it more than a few gigantic awards, including a $ 32 million judgment in a Texas case.
But last month was an under-reported victory at the Texas Court of Appeals when the awarded sum was slashed seven-eighths to 4 million and all claims for punitive and mental-anguish were dismissed.
Today's Baltimore Sun reports insurance companies have been lobbying to deny coverage on mold-related claims. If they succeed, responsiblity for all mold-related damages will fall on homeowners. Back to Lysol and rubber gloves.
Sunday, January 12, 2003 11:36 p.m.
And Everyone Says Joint MBA-JD is for Show
Lawrence Lessig for Red Herring, giving the example of Japanese "dojinshi" manga ("copycat comics") drawing a larger fanbase than original manga, explains why lawyers can't think like businessmen.
"Take my son -- no really! Take him!" I've got to the age where nothing surprises me anymore, but a lot of it will disappoint me. THis reads like an article from The Onion: Area Man Prostitutes Self, Family on eBay
Saturday, January 11, 2003 10:06 p.m.
Release the Hens
Spiked has a funny anechdote on the Animal Libertation Front seeking to liberate 7,000 hens from captivity at a Dorset farm. The freed hens created a stampede, killing 150 of them. Patrick West explains that the event occured because "the animal rights movement seems unable to tell the difference between rational, sentient beings (our species) and the rest. They appear to believe that we share the same hopes and concerns, that animals, like us, could not contend living as slaves."
Saturday, January 11, 2003 11:26 a.m.
Green-Eyed Monsters
There are few actresses as charming and likable as Gwyneth Paltrow. Her shy, understated elegance comes across in every film. In interviews she is witty, warm, and kind. So why is Paltrow greeted with venom by most voracious Page 6 readers?
To judge the character of a person based on her external appearance is cruel and unneccessary, whether she is beautiful, ugly, or neither. As a culture, we are learning to stop assuming the overweight are lazy or that freckles are unclean; but a huge hurdle has yet to be met in setting our jealousy aside and accepting that someone who looks like Gwyneth Paltrow could be --gasp -- a nice girl underneath the glossy flaxen locks.
It's ok to be pretty -- just so long as you do it in a kind of offbeat unthreatening way. To be conventionaly attractive is to be conventional. After all, who will fess up to any attraction to leggy blonds these days besides Alpha males and oil barrons?
Aesthetical preferences are natural but constraints are trancended in an loving equation (or certainly should be.) I used to distrust the guys that date a petite redhead one moment then a tall black woman the next -- the kinds of guys that are physically attracted to basically everyone. Now that I'm older and more experienced, I know that the ones to look out for are those with a "type." If someone wants to be with me because I have green-eyes, and everyone other woman he's been with is green-eyed; to him I cease to be Joanne. I'm just another girl with green-eyes. He will not want to get to know me beyond a limit, because in getting to know me, he will risk losing the ideal -- the abstraction of a green-eyed female.
Of course there are ways in which our form will influence our character. Leaving aside the issue of race as it has too many other factors to serve as an example, many physical characteristics are perceived in a certain light and make us act a certain way. For example, tall people tend not to be outgoing. In my personal experience, insecurities are bound to develop when you're the first person everyone notices in a crowd.
Since the beginning of time we've tried convincing ourselves that our looks predict the essence of our being, but this belief is simply irrational and untrue. Stereotypes were drawn instructing us brunettes are scheming Veronicas, pale skin is innocent, curvy figures suggest a maternal spirit, and other such nonsense. It's time to abandon these jealousies and insecurities, stopping seeing the neighbor's lawn as vibrantly green, and understand the shell that we inhabit is independent from our internal self.
In the "conversation" -- extracts of which were printed by El Nuevo Herald newspaper -- the Castro voice asks if Chavez received a letter he sent and the Venezuelan says he did. The two engaged in nonsensical repartee for several minutes, then Castro asks what day it is.
"It's all ..." says Chavez
"What day is it today? Tuesday. Wednesday. Tell me," demands Castro.
"Yes," says Chavez.
"What day is it today?" repeats Castro.
"Everything is on Tuesday," Chavez replies.
Wednesday, January 8, 2003 05:31 p.m.
Abstinence Makes the Heart Grow Randier
Predatory sexual activity in the church may not be age and gender-specific. A 1996 survey by Jesuit St. Louis University informs us priests molest nuns too
Maj. Harry Schmidt and Maj. William Umbach are facing up to 64 years in jail for charges of involuntary manslaughter, dereliction of duty and assault for the April 17 accidental bombing of Canadian troops. Their Article 32 hearing, to be held Jan. 13, will determine if there is enough evidence to proceed to a trial.
Forcable use of the drug dexamphetamine is their defense. The ineffectiveness of current "go pills" is why DARPA et al is developing new stimulants to "zap" brains with electromagnetic energy to resist sleep deprivation.
Wednesday, January 8, 2003 04:57 p.m.
Only Now Occured to Me
that 2003 is a prime number.
Wednesday, January 8, 2003 02:31 p.m.
Hot, Wet, Wild
Richard Dawkins'The Selfish Gene begins alluding to the mating habits of praying mantises. As you may remember -- and the only thing you may remember -- from biology class, after the male mounts and begins copulation, the female will attempt to bite off his head. If this happens successfully, the male's body will continue its pace, perhaps even, improving its performance due to offset nerves. Once copulation is over, she proceeds to eat the rest of his body. That had me curious as to other facinating mating rituals in the wild. A little hunting on the net turned up information on a recent book release, Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation by zoologist Olivia Judson.
You'll learn why one stick-insect copulation lasts for 10 weeks (to prevent other males from gaining access to the fertile female) and why the black-winged damselfly's penis has bristles (to scrape out his rival's sperm). You'll learn that male and female orangutans masturbate with sex toys fashioned from leaves and twigs, that slugs are hermaphrodites with penises on their heads, and that females in more than 80 species eat their lovers before, during, or after sex. You'll also ponder human sexuality when you learn that "monogamy is one of the most deviant behaviors in biology" (although jackdaws, chinstrap penguins, California mice, and some termites swear by it) and "natural selection, it seems, often smiles on strumpets."
Judson is also featured in this National Geographic story on animal infidelities, explaining promiscuity as a natural counter to inbreeding.
