From the Trenches

Work's been a bit slow today—I'm mostly just waiting to hear back from researchers—so I thought I'd take a moment to write to you, darlings of my readership. It's Yom Kippur, so I'm fasting, and bloody hell am I hungry. I don't know why I do this...really I don't. I'm so generally unobservant, it's absurd. I know, it's a fairly simple way for me to give a nod to my ancestry without formally disrupting my life. I do the same thing by eating crap for a week during passover. At least that doesn't make me feel half-dead (although it does leave me craving pasta). Ooh, did I say pasta? I could totally use some Pollo e Pasta Veneziana right about now. Or some Chinese food. Anything saucy and spicey.

Alexandria laughed at me a couple of years ago when she saw me fasting. I was doing exactly what I'm doing now: whining my hungry little head off. Apparently in Catholicism (gee, what a surprise) you're not supposed to kvetch when you fast. You just hold it in and don't let anyone see your suffering. Well, good for you, Catholics. I don't think you're SUPPOSED to bitch and moan in Judaism either, but apparently the motivation for fasting is so you can concentrate on your prayers and studies. What kind of silly method is that? If you want me to concentrate, you put a tube of Ritz or Pringles and a bottle of Coke in front of me. That way, my needs are constantly satisfied and I can move onto the next level of the pyramid. This way, I'm totally unproductive and grumpy. I feel like I'm about to fall asleep (woooo, seeing auras) and I've been totally incoherent on the phone with scientists and taken crappy notes. Well, less than two hours until break fast at the Roths. Then all will be well.

The study I started researching today is pretty cool, though. Researchers took a group of 18 straight men and 18 straight women. They sat each person alone in a room with a comfortable chair, and showed them 7 two-minute segments of porn. There was an oral and penetrative scene of heterosexual sex, gay male sex and lesbian sex. That makes six. The seventh scene was two minutes of bonobo sex. Hot, hetero, monkey-on-monkey action. The researchers measured physical arousal with the usual methods (penis circumfrence, vaginal pulses), and allowed the subjects to report subjective arousal as they watched the porn. So, the men behaved as men do: they said they only got off on women, and their bodies concurred. Men had no arousal in response to the monkeys, insignificant arousal in response to the gay male scenes and substantial arousal in response to the straight and lesbian scenes. The women reported the opposite: they said they were aroused only by the straight scenes. Their bodies told of a slightly different picture. In fact the women were equally aroused by all the human scenes and, most bizarrely, were aroused less so but still significantly by the bonobo scenes. Yup. They totally got off on the monkeys. I mean, it's also pretty interesting to note that straight women were equally aroused by both sexes engaging in sexual activity. In previous studies, the author noted, she found that lesbians were equally aroused by lesbian porn and gay male porn. So it's not just that straight women are too scared to verbalize their lesbian tendencies. The researcher thinks that women are just turned on by any activity they recognize as sex. You know, from my ever-valuable "field-observations," I'd have to agree.

No Show

Well, Friday has come and gone and still no soft launch. The website exists...there's a logo there to prove it, but the schmucks at godaddy or wherever have not yet loaded our content. Bitches, them all. Did I mention that this week I seriously improved my mad html skillz? Now I can do crazy things like G_μν=8πT_μν without buttons. Yup, that was done by hand. Strange that the underline doesn't align, though. Anyway...

I've realized that by working I'm now just generally thinking less deeply than I once was. Science is great, but so little of it is philosophy. I mean, there's plenty of philosophy of science—no denying that—but your day to day discoveries? Just hypothesize and grind. And even when something is conceptually and not just pragmatically interesting—like this article I'm writing for Tuesday on how strange quarks dipping in and out of existence may account for 5% of a proton's magnetism—does that really, really provide much food for thought? Some, sure, but it doesn't BEG for you to ponder it. Furthermore, I'm not getting paid to think about this stuff. (I mean, I'm not really getting paid at all, but my travel stipend isn't for this stuff.) My job is just to research, understand, and present.

Is there any place I can find a job to actually ponder? I mean, I could get my Ph.D. in philosophy, I suppose, but you have to be GREAT to make a dent there, and I'd have to study a lot of philosophy I'm either totally frustrated by (helloooo, ethics) or don't really care about (helloooo, politics). I know going to law school seems like a strange idea after I just said that political philosophy is the last thing in the world (of philosophy) I want to study. Still, there might be a lot to think about there. Perhaps there's an advantage to studying something that's totally man-made and is admittedly man-made. Perhaps attempting to be, in some way, a purest in that environment could be really productive. More likely, it will just lead to tons of contradictions, as it does in every other field.

I find myself in an ethics bind (not an ethical bind, a bind about the study of ethics). I think that ethics are man-made. I don't think there's any objective code of ethics sitting out there beyond us. Ethics is fully human, invented by people, for people. I know we have a natural instinct to be ethical, but I don't think that points to any greater ethic outside of us. So I think that ethics is fundamentally descriptive of this feeling; not prescriptive from above/within/whatever. Point one. Point two: I have a personal feeling of what's right and wrong. We'll let it be, for now, that this may or may not be a consistent system, and if it is consistent, it may not be based on a coherent set of first principles. We'll just say that I think I generally know what people should do and why they should do it. Under what right do I have to impose this on other people? I know I spent a post blabbering about this before. But still. I care. My theories are generally based on utilitarian principles...perhaps not completely, but I generally think increasing others' well-being is a good thing and decreasing it is a bad thing.

Is point two even consistent with point one? Can I admit that I think ethics is descriptive and still believe that it has something to it? I don't think this human impulse reveals some greater truth. I just want people to be happy. Does this desire carry any weight if I believe it's internal?

Side/end note: Some people think that nobody's really good because when people do things for others, they're doing it for selfish reasons. I call someone who gains self-satisfaction by doing good things for other people "a good person." People who don't get off doing good for others are less good people. People who get off doing things that hurt other people are sadists. I think sadists who engage in healthy sadistic sex are kinda weird. (No, no, more than that.) This "health" implies they have a masochist with them who enjoys the pain. If I were a sadist (deidle deedle deidle...), I think I'd only want to watch people who didn't like to be in pain. I mean, are the screams enough if the other person is on the verge of orgasm? I'd be like, "No, don't cum! Writhe in agony! You hate this!" Kudos to the imagination of the folks who engage in consensual sadism...but aren't they always left unsatisfied?

Oh, the associations never cease...

Flaccid Ejaculation?

It's coming on Friday...the soft launch!

My four articles are edited and ready to run. Today I gathered images for our photography section and found out about getting rights for them. Tomorrow we create a soft launch invitation list...will YOU be on the list? If you're reading this, you're almost certainly on the list of people I will try to give access to, although it's possible the list will be more limited than I'm expecting. I mean, I plan on trying to get about 40 of my closest friends and relatives into our beta testing group.

There are also a few sciencey events that I'll be going to for the group...I'll watch the Igs tomorrow (hopefully with Adam), in case anyone wants me to report on them, then I'll go to this Sloan science film festival this weekend, and Monday I'll go to Frans de Waals talk on primates and personality. And I think tomorrow I'm going to buy this book on bioethics...it, for one, chronicles the development of a fetus in terms of the different capabilities it has at every point from conception to birth. I totally need that. Also, I've decided I really want to write a focus piece on all of those studies that claim that there's higher abuse in households with same sex parents...and the studies that specifically say there's not. I mean, of course I'm wildly biased on this one, but I don't think that means I can't do objective reporting. Like, painful, "tell me the precise methods you used every step of the way...yes, both of you" reporting. I can be irritatingly objective when I want to be.

OK, Daily Show time...but I'll talk about Dan Savage's new book soon. I just finished it and I'm kind of blown away.

Good Times, Great Oldies

Work has drastically improved since the beginning of last week. I've written three articles of increasing quality, in my estimation. I'm starting to remember what I liked about this in the first place: getting crash courses on little bits of science here and there. This week I've learned so much about the biological bases of alcoholism and addiction (Wednesday, genetics of addiction), why some diseases are a bitch to cure (Thursday, the open genome of bacteria), why it's so awkward when I hang out with Cat and Vaughan at the same time (Friday, mimicry as a social psychological phenomenon) and how to build the best sandcastle possible (researching for Monday, a revised model in granular physics). I'd be happy to tell you about any of them that you're interested in, but you'll also soon be able to see them on the site; we soft launch on Monday! Social stuff has also gotten easier...it's not like I have friends there, but I don't feel like I'm the weird chick on the outside anymore. I'm also happy to be sitting next to the two designers now...they're good guys.

This weekend I went up to New Haven. Last night was really, really nice. I trained in and met Jen at Woolsey hall for a performance of the Mahler 2. It's a pretty frickin' awesome piece. Inventive, yet listenable. Beautiful, yet not saccharine. Passionate, yet not slutty. Then I chatted with some people, walked with Jen for a bit and met Caleb at Koffee Too? On my way to K2 I called Vaughan to arrange lunch for tomorrow, he said he was busy, so I said "OK, later." I realized a few minutes later I probably should have explicitly asked him to call me. The Pounder (that's Caleb: Caleb = K-lb = K-pound = Pounder) and I took a walk over to the basement of the Becton center to explore, where Vaughan miraculously called me back. Caleb and I played music on a sculpture for a while then caught the last ten minutes of the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Chinese subtitles in Davies Auditorium. We then met up with Caleb's friends, Nat and Kit, as well as Kit's roommates at Rudy's. This was, unforgivably, my first time at Rudy's, and I was very pleased with the place. The fries were awesome, as promised, and we found a quiet area to chill and play asshole. I'm not a card game fan, nor a drinking game fan, but the game was mindless enough and the attitude was chill enough that I had a really nice time. That, and I won the first two games. We left and played a bit of fusball in the Branford basement with Nat and Kit (me with Nat, Caleb and Kit...they kicked our asses). After the game Nat and Kit instantly fell into each others arms and started making out. Awkward sidelong glance between me and Caleb. I stopped keeping eye contact in those situations; I feel too guilty. Then we all parted and Caleb and I sat in our respective beds chatting for a while and then went to sleep at about 3 am.

Today was a little less magical...the computer crashed in the debate tournament, so Vaughan wouldn't talk to me at all, or even tell me he wouldn't be able to make our lunch. So Caleb and I killed a lot of time in less-comfortable-than-I-would-have-liked silence waiting to get in touch with him. I felt pretty bad for dragging Caleb around while he probably could have been making better use of his time (although he later said he probably would have just slept) and fairly pissed at Vaughan for not being considerate enough to step out for 30 seconds and give us a time frame. We got lunch at Ivy Noodle (I was famished, not having had a square meal in about 25 hours) and went back to Caleb's, where I read Dan Savage's new book and Caleb read for a bit then gleefully (he's got a very adorable glee) jumped into bed, cuddled up in the covers and napped. When he got up we crashed the debate venue and managed to catch Vaughan for a 30 minute chat. So the two of them met...a truly important step in the crashing of the worlds. Caleb afterwards commented that Vaughan was a lot like me. I mentioned that yeah, we had startingly similar interests, but he said it was more than that, we had a similar way of talking and everything. I had almost forgotten. I'll get V's reaction to Caleb soon. Afterwards, Caleb and I went back to his room, chatted for about 15 minutes and then parted ways. He went to the dining hall, and I went to grab a light dinner with Jen and Andrew Korn. Lovely conversation ensued and continued for my car ride home with Jen.

Now I am home, chilling, reading, enjoying a little bit of time to myself with my parents out for the weekend. It's been a while since I've had this kind of simple privacy. I miss it.

Thanks for reading if you made it to the end. Tomorrow: attempt to see the adult version of Spelling Bee with Greg.

A Little Bitching and More

Second day at work: more extremes than the first. On one hand, during the second half of the day I became slightly more talkative and social, so perhaps I'm beginning to break the "mute, personality-less girl" thing I had going for the first day and a half. On the other hand, I feel fairly incompetent. I was given an article topic today and spent so much time frittering away, doing background research, that I didn't email or call any of the researchers involved until around 3:30 in the afternoon...far too late to expect a response. My real reason for not calling earlier was that I was too afraid to cold call people, as I didn't know that was done, too afraid to leave messages, because I didn't know if that was a good idea, and too afraid to ask my boss what to do, because I'd rather not seem clueless. But of course I wound up asking later in the day, and yes, I cold call, yes, I leave messages and follow those up with emails. Makes tons of sense. Just asking makes even more sense. I'm slowly getting the sense that my boss is disappointed in me already. I don't have great ideas for how to slant articles...they ask me "so what would your take be?" as if I've ever figured out how to angle a topic. I haven't. Ever. The YDN articles were always assigned to me and I'm too chicken-shit to write op-eds. But apparently I'm going to start angling them now. And how.

On the first hand, again, my two article topics thus far are pretty cool. People who are frequent users of drugs tend to have physical responses when they enter the location where they usually use. This is why people overdose in foreign places...it takes more to get them high in their usual locale, so they use their habitual dosage elsewhere, and it's too much. A few researchers found a way to stop this environmental memory-making in cocaine-using rats. That's the first cool article. As for the second article....I CAN'T TELL YOU! Na na n'naa na! It's embargoed until next Monday, when it will appear on the brand-spanking-new Seed site in all of its embargo-lifted glory.

But right now I'm feeling really nervous. I didn't get enough done today, I haven't had much of a social life these past few weeks. I even interrupted vaughan's reading at slave to talk to him, which I very rarely do, because I've been so socially deprived and seeing a friend without the mind-numbing schlepp to the city or farther was about the most exciting thing that's happened in a long time. I'm not sure about this work, and I hate feeling like a disappointment. I don't feel really invested yet...hopefully when I'm producing, and that work is going up onto a website, I'll naturally take more pride in my work. But right now I'm feeling negative emotions that haven't cropped up in the past year or two.

Also, I've begun to realize one luxury I had this summer (aside from the general vast amounts of free time). I was able to take a step back and prioritize according to what I believe is important, not what the world believes is important. And since I had been in that state of prioritizing goodness, security in oneself and intellectual curiosity for so many months, I forgot that what the world prioritizes is quality of output. And not overall quality of output: quality of output in projects that specifically affect them. You are valued if you do what you do well. This is something I've never valued in people. I mean, I love excellent work. I laud awesome novels, movies, songs, performances, businesses, etc. I trash things, generally, because I hate them...not because they're of poor quality. And I always, in some way, admire things I hate. I'm more likely to be extremely dismissive of genres, not specific works. Hearing the other young editorial folk talk about how bad different articles are is a huge shock back into reality. Then there's the dorky editorial assistant who seems ever so slightly ostracized because his comments are sometimes out of place and overly exuberant. Thus far, props to him.

Immersion

I began work today. I'm an adult. Pause. Pause ... Pause. OK, now you can burst out laughing.

Today was "get acquainted with all the science that's happened in the past week" day. I think I doubled my knowledge of technology, learning how to get and browse RSS feeds and use an awesome bookmarking service called del.icio.us (oh, what an economical use of an extension!). It's actually pretty awesome...works much like the gmail tagging system, but as many people as would like to can view the server and anyone with the password can edit it. I'll link you all to our main site when it gets up and running, which will be next Monday. I'll be writing one article per day. That's crazy. I mean, I can probably research via the internet and write up that quickly, but any and all interviewing and fact checking will make this one hell of a process. I'm looking forward to the challenge, though.

More than anything, I'm looking forward to the immersion in a field. I'm going to spend the next two months eating, drinking and breathing science news. I will be a science news machine. I think that's pretty exciting...to really gain a solid background in a specific field in a two month period. Now, of course, as soon as I start slacking off, assuming I don't continue directly with science news after it ends, my knowledge base will become completely outdated. Maybe they'll hire me and I'll continue with the whole thing...who can tell what the future holds?

The atmosphere was all right...hopefully I'll warm up to the people and all. Two things have to change: 1. I need to be friendlier. I'm not a friendly person. I'm a nice person, and I'm a good friend, and I'm very dynamic when I'm around my friends, but I'm crap with strangers and people I only know moderately. I just need to loosen the fuck up. 2. I need to not feel greasy. Whenever I wake up to early, I feel greasy. Sure, not immediately after my shower, but somehow I grime up over the course of the day. This just doesn't happen when I sleep until 11, but it really makes me feel incompetent and groggy for the entire day. I never woke up today. If I felt awake, that would help the friendliness. Damn the grime!

I'm not in much of a mood for writing tonight. Tomorrow my hands will be bound to the keyboard and I will be Seed's article grinding bitch. That will probably either make me totally sick of writing come the evenings or make me ache to philosophize in my writing and use beautiful, florid, masturbatory language. I think we can all bet on the latter.

So Why So Sad

I'm experiencing a brief bout of post-job-acceptance depression and anxiety. I imagine it's natural, as that's the typical diagnoses for reactions with specific stimuli. I don't have any question about whether I made the right choice in taking the internship, even though I received a lovely call from GLAAD yesterday inviting me in for an interview. I just wonder how competent I will be. I know I'm a smart kid, I really do, but everyone there seems to have more background in both science and journalism than I do. My co-intern sent me a quick, friendly email today introducing himself. I googled the guy, and he's in the middle of getting his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering. And he's also taking this unpaid internship in New York. I'm in good company, which makes me question my abilities even more. OK, my computer's behaving very badly, so I'm going to restart and hope that internet explorer doesn't continue to randomly disappear.

Let's Make Like Poland...

...and get occupied.

So, I'm interning with Seed...it's official. I'm really very excited about this whole deal. I grabbed a copy of their magazine yesterday, while I was interviewing with their child-prodigy President/Founder/CEO. It's great. To borrow a word from the debaters, it's dorktastic. They label their issues with the spectrum lines of the element whose atomic number corresponds to the issue number. I mean, that may not beat the dorktasticness of singing Pascal's Triangle, but it comes close. And I'm actually going to get to research and write on a daily basis...generally fill their brand-spanking-new website with content. I'll keep all ye faithful blog readers updated on the status of the site.

Meanwhile, I might have to kill my uncle (ooh, how Hamlet!) for getting me hooked on Su Doku. For those of you out of the puzzle circle, Su Doku is a logic game. You are given a 9 square x 9 square board, broken up into nine 3 x 3 blocks. Most of the squares are blank, but you are given a few numbers as clues. In the solution, each of the rows, columns and blocks will contain the numbers 1-9, each once and only once. You have to fill them in. Go! The puzzles range from pretty darn easy to pretty darn impossible. But they're all doable and require only your clear thinking and wit. I'm in love. Crossword puzzles: you are now my thing on the side.

Letter

This letter was in response to Lisa Randall's awesome editorial in the Times yesterday, which can be found here.

Dear Prof. Randall,

Thank you so much for your editorial in the New York Times yesterday. You very clearly articulated several points I've been making to fellow students, family and strangers in coffee shops for years.

I have to say that I am, sadly, pessimistic about some of your proposals. I believe scientific ideas will continue to be named and misnamed in their early stages of development using convenient and often colloquial terms.

From some of my conversations about the Big Questions in science, I've gathered that non-scientists give science credit on a couple of bases: its intuitiveness and its history of past successes. The notion of force and anthropomorphized descriptions of disease are fairly intuitive. Getting man to the moon and curing disease have been impressive successes, great PR. But because their faith in science is contingent on results and intuitiveness, not based on a deep belief inthe scientific method(s), it dwindles when faced with seriously unintuitive or non-productive ideas, such as cosmological theories or string theory. The dwindling has begun, and I doubt it will stop until we have a complete, workable theory for something the public considers significant.

I would love more people to be able to accept the complexity of science and the fact that "incomplete" does not mean "wrong." However, given the current political climate and state of the union, scientists telling non-scientists to "just trust us, we've been doing this for hundreds of years and know what's best," isn't going to fly. I really wish I knew of some way to make people accept science as it is and to understand that its weaknesses do not invalidate it. I just don't think asking them is going to do it. We need...collateral? a breakthrough? I don't know.

Anyway, I'm sorry for taking up your time if you've read this the whole way through. I didn't mean to sling my pessimism at you for so many paragraphs. Thank you again for bringing such important ideas to a large audience.

sincerely yours,
Maggie XXX [best not to have the last name in the blog]
(Yale '05, B.S. in Physics)

She sent me a very nice response:

Thank you for your thoughtful message. I wish I knew the answers. I personally decided to at least try to make it possible to understand more complex theories by writing a book and investigating what can be done. In any case, it's not just science these days, but everything that is overly simplified in the media. I hope it improves.

Best, Lisa Randall

Why, Professor Randall...write about science for the general public? What a splendid idea. I think I'll try it. (Come on Seed, take me on board, baby.)

Just the perfect blend...ship...

I hung out with Greg today, and we saw a showcase of songs from NYU Musical Theater alums, including those of our musical theater instructor. The show was of somewhat varied quality. I'm happy to say that Sam's numbers were among the best, with due credit to the awesome Laura Bell Bundy, who performed them. I also realized I say some HORRIBLE things around Greg. I could be lynched for some of my comments (for anecdotes, drop an IM). Some people say they like their friends or their boyfriends because they like who they are around them. I suppose this is a valid point. I even suppose that, in a way, I really like myself when I'm around the friends I say horrible things to (greg, vaughan, cat). But I think there's another aspect of friendship, which is that your close friends always give you the benefit of the doubt. A close friendship allows you the luxury of making truly borderline comments without a friend losing faith in your overall goodness. I think with these friends, especially, I have that kind of understanding: They know I'm a generally good person. I know they're generally good people. So we have knowledge of a certain half-joke that underlies our conversation. The bad comments we make aren't said without any sincerity, but they're not really vicious. More often then not, they're casual observations framed in the most biting style, as to create the greatest amusement for the other person. We don't have to laugh or express ourselves with extreme sarcasm or levity in order to clarify that we're not totally serious. The more sincere the tone, the more amusing the effect. It's the trust that makes it work. I appreciate that...so thank you, friends, for letting me be awful.

The Newest Possibilities

So, this week I've applied for two positions that I'm pretty excited about:

1. Editorial Intern with Seed Media Group. The description of the position is: Editorial Intern (Web)The Editorial Intern (Web) will turn out breaking science + culture news on a daily basis. This is an in-the-trenches opportunity to help build a news outlet as well as inhabit it as a beat reporter. Experience meeting tight deadlines a bonus; ability to take a slightly unconventional view a must.

I mean, that sounds just about perfect. This Seed group sprung forth from the loins of Seed Magazine, this pretty funky science magazine that Henry Kaiser interned for last year. They're all about science and they're all about criticizing the right's mishandling of science. I mean, I'm giddy about physics, I jerk off to cog sci, and I tear down walls (cell walls, damn you!) for stem cell research. I think I'll fit in well amongst these people. The interview's tomorrow, with a guy whose second google hit is a website called octacock (a play on octopussy, no doubt, although I haven't gotten a good sense of their site yet).

2. GLAAD National News Media Fellowship. To rip a bit from their website: "The National Fellow is primarily responsible for supporting GLAAD's National News program through monitoring print and broadcast media and sustaining relationships with national news reporters, editors and producers. -Plan, write, edit, and proof written materials including releases, alerts, letters to media professionals and other documents as needed. -Monitor assigned national media outlets on a daily basis and compiles coverage of GLAAD's work and issues pertaining to the LGBT community. " Etc.

If I'm thinking about law school...and I am...this would be a kind of great opportunity for me to do what I like, with an organization I like, for a cause I like, that would provide something on my resume to give to lambda legal after a year of law school that they would like. I would be pretty darn excited to do this and work with them, although I'm curious whether they'd object to my rampant heterosexuality. I tend to be fairly un-PC, which is fine when I'm talking about women ('cause, you know, I am one), but works a little less well when I'm talking about queer folk ('cause, you know, I'm not one by any typical standard). Hopefully they'll believe that this is because I accept homosexuality fully enough that I feel I can discuss it...I don't have to sidestep it out of deference to the experts. I mean, I don't think that would be a good way to handle any issue...but if you really plan on being a douche, sidestepping might be a good idea.

I hate defining myself as "straight." I tend to just go with "hetero." Although, let's be honest, I'm about as straight as they come. I'll only kiss people I have an emotional attachment to, and only hook up inside a monogamous relationship. I'm into nothing kinky, can't stand the mixing of pleasure and pain, and I never get bored with repetition, so the ultimate conclusion of a regular sexual routine would suit me fine. It's true, I watch gay porn, but I'm into that at least as much for the dynamic between the characters as I am for the sex. Television studios know that once the two characters in a show get together, the show's done. Porn's the same way for me. The climax is when the characters first kiss...not when they climax. Good porn, in my opinion, is the porn that can keep this dynamic going throughout the sex, so the viewer gets the characters physical and emotional excitement. Wow, I'm such a girlie girl.

Penguins

It has been too long! I will write a fuller update later today, including a discussion of a couple really cool jobs/fellowships/internships I've applied to, but for now, check out these articles:

March of the Conservatives: Penguin Film as Political Fodder

Central Park Zoo's Gay Penguins Ignite Debate

"Or as Laura Kim, a vice president of Warner Independent, put it: 'You know what? They're just birds.'
Oh, but they have become so much more than that." --Jonathan Miller of the New York Times

Something Is Wrong

I'm beginning to get concerned about this whole "unemployment" thing. While I don't mind that I don't actually have a job yet, I am pretty concerned that it's been over a month since my last interview, and I've actually applied for many more jobs since that interview than I had before. At the beginning of the summer, the interviews came rolling in...I had four interviews; about one for every three resumes I sent in. I must have applied for at least 15 jobs since my last interview, and I haven't heard word from any of them. I don't think I changed anything since then. I should be getting about the same response. Alas, I am not...and it worries me. Maybe I've added some huge typo to my resume? I'm scared to look. What could possibly be going wrong?

Being Disadvantaged (and insecurity in general)

An incident last night reminded me of a conversation I had with Vaughan a couple of weeks ago. We were discussing that time-old wonder of almost all couples being comparably good-looking. It's not uniformly true, I'm sure (I think I got the better end of the deal with Mike), but glancing around New York, I conclude the standard deviation is pretty small. I had always assumed that this was a simple evolutionary thing: you find the mate with the best looking face you can, and this pairs people up approximately according to looks. Vaughan mentioned a slightly different idea: the person who's the less attractive one in a couple with a large "looks gap" often becomes needy and clingy and constanty demanding of reassurance. This is a real drag on the better looking person and their relationship as a whole. If one person feels unworthy of the other person, the relationship can't work.

At first I couldn't believe that he was almost categorically putting the blame on ugly people. Then came last night's incident.

I was sitting on a reasonably crowded 6 train, and across from me, next to the door, was a woman with a cane, probably in her late 50s or early 60s. She had her cane somewhat precariously balanced on the pole next to the door. At one stop, a woman, probably around 35-40, walked on, brushed the older woman's cane and kept walking. Immediately the woman with the cane swoops down to pick it up and starts yelling at the younger woman. "Hey, when you knock over someone's cane you pick it up! Do you understand? Do you realize I can't walk without this cane? You have no respect for an older handicapped person! You young people, you don't have any manners. Schmuck! Bitch!" The other woman kinda muttered under her breath. But I was thinking, "Wow, this handicapped woman's a real dick!" Sure, it sucks to be disabled. Sure, that can piss you off and put you in a perpetually bad mood where you harass people on the subway in an obnoxiously loud voice and rude tone. But once, you're at that point, who cares if it's because you've suffered, you are legitimately being a dick! Perhaps this woman was sort of a pain beforehand, but I would guess that her disability exacerbated her irritable personality, as it would for many, many people.

And I believe this is the true ill done to people by having some disadvantage. The biggest problem with the handicap was not that she could walk, it's that it turned her into a genuinely unpleasant person. The problem with being physically unattractive is not that you're hard on the eyes, but rather that you become insecure about your looks and that affects all parts of your personality. I would say that Vaughan was probably right, to a degree. The less attractive people likely become worse boyfriends and girlfriends because they're insecure about their looks.

Insecurity is one of the most powerful forces. Any person who is fully secure comes off very, very well. Insecurities manifest themselves in so many little and big ways: arrogance, obnoxiousness, shyness, smugness, shyness with outbursts of smugness, fascism, whatever. Worst of all, I don't think there's any reliable method of eliminating insecurity. It's a lifelong goal, I suppose...

The Weekend

Wow, I haven't posted since I went to Yale for the evening. I think it's about time! Unfortunately, the time lapse means this will be more of a summary post than a content post.

My weekend has been absolutely lovely. Friday night I hopped off to Yale to see Safety Mix perform and see Caleb...not perform. The mix was pretty darn good. Lauren Hackney turned the audience quirk suggestion of Hurricane Katrina into tasteful hilarity. Molly's quirk of "has delayed reactions" just worked incredibly well. Of course, Austin's usual commitment to character made his every move a pleasure to watch. And at the end I got to participate in pick-up lines, where I received a few laughs and a few groans. Very exciting. The evening started out with an Ivy Noodle dinner with Caleb, after which we got coffee at K2? and walked with it up to science hill where we sat at a picnic table under the stars. Aw. After the show and a brief stop at the Dwight Hall Jam, where I had several musical orgasms listening to Shades sing Amen/We Shall Overcome, we went to Caleb's friends' place. First we hung out at a party with loud music and bad beer, then chilled with the friends and drank scotch. They were good folks, especially Nat, the one Caleb knows from math classes. He, too, is hot, and he, too, has a girlfriend. Unlike Caleb (thank God) he chain smokes like a mo-fo. One of the other friends was pretty cool...he was the scotch collector. The other seemed cool at first, but his cynicism started to piss me off pretty quickly. We headed back to Caleb's room and played a non-competitive (at my request) game of chess before drifting off to sleep. In the morning there was breakfast at the copper kitchen, then I chilled with Reiman and, eventually, Claire at Reiman's enormous new apartment.

Seeing both Caleb and Reiman was really cool. Things are always better with Reiman when I'm not taking classes with him and there's nothing to prove. As of now, there's absolutely nothing to prove and just shootin' the ol' bull with him was a joy. Yay, Reimamurti. Caleb is as awesome as ever and, of course, as taken as ever. Some people seem to think--it's not a poor assumption--that I hate Leslie, even though I've never met her. While I'll play along, I don't want to spoil anyone's fun, I actually have nothing but warm feelings for her. I would never have started the emotionally intimate and generally flirtatious relationship I have with Caleb if I wasn't comfortable in the fact that he's unavailable. If he were single I would have thought "no need, out of my league...don't want to scare the boy" and probably just had a few superficial chats in the dining hall. Since he's taken, I had no problem bonding with him...I'm certainly not out of his league for friendship. I'm not out of anyone's league for friendship. I'm awesome. Second reason why I'm grateful for Leslie's presence: Caleb really seems to like her, and he's loyal to her, and that makes me feel good about Caleb's attitude toward women. I could never date the vast majority of my male friends because I see the way they think about women, and while they're not, like, abusive, I just wouldn't want to be on the other end of their confused and somewhat messed up feelings. Caleb thinks lots of girls are attractive, but he really cares about his girlfriend and is committed to her. That's the kind of attitude I'm looking for in a man. Plus, Leslie's a park ranger. How cool is that?

The rest of the weekend was pretty chill. Lots of fun at two very relaxing parties: Alisa's apartment warming and Adam's birthday. My friends have great taste in friends. Both parties had a very warm feel, where everyone was dorky and nobody trying to seem too cool. I'm not going to be best friends with all of the attendees, but I felt comfortable with them. It was also good to see Josiah at Adam's party. I feel like I'd have a crush on him if I knew him better. But he's going to Costa Rica to write speeches for the once and (possibly) future president. Sweet to the sweet.

Yesterday I met Greg for coffee at Slave and showed him around The Chester. He and Vaughan finally met, albeit extremely briefly. V pointed out a benefit concert performance of On The 20th Century. I totally want to go, but the cheapest tickets still available are $250. And that's a little much. And by a little I mean at least $150 too much.

Well, there's the summary. Tomorrow I'll think.

Feelings, Nothing More...

This hurricane on the Gulf Coast is one of the worst things to happen to America in a long time. It will have horrible, long-term effects on more people than 9/11 (although fewer deaths), and one of the country's great cities with awesome history is under water. Nobody denies it: this really, really sucks.

Then why don't I feel anything? Why didn't I feel anything after the tsunami? Why, aside from a little bit of shock and sadness at, I won't lie, the damage done to the skyline, didn't I feel anything after September 11th? I would guess it's the impersonality of it all. I feel sad that Eric Seymour's childhood home is probably gone...and that's about it. I don't know people in New Orleans. I think this shows a lot about how people are wired, and some of it is not entirely flattering. We need a story. We need a face. These are the things that effect our emotions. Death tolls do not.

If I could ditch one aspect of human nature, it would be the in-group/out-group impulse. Any psychologist or non-vegetative person will tell you that people are interested in labeling themselves "us" and labeling someone else "them." I really hate this impulse. I want to feel equally bad when Africans or Middle Easterners are killed as when Americans are killed. I want to feel as bad when children or old people are killed as I do when college students are killed (does anyone else besides me get more upset about the deaths of 21-year-olds than about the deaths of 5-year-olds?). But even that gradient between people who are in my in-groups and people who are outside is very little. I mean, September 11th killed plenty of young, smart, Jewish New Yorkers, and I didn't cry over them. In order for me to feel truly upset, I have to know the person. And even if I know the person, I have to think about the person in order to cry over them. Emotional triggers are very bizarre indeed.

Minimal Expectations

I'm thinking back to last week, when we were watching Love Actually during the girls' reunion. In one scene, Emma Thompson recognizes that her husband, Alan Rickman, is the object of his secretary's advances and not far from succumbing to them. She says something to him like "That (whatever her name is) is very pretty. Be careful about that." Jess turned to the rest of us and said, "Can you imagine having to say that to your husband?" I realized then that, able to imagine it or not, I actually expect to say something like that to my husband at some point. Perhaps better, perhaps worse, I instead expect to confront the issue of the difficulty of monogamy for a man head-on, and possibly give him Lady Chatterly's husband-esque permission to find satisfaction elsewhere, given guidelines I'm almost comfortable with. Is this really weird? Yes! I think it is! But am I in any way wrong? Am I pessimistic or just being bizarrely realistic?

I quote a Dan Savage column from October 19, 2004, "You know what? Sooner or later everyone gets cheated on. Some researchers put the odds of one or both partners in a long-term relationship cheating at 80 percent. Toss in the likelihood of being cheated on in a short-term relationship, IDEAS, and the odds that you will be cheated on sooner or later climb to 100 percent. It sucks, sister, but there's not a lot you can do about it. " Considering I plan on having relatively few long-term partners (if the past is any indication of the future), I think that if someone will cheat on me, it will probably be my husband. Savage goes on to advise people to "be in denial about the likelihood, if not the certainty, that some guy, someday, is going to cheat on you." I'm not much one for denial, although I'm happy to practice it when something bugs me on a really deep level, but right now this is still hypothetical and not at all personal.

I know I'll feel differently about the inevitability of adultery when I'm actually in a long-term relationship. After dating Mike, I know I have more of a jealous streak than I'd like to admit. No, Mike didn't cheat on me, he was a very good boyfriend, but when he'd even mention that another girl was cool, I would start to just barely fume. And like the girly-girl that I am, the emotional connection is much more important to me than the sexual one. If I were to arrange for my (future, hypothetical) husband's adultery, it would certainly be something anonymous, with prostitutes or one night stands or something. And lots of protection.

It's a somewhat grim outlook for the future. Possibly all the grimmer because I could never, ever see myself having the desire to cheat on someone I was in a decent relationship with. I don't know, kids, comment on this one if you have anything to say. I'm hungry for lunch.

Worse Things

I'm making an executive decision that I'm too tired to actually discuss the true horrors of the day: the inundation of New Orleans and costal Mississippi and the trampling/drowning of almost 1000 Shiite pilgrims. So instead I'm going to talk about a smaller horror that's closer to home.

A few days ago my fellow Rumpus staffer, [NAME DELETED], was arrested on charges of first degree sexual assault, aka rape. I'm not exactly close with X, but here's what I know about him: he's smart, he gets drunk on weekends, he hooks up with a lot of women, and he's pretty damn good-looking. He always seemed like a decent enough guy, and I never would have expected this of him, but I'm not running to say "No! It couldn't possibly have happened!"

So the question arises: what do you do with someone before a trial? After a trial whether or not they're convicted. I mean, the law says that if you're convicted, you committed the crime, but juries make mistakes. The thought that someone would be labeled a rapist for the rest of his life and jailed and 0stracized and such when he didn't commit the crime is so saddening. And if he's let go but did commit the crime, how can we treat him normally? How do we know? Will people be wary around him for the rest of college and his life? If you saw a man who had just been arrested for rape and was out until his trial, would you shake his hand? Are people really innocent until proven guilty?

Since I'm tired, I'll free-associate. We shake the hands of people we meet for the first time as a gesture of trust and camaraderie. It's a way of putting yourself on the same level with that person. But how many of the people I know are deserving of my handshake? I believe it was Winston Churchill who said (I'm paraphrasing) "The best argument against democracy is five minutes with the average voter." I think the best argument against hand shaking is a few years with the average person. Even the average person who's hand you'd shake. He probably has some really unsavory views, some really disgusting habits, and is casually abusive to people without realizing it. We have to assume the majority of men whose hands we shake enjoy porn and have masturbated within the past few days at longest (I know nothing about the masturbatory habits of 30-70 year old married men, I admit it. No, that wasn't an invitation to tell me). A lot of them don't use soap to wash their hands after they go to the bathroom. I've mentioned before that one of my favorite books of all time is "Everybody Poops." It's a great thing to remember, but it can be awful. Every time you shake someone's hand you're shaking the hand of a pooper.

This brings me, rather circuitously, to an issue I have...the inability to view anonymous people as full people. When I hear about someone's girlfriend, I always picture an ill-formed girl who doesn't sweat, doesn't have much of a personality, doesn't have distinguishing features. Which means I'm always shocked at just a little disgusted when I meet the girl. "Oh, when you talked about your girlfriend, you didn't mean 'Platonic ideal of girlfriend that would actually add nothing to your life in terms of fulfillment, you meant this weirdo chic who probably challenges you and is making you crazy." I feel this way with guys, too. Which is why (by "why" I mean "a very small one of many reasons why") I have to be really inspired to be attracted to someone. When I see a guy, he's a hairy, sweaty person with awkward bone structure. I have to already love someone as a friend to be able to take his humanness as an endearing quality and not as totally repulsive. Which isn't to say he still doesn't have to have a great smell. He does. Oh, he does.

The Kickback

I think keeping this journal of sorts has made me think more on a casual basis. I always work best when I have someone to impress, and a semi-anonymous readership of infinite potential is an ideal source of motivation. On the other hand, it's pretty irritating because I keep thinking of things when I'm out and forgetting about them by the time I sit down to write. I'm going to push through as many things from the past day or so as I can remember.

I just read in The Advocate that yet another high school, this one in Georgia, has decided to ban all non-academic clubs for the purpose of banning a gay-straight alliance. This is the sort of stuff I both love to hate and hate to love. I love to hate it for obvious reasons: I see banning a gay-straight alliance as so unequivocally wrong. I don't have to constantly entertain another side in my mind while I'm thinking about this issue. It's so clear: they're being motherfuckers. I suppose the only other side, one of my favorite controversies, is the question: should someone always do what they believe is right, even if you believe that what they believe is right is absolutely wrong? It's such a great question...right on the border of ill-formed. That might be my favorite question to ask myself in times of intellectual boredom. Should you always do what you believe is right? Well, of course you should! Act on what you believe is right! But what if that comes into conflict with what other people think is right? The Inquisition might be a good example. Putting aside the likely case that the Inquisition's motivation was to wield power, not to save souls, if they really did think they were saving souls when they forced people to confess as they were tortured and killed, given that they had this belief, were they doing wrong? I mean, surely we'd all hurt somebody in the short term to save that person in the long term, right? We might tie a loved one who was an addict to a bed so they could go through withdrawal. We might break up an abusive relationship even if it seriously emotionally hurts the person in the short run. So why wouldn't we force the person we loved to obey rigid standards that defied their impulses and desires if we were sure it would get their soul into the kingdom of heaven? I don't think we can really set standards by saying "you can do whatever you want as long as it doesn't violate another person's rights" because rights are somewhat subjective. I mean, I think I know exactly what rights people have. I'd love to set those rights as standards for everyone else. But I have to acknowledge that my reasoning isn't universal and I have no reason to believe a priori that I am better qualified than anyone else to make these decisions.

So where was I? Right, why I hate to love these people who cancel all extracurriculars just to stop a gay-straight alliance. Well, at least they're making themselves clear. I find something very refreshing about the Fred Phelpses of the world. The people who are willing to say "God hates fags and so do I!" We know where he stands. We know he's homophobic. I find much more disturbing people who say they're not homophobic but then add in "It's not about that. It's about protecting marriage. And the children." Stop playing politician, kids. You're trying to protect marriage and children from homosexuals. That means you think that homosexuals are something you need to be protected from. You may say you think children do best with two parents of different sexes, but can you really think that the damage caused by not having this sort of parenting situation can possibly be worse than any of many legal things? Alcoholic parents? Single parents? Mentally ill parents? Cold parents? Parents who smother you? Parents who push you too hard? Parents who unwittingly look at you in the wrong way when you're three and thereby screw you up for life? I imagine there are many, many ways in which children can be hurt by even well-meaning, well-equipped parents that far outweigh the problems caused by missing a parent of one of the two sexes. Let's face it. We're all messed up to a degree, and that degree is much higher than the messed uppedness having same sex parents could possibly cause.

But getting back to people who piss me off. Almost worse than the politicians are the people who act like they're doing the world a favor by not being racist/sexist/homophobic/classist. It's hard for me to put my finger on, but I see people who constantly carry the attitude of "Acknowledge my goodness! I am not like those other white/male/straight/wealthy people who choose to look down on you. I have chosen to put myself at your level. Am I not good?" This feeling that you had a choice in the matter, that you could have been awful but instead chose not to, is absolutely appalling to me. This notion carries the tacit notion that you do have some sort of superiority. If you truly believe in something, here, equality, you should not feel at all self-congratulatory for acting on it. If you have that feeling, you don't believe in equality with your whole being. Now, I should be clear that all traits that really piss me off in other people I experience in myself. I occasionally catch myself feeling self-congratulatory, and it's one of several things that bring me a constant feeling of guilt.

Wow, I had so much more to say, but it's time to watch SVU. I'll write more tonight. On important things. Like New Orleans, the 850-or-so deaths in Iraq today, and the rape charges brought against a fellow Rumpus staffer.

Straddling the Edge

I really should be carrying a journal around with me. Some of my best thoughts, as far as I can tell, happen when I'm sitting around and staring into space or driving. And then I always forget them when I come to write in my blog. So, at the risk of causing accidents on the Bronx River, I should get me a journal. But I'll do my best for now.

Today I went wine tasting with Vaughan. While the day was a little low energy due to the oppressive weather and early hour of arousal, I, of course, had an amazing time. The wineries themselves were great. Every building we tasted in was beautiful, but some were more glorious than others. Taking the cake was Raphael, whose large rooms, Mediterranean feel, magnificent views, and gorgeous furniture only served to highlight their superb wines. The first place we went to, Jamestown, I believe, was also a highlight. The building was a bit rustic, all wood, and the man who gave us the wine was friendly and informative. He and V had a good little chat about the supreme court ruling on wine importation (or something of the like) and he told us a bit about the long island wineries. The wines, in general, were very good. I think over the course of the day I actually developed a taste for Merlot and discovered Cabernet Franc, which is bold and fruity (much like a flamer in the deep south). I also honed my still fairly dull ability to pick out tastes from wine. The first one I discovered was pepper. It's a really strong smell, and it is peppery, but I wouldn't have placed it as such today. I can also get the plum/cherry/blackberry taste and can smell fruit and flowers a bit. I'll need some more work before I can name the percentages of each ingredient.

We also met a crazy and/or--emphasis on the and--drunk woman in one of the wineries. Apparently she plans on opening a dessert place on the end of the island. And she wanted to call it something silly like the "just at the edge dessert plaza." The wine man suggested "On the Edge." Vaughan and I said that sounded a little suspicious, but she assured us that they all had multiple personality disorder there, so it would be accurate. So I suggested "Off the Edge." She decided to compromise at the awful-mental-image-conjuring "Straddling the Edge." I whispered to V that that sounded like a name for a bisexual bar. She also seemed to have a very specific idea of what my relationship to V was. I believe she thought we were dating but we hadn't been dating for long. When she asked me if I was in any kind of therapy (do you get how she's crazy?), I told her that I was in therapies both dermatological and headache-preventional. And, I added, my headache prevention medicine could act as a mood alterer in higher dosages. Vaughan asked what it was, and I told him, and the woman seemed shocked that I would tell this man the name of my medication, like he would be scared away by it. Clearly she doesn't know many Jews and Catholics.

And the day outside of the act of wine tasting was lovely as well. Of course the two hour car rides flew by as we sang to Vaughan's ipod playlists...his "singin in the car" playlist reigned on the way there, and I did most of the picking on the way back. We had a nice listening to the uptempo songs from that great work of theater, On the 20th Century. Ah, the joys of belting "Babette" driving down the highway. The pleasures you may never know. Hanging out with Vaughan was great...even if the conversation stalled a little more than usual. Social genius, that man is. Some of the potential readership of this blog is, too. Social savants know not their strength! Use your power for good.

OK, I had more to say about not feeling like I own my intelligence...but I may have discussed that already, can always come back to that in the future. For now, you have the summary of today.

Chin Up, Keep Muddling Through

I got rejected from BMI, bah. I was pretty upset about that today, but I've decided to do the healthy thing and repress all of my emotions and make this a damn interesting blog entry if it kills me.

OK, so what's interesting? I was thinking today about the way we, nowadays, portray aliens in our movies. They're robot-ish, intelligent but difficult to understand, but perhaps most importantly, they usually ooze some kind of unfortunate fluid or have disturbing eyes or unappealingly textured skin. I have to figure that our portrayal of aliens is really just a portrayal of how we believe outsiders would view humans. In some ways, the answer is good, in that we're intelligent. But the answer is also an emphasis of the strangeness of our bodies. How we may appreciate them because we're used to them, but they're really slimy and disturbing and would appall anyone who was unfamiliar with them and encountered them. These aliens are also usually immoral creatures with a hint of amorality. It's a bit of "they know not what they do...ok, well, maybe they have a clue and just don't care...or take a little bit of sadistic pleasure in it." It expresses an ambivalence about the negative aspects of our nature. We reap all we can from the planet, from the animals, from each other under the guise of survival. But we really do know what we're doing. And maybe we get more than a little bit of a kick out of pillaging earth. Now, why do I assert that our portrayal of aliens is a reflection on how we view ourselves? To me it seems intuitive, but at least part of it is that we are conceiving of a different intelligent life. But we can't conceive of a kind of intelligent life we know nothing about, so we just emphasize and deemphasize human features. The alien is what we both desire and fear in our fellow man. He is "the other," but not so other than any part of him is truly alien to us.

Now wasn't that interesting? And almost coherent considering I wrote it after my bedtime?

Something else I was chatting with my Dad about the other day: I'm not sure that I believe in catharsis. Now, that's not to say that absolutely nothing is cathartic. I'll grant that sometimes it can be good to cry or exercise or whatever. But I generally find, as does research, I believe, that a so called act of catharsis only very temporarily sates a desire and, in the long run, actually increases that desire. I mean, that's how sex/masturbation/orgasms work, right? You don't desire it much until you start it. Then the need becomes more frequent. Speak to anyone who's been out of a relationship for a week: they desperately crave sex. Speak to anyone who hasn't hooked up with anyone in two years: they'd like it, but the need isn't so immediate. Catharsis is somewhat self-defeating, here. This is also the case with violent movies. Some say these movies get out the tendency toward violence in a non-destructive way. I believe most studies show that by watching violent movies, people really do become more violent. I would love to believe in catharsis for all desires, just I as I would love to believe that there's absolutely no drawback to watching porn. Unfortunately, all experience points against both of these.

Also interesting! Discuss amongst yourselves. Or in the comments section.

Up and Running to NYC Tomorrow Morning

As for the first part of the title of this entry, my website, www.maggiewittlin.com, is up and running! I think it's pretty stellar, and even given that you probably got here via that site, I feel I should tell you to go and explore. It's awesome. I think.

And for the second part of the title, tomorrow we move Natalie into her dorm. Aaah! I can't believe she's going to college...not because she seems too young, but actually because she seems too old. She's not wildly excited for college, because she lived on her own for most of the summer and, to be honest, most of the year. She doesn't really want for freedom, and the work she's been doing at the voice has been intellectually stimulating. On the other hand, she's not dreading college, because she's used to most aspects of it. I really hope she finds things she loves at Barnard. And people she loves. And I hope she doesn't get wigged out by the simple fact that she is going to be in a FRESHMAN class with other FRESHMEN (freshwomyn?), half of whom will probably need to be bitch-slapped. I'm sure she'll be OK, though. I think college will be bad in exactly the ways she's resilient to and be good in exactly the ways she needs. At least I really hope so. Only the best for my sister.

Yesterday I saw The Pillowman with Greg. My God. That might have been the best show I've ever seen. No, really, I think it might have been. There were so many incredible moments, and the whole show just had my emotions and thoughts on a string. Except for the end of the first act (which was probably actually the second out of three acts), which involved a bit of a cliche that was supposed to be pulled off as shocking, I think. But besides that, it was awesome. And spending time with Greg was, as always, great. He seemed a bit insulted that he hadn't yet been mentioned on the blog, so I'm going to chat about Greg for a bit.

I wondered why I hadn't said anything about him yet, considering I've spent more time with him than pretty much anyone else this summer. I'll venture a couple of guesses. First, my relationship with Greg is very simple: I just plain like him. I have a good time when I'm with Greg. We have a lot (beyond interests and into mannerisms, etc) in common. And while I've become somewhat closer with him recently, this isn't much of a surprise. I've always known Greg was great. And I don't want to jump him, so that eliminates that motive for talking about someone ad nauseum. Second, Greg's going to remain more of a fixture as the year begins than pretty much anyone else. I guess there won't be any sudden changes in Ethan's life either, but Greg's already working and makes lots of time for me. Other people are already elsewhere or will soon be starting school or some other activity that will decrease their availability. So I feel confident that Greg's sticking around. And third, why should I be justifying my lack of discussion on the subject of Greg? I feel like I've been talking about two or three friends almost exclusively since I started writing this thing. Really, the blog is fucking self-centered. Because I'm fucking self-centered. Because I spend my entire day with me, and everything that's done to me affects me, and I care very deeply about me.

So, friends, the moral of that paragraph was: just because I don't talk about you, it doesn't mean I don't love you. It's just a function of me loving me somewhat more and of me being secure in my relationship with you. Which is important. So feel proud to be wholly absent from the blog! But don't get too scared if there are twenty references to you already. It doesn't mean anything too bad. Probably. Moohoowahaha...no, really. It doesn't.

Ugh, I have to wake up early tomorrow.

Ultimatum

I have just found the great satisfaction and calm that comes from issuing an ultimatum. In this case the ultimatum was to digitalibiz.com, who is SUPPOSED to be hosting my website (the in progress and awesome maggiewittlin.com). They did not, as promised, respond to my support request within 24 hours, and I have informed them that if the problem is not fixed, or at least seriously addressed, by 9 am tomorrow, I will take advantage of their 30-day money back guarantee and take my damn business elsewhere. Oh, I feel powerful! I feel decisive! I feel like a business woman! I will see if they respond accordingly, and if not, web.com has an even better deal than theirs. Digital iBiz will know no wrath, no fits, no anger. They will simply see $115 withdrawn from their earnings. OK, I may post some mean comments on review boards, too. We'll see.

Tarot

I just finished another rousing victory in solitare. I think I've gotten worse at the game since I started playing sometime this semester when I had no work. That might be because my skill level has decreased, but it is more likely due to a sudden increase in my standards. It is not enough for me to win the game...in order to claim true victory, I have to win WELL. A perfect game would be one that ends with four aces on top and full columns of cards (even better, I suppose, would be no aces and full columns including aces, but I hardly try for that). The closer to this the better, and I judge each completion based on what card is the highest card up top when the game is won. If there are three aces and a four, then it's a four...there's no averaging. This means that during games I will start to compromise: if I put one deuce up top, I become willing to put the other three up top if it betters my chances of winning. In any case, that game is a minimum level two...it can no longer achieve the coveted title of Level One Victory. Cards may, occasionally, be brought down from the top during a game. If it was convenient to, say, put a three up top early on in the game, but then I needed to join a four to a two, I could bring that three down. I cannot, however, bring cards down without immediate need.

I have to struggle, somewhat, not to find meaning in these games. Solitare, and its more addictive cousin, Minesweeper, bring me into a sort of aggravated Zen state where I feel as if I've found the meaning of my life and the universe in the randomness of the spread. Minesweeper does this more effectively, as it is infinitely more absorbing due to its nature: it is a constant, immediate puzzle. I become absorbed in these games, and I have to convince myself that every aspect is a random function generated by my computer. These patterns are not beautiful fractals. I cannot "sense" what is going to happen...what cards will turn up, how many mines will be adjacent to a specific space. God does not favor me in these games. There is no higher power concerning himself (or herself, I suppose, but my mysticism says him) with my victory ratio. I am not being timed, sent back to my life after just the right number of lost solitare games. Still, the feeling is inevitable. This grand mysticism only heightens my actual atheism. If I can feel divine presence in something so straightforward and artificial as a solitare game, then this feeling is irrational and I can dismiss it from the larger scale notion of "fate."

Although I do--and, wow, do I hate to say it--sort of believe in fate. I kind of can't get around it. I ultimately believe that I will succeed in life, and that belief is based on my faith in fate. Well, fate and the clawing encouragement of others. So many people have expressed confidence in me over the years. They all truly believe that I will do well. I have an incredible urge to be self-defeating, mostly because others seem to believe it is my fate to do great things, and I desperately want to take my fate into my own hands...or at least out of God's. I want to disprove that notion and allow everyone I know to wallow in great disappointment. "Wallow, teachers! Wallow, relatives! Wallow, friends! See how I, a brilliant, competent, semi-mentally healthy woman have failed you all!" And I will not have failed myself, because great things were never really on my agenda. I can still think and write and produce what I need to while living a simple life. God, at times I really, really just want to work at Borders for eight hours a day and live in a crappy apartment in Mount Vernon and hang out with friends and write prose and lyrics and occasionally take pictures of naked men.

Would that be so bad? Would I really be as unsatisfied as everyone says I would? Would I be less satisfied than if I were a lawyer or consultant or some profession that stimulated my intellect and sapped my soul? I'd rather space out for eight hours a day than bill on 12 minute cycles and feel the same stress my father regularly feels. I'll probably take the middle way and do something all right. Mediocrity isn't as glorious as sublime failure, I know, but I think it's enough. I'll go into communications. I'll do well. Perhaps in 10 years I'll be reasonably respected in that field. Maybe I'll write one full-length musical and it will be listenable and amusing but somewhat incoherent and not at all provocative. Maybe I'll make $100,000 a year at my earning peak. Maybe I'll have a few good relationships but never get married. And for the ultimate in half-assedness, maybe I'll carry a child for a nice gay couple I love and get to see the kid on weekends. There would be something horribly beautiful in all of that.

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like School

The summer, as it is usually delineated, is rapidly winding down. We are in the last throws of August, and most incoming freshmen are already at pre-orientation programs. Natalie goes to school in a week. Lauren is leaving for fucking michigan on fucking wednesday...Jess for freakin' Italy not too long after...Soon even Vaughan will be back at work, filling young minds with physics and philosophy and terror. And I'm stuck doing absolutely squat while I hope to get a job offer...or at least an interview. The transition from vacation to unemployment is going to be a fairly quick and brutal one, and I'm not looking forward to it. These are the days when I wish I had taken the job with R.A. Rapaport. I saw their ad up again...maybe they'd take me if I came crawling back.

But I won't go crawling back. I'm going to patiently and quietly go after every good job that pops up until I get a letter from the ACLU saying "please be my media relations liaison!" or a letter from michael lucas saying "please be my right hand woman!" Wow, if I could work for Michael Lucas I would just flip. He's everything I could want in a business man...a Russian Jewish immigrant who worked his way up from nothing to the greatest gay porn producer/star east of LA. He doesn't drink or smoke or do drugs, and he always uses protection and insists that his actors do as well. He's a fresh perspective on life, and doesn't think that gay people should get married, even though they should have the right to because "we pay the same taxes as everyone else." And he's really hot.

Have I mentioned that I really, really want to get into BMI? If I get into BMI, I'll be a happy person. I promise. Not permanently happy, but I'll at least be happy for a little while. Because if I get into BMI, then my life will have some semblance of direction. My job will only be my day job, and hopefully I'll love my day job and want to turn it into an awesome day career, but if I don't love it, oh well, I'm a budding lyricist who needs to support herself. If I don't get into BMI, then I'm looking for the beginning of a career...the beginning of my life. And I'm just not ready for that yet! That's the sort of thing that will drive me to law school...and I don't think I REALLY want to go to law school...it's just the least time for the highest degree and therefore the job that requires the most interesting thought. Hm, hopefully if I get rejected from BMI, I will be notified right before I go wine tasting with Vaughan next week. Then I can get drunk on fine long island wines (wow, something fine comes out of long island?) and check out men with V. And it will all seem OK...until the next day when I'm alone with monster and idealist.org.

Let's Hear It For the Girls

Some of my best high school memories are of "girls' nights," where we'd sit in Amy's den and eat fondue and watch Patrick Swayze movies. Usually all this was followed by a bisected game of truth or dare ("Truth," as the case was) where we'd find out just a little too much about Jenny's love life. She enjoyed having sex with Josh in a mirrored bathroom where she could watch herself. Josh has an 8-inch penis and can autofellate. Jenny sort of left the group before we could hear about STDs and how she was having too much sex to pass into sophomore year of college. In any case, girls' nights were great. While I felt as though I'd spilled my guts about my elementary school homoerotic adventures and my early predilection toward masturbation in the first session or so, there was always more to talk about, and talk we did.

This year, Jess R. started a little weekly gathering where four of us girls would get together and eat a pizza dinner and gab. Alexandria floated in at the beginning and out at the middle, but this particular group solidified around the four of us: Jess, Lauren, Jen and myself. This weekend, Jen came up from Philly for a girls' reunion. We got together at Jess's house on Friday night, made pasta and watched Love Actually. Yesterday we got manicures/pedicures/massages, I went to Woodbury commons with Jen and Lauren for cheap and awesome Pumas, and we all reconvened at Lauren's for some Chinese food and half of three movies. Today was slaving, City Limits and The Wedding Crashers with Jen and Lauren. All so great.

I like these people a lot. Maybe it's because Jen and Lauren are, in some was, two of my biggest fans. I suppose that cheapens our relationship, so allow me to rephrase it: Jen and Lauren completely understand my humor and I love the form conversation takes when I'm around them. I'm at once intelligent and witty and silly and fun, and I feel them responding in kind. I react to them well, they react to me well, and we get into a great rapport. And, let's face it, I like looking into their eyes. No, no, not gazing romantically or any of that crap. They're just good at exchanging looks of understanding. Although to put myself just a step back in the red, it's not wholly different from what I enjoy in the men I like. The dynamic of looking into their eyes, them looking back, us laughing, is the entirety of what I find attractive. But with the men, I want to kiss them. With the girls, the buck stops at the conversation. (I almost wrote "the buck stops before the bucking starts." Should I have?)

This whole "public diary" thing is a little funky, because I'm somewhat unwilling to put down any truly personal information. I mean, SURE, my interest in gay porn, the fact that I naked-humped two of my best female friends on a regular basis in third grade, my elation when I found out that cunnilingus actually existed and it wasn't merely a creation of my masturbatory fantasy can all go up here, but these are practically universal knowledge! God, I hope potential future employers don't read this. Although I suppose that information is none too incriminating, if too much to swallow at a first glance. The problem with the public diary is not those bits of information, but more than I could never say I dislike someone I know or even overtly say that I have a crush on somebody I have a crush on, obvious as it may or may not be to that person and the rest of the world.

Anybody might be reading, and I don' t mind ANYBODY, I mind very, very specific people taking a glance at the blog and seeing my true feelings about them splayed out onto virtual paper. Or worse, they could see the fleeting sensation of the moment on the virtual paper and assume those were my true feelings. And perhaps more dangerous than my extreme feelings for people is my nonchalance toward others...people who would like to be slightly obsessed over or other people I should, in theory, despise. Perhaps I just don't care that much. Perhaps my personality tends so much toward the obsessive that my feelings toward my best friends are completely eclipsed by my feelings toward some cute guy who's certainly nice enough, who shares a delicious rapport with me and who, of course, has wonderfully sparkly eyes. But that guy doesn't joyously sacrifice hours every week he's near to be with me. I'm not the first one he comes to when he has problems or tickets. Those friends are! And that really should build our relationship. Damn you, evolution, for being so successful in putting my sexual and romantic interests above all else. And damn you more for giving me a hankerin' for men I can never have! Why blame my insecurities when I can blame evolution? Better it than my mother.

Last Night's Dream (not an entertaining post)

I've been told never to tell anyone my dreams. Not because people want to repress me or anything, just because there's nothing duller than hearing about someone else's dream. I'm sure that's true...it's exactly like telling a story where you can't remember the flow and there's no punchline and the other person doesn't know the characters (they've come out of your head...they're not even the real people). Add all this to the fact that it's just not real and nobody suffered any real consequences and the question "So how did he react?" is completely useless, and you have a crappy, crappy-ass monologue.

But to hell with that. This is MY blog.

Last night I dreamt that my grandparents, my sweet, innocent, slightly hard-of-hearing but still with their wits about them grandparents had plotted to kill my father. And each member of my family (my mother, my sister, and myself) had a part to play in the killing of my dad, which we were supposed to perform with easy deception and calm. My mother did her part, I'm sure, my grandparents did more than their part, and to my shock, I performed my assigned part, hardly comprehending what I was doing. My sister was the only one who refused to do anything. At some point, we were all, grandparents included, father not, sitting around my living room. It was clear to me that my father had already been killed, and my mother mentioned something about calling him or waiting to get home. While everyone was aware of exactly what was going on, nobody dared spoil the perfect facade, until I spat something at my mother about "...and EXECUTION," and she burst into tears. I, too, began to cry and started to hug her. I motioned for my sister to come hug us, but she refused to join her murderous family. I kept saying "Just us!" meaning that the hug would exclude the grandparents, the true villains in the scheme and the ones who would have to suffer least because of it. Natalie did come over and joined the hug, and we all wailed as we began to accept that our father would never be back.

So yeah, tough shit. I woke up shakier than I have been in years, after a dream. Had I had this dream at age 5, I so would have been in my parents bed in about three seconds. But as it was, I lay there until I fell asleep again and had a few just as vivid but much less disturbing dreams.

Why my grandparents? I've certainly had enough dreams about their deaths, and I've always been shaken to the core thinking that they'll someday die. And, not to be too negative, but their deaths will probably--and, dare I say it, hopefully--come many years before that of my father. I love them. They're really great folks, despite their general geriatricness. I saw them today. Things have certainly gotten much more awkward between myself and the grandparents. I don't really know what to talk with them about. Then again, I'm not close to many adults (real adults, I mean) besides my parents. I don't get much beyond polite conversation with even the closest of my mom's friends, and I keep a significant emotional distance between myself and my former teachers. So maybe it's the adult thing. Then again, Mr. Arrigo has read most, if not all, of the erotica I've written...including those pieces I haven't published. Like the one between two very thinly veiled teachers. Some adults, perhaps, don't need to be protected so much. Then again, I know a little too much about exactly how Mr. Arrigo takes his sexual pleasure. Perhaps I shouldn't assume they're OK with hearing the raunchy stuff until they've extended some hint in my direction.

Natalie tries to avoid Griz and Bucky (the grandparents) as much as possible. I know she has no interest in seeing them because she doesn't have anything to talk about with them, either. I can hardly blame her. But my Mom thinks there's something more. She thinks they scare her because they're old. I can understand that, too. Age is a bit of a disability. Every time I pick something up for them, I feel like I'm flaunting my own nimbleness. And then there's the whole imminent doom(ain?) thing. My my grandmother's 77 and my grandfather's pushing 81. While this doesn't mean they're in their last five or even ten years, they're hitting the life expectancy. How many people really live to 95? It's very scary that they'll be gone relatively soon. I've already spent substantially more than half the time I will ever spend with them. Wow...I've never thought of it that way before. Will they ever see their great-grandchildren? Maybe I really should get a boyfriend...start the ball rolling and all.

Aberration in the Suburbs

Tonight I had a lovely Japanese dinner with Alisa at a place called Abis in Mamaroneck. The great virtue of Abis is their stunning ginger salad dressing. My Christ, you've never tasted anything like this stuff before. We buy "Gio" Japanese ginger by the bottle, and Gio is good, no doubt, but it can't hold a flickering candle to Abis's ginger dressing. Alas, I forgot that long enough not to order the salad, boo, and was forced to bum a leaf of lettuce off of Alisa.

As we got into her car to pull out of our much coveted Mamaroneck parking space, I turned to see, walking down the main street of quaint Mamaroneck, the most garishly dressed transvestite ever. In the history of Greenwich Village, Castro, Oxford Street in Sydney...wherever. Our subject probably started as an overweight light-skinned black man in his mid forties. He added a long, straight black wig (decidedly the best accessory in his ensemble) and some hot pink lipstick that just overstepped his lip line. He wore a long, flowing boa/robe. The feathers--hot pink, of course--lined a lacey body that might have looked near-appropriate on a transvestite with a trim figure. Our subject was not this transvestite. The real kicker of the outfit lay under the robe, where a massive ass was draped with a tiny, white tennis skirt, and enormous man-boobs and a rolling belly bounced under a transparent black mesh top, giant man-boob nipples undulating with every step. Somehow my eyes didn't even make it to the shoes. He was horrible and frightening, yet I couldn't look away. The whole staff and patronage of the Verizon store stepped forward a few seconds after he passed to gape and gawk and the like.

Now, I suppose it's generally considered proper etiquette to call a transvestite "she." Unfortunately, I don't think this feller--yes, feller--earned that right. Many transvestites are a credit to my sex. They dress better than I do. Their makeup is neatly, if brightly applied. They most certainly have better upper arms than I. Our specimen was an insult to all transvestites as well as transsexuals and transgendered folks, who, by the unfortunate non-coincidence of having the same prefix, get grouped under a common heading. Perhaps the boy started in the Village, was told to walk north to find Chelsea, missed it, and kept going. I don't know. I just hope he continued and made it to Playland. Atrocious taste and all, he's exactly what the Westchester kids need.

Diary?

I just finished a reasonably awesome book called Magical Thinking. It's a series of vignettes from the life of gay neurotic genius genius genius Augusten Burroughs. He's uneducated. He's self-obsessed. He's successful. So, pretty much, he's living the American dream of getting columns upon columns of acclaim for writhing on paper. Few to motivate him, none to guide him. So I've been obsessively browsing his website, not least because he's a bit of a looker, that one is, and he gives the advice that those who want to become writers should write every day. It's the same advice every writer gives, really, but it takes someone I want to listen to in order to push an idea through my head. It's like how three people recommended Me Talk Pretty One Day, but I only got to it after Vaughan recommended it. Did I mention why I read Magical Thinking?

In any case, I'm going to attempt to write every day. It's going to be shit, I warn you. I am leading the drab life of the unemployed, which not only gives me limited interaction with the outside world, but also turns discrete events into one long smudge of "day," letting the stories blend in with the rest. I expect my "voice" will change. I just pondered the concept of finding my Voice and noted that it's still not here. Are you imagining Ariel furiously clawing at Eric, trying to demonstrate that the black haired bitch next to him is an evil, butch sea-witch and not the love of his life? I sure am. In any case, I can get into modes...LOL mode, dorky-witty mode, bitter homo mode (I'm right around there now)...but I can't just talk. Then again my audible voice gets into modes, too. Maybe it's hopeless.

But, Goddamn it, I'm going to try. However, now I need to help Natalie get all techy and shit. And by "all techy and shit" I mean she hasn't signed onto her Barnard email yet because it's broken and she barely cares. While I wish she were more thrilled for college, as that would mean a guarantee that she'd actually go come two Mondays from now, I'm secretly really, really proud that she's not getting into "yay, college! I heart Barnard! Best four years of my life!" mode. Because that will only set her up for disappointment...it sure set me up for disappointment, and I only had a toe or two through that door.

In any case, get so unexcited for the diary. Several entries a day. You know you love it 'cause it hurts so good.

How to Feel Free

I recall someone mocking a survey that said Americans feel most free when driving their cars. Not when exercising our right to vote, not when waving banners or speaking out against government. No no, we feel freest when driving our cars. Well, of course we do...what do you expect? Freedom is a sense of possibility. Voting's so stuffy, and you can hardly feel the alternative while you're doing it. When we drive, we're in motion, we see stasis all around us, we're passing the earth in a race.

I exercised my favorite freedom tonight when I left the Last Chance dance without a word. For those wandering aboard, the last chance dance is a dance for the seniors that is theoretically our last opportunity to hook up with someone from our class. You put a down a list of "crushes" and if you match with someone, they tell you. I, of course, didn't match with anyone (save one friend who put his friends down), so I didn't have any person as a goal during the dance. I went for an hour, had some cheese that left me with atrocious breath, drank to get rid of breath, failed, danced for a bit, and walked out without saying goodbye to anyone. I love doing that. I feel so oppressed when I have to say goodbye...what a great feel to walk out. To realize that you'd rather be home than here and walk.

And now I feel depressed, sure, but I didn't feel any better at the dance.

The Beginning of the End of the Beginning

Tomorrow I have the infamous "final final." Once I hand in my (hopefully easy) music theory final, I will have completed the entirety of my academic responsibilities at Yale. I will, pretty much, be a college graduate. I'm of course having tons of regrets, smacking myself for not having more fun, actively going out and grabbing college and turning it into what I hoped it would be. That's not really my style, though...I can't make myself want to hook up with people and get drunk and be crazy. I can only want to want to hook up with people and get drunk and be crazy. Ah, me. There really were plenty of good things.

And just now I'm realizing that all the people will be scattered.

I said goodbye to Caleb tonight. Wow, was that intense. I've become really good friends with him in just the past few weeks, spending some good time talking with him about anything and everything. I like the boy a lot. Yeah, a lot. He's interesting and thoughtful and fun and unpretentious and open but not expulsive...just wonderful. He makes great eye contact, too...sexiest thing in a man, and rarer in straight men than I'd hope. Ay, alas...at least when I come down for Safety Mix shows and Glee Club concerts next year I can crash on his (currently my) couch. Bah, I tell you. Bah!

See, these are the kinds of posts you get when I have no friends on line. Moral: be a friend, come on line, don't make me write these posts. And the early bird gets the worm. That's the moral, too. Isn't it always?

Tasteful Line-Pushing

We went to a hockey game this Friday, where Yale was barely beaten by Brown, and we sat in front of one of the cleverest hecklers I've ever had the pleasure of hearing. He yelled (only once or twice, I might add...he didn't do the self-obsessed constant chant) "If it's Brown, flush it down!" He also called one of the referees, a particularly short and skinny man on the ice "mini-ref." He repeated this one, but with slightly funnier (read: more extreme) intonation every time. He was drunk enough that he gave the impression of playing this all for his own amusement, and that's a true essence of comedy. An air of playfulness, performing without seeming like you're trying to perform, is a wonderful way to be a comedian. There is nothing less funny than mugging and nothing less enjoyable than having laughs pulled from you as you chuckle on cue.

I also admired his taste. He was a drunken sports fan, yet he never said anything obscene in front of the kiddies. He mocked the players with wit and restraint. One Brown player had the last name "Haggett." An easy target for rhymes, no? But this sports fan chose to yell "If you can't Haggett [hack it], get off the ice!" Hilarious and inoffensive. You go, drunk man.

I also just read Fifty Million Frenchmen, one of my favorite shows in terms of score (a Cole Porter classic). I was again struck by the lyrics to "I'm Unlucky At Gambling." Here's the verse in question:

I took the croupier to a picture show,
I took the croupier to a picture show,
And though I snuggled close when the lights were low,
The croupier impressed me as rather slow.
I said "I like John Gilbert a lot, don't you?"
I said "I like John Gilbert a lot, don't you?"
He didn't answer, but when the show was through
I realized that he liked John Gilbert, too.

Yup...as far as I can tell that's a blatant reference to homosexuality...in 1929. Nineteen-fucking-twenty-nine! That was, like, before Hitler exterminated European homosexuals...but Cole Porter had the brass balls to write it into a song. Stunning...

Now I Wallow

I'm in pretty bad shape these days. No, don't worry, I'm not suicidal or even cutting myself or starving myself. I am, however, self-destructive in the sense that I am completely unmotivated to actively job-hunt for next year. I have no idea what I want to do (when I go and talk to people that other people set me up with I say I have an idea, but that's pretty much a lie, I don't), so I have no short term goals or long term dreams. My biggest fear is calling people to thank them after I've spoken with them. My next biggest fear is getting in touch with people they recommend I speak to. Nowhere on the fear list is "starving" or "being homeless," because I know those won't happen, and I enjoy wallowing enough that living a very, very mediocre life has gained some appeal in that it will defy everyone's expectations. People who are expected to fail sometimes find that drive to succeed. I'm expected to succeed, and I have something of a drive to fail.

Doing something I'll truly hate has also gained some appeal. I see no chance that I would enjoy teach for america at all, but perhaps really working, slaving, and seeing people with actual problems will make me happier. I'm always happier when I'm around people with actual problems. Sick? Perhaps, but time and again it has been proven true.

So am I worried about next year? Oddly enough, no. I'm worried about now and me in general. I'm worried that I'm not worried about next year. I'm worried that I have no interests and a desire to fail. I really want to leave college, I don't like this place at all, but do I really want to jump into a void? What would that even consist of? Sitting at home for a while, I suppose, until I find a mediocre job in NYC. It's the obvious choice, right now. Why deny the obvious choice?

My Dream Last Night

For a limited time, I got to live in Dave Stanley's body. Finding myself newly an attractive male, I of course wanted to stand in front of the mirror naked and admire myself and masturbate. But my mother kept coming upstairs as I tried to masturbate so I could never actually get hard.

Go ahead, Siggy. You can take this one. It's all you, babe.

Who are the bad people?

At a dinner table discussion tonight, Jen mentioned that she's sick of people talking about voting for Bush like it was a completely immoral action and there's no good reason anyone could ever vote for him and that everyone who voted must be either evil or stupid. Haninah seemed to agree somewhat, Eric, while not explicitly disagreeing, said he'd seen those people and he's glad he's on this side, now.

But this led me to think of a topic I've been considering quite a bit lately of what makes a bad person. Is it someone who always tries to do what's right? It seems like this is a factor, but I'm convinced that plenty of Nazis and terrorists and witch-hunters and opponents of gay marriage think that they're doing what's right, and these are pretty bad people by my standards. Some might say they're (probably the Nazi's and the terrorists) some of the worst people who've ever existed. I wouldn't disagree. So it seems that the point is not whether you're trying, but rather, what values you have...especially your values relative to my values.

It does seem to me that the way to judge which people are bad is by how radically their values diverge from yours. Hitler did not place life at a high priority, in fact, he readily sought to end life for many people. Life is probably my highest value, as I'm a humanist. His highest value was purity of the gene pool. I like diversity in my population. So I (somewhat weakly) oppose his highest value, and he (somewhat strongly) opposes mine. This is primarily why I would consider him to be a bad person. I think this will work with all people. Let's take Jesus. His values were of self-sacrifice for your fellow man. While I think he may have overdone the emphasis on sacrifice, his proactive stance on charity and love of humanity resonates with my values strongly. He adds a value I only oppose very lightly (much less so than a purity of genetics) to a value I embrace. He might think me less worthy, on the other hand, because of his concept of sacrifice held so dear which I generally reject. He would respect my love of humanity, but opposes strongly my zest for indulgence and will for all of humanity to endulge. So he would probably think me a worse person than I think him.

Of course we have to look at frailty: how strongly we act on these values. But it seems this generally emphasizes how bad or good we feel the person is. I suppose this is unfair, as strength is a value that some people prioritize. It's not one of my highest, but for those who consider it completely essential to goodness, it is a common value between themselves and those they consider good. It rarely trumps initial intention, however.

So I don't really see why voting for Bush couldn't be considered an awful thing. Anyone who votes for him clearly has values pretty vastly divergent from mine. And they are acting on those values. And of course there are reasons for voting for Bush that are less opposed to my values, but in any case, people voting for Bush are not too high on the good people list. And I would bet that most of them are voting for reasons that I would consider opposed enough to my values to make them bad.

The Dirtiest Secret

Since I'm not advertising this address, I feel comfortable putting my most recent deep, dark secret up here. Don't tell anyone, please, but this was a very good week.

I know! I know! I'm a horrible person. The worst thing in the world (besides personal tragedy) happened: George W. Bush was reelected as the President of the USA. I lost my faith in my fellow man almost completely. All of my thoughts about the self-centeredness and blindness of human kind were confirmed. He was elected with a mandate, so he can do pretty much whatever he wants, and he has the senate and house to back him up. We have several supreme court justices who may not make it through another four years, and Bush will be sure to appoint people with his values (i.e., psychos) in their stead. Iraq may or may not degenerate into a complete disaster. The draft may or may not (I actually believe him when he says it won't) be reinstated. Roe v. Wade may or may not be overturned. We may or may not get unyielding contempt from the rest of the world. So that sucks.

But somehow something happening so strong and so outside myself made it a good week. Something bigger than I shook the campus and the country, and all of a sudden it didn't really matter that I have no sex or romance in my life, or that I don' t know what the hell I'm doing next year. And I actually gained back a bit of my sex drive (helps that I'm ovulating), so I'm feeling pretty good.

I've been photographing beautiful people for Rumpus, which is awesome. So many guys with nice faces and BEAUTIFUL bodies. I think they might have helped my sex drive, too. I've been feeling a little bisexual lately...don't know if it will pass, probably will. Oddly enough, it's not at all sexual...more just finding girls attractive as people to be emotionally intimate with. Yet I can't help but define it as a sexuality, even though the thought of physical intimacy isn't appealing. Whatever...I'll ride. Men are still hot...and have far and away the more attractive genitalia. You have to see that. Even if you like women, I mean, please...