Pre-War

I met some of my neighbors tonight! It's pretty exciting. As I may or may not have mentioned, my building is largely occupied by one enormous extended family...relatives of the landlord. The landlord is actually the nephew of some uber-landlord, and somehow acquired this building from Uncle Ownesman-Hattan. So he lives on the second floor with his wife and daughter, and some other large portion of the family lives on the fourth floor (they're above me, so it's a little harder to tell who's where). We're on the third floor, in the smaller apartment, and Gertrude lives in the larger apartment. I've never met Gertrude, but Amy has. She seemed nice, I believe. As far as I knew, the fifth floor was totally unoccupied and currently under renovation. Not so!

I was coming home from transferring the laundry from washer to dryer when I see two men around 60 standing outside searching through their keys. I opened the door for them, and one asked me, "Did you just move in?" "Oh, a couple of months ago," I said. "You?" "We've been living here for 35 years." So a while, then. Actually, I believe my cousin Larry's done the same thing...stayed in the same Hell's Kitchen apartment since he first came to New York with the dream of acting. And the often rent-stabilized neighborhood changed around him, just as it changed around these guys. They've been here since 12 years before my landlord was born. Hardcore. Very hardcore.

But also incredibly endearing. To have that kind of immediate stability—same space, same person—for 35 years has an enormous appeal to it. It's almost like living a quiet country life in the heart of the nation's biggest city. I guess that's just what marriage is...the ability to have home, to have intimacy, to have a comforting anchor besides yourself in the most otherwise worldly of circumstances. I look at these guys, and I look at the couple from Thailand who runs the laundromat (I was teaching them some English words last week) and, even though they work together and live together, seem so happy in each other's presence and so comfortable in their banter, and I realize that I really, really do want to get married someday. And not just to any good guy, but someone I feel a real comfort and intimacy with. It's not about the structure for me...the picket fence (ew), the kids' soccer games (the hideous memories!), the community organizations. It's about finding someone who feels like home. I think that's a reasonable goal for the next 20 years or so...

Never Say Die

So, it's been a month. That's a little over the top on the blogging neglect, but I haven't been feeling the urge much lately. Still, as the post title advises, I never say die.

Amy's heading to Italy for a month, so I'll be somewhat lonelier and therefore somewhat more likely to blog. This will be good for anyone who's still reading, even with the break. I will, however, be getting a temporary roommate, this dude Brook who used to date my friend Lara and ran into Amy as they were both traveling the world. I saw his documentary about his trip, and he seems reasonably cool, so I'm not fearing for my life or anything. It'll be an interesting experience to suddenly be rooming with someone I've never met. We shall see how that goes.

This weekend's been lovely and low key but not dull. Friday night I saw Festen with mom, a play I wouldn't recommend, but if you have to go, no need to weasel your way out of it. It was pretty trite and some of the acting was heinous (cough)Ali McGraw(/cough), but I wasn't sleeping through it, which is more than I can say for anything written by Eugene O'Neill. Right.

Yesterday I went to the gym (the guns are shaping up!) and had went with Ethan to Joe: The Art of Coffee (a coffee shop, not a movie). Nice place...I think I prefer Esperanto and the Hungarian Pastry Shop, but I'll put it in third place, still above The Coffee Pot. That's just in Manhattan, of course. Slave to the Grind still reigns supreme as the unsurpassed paragon of coffee shop greatness. If anybody knows any other awesome ones in Manhattan, recommendations are always appreciated. After time with Ethan, I hung around for a while, doing crosswords. I'd kept the evening free so I could buy Mike alcohol after the (NINE HOUR!) MCAT if he didn't feel like mush. He felt like mush. So around 10 PM, I took the train down to see Cat's beautiful (albeit messy) new apartment in the East Village, and then we met Evan for a bite at Yaffa. Good stuff, fun conversation.

This morning I met V for brunch, which was lovely as always. We went to the eatery (it would be a capital e if its logo weren't a large lower-case e) and I got a great poached eggs dish. It was delicious, as were some of the other customers. We walked around the neighborhood a bit, chatted and parted ways. I was somewhat impressed that Vaughan just drove in this morning despite the downpour, no questions. I think I have a lot of friends who would just call to say they didn't want to face the rain (or get out of bed) and cancel on me with hardly an apology. Props to V for not canceling. Afterwards I got coffee with Greg, and we went over the outline for his next game. I'm really excited for it...the game sounds like tons of fun, infused, as always, with his great wit and knack for creating amusing, tough-but-doable puzzles. It's going to be much longer than the first game, with better art. And he's got a new concept for the music, which should make for a more fluid and subtly diverse score. And he's got a marketing scheme up his sleeve that may work wonders. I'm going to help develop that aspect.

Now I'm just hanging around. I did the Sunday puzzle and chatted with Natalia, and I'll heat up some soup for dinner pretty soon. Good times, great oldies. Sadly, Kool 96.7 seems to be gone with the wind. It's upsetting to lose something from my formative years.

Goal for this week: Be as not tired and therefore productive at work as I was last week. I've had quite a few weeks of total exhaustion and slow research. I finally picked up the pace last week and got a bunch done for an upcoming article. Rock out.

Subconscious Update

So glad Natalie and I were able to avoid those flying and crashing Barnes and Nobles while we waited for Polina, my sophomore year acting teacher. That was a close one.

Opposite Day! Call for Submissions

So this dude has decided he's going to start "opposite day," where everyone seriously argues something he or she disagrees with. No parodies, no smirking, no choosing something you sort of understand. This is a great mental exercise, and some people have done quite a bang-up job already. I'd really like to take part, but first I need a topic. Any ideas? I suppose gay marriage is the first one that comes to mind. I've often said it's the only issue I'm really passionate about because it's the only issue where I can make up my mind. I see the case for government interference in struggling countries, and I see the case for staying out. I see the case for big spending and welfare, and I see the case for total capitalism. I'm very pro-choice, but I see a reasonable case for pro-lifeness. I'm very atheistic, but I see why people would believe in God (and I don't just think it's because they're weak). So I could do gay marriage. What else could I do? Axing funding from scientific research on alternative energy and cancer treatments?

Please send ideas. If I don't get good ones, I'll just try to do gay marriage while I'm a little more awake. And if you want to argue for something you don't believe in, go ahead. That'd be awesome.

Totally

the Wit (61% dark, 38% spontaneous, 21% vulgar)

your humor style: CLEAN COMPLEX DARK You like things edgy, subtle, and smart. I guess that means you're probably an intellectual, but don't take that to mean pretentious. You realize 'dumb' can be witty--after all isn't that the Simpsons' philosophy?--but rudeness for its own sake, 'gross-out' humor and most other things found in a fraternity leave you totally flat. I guess you just have a more cerebral approach than most. You have the perfect mindset for a joke writer or staff writer. Your sense of humor takes the most thought to appreciate, but it's also the best, in my opinion. You probably loved the Office. If you don't know what I'm talking about, check it out here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/theoffice/. PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Jon Stewart - Woody Allen - Ricky Gervais The 3-Variable Funny Test! - it rules - If you're interested, try my latest: The Terrorism Test

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 77% on darkness You scored higher than 29% on spontaneity You scored higher than 12% on vulgarity

Link: The 3 Variable Funny Test written by jason_bateman on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

Dakota Panning?

South Dakota finally did it. They stepped fresh over the Roe v. Wade line and banned abortions, with the one exception of allowing abortion to save the mother's life. South Dakota has now been stuffed into the same warm place of my heart where I've always held Fred Phelps. It's the "thanks for being honest" section, reserved for people who cut straight through the bullshit of politics and the silly, silly notion that middle-of-the-road = reasonable, and just take the side they want to take. They say and do what everyone else wants to say and do but won't because they're afraid of being seen as extreme. And they are extreme! But extreme can be good. Sure, moderate can be good sometimes, too, but moderate isn't always good, and you being confused doesn't mean both sides have something important to contribute.

Now, in these cases, I think Phelps and SD are dead wrong. I think a human life (that's H. sapien, not a "person's" life) means pretty much nothing without consciousness. The only other value it has besides a continuity of consciousness is the value other people subscribe to it. This is why it's crueler to tear up a 4-year-old's teddy bear than it is to break her stereo. She (sort of) thinks her teddy's a person, and you're breaking that human connection. That, I believe, is the only wrong in, say, taking Terry Schiavo off the tube: Her parents feel extra loss. So that's my view of "what makes a person." SD thinks that a zygote is a person. All right, kids. Whatev, as they say. I feel a little insulted: You think this cell, or this bobbing cluster of cells has the same value as I do? As my friends and family do? But we're all awesome! We chat and think and read and write and sing. We do amazing things from our minds, and we are so fully present while we're doing them. We each have an "I." How cool is that? But these Dakotans think I have the same value as the blastula.

Given that, however, they're doing the totally right thing. If I honestly thought the blastula had the same value as a fully developed human, abortion would be horrific! No, you can't kill someone just because you were raped, even if it was by your father. Very, very bad times for you, and gee that's a sad thing, but that doesn't mean you're allowed to kill someone, especially someone who's completely innocent. The only acception, of course, would be if you could only choose one life to save. Then, it's not so strange to choose the mother. The baby's life is less stable anyway...you have a better chance of saving the one already around. It's a sensible ban, South Dakota, given your totally absurd premise.

That said, I realize a lot of pro-lifers are really more anti-choicers. They don't like sex or impurity and want sinners to live with the consequences of their actions. I actually didn't fully believe they thought that until I saw a video today where a State Senator says he'd make an exception for a pure, religious virgin who planned on staying a virgin and was savagely raped. You just dug yourself into a hole, man. Please don't get out.

What They Don't Want You To Know

That always works as a good title, don't you think? Even if you know it's a sucker-trap, you're still going to read anything entitled "what they don't want you to know." This post: High School Edition. Here are things I've found out recently that they don't want you to know.

1. Teachers are sometimes attracted to their students. Now, this isn't usually the case, I'm sure, but one of my many friends who's started student teaching (or teaching) this year says a bunch of her fellow student teachers come to class and talk about nothing except which students are hot and are "totally into" them. Great, boys. As a recovering chronic teacher-crusher (when's my next CTCA meeting?), I feel qualified to say that the safety of the teacher not liking you back is crucial. It's not that I consciously wanted the teacher not to like me back, it just wasn't an issue. I didn't have to worry about the obscene complications that would result were that the case. And that was good. The power dynamic is so strong you can taste it (but don't), so teachers who think your students are attractive, don't even think about acting on it. Don't tempt yourself. Be professional. Find someone your own age. And if that's too much to ask, you're in the wrong line of work.

2. STD/STI transmission rates are low low low. Take a look at this slide. The chances you'll catch HIV from a single act of vaginal intercourse is significantly less than 1%. Here it is again. I don't see either of these explicitly say whether the sex studied is protected or unprotected...it looks unprotected. Because if the risk of transmission during receptive anal intercourse with a condom is 7%, I know a fair people who would probably be infected by now and aren't. Yeah, don't bottom without protection. Really, don't do anything without protection, and don't let anyone bottom for you without protection: If you infect someone that way you're a moral travesty. But I never would have thought that having unprotected sex with someone who's HIV+ would put you at a less than 10% risk for catching the virus. Apparently the risk is much, much lower.

3. College may or may not be wild and totally awesome. I'm still bitter at everyone who told me college would be the best four years of my life. I'm still even more bitter at the people who think I'm now in some sort of "we know what the wild side is because we went to college" club. High schoolers be forwarned: college is school with no parents around. In some ways it's different from high school, in some ways it's different from whatever you'll do after it, but it's not some sort of unique communal experience. Don't expect to much. You'll spend more time doing work than anything else...and it won't all be, like, feminist theory. My friends and I estimate somewhere between 15% and 25% of you will graduate virgins (estimates based on our group). You may never see anyone smoke pot during the four years you're there. If you want to go crazy, you'll have to make yourself go crazy. Good luck.

I only really had two things to tell you, but then I needed to round it out to three, so I stuck in my perpetual whinging. But if anyone thinks of anything else they don't want you to know, please post it in the comments.

Sexual Relativity

AKA: Everyone thinks he or she is inexperienced. This continually strikes me as odd, especially because the most sexually experienced people I know tend to think they're the least experienced. This, admittedly, is probably because they're gay men, and gay men just have more partners on average than any other quadrant.

The random Durex sex facts site I find myself on says that the average man has 12.4 sex partners and the average woman 7.2. 27% have had sex exactly one person, while 21% have had sex with over 10 people. Quite the little distribution curve, there! And it must be because of that little distribution curve that lots of people feel inexperienced: The far hump is very visible. Someone like me can see the people with >10 sexual partners and say "wow, I'm really inexperienced," while someone like, um, a completely anonymous fairly experienced 30 year old gay man could have had, what, 70 sexual partners? And he could see the however many percent in front of him (5%? Maybe?) and see that there are a fair number of people who've had 500 sexual partners.

Ooh, it's totally wealth. Like how nobody feels rich. The curves are totally the same. Check out this thing:

Look at the wealth curve. You've got the lots of impoverished people (0-1 partners) and then a slowwwwly climbing middle class (2-10 partners) and then at the top, you start piling on these people with buttloads of partners. And you're always socially in a position where you can see how many people are wealthier than you/see how many people sleep with more people than you. Because class just works that way, as does, generally, sexual mores. Because of my location, politics, occupation, etc, I hang out with people who aren't all about the free love all the time but don't feel the need to wait until marriage before having sex. Hence my range. I see someone like the anonymous 30 year old gay man and think "Wow, that dude's had a LOT of sex," just like if you lived in a small town in the middle of nowhere, the person with the really big house would seem totally rich, even if they couldn't afford a one bedroom in a prime, prime area of Manhattan. But then maybe the person, being town high society, goes to a country club in Florida and sees people who drive Rollses and thinks "Damn, I'm not that wealthy," and the 30 year old gay man sees a few friends who have sex with a new person every week and thinks "Damn, I don't get any."

Everyone sees people above and below and tends to ignore those below. So one friend has kissed a few people and nothing more. He knows some people who are Shomer Negiya and won't touch the opposite sex for a handshake. They probably know people who don't even think about what it would be like to touch the opposite sex. The gradations get finer. But everyone knows those super wealthy/promiscuous people exist. And so few people can match them...you'll never meet those people. Don't bother.

I made my point two paragraphs ago. I'm just enjoying being in the city. Woot!

All the Cool Kids Can Do It

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

In the Kitchen

It has been too long. Yes, I've been horrible about updating, but I never say die. So here I am with another post. First and most importantly, our lease has begun! And I have a picture for you folks, but with the old tennant's furniture. Isn't our living room sexy?


I have a bed, desk and computer in our new room but no internet, which, let's be honest, is the most important thing. We'll need to deal with Time Warner this weekend and get ourselves some comedy central and wireless road runner. Sweet.

We had a few issues moving in. It turns out the old tennants weren't moving out because they were taking on a third roommate and needed a three-bed; they moved out because one of them was a violent drunk who would come home at night, fight with his boyfriend and break things (including Amy's door). At least that's what the super and landlord tell us. To get revenge on the powers that be for kicking him out, the guy left the place a bit of a wreck, complete with december-expired milk in the fridge. The only problem is the powers-that-be didn't bother to clean the place before we got there, so Amy, my mom and I were stuck sweeping and swiffering and throwing shit out. My door doesn't really close. Amy has holes in her wall. We'll deal. We also didn't get keys for about 8 hours because the old dude had given them to his lawyer to hold. And the toilet overflowed...it's fixed now.

I'm still thrilled with the place. It's beautiful and generally functional and a good space to work with. The neighborhood's fun, and I'm looking forward to exploring. Ninth Avenue has some of the best food in town at a wide range of prices, and the population of Hell's Kitchen seems to be an interesting mix of gay men, latinos, and the many adorable children who go to school within a couple of blocks from our place. I'm just thrilled to be in Manhattan...it's where I've wanted to be for years. Plus, I'll be home with the parents a bunch. I won't be ditching the old folks entirely...they're great folks, and I'll probably want a little break from the constant noise of Tenth Avenue every so often. I've got plenty more to say, but work is officially starting right about now, and I've got to hit the RSS feeds and see what's going on in the "global science conversation" that's the colorful white noise of my days.

Free Lonnie Latham!

Continuing in their grand tradition as one of my favorite organizations in America, the ACLU has filed an amicus brief asking an Oklahoma court to dismiss charges against Southern Baptist minister Lonnie Latham.

It's important to note, as a preface, that Lonnie Latham is a total douche. He's known for being homophobic, and he supported the Southern Baptist church's adoption of a policy encouraging Baptists to befriend homosexuals and convert them to heterosexuality. Great.

So it will come as a surprise to no one that Latham actually likes sex with men. At the beginning of the year, Latham was arrested in Oklahoma for soliciting oral sex from an undercover cop, under charges of offering to engage in an act of lewdness. He could face up to one year in jail and a $2,500 fine if convicted of these charges. Of course the immediate reaction is a hearty "Should've known! Serves him right!" It's always fun to see fire-and-brimstone preachers get arrested for trying to pick up 13-year-old boys, or catching family-values-toting senators with prostitutes (preferably minorities).

But then there's the second reaction to Latham's predicament: "Wait, what did he actually do that's illegal?" He didn't offer to pay the undercover cop. The undercover cop was an adult. The undercover cop had shown some vague interest in hooking up with Latham. He didn't just whip it out in the middle of the street. Where's the crime in asking someone back to your place if they're looking you in the eye and smiling? Even if the other person doesn't seem interested, why the hell is that illegal?

The ACLU thinks it shouldn't be, and they are supporting Latham, hoping to get the charges against him dropped, and I am 100% with them. "Lewdness" is the most absurd, poorly-defined law ever. Part of the definition in Oklahoma is "the giving or receiving of the body for indiscriminate sexual intercourse, fellatio, cunnilingus, masturbation, anal intercourse, or lascivious, lustful or licentious conduct with any person not his or her spouse." So...sex with anyone not your spouse is illegal in Oklahoma? That doesn't jive with Lawrence v. Texas at all. But wait, they say "indiscriminate." What does that mean? OK, being on one end of a public glory hole is indiscriminate. But choosing a one night stand...is that indiscriminate? I don't think so. I'm not a legal scholar, but this definition blows.

So, Oklahoma, please dismiss the charges, and don't arrest people for trying to get some. And to you, Mr. Latham, stop being a douche. If people aren't hurting anyone, just let them live their lives, as the state of Oklahoma will hopefully let you live yours.

Houston, We Have Apartment

We have an apartment, wooo! On February 15th, Amy and I will officially be Hell's Kitchen residents, and I couldn't be more excited. The neighborhood looks lovely, the place is BEAUTIFUL, and there are tons of perks, such as a working fireplace, roof access, and a key to the wonderful garden down the block. All this is thanks to our awesome broker, Alex. If you're looking for a place in Manhattan, let me know and I'll give you his number/email. He chauffeured us to every apartment we looked at with him, and he has an EMT parking permit, so he can park anywhere. He also prescreened apartments after the first two, so he could tell us whether they'd be worth our time or not, based on how we'd reacted to other places. Two thumbs up. Anyway, when I go later this week to measure completely I'll take some decent photos and possibly post them. Our apartment. So hot right now.

The Defense

Well, I made #4 on The BEAST's 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2005. I suppose we all did, but I feel I should at least answer the charges. Here they are:

4. You

Charges: Silently enabling and contributing to the irreversible destruction of your planet. Absolving yourself of your responsibility to do anything about it that your immediate neighbors don't. Assuming that it's normal behavior to spend several hours each day totally inert and staring into a cathode ray tube. Substituting antidepressants for physical motion. Caring more about the personal relationships of people you will never meet than your own. Shrugging your shoulders at the knowledge that your government is populated by criminal liars intent on fooling you into impoverished, helpless submission. Cheering this process on.

Exhibit A: You don't even know who your congressman is.

Sentence: Deathbed realization that your entire life was an unending series of stupid mistakes and wasted opportunities, a priceless gift of potential extravagantly squandered, for which you deserve nothing but scorn or, at best, indifference, and a cold, meaningless demise.

OK, let's start with my pleas to the charges, in order: guilty, guilty, guilty, not guilty unless you count caffeine as an antidepressent, only slightly guilty, guilty, guilty. I guess I didn't do to well.

The evidence: Nita Lowey, bitch.

Sentence: Yeah, I suppose I'll take it. But considering I'm not totally guilty on all the charges, and they really have no evidence, I think I'll instead take a deathbed realization that my live was only wasted opportunities and not stupid mistakes...I've made a few stupid mistakes, but I'm much more of a wasted opportunities sort of gal, wasting opportunities such as college. And I think I deserve befuddlement, not scorn, and, God no, not indifference. The cold, meaningless demise? Sounds about right. Although if, in honor of my death, we could keep the thermostat at 72 degrees for just a couple of days, that would be great. I'll let you know when I'm a few days from death and willing to use all my money to pay for the wasted oil that went into heating my final hours. But hopefully the price of oil will be down by then.

In other words, I'm creating a special circle of hell for incompetent and/or scheming realtors, along with blood-sucking insurance companies. A small, vaguely special place in heaven goes to the guy in the breakfast cart who knows my order and smiles when he gives me my coffee and to the young, upbeat cab driver who makes talking about the weather seem like something slightly more than smalltalk.

Touching Base

Wow; it's been too long. As you can probably guess, this means I've been a busy, busy girl for the past three weeks. I am now officially "Staff Writer for the Web" for Seed, which means very little change in what I actually do and very much welcome change in what they pay me. Because I am now officially a working woman, I've started the apartment search with Amy (Greenwood...a good friend of mine from high school who just got back from touring The World). We've been casually looking for about two weeks and just decided to pick up the pace by calling a real broker and getting her to find us the best places the day they come out. Last Thursday we saw the best place yet: a two bedroom on 56th between 9th and 10th with enormous bedrooms, a nice bathroom, and a small-as-all-hell-assuming-souls-are-planck-length living space. The last attribute is why we didn't take it. We planned on going on an apartment binge on Saturday, but apparently nobody shows on Saturday, so we were only able to see one apartment. It blew.

Dating Mike again is going extraordinarily well. I feel totally at ease with him—mentally, physically and emotionally. I guess that's the big perk of dating someone you've already had an intense, long-term relationship with: You don't have to get past the awkward getting-to-know-you stage. I hate that stage...with friends, coworkers, teachers, whatever. I like to be free and easy with people. It's also great that Mike doesn't socialize much and doesn't socialize at all with people I know. I'm so much more comfortable one-on-one than in group situations...or public situations. Spending hours chilling in his (awesome west village) apartment is simply perfect. The time-limit looms (September, when he goes to some random still-unknown city to teach private school), but it's a ways off, and I'm happy to enjoy the time while it's here.

More thoughts later...right now I'm exhausted.

Vacation Winds Down

For the last time for a long time I've spent 10 days lazing about, sleeping late, and hanging out with friends in restaurants and coffee shops. It has been a lovely 10 days, and I will miss them dearly as I return to 7 am wakeups, 9 hour workdays and a bare-bones social life. It took me until Friday to really drop work from my mindset. With a combination of evil hormones and worker's residue, much of last week was spent in a restless state of anxiety I couldn't quite shake. And then it shook, and I revived myself as I was from June through September. It's such a lovely, easy way to be.

I might as well chat about the cryptic comments from a couple of weeks ago. I'm currently dating—but not in a relationship with—my ex. He doesn't want anything serious, which right now I'm all for, but I'm of course concerned that will change over time. At least the lack of seriousness and future dampens the "crawling back home (without ever going abroad)" feeling that was initially pretty strong. As it stands, seeing him is just a nice way to pass time, and I'm good with that. The other concern is that I really like hanging out with him and flirting with him and looking at him, and I trust him and feel close with him, but those things don't necessarily add up to wanting to date him. I'm not sure I do. Hopefully this will all become clearer with time. Hopefully nobody will get hurt. Hopefully the whole world will eventually find love and happiness. It's a lot to hope for.

Reading Kids' Diaries

I think we should read kids' diaries. I'm also just a little bit pro-Bush's-spying-program, assuming he really is just scanning for terrorist plots and not preventing robberies or extra-marital affairs or meetings where people get together and burn Bush effigies or anything crazy like that. But that's not today's topic. I'm not talking about violating civil liberties for the sake of security here, I'm talking about violating civil liberties for ART.

If there is one consistent problem with all fiction (and even non-fiction) it is the unrelenting portrayal of children as adults perceive them, never the portrayal of children as they are. Now, I can't capture children as they really are—at age 22 I'm hardly in that position, and I never was able to keep a diary as a kid—but I do remember thinking, when I was a child, that every portrayal I saw was horribly charicatured and never represented the world I knew.

Exhibit A: Bullies. Stories about children are rife with bullies, children who live to make other children feel bad, and that's fine, because there are plenty of bullies in elementary school and middle school. They were, however, never of the Malfoy-Crabbe-Goyle variety. Never one obvious leader with cronies who had no other friends who would show up just to torture people. As I recall, it was the legitimately popular kids who were bullyish. The vast, vast majority of boys, especially around age 13, are obscenely insecure. It's not like college (or even high school), where the secure crowd rises to the top and wins everyone's love, and an insecure minority are stuck being assholes whom everyone kind of hates but may have some power due to sheer force. No no no. In middle school, the entire popular crowd is insecure and generally takes it out on anyone they can. And they're less explicit about their bullying. There's no obvious building themselves up...it's just about shooting the other person down. It's about exchanging looks with a group of five that say "Wow, this person just made a really bad choice. Why would anyone do THAT?" It's not about shoving people into lockers. It's about subtle mockery and exclusion. It probably wouldn't look that bad if an adult listened to the whole thing.

I'm a little too caught up in exhibit A to run through other exhibits, but they would partially concern the inner life of children. What do they think about? I famously thought about my kindergarten teachers molesting miniature versions of the von Trapp children. What do normal children think about? The exhibits would otherwise concern the interactions between children. What do they talk about? What kind of signals do they give? I have relatively little recollection. I don't think TV shows, books, plays and other art forms portray these accurately, even when they capture something fundamentally true about people. They fail to capture childhood as it is, not how we vaguely recall it to be or see it in other children. I only know because I was overwhelmingly frustrated as a child by the innacuracies. I just didn't do anything about it.

Which is where the civil liberties violation comes in. Isolate children from portrayals of themselves. Force them to keep diaries under the guise of secrecy. But then read the diaries. Read them all, and from them get an idea of the collective experience of individual children.

Of course this is impractical, but we should find some way of getting the information from them without letting them just confirm our suggestions, without them just spewing back the portrayals of them they've seen. Save art! Help human understanding! Exploit children!

A Childhood Memory...of Why People Suck

I just recalled an incident from when I was eight, which reminded me why I sometimes get really annoyed with people. It also reminded me that adults act like children, or children imitate adults, or people just maintain the same sort of irritating behavior throughout life and only seem more mature because they change their presentation. The memory:

I was in Mrs. Honig's Hebrew school class one evening in third grade. I was reading a passage (in English) and suddenly had the idea so pronounce the "c" in "scissors" when the word came up in the reading. To see if people were listening. To see how they'd react. Well, the decision was made in a split second, I pronounced the "c" and the reaction was incredible. The entire class JUMPED to correct me. Twenty-five eight-year-old Jewish kids, all trying to beat each other to be the first to tell me I was wrong. To look at each other with smug superiority.

I know I'm viewing this through the lens of the slightly socially awkward eight-year-old that I was, but I think that's a far fairer lens than seeing how an adult would have perceived the behavior of the children. They might have been glad the kids knew how to pronounce the word. They might have been glad the kids were listening. They might have been mildly perplexed that one of the better readers in the class had mispronounced a word everyone else knew, but they would have been glad that I had learned from my classmates. But adults seem not to observe the behaviors of kids as other kids do, and I think they therefore miss out on the subtleties of the exchange. Kids do have a pretty intricate social world, and they can be very cruel to each other. A child's comment that may seem innocent or just funny to adults may seem horribly demeaning to other kids. And I think those kids are the ones who get it. The adults don't. And the attitude I got from the other kids in third grade I've seen over and over again in every stage of life. People are incredibly eager to jump on each others mistakes, correct each other, win arguments for the sake of winning, not for learning or teaching or commonly arriving at truth.

If you don't find this story compelling, let me give you another:

I was seeing a high school show with my friend Monica in fourth grade. As we entered the high school she said to me, "Maggie, I think some of the more popular girls are here, so if I see them, can we pretend we didn't come together? I'm just becoming accepted by them, so, no offense but, you know..." And I said, "Oh sure, I understand." And I did.

Perhaps Monica didn't show great virtue, but her actions bothered me so much less than the attitude the third graders gave me in Hebrew School. Again, my perspective let me know where Monica was coming from and the attitude she directed at me. She didn't dislike me or disrespect me, life was just easier if the popular girls liked her, and being with me in front of them would make that a much more difficult goal to achieve. I thought I might do the same thing in her shoes. I actually give her points for saying that directly to me. I think that showed she respected me, that she was able to let me know exactly why she might not stand with me if they came over. She wasn't passive-aggressive. She was assertive. And I have to give it to her for that.

Tip of the Hat, Wag of the Finger, Shrug of the Shoulders

Congratulations to Stephen Colbert for getting referenced in a post title. Bravo, Stephen. You have achieved the highest maggie-centric honor in journalism.

Tip of the Hat
To Judge John E. Jones III for his glorious decision in the Dover "Monkey" Trial. I would sum it up for you, but why should I give you the goods here when I've already done it here. Check out the article. I will give you one teaser quote from the judge:

The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.

You tell them, Judge Jones. Also see my article for a doozy of a quote from Richard Dawkins, who never fails to take the appearance of level-headedness right out of his own completely level-headed conclusions. And that's why we love him so.

Wag of the Finger
To President George W. Bush, not for spying, but for whom he's spying on. I have to say, when I first heard about the spying, I was nonplussed. If listening in on known Al-Qaeda operatives is going to help us prevent people from dying, I could see where "wartime exceptions" would be reasonable. I don't know if it's constitutional—I'm really poorly read—but it doesn't totally offend my sensibilities. However, this totally offends my sensibilities. Spying on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" protests? Really? Are those protests a "credible threat?" I vote no. They're generally angry but peaceful. I mean...a kiss-in is about as peaceful as you get.

I love when standards for these things sound like kids talking in a middle school English class...just throwing out creative ideas is good enough; the ideas don't have to be right. Which is really fine for middle school English...I'm all for rewarding free thinking. But it's not OK with logic like "well, clearly they don't like the military...and protests get people worked up, and sexuality gets people worked up, and they want to be allowed into the military, so maybe they're militant..and they'll kill us all!" Or whatever the logic there is.

Shrug of the Shoulders
To the Transit Workers Union, for being a huge pain in New York's ass for a cause that's probably totally reasonable. I haven't reviewed the specs much, and even if I did, I don't really know what's appropriate for them to be getting. So, fight the good fight, TWU; just don't fight the less-than-good fight. Because I was one of 4 people in the office until about 11:30 today, and I'd prefer if that didn't happen too much more. Thanks.

Oh, The Inner Turmoil!

There is much. There is a reasonable quantity of outer turmoil as well (see the rather productive back-and-forth I've been having with a blogger on the "Inexpensive Indulgence" post. also see the article I wrote and the two I interviewed for today, coming out later this week.) Currently, I don't want to argue any more, please anybody, or redefine myself. And right now I'm being provoked by a guy on AIM (friend of a friend who wants me to rant about a kid he knows), scoffed at by my mother because I want time alone, and forced to redefine myself. Of course redefinition is a lifelong process...although it would be lovely if it ended at some point with me not defining myself at all. But I have way too much time on my mind, if not on my hands, and I can't help but dwell and wallow and ponder and think myself into DOOM. Which is what I've been doing this week. Worst/best of all is that recent events are so me and my life...they're just not me and my life right now. Bah. Sulk. Collapse on the couch. Read Narnia.

Good People, Good Art

After Friday evening, the weekend progressed into uncomplicated goodness (nice move, weekend). Yesterday I drove up to Wesleyan—my longest solo drive to date...yes, I realize it's under 2 hours—to see Chayes in "The Faculty Room." The show was lots of fun...in that hard-to-take sort of way. I may have mentioned I love theater/movies/books where you're transported completely into another world...a world that looks a lot like ours and could coexist with ours, but the people there just have slightly different rules for life. This was one of those shows, although it got kicked up a notch by being aware of its weirdness, and then laying weirdness over the awareness. Good stuff. Afterwards, I had Thai food with 3 Jesses (Chayes, Cygler and Kahn), which was lots of fun, and I livened up with some food in me. Food makes such a difference. Go food. On a brief walk afterwards, I chatted with Chayes about the events in my life. Was good to chat.

Today was "Brokeback Mountain" with V, which was, of course, amazing. He drove us in, mostly because he knew he could get a good, free parking space on a Sunday afternoon, and that opportunity was too good to pass up. We listened to showtunes. Need I have even written that? No. Brunch was at a trendy-ish Chelsea place, and we ate and chatted and such. Then came the awesome, awesome movie. Now, V said he'd rather see a movie with great projection than with a good crowd, but I think I may have proven him wrong with this one. The Chelsea crowd was priceless, even if they did interrupt a couple of good moments. One guy whispered "Oh, shit!" right after the cowboys had sex for the first time, as if he were surprised. Everyone cracked up. Also, I loved seeing a line out the men's room door and no line for the women's room. On the ride back I rediscovered exactly how much V hates traffic. He's a total taxi driver...can't stand people who are less able to maneuver than he. He kept saying "I hate people," which eventually caused me to break out into my once-improvised song "I hate people," written in the Best Buy parking lot on Central Avenue.

After the movie, V said this movie showed a good example of why gay men shouldn't get married. I paused. "...to women." Him: "Right." He said that he's seen 3 gay friends of his get married...in two of the occasions, he was left to comfort one of the groomsmen whose sexual relationship with the groom ended at the wedding. Oh, joy. And by joy I mean emotional hell. Also: V always smells good. It's a little weird. Actually, it's really weird. What the hell? It's like the glee club director who never sweats. Sick, sick, none-too-ethnic people.

And You May Ask Yourself...

Tonight my life took a turn for not-like-my-life. I'll chat on an individual basis...maybe...

But everything else paused when a series of likely coincidences took me to the very front spot of the subway. I was almost all the way from union square to grand central, when I realized that my back was immediately to the window that overlooks the track. I turned around and held the bars to either side of the window and just looked forward, a la Kate Winslet in Titanic. Without the imminent doom. So I got a great train's-eye-view of the subway. It's kind of great looking. I recomment riding at the front if you hav the opportunity. Pulling into a station will never be the same again.

Also, I was happy to read this post on my latest (and most creative) addition to the Seed website.

The Downside of Vanity

These are the last three entries you get when you google my name:

anal-intercourse-story.notbad.net.ru - anal intercourse story

lesbian gone wild

GIRLS GONE WILD - THE GREATEST XXX SITE . FREE GAY TEENAGER XXX

Yet, I still think it's a good idea to spend as much of my life as possible writing stories about monkey porn and broken virginity pledges. And making atrocious puns (see an article to be posted tomorrow). Hey, if a Salon journalist can write, "He attempts to answer the question, 'Why should we care so much about boys when men still run everything?' Dowd-ing Thomases might put it thusly: If men aren't necessary, should we care?" (my bold), I can pun as badly as I want to!

I've Got A Little List

Through a brief-ish but productive AIM conversation with Vaughan, I've started compiling a list. The document consists of "things I know little to nothing about, but should know about if I don't want to be an embarrassment to my family, my country, and myself." The working list is included below this entry. Feel free to suggest things I may not know about that I should investigate.

I also realized that I never talked about the real indulgence relevant to my post yesterday. While it's nice not to criticize harshly, it's really luxurious to praise unabashedly. Try doing it sometime. It's amazing! It has all the creativity of a good lambasting with none of the guilt. You can be even more creative, because the field is less explored (this isn't really the same as love poems and religious praise). Try telling someone they're so un-fucking-believably fabulous. It's stunningly good! "You just blew me right out of the water, like, dropped to your knees and took me from the pit of the ocean to fucking heaven. I'm pissing ambrosia on Zeus, that was so awesome." You know. Just ride with it. It's so amazingly satisfying.

OK, here's the working list:

Things I should know

Genocides
Rwanda
Sudan
Khmer Rouge
Serbia-Bosnia
West Africa?

Conspicuous Absences
Stalin
Pol Pot
Argentina

How Things Work

US
How a bill becomes a law
Constitutional amendments
SCOTUS, how a case gets there, what happens
Lower courts: who are they? how do they work?
Candidates for president
How presidential election works

International
The UN
How the EU works
WTO and how it interacts with the G8
How currencies fluctuate
How Canada and the UK elect their leaders

How the regions got their structures
How the EU was formed
Why africa is structurally fucked
Yugoslavia
USSR
The Koreas
One Germany
Northern Ireland/Ireland
Palestine/Israel
Individual mideast countries
Apartheid

OK, some of those I know more about than others (how we elect the president). But some I know absurdly little about. Feel free to add things along these lines, and for other categories, including "things that will kill us all, or at least tens of thousands of us."

Inexpensive Indulgence

The greatest thing I learned from my crazy mania professor Eric Schwab (I'll say 'hello, eric schwab,' because I'd put him just barely in the self-googling half of the world) is that it is legitimate, nay, desirable, even, to read a text and not criticize it. Just take from it everything you can. You don't have to endorse it or support it or praise it...just use the text to see what you can get out of it. Go on. Whatever you want. Be selfish. Take from the text. Perhaps this wasn't how he phrased it, but he did come down hard on the frequent practice of reading with a mind toward ridicule.

Why do people so frequently read this way? I understand you get something valid out of criticism; you practice discerning valid arguments and therefore practice forming strong opinions and arguments of your own. Plus one for critique. Fair enough. But you lose so much. You, number one, get really tense and have that insecure satisfaction of gossip, especially when you critique poorly. You (and realize, of course, that 'you' always means 'I') feel like a dirty, dirty, bad person. And that's not a good feeling at all. "Sure, religious people: there's an invisible omnipresent being pulling all the strings and setting the world up so science can explain everything, but really science isn't the way to answer our questions because he's just testing our faith. Like he is when he kills tens of thousands of people in Asia. He's not cruel. Noooooo. He's just got a plan!" See. I feel dirty now. That's not good. Whereas if I legitimately consider the opinion (unlikely at this point; I've done a lot of that already), or just try to see how the impulse to believe in God reveals something about what it means to be human (very likely), I feel good. And satisfied. Try it! I think you'll like it.

So it feels bad to ridicule and good not to ridicule. You also get much better reactions when you don't ridicule. When you argue with an attitude, people get defensive and it sucks. You wind up in one of those arguments where there's no aim to prove or disprove the original point, you just find an objection to everything the other person says. Those arguments are frustrating. If you remain amicable and ask the person to explain his or her thoughts, you can present challenges and get the person to respond to them thoughtfully. People are much more likely to present their opinions fully and be receptive to constructive criticism this way. If you take the conversation in another direction, they'll be happy to go with you.

And you just get more out of it. You have the power to make the reading of the text or the listening of the speech as useful to yourself as possible. You can use it to explore the topic that means the most to you and resonates most with what was presented. It's a great, open opportunity. Go for it.

If the argument or information really just blows? Ignore it. Move on. Find something else. If there's absolutely no entertainment value, humor, decent points, food for thought, cute facts or anecdotes, consider the time you've spent reading a sunk cost and do something else.

Some people think it's weak not to criticize harshly if something's bad. Why? I don't think it's weak. It's being the bigger, more selfish man. It's doing exactly what you want. It's putting your remaining time to use that works for you. Excellent.

Unsurprisingly, this post is spurred because every negative comment written about my work hits me hard. This is the problem with going public, especially with a poor sense of what should be censored, a creative mind, and relatively little experience in the field. I'm fledgling. I'm learning. I'd appreciate if people criticized constructively...and I'm not convinced they get anything meaningful out of doing otherwise. I know I don't get anything out of that except a quick, guilt-ridden high. But, in my little utilitarian scheme, if it actually benefits them, I can't stop them. I can't stop them anyway.

We Could Be Wrong

So, let's say there is a God. A likely situation? In my opinion, no. In the opinion of others, very. But, as pretty much everyone will concede, a possible situation. Not one we can ever conclusively say is untrue. That's the frustrating beauty of all the theistic arguments. So, anyway.

Given: ∃ God

And therefore everything we know is wrong. Of course, maybe everything we know isn't wrong, and God is one of those Gods who sparked the big bang and evolution and pretty much left the world to function given physical principles and He did so with infinite lovingkindness. Possible. But I'm not talking about that situation. I'm talking about any situation where everything we know is wrong. God created the heavens and the earth. God created man pretty much as he is.

So, IF this is the case. What is science? Is it still taking all of these testables and, well, testing them? Would we still go about our merry way, finding out what we could via these methods, hoping that the consistency we've seen in this world holds up a little more? Or would we claim that the answers to these questions, even if we couldn't test them, are ultimately the scientific answers, because they are truth? Or would science just be dead/useless altogether?

Of course there's always the question of how we know there's a God. So we have to assume it was revealed to us in some awfully convincing but non-repeatable way. Like the whole booming voice from the heavens, mountains lifted, every person told what he or she is thinking, and then nothing. Heck, I'd be convinced. But it's non-repeatable. OK, now that we have that out of the way...

Is the first priority of science truth? I think it's pretty clearly not. It's just that we're very convinced we can find truth through a system that makes a lot of sense and has some pretty remarkable successes in the past.

On a less extreme note than the "science fails!" scenario, what about the several times scientists have gotten it wrong...such as with the ether. I mean, the ether wasn't a horrible hypothesis. It's not immediately intuitive that light should be the fulcrum of the universe. So, in their science classes they taught the ether. Should they not have? I think they should have. So we kind of tacitly consent to teach untruths as long as they're arrived at via this tried-and-usually-true methodology. Seems mildly messed up. I'll ride with it, but I do kind of feel we should be qualifying everything.

I guess that's what I'll concede to IDers. Not that evolution should be singled out as being flawed, hell no, it's one of the theories with the greatest ratio of explanatory power to problems that we've got. But aside from repeating the steps of the scientific method ad nauseum, I think kids should be given a clearer picture of science: What it's based on, how it operates, what it will not answer, all the incredible things it's done, and how there may be things that are wrong and always will be uncertainties. And that's part of the discipline. The good news, you can tell them, is good science is set up so that it will seek out and find what's wrong. And that's it's greatest virtue. So take the answers as truth with only a small grain of salt.

The World of the Post

I was riding home on metro north today, when I looked to my right and realized three men lining the aisle across from me were all reading the New York Post. I have a very serious love/hate relationship with the Post. The hate side is obvious: the paper is exploitative crap. It's filled with overblown, romanticized stories about killings, sex scandals and celebrities. It is always in the poorest of taste, and the news rarely has any relevance outside itself. It is a true tabloid, but it's reputation is better than that of, say, Star. It's, you know, not embarrassing to read on a train. Now for the love side: the paper is BRILLIANTLY HILARIOUS exploitative crap. I really feel I should be writing the tasteless puns that accompany every story as a headline. Seriously, Post folks, call me up. I'll do it in my spare time. It'll be awesome. They, apparently, don't deem a pun as making light of something (I remember seeing "Oh, God!" as the front page headline for a suicide bombing). Which is tasteless, sure...but I think you can kind of set your own rules that way. If they do it for everything, it's not so bad.

But anyway, what I've realized is that people read the Post. A lot of them. And they're all living in this bizarro world I know nothing about. Now, I'm not as much of a news junkie as some people are, but I, for example, know what case went in front of the Supreme Court today, and I don't know, for example, anything about the guy who killed a police officer this week. But lots of people know tons about this guy, just like lots of people knew tons more about Scott Peterson. I'm not saying these people are wrong for enjoying their Post...everyone who's anyone knows that personal stories are more compelling than tragedies and decisions that affect people on a mass scale. It's just strange that there's a population living in an entirely different world of news, even though they live within a two mile radius of me.

On a lighter (or darker) note, I'm not thrilled with the colors of my site. It's blatantly obvious that black is out and Mac white is in. However, I may just ride out the wave and wait for black to return when apple and google go under and, say, alienware rises to the top. Then I'll be SO in.

She Was Asking For It

This post might offend you. No, really. It might.

I've been thinking a bunch about this post on the amazing blog feministing.com. Jessica, the smart and saucy head of the site, discusses a British study whose main finding was "one in three people in the UK believe that women who 'behave flirtatiously' are responsible for being raped." OK, that's pretty scary. But then she goes on to quote more of the study. I'm interested in this part:

Similarly, more than a quarter of people (30%) said that a woman was partially or totally responsible for being raped if she was drunk, and more than a third (37%) held the same view if the woman had failed to clearly say “no” to the man. (bold theirs)

They clearly find this abhorrent. I'm not so upset, and it's mostly that "partially responsible" category that's doing it. Let's take another example. Say a rathepetitete woman is driving alone in her cute Porsche convertible and wanders into the South Bronx. She realizes she needs gas and hops out in her fabulous Prada heals and Gucci mini-dress. She goes up to the attendant and pulls out a wad of Benjamins and flips through about five of them before she finds a Grant, which she uses to pay the attendant. She wanders around the corner to use the bathroom and is accosted by a man who easily pins her against the wall, holds a switchblade to her throat and demands her money. Would you really say this woman was not "partially responsible" for the mugging? Of course the mugging was wrong. Nobody should mug somebody else. But when you do stupid shit that makes you substantially more vulnerable, I think most people would say you're "partially responsible" when something like this happens to you.

So how, if at all, is this situation different from rape? I have a couple of ideas, but first I'll chat a bit about what's not different. People can be bad and do bad things. We know this from a very young age, where kids talking behind our back preceded the "don't go anywhere with strangers" lecture. It is your job, as an adult, to do your best to protect yourself against this. I do think someone who doesn't say "no" when they mean "no" is doing something wrong. It is your responsibility to say no to salesmen who would con you into buying. It's even your responsibility to say no to people who come up to your car and start washing your windshield in hopes of getting paid. There are ways of forcefully saying no, and everyone should learn them. If not, people will make you do all sorts of things you don't want to do. Rape may be the worst case scenario, but it's certainly not the only scenario. You should also not get fall-down drunk without friends around. Again, people will mug you, mock you, and, again in the worst case, rape or kidnap you. It is your responsibility to care for yourself and to make sure you have trusted backup. If the woman in the car were with a 6'5", 240 lb. man acting as her escort to the bathroom, she wouldn't have had such problems. She also might not have had problems if she had hid her money well or made sure she was in a safe location before getting out of the car. So, that's how they're the same. If you can take simple steps to prevent harm, and you don't, there's some partial responsibility on your part.

It is important to note, however, that you having more responsibility doesn't make the other person any less responsible. This isn't a 0 sum game. Somebody who rapes someone passed out on the kitchen counter is just as morally abhorrent as someone who rapes a fully conscious, fighting person. "It was stupid of them to do this, so I have a right to" is bullshit logic. I believe that if you're hurting someone, if you're generating negative utility, you're being bad. Eso es todo.

Now for my thoughts on how these are different. The first thing that comes to mind, which I don't really believe to ultimately be the answer, is general vulnerability. Taking advantage of someone naturally weaker than you are or in a compromised state is worse than winning a fair fight. It's even worse than holding a gun to the head of someone in what otherwise would have been a fair fight. While I think this argument has merit in general, it doesn't seem THAT bad for someone to mug a drunk person. And raping someone who's you're own size is still abominable.

The second thing that comes to mind (all right, I guess it's actually the first) is the nature of the crime. But it's clearly not just the severity that's the issue. We can think someone who gets killed by doing something stupid is partially responsible. Is it that it's demeaning? That it's a violation? I mean, I think murder is more of a violation than rape. Here's what I think it is...thought 2.5:

I think a lot of it boils down to that age-old double standard of men-should-screw-like-bunnies-but-women-should-be-pure-and-virginal. Especially, it comes down to how people have historically (and, sadly, currently) reacted to rape. If the families and friends of the victims always reacted to rape that might have been prevented by smarter choices the same way they reacted to these other things—"I'm angry at you for not thinking and suffering the worst consequences, but now that it's happened let me hug you and do everything I can to make sure you're OK"—we might view it in a similar light as we view the other crimes. But when men in the Sudan find out the women in their lives were raped and blame them (completely unjustly in these circumstances: This isn't rape by an irresponsible, thoughtless date; this is usually rape by soldiers at gunpoint) they disown their daughters. They break off their engagements. They shun their sisters. They view the woman as unclean. When men rape in these kind of situations, they're not just giving the women a single traumatic, life-changingly depressing experience, they're also ruining everything they have and toppling their support network.

While, thank God, this doesn't seem to be the case in America, I don't think that frame of mind is totally absent. When people give women partial or total responsibility for being raped, they're not saying "you were thoughtless and could have prevented this," I really think the message between the lines is "you secretly wanted this at the time, and now you're just complaininbecauseue you can." I think that's where the problem is. And it goes a step further...even between those lines lies the message "And you're a slut because you wanted it. You're disgusting." That's very rarely, if ever, said (I believe...I may be totally wrong...In fact, there's a very good chance I'm totally wrong). But I think it's there, and I think women know that it's there. And I think that's why it's so, so offensive to say a woman was partially responsible if she put herself in a very compromising situation. Not because she didn't really forsake her responsibility, which she make have, but because the implication is that she was a willing participant. She wasn't.

Am I just spewing the obvious? Am I spewing crap? Am I spewing legitimate thought? I can't tell anymore...

Best. Weekend. Ever.

And such a good change of pace. Well, the only bad non-change of pace was Yale losing the game (in triple overtime no less!). Five years in a row we've lost the game. How depressing. But everything else was just stellar. A review, more for my personal records than for public intrigue:

Friday: Got into New Haven around 7 after sneaking out of the office about 90 minutes early to catch my train. I dropped my stuff off at Caleb's room then met Caleb, Lori, Alexandria, Di Franco, Matt Lewis, Marty Rod and Lauren Burke at Neat lounge. I stayed for about 15 minutes and one glass of Pinot Noir and went to the glee club concert. I immediately ran into the '05 crowd, giving massive hugs to Meredith, Reiman and Haninah. The concert was great (I hate to admit it, but the harvard glee club sounded really, really good. Then again, they're all-male: a big bonus to my ears.), and we all went back to the reception for a little while before I was scheduled to meet Caleb at Yorkside. We met up at a very crowded Yorkside (Caleb and Di Franco arrived about 20 minutes late, damn them) and headed to "player Drew's" party in his apartment. BEAUTIFUL apartment. The kind of thing that would cost you 4 grand a month in New York but is probably a quarter of that in New Haven. Good time at the party. Caleb got massively drunk. I hate to say it...but sometimes I like people better when they're drunk. Sometimes I like me better with half a glass of wine slowly filtering through my liver. Here's a sample of drunken dialogue between Caleb and Marty on the way back...Marty's trying to get Caleb to remember some girl:

Marty: Oh, you know...the hot one.
Caleb: Can you be any more specific?
Marty: The one who smoked out of an apple. The hot one.
Caleb: Anything else? Anything about the way she looks?
Marty: Man, she's the one who smoked out of an apple!
Caleb: Right, because I saw her. Because I'm so fucking in touch with the world that anytime someone smokes out of an apple...I KNOW. Because I'm Johnny Fucking Appleseed.

That was about it. Still pretty funny, though.

Saturday: Game time. Woke up around 10:30 to a very unhappy Caleb. Gave him Tylenol. We went to Copper Kitchen, possibly the best place to get breakfast in New Haven. It was crowded as all hell, but the super-efficient waitress got us our eggs and hash relatively quickly. We went to the busses by the gym, and the line pretty much went to Hartford. So we walked the two and a half miles or so to the game. The day was actually pretty nice, and we got there much faster than we would have had we taken the bus. So, good choice, Maggie and Caleb. We found the Branford tailgate and met up with Alexandria, Roxy, Lori, Brad, Haninah and Andrew Korn. After much reuniting and being squashed into small spaces, we went into the game for the beginning of the second quarter. By a couple minutes into the third, Yale was up 21-3. It looked like smooth sailing.

A bunch of us cut out just as the fourth quarter began and Harvard brought the score to 21-16. We drove in Roxy's rented car to Atticus, where I stayed for a few minutes before heading to physics Yorkside. The only one to come reasonably on time was Meredith. Yorkside was packed, and we figured the others would still be at the game, so we just went to Koffee Too and hung out there, meeting everyone else at Yorkside around 5:15. A bunch of those people went to Harry Potter, so Reiman and I hung out a bit before I departed for India Palace. They took forever to seat us and longer to serve us, and our group of 12 had to split up (shocker), but oh did that Indian food hit the spot. And the company couldn't be beat. After Indian, sake bombing (or in my case, hot sake sipping) at Miya's. Good time was had by all. Eric Seymour also joined us at that point, and it was very good to see him. I heard all about the TFAers crazy experiences, and I, of course, asked all the guys whether their kids have crushes on them.
Brad - A couple seem to.
Matt Lewis - No, they're elementary school kids, and his life's goal is to never have a student with a crush on him.
Dave - Yeah, they do. (shocker)
Eric - No, but the captain of the basketball team sometimes touches him inappropriately. ("I was going to buzz the principal's office, because this was the third time he'd come in late without a note, and I go to reach for it and he hugs me. I was like 'WTF? buzz!'")

After Miya's some people went to Rudy's and I went back with a few other people to Caleb's room. They, too, left for Rudy's, so Caleb and I just hung out and chatted, which was great as always. I gave him a backrub I owed him and he desperately needed (what a self-sacrificing girl I am, giving a backrub to an obscenely sexy man...the pictures don't show his general awesomeness). When people came back from Rudy's, they played poker, and Haninah and I chatted on Caleb's bed, as he tried not to flirt with Matt Lewis's girlfriend's friend and instead redirect her onto Brad. It worked. After a while: sleep! And it was good.

Sunday: Woke up to Caleb's alarm, showered, dressed, woke up Alexandria, packed, and went with her and Caleb to Koffee Too for breakfast. Ate with them and the others. Brad drove us to the train station, and Alexandria and I got on the 11:57 to Grand Central, while Caleb waited for his Amtrak to Virginia (where he'll be spending the vacation with Leslie, his girlfriend). Departed from Alexandria at Stanford, where I took the local to Mamaroneck and waited for 35 minutes for a cab. Ah, well. And now I'm relaxing and cursing myself for not bringing the book I have to review for Seed home with me. I wasn't sure I was going to have to review it, and now the reviews are due on Wednesday. Which means I have a book to read tomorrow. Luckily it's shortish and fun. But it's still a book. I kind of miss that kind of pressured work, though. I'm a little excited.

CLARIFICATION (11/24): On the clause "as he tried not to flirt with Matt Lewis's girlfriend's friend and instead redirect her onto Brad. It worked." This is not to imply that this girl was going after Haninah all night and instead he pushed her onto Brad. I believe she was flirting with Brad earlier in the evening at Rudy's as well as before the card game got going. While Brad was playing, she was flirting with Haninah. She was looking for love (in all the...right places?)

seedmagazine.com is live (and well)

I'll be sending out an email blast tomorrow, but to reward any loyal blog readers, you get to be the first to know that seedmagazine.com is up and running! Yes, this is The Site. Go! Enjoy! And click on the following link to help my personal mission of getting our site to show up when you type "seed" into google: Seed.

Indulgence

Today I made the most indulgent purchase of my life. Here, I'm defining indulgence as (price x emotional kick)/(market value x personal necessity). The purchase was the most beautiful copy of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ever. Really, ever. The price? $13...over my $50 of gift certificates. YEAH. So that was probably stupid to blow about 7 books on one. But it's great. It's beautifully elegant...just a white cover with the title and author in black type. No dedication, no annotation, no about the author, and most importantly, no introduction from Harold Bloom or Samuel Beckett or Pompous Schmuck-Jerkoff. It's just the text. Black on white, take it as you will, your imagination sets the mood. $63 isn't bad...for love! (as I hear, the going rate's about $200)

And in further news, Phase 1 of Operation Stealth Infiltration of the Adult World (yes, OSIAW's a crappy acronym) is complete, woo! Yeah, that was cryptic, but, like so many parts of this blog, it's public to everybody save one or two people in the world. More thoughtful things some other time...

Will You People Stop Banning Gay Marriage?

That'd be nice. Texas, I'm talking to you. No, not you, Austin. You just keep doing your thing.

Anyway, having just bounced off a blog post where I got a song that sounds like a combination of everything Jason Farago's ever played for me, I thought I'd do a music post of my own. So tonight I give you the songs of a playlist I created last week:

2000-2008: A Bush Administration Playlist

NB: These songs don't all have a literal relation to the Bush administration. They mostly just channel a certain je ne sais quoi that's part of today's zeitgeist...or some other...foreign...words...Anyway, if you think any songs should be added, let me know. And sorry about the running times. I'm copying and pasting from itunes; try to view them as hyphens.

1999 3:37 Prince
All You Can Eat 3:23 Ben Folds
America, Fuck Yeah 2:06 Team America: World Police
Big Yellow Taxi 3:46 Counting Crows
Can't Always Get What You Want 7:28 Rolling Stones
Easy Street 3:17 Bernadette Peters., Carol Burnett, Tim Curry
End of the World as We Know It 4:05 R.E.M.
Enormous Penis 2:45 Da Vinci's Notebook
Fake Plastic Trees 4:50 Radiohead
Fat Bottomed Girls 4:18 Queen
Gay Messiah 3:46 Rufus Wainwright
If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next 4:52 Manic Street Preachers
Instant Karma 3:23 John Lennon
Is That All There Is? 4:30 Sandra Bernhard
It's Oh So Quiet 3:38 Björk
Karma Police 4:21 Radiohead
Livin' On A Prayer 4:10 Bon Jovi
Making Love Alone 5:54 Bernadette Peters
Mama, Look Sharp 2:25 Redhot & Blue 20th Anniversary Jam
Molasses to Rum 4:42 1776
My Poor Generation 3:59 Moxy Früvous
Never Been To Spain 3:47 Three Dog Night
Novacaine For The Soul 3:09 Eels
Plastic Jesus 4:30 Jello Biafra, Mojo Nixon
Psycho Killer 4:20 Talking Heads
Right Through You 2:55 Alanis Morissette
Say It Ain't So 4:18 Weezer
Selling Out 2:25 Tom Lehrer
Springtime for Hitler 3:23 The Producers
Sympathy for the Devil 6:27 Rolling Stones
Take A Letter Miss Jones 3:29 Blood Brothers
The Drinking Song 5:09 Moxy Früvous
The General 4:06 Dispatch
The Greatest Man in America (live) 3:09 Moxy Früvous
The Lees of Old Virginia 3:50 1776
The Time Warp 3:16 Stanford Fleet Street Singers
Urinetown 1:40 Urinetown
We Are the Champions 3:03 Queen
We Shall Overcome 5:26 Denver Gay Men's Chorus
Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego (Full Version) 2:50 Rockapella
Won't Get Fooled Again 8:33 The Who
You're So Vain 4:18 Carly Simon
Your Redneck Past 3:42 Ben Folds Five

And No One's Getting Fat Except Leon Kass

[WARNING: the post contains TMI. If you don't care (most of you), read ahead. I will let you know when it's starting and ending]

I had so much blogging I wanted to do over the course of the day, which is always a bad thing, because then I can't focus when I actually sit down to write.

So let's start with Leon R. Kass's The Death Of Courtship, as excerpted on the Focus on the Family website. I encourage you to read the full three parts, but since I don't expect you to suffer for pages upon pages, I'll just give you my reaction and some snippets.

Kass's piece clarified two already-pretty-clear things for me:
1) THAT I am naturally a pretty conservative person.
2) WHY I cannot tolerate people who identify as politically and socially conservative.

TMI STARTS HERE
We'll start with the first. As most people who read this blog know, I dig gay porn. I read and watch it a fair amount. I'm the first person in a group of friends to strike up a conversation on masturbation, and I encourage people to explore their desires, both latent and accessible. I have no moral objection to people using drugs to the point that it does not really hurt themselves or others.

But for me, the talk is the walk. I don't hook up with people who aren't my steady boyfriend. I appreciate romance. The only illegal drug I've tried is one shot of absinthe, and I'm not even sure that that's still illegal. I've never been properly drunk. In many ways, I'm doing much better on the conservatives' demands than most of their children are. And in the ways I'm not? (You know, the pornorgraphy, incessant self-abuse) I'm feeling the effects they talk about.

Just as people now have some trouble enjoying fruit properly because they've experienced freaks of nature such as Rolos and Spree, the standards of whom I'm off-handedly physically attracted to have gone up enormously due to a little too much Lane Fuller in my life. Coincidence? Who knows. And I probably should have read Dan Savage's advice on "varying technique" in masturbation when I was five, but it's a little late for that. I have become erotically desensitized in all respects. Point to the right.
TMI ENDS HERE

So for my first quote from Kass I go to this utterly obnoxious but not-entirely-without-merit blurb:

"The change most immediately devastating for wooing is probably the sexual revolution. For why would a man court a woman for marriage when she may be sexually enjoyed, and regularly, without it? Contrary to what the youth of the sixties believed, they were not the first to feel the power of sexual desire. Many, perhaps even most, men in earlier times avidly sought sexual pleasure prior to and outside of marriage. But they usually distinguished, as did the culture generally, between women one fooled around with and women one married, between a woman of easy virtue and a woman of virtue simply. Only respectable women were respected; one no more wanted a loose woman for one's partner than for one's mother."

Yeah, I'm wretching too, don't worry. But hidden in that drivel is a point: There probably is an unbalance between men who will want to marry if extramarital sex is easy to obtain and women who will want to marry if extramarital sex is easy to obtain. Note I said "unbalance," not "no men will ever want to get married and all women will." Just "unbalance." If the only way you can have an actual relationship that involves sex is by getting married, you will have an overwhelming proportion of both sexes who want to do just that. While extramarital sex is pretty completely accepted (as it is now), most women will want to have extramarital sex, and then at some point settle down with a husband. Most men will want to have extramarital sex, and then at some point settle down with a wife...but it's a smaller most! I think. And if you think I'm being heterosexist, I am. But I said "most." So I'm still right. I think. And it's not so much "heterosexist" as "totally self-centered."

So in the current situation, for whom does it suck? Meeeee. Ussssss. Well, not all of us. I can't predict whom it won't suck for and whom it will suck for. But this does mean there will be leftover women. Which is annoying and unfortunate for those women.

So we should change things! We should make laws! We should stop prescribing the pill, and make abortion illegal, and teach abstinence only education to prevent promiscuity and force people to have the families I want them to!

No we shouldn't.

And that's where I finally hit number 2: I hate social conservatives (except Steve Schwartz). OK, so some impulses I have are completely different from theirs. I don't think there's anything even remotely wrong with homosexuality...although that not being a choice sort of invalidates the comparison, in my eyes. But I wouldn't think there's anything wrong even if it weren't. I don't think there's anything wrong with having an abortion (see my semi-offensive post from a few days ago), but that's because I don't believe in the abstract notion of the soul. And of course I don't think there's anything wrong with random sex or drug use or everything else Kass criticizes, it just makes for the world that he correctly describes, and that's not the world that works best to my advantage.

And that's completely my problem.

Sure, I can advocate for a culture that more suits my needs if I believe it will more suit the needs of many others. But the presumption, the gumption it takes to want to LEGISLATE that culture? That's just offensive. The fact that Kass (did I mention he was Bush's bioethics advisor 2001-2005?) could write this is unfathomable:

"While some programs also encourage abstinence or non-coital sex, most are concerned with teaching techniques for "safe sex"; offspring (and disease) are thus treated as (equally) avoidable side effects of sexuality, whose true purpose is only individual pleasure. (This I myself did not learn until our younger daughter so enlightened me, after she learned it from her seventh-grade biology teacher.) The entire approach of sex education is technocratic and, at best, morally neutral; in many cases, it explicitly opposes traditional morals while moralistically insisting on the equal acceptability of any and all forms of sexual expression provided only that they are not coerced. No effort is made to teach the importance of marriage as the proper home for sexual intimacy."

That's because sexual education is supposed to teach you. It's supposed to teach you facts. Teachers teach facts (and strategies and ways of thinking about things but hush, teachers, I'm talking about sex ed, not calculus or philosophy). My other radical opinion in life is that teachers generally shouldn't teach morality beyond keeping order in their classrooms. Yes, telling a kid not to call another kid "faggot" qualifies as keeping order. Of course this is a balancing act, but I don't think teachers should even tell their students that giving to the poor is the right thing to do. And I think this mostly so it doesn't get us into binds like these problems with sex ed. If teachers can tell their kids to volunteer at a soup kitchen, they can tell them not to sleep with someone 45 minutes after they meet. Sure, I see the difference between these types of morality, but many people don't, and those many people are the ones we have to deal with.

And along those lines, I don't think the government should legislate ideals. I think the government should pass only enough restrictions to keep people from destroying each other. What does this make me sound like? A Republican. Yes it does. And to be frank, I think I have some conservative small-government impulses also. But, while welfare programs cost money, and taking money is a restriction in some sense, welfare programs aren't at all restrictions in the same sense as a prohibition on abortion would be. It's more of an allowance, even though it's "big government." And I think it's important we do good things when we can. And we can.

All right, it's late and I'm starting to eke into the land of gibberish (Gibber, I suppose). I'm not editing this, so be kind. Some things would have been edited. Buenas Noches!

How To Fuck Up Small Children

As my friends (and Augusten Burroughs) demonstrate, it can be much harder than you think to fuck up small children.

A small child's parents can get divorced when she's two, and refuse to be in the same room as each other for the next couple of decades of her life, and she can still be 25 and in a relationship with a good-hearted, secure-in-all-the-right-ways sort of guy for a solid 50 months and counting.

A small child can be raised in a culture with a violent opposition to education, with people who mock the smart kids and teachers who hate students who do well, and she can graduate from a top school and publish scientific papers in journals.

A small child can be born with doctors saying that if she survives at all she will unquestionably be severely mentally retarded, and she can still turn out on the smart side of the scale. You know. Passable and all.

HOWEVER

There is no question in my mind that AMC has truly fucked up these small children for life.

Just in Casey?

The site didn't launch, and during my moping period I had the opportunity to read Alito's dissent in PP v Casey. I do feel I learned a lot about the process of how decisions are arrived at and written up just from reading the opinion. It's no surprise that reading these things is a good part of law school. I also learned much more about the conditions that need to be met in a legal state abortion law than I knew before. I quote from the dissent:

"Under that test, as the majority explains, a law that imposes an “undue burden” must serve a “compelling” state interest. By contrast, a law that does not impose an “undue burden” must simply be “rationally” or “reasonably” related to a “legitimate” state interest."

I had heard of "undue burden" before, but I didn't know much about this "compelling" and "legitimate" state interest part. Great language guys...I guess passing the legal buck is all part of the process.

But onto determining whether Alito was, indeed, just in Casey. The first part of the decision I take issue with has nothing to do with Alito: it's the precedent O'Connor sets...or at least the precedent Alito interprets her as setting:

"Justice O’Connor has explained the meaning of the term “undue burden” in several abortion opinions. In Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, 462 U.S. at 464, 103 S.Ct. at 2510 (O’Connor, J., dissenting), she wrote that “an ‘undue burden’ has been found for the most part in situations involving absolute obstacles or severe limitations on the abortion decision.” She noted that laws held unconstitutional in prior cases involved statutes that “criminalized all abortions except those necessary to save the life of the mother,” inhibited ” ‘the vast majority of abortions after the first 12 weeks,’ ” or gave the parents of a pregnant minor an absolute veto power over the abortion decision. Id. (emphasis in original; citations omitted). She suggested that an “undue burden” would not be created by “a state regulation [that] may ‘inhibit’ abortions to some degree.” Id. She also suggested that there is no undue burden unless a measure has the effect of “substantially limiting access.”"

I'm not sure what he means that she "suggested" undue burden would not be created by a regulation that just inhibits abortions and doesn't "substantially" limit them. I would guess from his quote that she was somewhat explicit about it, but if she didn't explicitly state these conditions must be met, I think a justice has some leeway with them. Clearly, Alito doesn't think he does (and wouldn't care if he did). "Substantially" is an interesting word. Does substantially mean "greatly, in some cases" or "at all, in many cases?" I would like to say that it's the former. If even one, even hypothetical, person is greatly inhibited, I believe the inhibiting was substantial. Alito seems to put more stake in numbers, which I think is kind of heinous. This is the part of the dissent I disagree with most:

"Second, the plaintiffs offered testimony that the exceptions in Section 3209 [the spousal notification part] would not cover a case in which a woman did not want to notify her husband for fear that he would retaliate in some way other than the infliction of bodily injury upon her, such as by subjecting her to psychological abuse or abusing their children (see 744 F.Supp. at 1360- 62). The plaintiffs, however, do not appear to have offered any evidence showing how many (or indeed that any actual women) would be affected by this asserted imperfection in the statute."

Admittedly the burden of proof is on the plaintiffs here—Alito makes that painfully clear—but I think that by simply pointing out this imperfection, they've proven a substantial limitation of access inherent in the regulation. Whether or not this substantial limitation would affect zero, one, or tens of thousands of abortions each year does not affect that the limitation is imposed.

Maybe he covered why this point-that few women would be affected-is relevant, but, at least from my first reading, all I see is his earlier comment on O'Connor's definitions of undue burden:

"Taken together, Justice O’Connor’s opinions reveal that an undue burden does not exist unless a law (a) prohibits abortion or gives another person the authority to veto an abortion or (b) has the practical effect of imposing “severe limitations,” rather than simply inhibiting abortions ” ‘to some degree’ ” or inhibiting “some women.”"

Is he taking these phrases a little out of context? Most restrictions will only inhibit abortions "to some degree" or inhibit "some women." They have the clause in this spousal notification regulation that a woman can get around it if she believes her husband will physically harm her. If it did no have this clause, would he still not strike it down because it only inhibits some women (those with abusive husbands) to some degree (a little slapping around here and there...no death...that would be a severe limitation, but a black eye never REALLY stopped anyone from doing anything). I exaggerate for effect, but the "some women" and "some degree" clauses seem pretty bizarre, in the way he takes them.

So who decides when "some women" becomes "all women?" And the restriction here is imposed on all women, even if many are not affected by it. If he's really right in saying that all women must be inhibited to a great degree, I suppose I'm defeated. But that seems like a ridiculous requirement. Perhaps that's what O'Connor meant. As Alito points out, she struck down the two-parent notification not on undue burden, but because it served to legitimate state interest. If he had the ability to determine that "severe limitation" did not necessarily mean all women inhibited to a great degree, as I believe he probably did, there I disagree with him.

Then there's the "rationally relates to a legitimate state purpose" part of the thing, which I'll touch on briefly. The interest at hand is the father's investment in the fetus. Apparently, "The Supreme Court has held that a man has a fundamental interest in preserving his ability to father a child." OK. Then, "The Court’s opinions also seem to establish that a husband who is willing to participate in raising a child has a fundamental interest in the child’s welfare...It follows that a husband has a “legitimate” interest in the welfare of a fetus he has conceived with his wife."

Why this is a state purpose is apparently too obvious to mention. I don't say this sarcastically...it doesn't seem intuitive to me, but for those familiar with law, perhaps it does. Alito quotes, "“[S]tatutory regulation of domestic relations [is] an area *726 that has long been regarded as a virtually exclusive province of the States."...Accordingly, Pennsylvania has a legitimate interest in furthering the husband’s interest in the fate of the fetus, as the majority in this case acknowledges." Yeah, I don't really get it...why the state's ability to regulate it necessarily implies an interest in every aspect of it.

So that brings Alito to the "rationally related" part:

"The Pennsylvania legislature could have rationally believed that some married women are initially inclined to obtain an abortion without their husbands’ knowledge because of perceived problems–such as economic constraints, future plans, or the husbands’ previously expressed opposition– that may be obviated by discussion prior to the abortion. In addition, the legislature could have reasonably concluded that Section 3209 would lead to such discussion and thereby properly further a husband’s interests in the fetus in a sufficient percentage of the affected cases to justify enactment of this measure."

This was around the time I got tired reading the opinion and writing this entry. So I'm a little off. But I just don't like the assumption that encouraging women to talk to their husbands, husbands gaining an interest in their child (and then women having or not having abortions) serves a legitimate state interest. Alito (I believe) concedes that it's not a "compelling" state interest; therefore if it placed undue burden on women, it would not be constitutional. Even though I don't see where the legitimate state interest really comes in (anyone's welcome to tell me...although maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and it'll be clear as day), I don't think it's relevant, because I think the law does substantially inhibit women, even if it, in practice, may not inhibit many, and it therefore creates undue burden and does not serve a compelling state interest.

Well, that's my first analysis of a judicial opinion ever. I'm sure law school professors would fail me so hard and fast I wouldn't sit down for a week. But I'd love your lay and/or law-school-informed reactions.

(Also note: I'm not reading this over before I post, so there may be some serious flaws in sentence structure/logic.)