friday celebrity-letter blogging

dear dr. max lûscher,

you're a fucking genius! the color quiz is far and away the most accurate measure of a person's emotional and mental state in the history of psychological inquiry. i take the quiz every now and then just to pass the time, and it's never once been wrong. i can't even begin to tell you how impressed i am. seriously, i'm just, like, agog. probably you don't need me to tell you this, especially since you're, you know, dead, but let me illustrate my point with an example anyway.

for a while now i've been following this brutal, circular, wheel-spinning debate about things like racism, and whether it's worse to say people who don't know they're exhibiting a racial bias are exhibiting a racial bias than it is to say it makes perfect sense to overcharge certain racial groups for merchandise, and whether a business's offending a portion of its consumer base by overcharging in such a manner could or should be perceived as rational, and whether it makes sense to attempt to justify or rationalize a person's unscrupulous behavior when engaging in it has helped that person attain a self-serving goal . . . crazy stuff. stuff i couldn't believe there could ever be two evenly split sides about. i just got angrier and angrier, and more and more depressed, because every time someone tried to make a case for fair and decent behavior under any and all circumstances, someone else would call that person an economically ignorant ninny--but i didn't want to turn my back on the dialogue, because i felt like it was really, really important to keep trying to make that case. i did what i could to make calm, methodical arguments, but away from the maelstrom i was having stress dreams and couldn't finish my lunch, and then finally, on the eleventh day, someone said that anyone with less information than someone else not only will be but should be ripped off every single time he or she can be, and i had an aneurysm and ran away crying. i felt like cindy lou who after she'd accidentally wandered into quentin tarantino's remake of glengarry glen ross.

so, in an effort to stop thinking about all of that awful stuff and think, instead, of nothing at all, i popped on over to the color quiz to stare at meaningless, uniform sqares of bright, silent, morally neutral color. and guess what color quiz reported about my mood?

Your Existing Situation: Not only considers her demands minimal, but also regards them as imperative. Sticks to them stubbornly and will concede nothing.

Your Stress Sources: The situation is regarded as threatening or dangerous. Outraged by the thought that she will be unable to achieve her goals and distressed at the feeling of helplessness to remedy this. Over-extended and feels beset, possibly to the point of nervous prostration.

Your Restrained Characteristics: Quick to take offense. Sensitive and sentimental, but conceals this from all except those very close to her.

Your Desired Objective: Needs release from stress. Longs for peace, tranquility, and contentment.

Your Actual Problem: Depleted vitality has created an intolerance for any further stimulation or demands on her resources. A feeling of powerlessness subjects her to agitation and acute distress. Tries to escape from this by relinquishing the struggle, and by finding peaceful and restful conditions in which to recuperate in an atmosphere of affection and security.

holy fricking cow. that is the BEST. QUIZ. EVER. it knows everything. it's also fairly effective therapy; i guess i'd rather not be the kind of girl who chooses to escape her problems by giving in to her adversaries. i mean, i haven't been yet. and while i'd also rather not succumb to a nervous breakdown, at least when i finally do lapse into frothy madness i'll be able to do it with a clean conscience. or a conscience, period.

so brace yourselves, foes; from this day forward, for me, it shall be ever once more unto the breach.

thanks again, dr. lûscher. i don't know how you figured it out, but whatever you did, it's pretty rad.

your embattled fan, who is once again prepared to wade out into the center of the thunderdome and hold up her fading daisy,

juniper