reader poll

do we hate this new look? i'm not sure about it yet, i think i might change everything but the titles to black. changes of this sort do affect you, so i'd like to know how you feel. odds are i won't change anything right away, because it's such a ruddy pain in the arse, but take some time to think about it and voice all of your opinions, positive or scathingly negative. i honestly want your take, because nowhere am i more the antithesis of the stereotypical gay male than in my utter inability to pull a room together.

postscript, 10:45 PM: forget that about it taking a while, i've already started moving things. but please do leave your input.

i'm here, i'm queer -- but not like you think i am . . .

so, i just spent about two hours trying to change the layout of this crazy green monster with the supposedly new and improved blogger layout options, and i couldn't get it to do a single thing i wanted, so i hope you liked us the way we were. luckylumpia in seattle does . . . kind of . . . maybe . . . here's what she had to say about us in her list of web-site reviews:

Apr 20, 11:56am blogs

i am a pretentious hack. [weloveyouplatonically.blogspot.com]

I presume he is a gay male. It is nicely written and has dirty squirmy parts.

really? really? i not only read male, i read gay male? well, c'est la vie--there are plenty of things that sound a hell of a lot worse--but if anyone else is confused, i assure you that i'm chromosomally xx all the way. some of my parts are, admittedly, squirmy and dirty, but all of those parts are female, and always have been. of course, the fact that i am not traditionally feminine is something i've been aware of for, well, pretty much since i've been aware, and some of my gay-boy friends have suggested that i may have missed my calling. i just didn't know it was coming across so strongly in print.

now that i've been thinking about it for a while, i'm actually quite curious as to what exactly it is about my tone that suggests gay male, or at least fails to suggest female. what would suggest gay male in any tone? is it my frequent use of the word "hon"? is it my tendency to steer clear of "girly" topics? is it my tendency to steer clear of girly topics while maintaining a relatively girly demeanor? or is it nothing more complex than my having referred to someone as "the grace to my will" in the sidebar? i do hope it isn't that; delve deeper, luckylumpia--the world is crawling with ironic references, and you're likely to run into some problems if you take them all at face value.

that bit about it being nicely written, though, i am 100 percent on board with.

white lies

folks are spitting wooden nickels about the tillman affair, and rightly so. but i would like to take this opportunity to make sure everyone knows that this is far from the first time this sort of misinformation has been offered to the families of soldiers killed in iraq, or to the public. way back in september of 2005, news broke about a young man named kenneth ballard whose family had been notified via letter that his death in May of 2004 was the result of "a firefight with insurgents." over a year later, it was revealed that ballard was actually killed by the accidental firing of a machine gun after he and his platoon had returned from fighting. a 2006 review of army case files revealed that the families of six other soldiers, including tillman, had been given similarly false information. now, you might think to yourself, "only six? panties in a bunch much, juniper?" but the review only explored the deaths of 810 troops, or about 26 percent of the total number of servicemen killed in iraq and afghanistan by the time of the study. most of the cases involve a repainting of the situation similar to that in ballard's case—a stated cause of enemy fire or combat with insurgents when there were no such things in the general area at the time of death—but one soldier died of a heart attack after inhaling something sketchy from an aerosol can, and his family was apparently told that he died of completely natural causes (or that he was scared to death by insurgents; the article doesn't go into much detail). jesse buryj's mother had to file a freedom-of-information-act request in order to obtain a copy of her son's autopsy report, which revealed he'd died of a friendly-fire gunshot wound to the back, even though she had been told he'd been hit by a truck that had run a checkpoint.

i have no way of knowing who initiates these falsifications or what the motivation is. there could be sincerely good intentions at the root of it, a desire on someone's part to make these deaths seem a little less senseless or unnecessary. but given the way in which detractors of the war have been viciously and repeatedly attacked for chipping away at the morale of the troops or suggesting that fallen soldiers might have died in vain, i can not quite silence the angry, cynical part of my brain that thinks there could be a pr angle even to this aspect of the war's management. one cindy sheehan was hard enough to silence, wasn't she? if these families can be placated, if we keep using the words "enemy" and "insurgent," if we convince those suffering a loss here in the states that that loss is on the hands of a distant, bloodthirsty enemy, maybe they won't remember that that enemy is one we created out of nothing with our own war-hungry hands. maybe they won't let their fury and misery circle back around to its logical target. maybe.

whatever the reason, it's a terrible thing to do to. when the truth of the matter comes to light however many months or years later, it's as if the family is being informed of the death for the first time; essentially, they have to rip the scab off and start the grieving process anew, only this time with the added shock of having been lied to by the country their son or daughter or mother or father died serving. that's quite a blow. in fact, i can't think of many hits that would come harder—or that would be more likely to make the families of the fallen question the righteousness of the cause. just ask peggy buryj:

When your son's a soldier you know they could get killed. You know, you pray. But you know it—it's a reality. . . . Some—maybe some mothers could say, well, it didn't matter—oh, how he died. Well, it does. It's—it's important. It's a part of history. It's a part of my son's life, how he died. And they're not going take that away from him. . . . I like to think they think it hurts too bad to tell families that their son was killed by friendly fire. But that's not the truth. What hurts is not knowing. . . . The people that have come forward—and made the stink, and . . . questioned it, are the people that are getting the attention. . . . [Army officials] have two options, to tell me who killed my son, or to have a very good reason—why they can't figure it out. Those are their only two options. And one will not be acceptable.

words trailing off . . .

"The thing about David Halberstam was that he stayed the course and he kept the faith in the belief in the people's right to know," said George Esper, who spent 10 years in Vietnam with the Associated Press.

Neil Sheehan, former Saigon bureau chief for United Press International, said he had lost his best friend, a man of enormous physical and mental energy who had "profound moral and physical courage."

"We were in Vietnam at a time when we were being denounced by those on high," said Sheehan, who went on to write A Bright Shining Lie, a Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Vietnam War. "There was tremendous pressure. David never buckled under it at all."

-lisa leff, ap

i like to tell myself that i'm very reasonable and not at all one for superstition, but life has consistently proven that my mother and other old wives are far from wrong to fret about things like this happening in threes. i doubt my mother would recognize halberstam's name, and she was never big on vonnegut, so today i am doing the sniffling and hand-wringing for both of us. it would have been enough to be so terribly sad, but now i am terribly sad and terribly anxious. ah, well; we do our parts and shuffle on, i suppose. we can only hope, at the end, that we've gotten at least some of it right. not this right, perhaps, but close enough that we can be proud of it. so a toast to the people who've managed it, because in this particular triad, one of them is going next.

monday swat-in-the-face-with-my-white-glove blogging

condé nast is hiring. condé nast is always hiring, all the time. condé nast will not hire me, because i don't live in new york, or because i think gucci handbags are preternaturally ghastly, or because i don't have a master's in journalism from yale and a phd in comparative literature from columbia, or who knows why.* whatever the reason is, the human resources department is doing nothing to convince me that it has anything to do with my skills set not being up to the publisher's standards; right now condé nast is looking to hire a senior editor—let's take a look at the prereqs, why don't we:

The Senior Editor reports, edits, and packages stories. The position requires a proven history of reporting, editing, and compiling material specifically with food-related feature stories. This person will also have a solid knowledge of copyediting and fact checking. The Senior Editor must have published clips proving an ability to weave a compelling, literary story that evokes a strong sense of place, and captures the essence of an experience or destination are necessary. Experience editing high caliber writers is essential.

what does that sentence even mean? i have to read the job description three times just to figure out what the hell it's getting at, and they're the ones looking down their noses at me? pish.

in all honesty, i have no interest in this job, but it's the principle of the thing, you know? and we have something of a history. when their promotion department sent out an e-mail blast last march about the new yorker conference, i found a typo in it. you can't reply to those e-mails (i tried; they don't even want to hear it), so i couldn't help them, but it bothered me all day. that typo isn't present on the current conference page, which is basically an expanded version of the blast, but there are new and thrilling errors in its place. 2012 is a big deal, a big, lofty, intellectual, self-congratulatory deal; there's no room for editorial mishaps in that sort of thing. likewise, public notice of a job opening that is going to be viewed by many, many people—people who have come to you because you represent a standard they aspire to—should be checked once or twice before it's released, ideally by someone who can read and speak fluent, intelligible english. i understand that nobody's perfect, but sometimes the context in which that imperfection reveals itself makes it so much more disappointing.




* i know what you're thinking, and yes, i do capitalize properly in all official application materials. i don't enjoy it, but i do it.

. . . if by "near future" you mean the present and/or the immediate past

so, it looks like for all the hype and hullabaloo surrounding the new yorker conference--or, at least, all the hype and hullabaloo the new yorker has attempted to create surrounding its conference--there isn't going to be much to it that people who read the new yorker won't already know a fair bit about. i mean, there's plenty of cool shit goin' down--dan barber will be there to talk about his sustainable and community-based agricultural projects; jonathan haidt, a social psychologist who co-authored a delightful paper on the neurological underpinnings of morality with one of the current loves of my life, joshua greene, will be on hand to remind (or at least ask) everyone to be nice; and david byrne is david byrne is david byrne, and i shouldn't have to say any more about that--but then there's will goldfarb, who makes things that are reminiscent of desserts out of ingredients that are mostly food and who was written up by buford last june (the conference page credits him with the invention of "experiental" cuisine, which sounds like what you get when you stir fry blindfolded while listening to early sonic youth albums, but i'm fairly certain that the term goldfarb actually uses is "experiential," which just sounds like a snooty, puffed-up way of saying you can taste it), and will wright, the creator of the sims, who was profiled in the magazine last november prior to the release of his new game, spore. and there's some guy who makes cocktails out of oxygenated water (?!?) whose name i refuse to know, and a bunch of men who know how to make money, and some other men who know how to make money by selling drugs. it'll be good enough, is what i'm saying, but for $1,200 it could probably be better. even my malcolm, whom remnick is pimping over this shindig as if he were a berry-lipped virgin lass and the conference were being held in a corner room at The Enchanted Hunters,* is recycling last year's news and lugging mike mccready,** the dude whose hit-song formula was tucked oh so tidily into the center of last october's epagogix article, back into the spotlight.

that article, as we all (secretly) know, was my birthday present, and a lovely present it was, and here we are at my approximate half-birthday talking about it again, and i don't love it any less . . . but the "hooray for money and formulas!" zealotry of some of its subjects didn't exactly warm my heart, and since this conference is about the future (or so we're told) and, presumably, how grand this select group of individuals is on the verge of making it--i don't know. i guess i was hoping for something a little more optimistic from malcolm than "i know a guy who can tell you how to pad a radio playlist." because if platinum blue is the future of music, boys and girls, well, i don't even know what i'll do. i hated that gnarls barkley song, but it was all around me everywhere i went for months and months, it sat on the crown of my head and thumped its knuckles against my temples in that relentless 2/4 tempo until tears came to my eyes, and i really was crazy . . . and in the land of platinum blue that would be my life. or, no, i guess more accurately my life would swerve helplessly between that and the soul-deadening cruise-liner-lounge "jazz" of norah jones. what is up, america? all the music out there, and you're all, i want to swap my right ventricle for a drum machine! no, i want to be yelled at by angsty boys wearing suits and eyeliner! no, i want to drown slowly in grade b maple syrup!

well, that's your right, isn't it. you can do all of those things. but i want to listen to mirah and the version of love spit love's "am i wrong" where the marching band comes in in the last bridge, and joanna newsom, and anything that involves a banjo or a harpsichord, and if you and people like mike mccready push the sounds i love any farther toward the left end of the dial we're apt to fall off the edge of the earth. so huzzah for math and entrepreneurs--the world benefits greatly from them both, to be sure--but keep them away from my stereo, thank you very much. we're doing just fine on our own.

i don't know why malcolm gets so excited about these things. i tend to chalk it up to a boyish love of gadgetry, the end result of coming of age alongside atari and microsoft, coupled with a very endearing desire to know why any of us likes any of the things we like, and i forgive it. how could i not? after all, i wonder about that plenty myself; i also wuved my colecovision. but all software is not good software, and lately i'm of the opinion that very little progress is good progress. i thought this conference was designed to convince me of the opposite. no dice, new yorker; it's the same old song and dance on a new stage. you don't care about progress, not really. all your pomp and chest-beating about the recycled paper you print your blow-ins on . . . you're not fooling us. the magazine itself is bright, clean, pre-consumer, tree-felling content through and through, and in truth the recycled blow-ins basically negate themselves by coming six to an issue.*** poor elizabeth kolbert, traipsing all over the planet, trying to gather enough convincing evidence to compel the right people to make the right changes in the hopes of constructing an honestly inspiring future--and the future, ungrateful little churl that it is, doesn't even invite her to its party.

well, i'm not going either, lizzie. but maybe you could ask a friend of yours who is going to ask daniel levitin why i and everyone i know can't seem to listen to this song any fewer than nineteen times in a row in any single sitting, and yet have never once heard it on the radio. curious, no? or not. i can't tell anymore. but now that i've got it in my head i must progress into my own private near future, which consists, obviously, of another eighteen listens. and that's enough music math for this evening.



* not that this is all bad; the video promo they've put together shows off malcolm's pretty eyelashes quite nicely. look at them batting all dark and sweet, bat-bat; between them and that perfect adam's apple i'm wobbly enough in the knees that i'd hand over that $1,200, if i had it to hand. oooooooh, what an evil genius david remnick is.

** lest you, as i was initially, be confused, this is not the mike mccready who has been the lead guitarist of pearl jam for the last sixteen or seventeen years--and thank god for that; i'd have been sorely disillusioned by such treachery.

*** really, is that necessary? seriously? i don't believe you.

pretentious hack dialogues: when you do [blank], i feel [blank]

i am a pretentious hack: hey, juniper. what's up?

juniper pearl: oh, nothin'. you know, work, whatever. blah. you?

iaaph: yeah, there hasn't been much of anything new here, either. actually, that's, um . . . [nervous sigh] i was kind of hoping we could talk about that.

jp: [in tone of strained nonchalance] oh, really? [averts eyes and picks at left thumbnail] what do you mean?

iaaph: [squares shoulders] listen, we've been together a long time, and i know we still care about each other a lot, but i think maybe we've reached a point where we've kind of started to take each other for granted. now, don't get upset yet, i know this is my fault, too. i set up a lot of deadlines and obligations for you without really asking you how you felt about them--but you didn't say anything about them, and i'm not the only person who expects you to meet them now--

jp: i know, i know, and i'm sorry, but i'm doing the best i can. you know how hard it's been for me to keep up with everything at work lately, and--

iaaph: i do know that, that's what i was trying to--

jp: i have to conduct a fair amount of research to come up with stuff to meet those deadlines with. i read and write all day, i don't always have the energy for it when i get home. [growing agitated] and i've been trying to cook more, so we don't have to lie awake at night trying to calculate how many plastic bread bags we'll have thrown away by the time we die, or wondering whether or not the girl who takes our order at the thai place down the street is telling the truth about there not being fish sauce in the drunken noodles--

iaaph: and i appreciate that, i really do, i just meant--

jp: and those things take a lot of time, you know? i mean, i'm just one girl, and you haven't exactly offered to help with those things. and you complain when i go out, but i do that for you, too, so i can talk about something, so we don't have to keep having all these small, negative discussions about the same old shit--

iaaph: joon, i don't--

jp: i mean, who the hell are you to get on my ass, anyway? that's completely unfair. i'm the one doing all the work around here--

iaaph: i added labels . . .

jp: i make sure the internet bill gets paid, i keep that stack of highlighted magazines in the corner like some kind of compulsive hoarding freak just in case i need to come up with a topic on short notice, i always have to be the one to start a conversation, and forget about intimacy--it's like you're not even there! and you're telling me that i'm not pulling my weight? you can't come down on me like that, you're just a blog--

[a stunned, heavy silence descends upon both parties]

iaaph: wow.

jp: i'm sorry. oh, god, i'm so sorry, i didn't mean that. it's just--sometimes i feel so overwhelmed, and when i try to talk to you about it you just sit there, waiting for me to impress you, and lately when you look at me like that, all blank and expectant, i can't think of anything to say.

iaaph: [subdued and tentative, eyes cast downward] i don't expect you to impress me.

jp: [quietly, after a pause] i think we both know that you do. [iaaph looks up; their eyes meet. both are tearful] but that's all right. i want to impress you. i want to be able to tell you a million amazing, moving, hilarious things, and i know we're not through yet, we're going to have those conversations, all of them, for years and years . . . but not every day. i'm in a weird place now, with my career and everything else, and i don't want to have to approach every new idea like it's assigned reading. sometimes i just want it to be information, like it is for everyone else. you want everything to be a thesis--

iaaph: i don't, i don't want that. it's true, when we met you did most of the talking, and you were funny and witty and curious, and you had all these ideas, and i guess i got used to that--but i know things are different now. still, though, i mean, i don't want to sound pushy or too needy, but you can't shut me out like you've been. if you aren't going to make a date, if i bring something up and you aren't interested or feel like you can't concentrate on it right then, you have to say so. you can't just walk by me like i don't even exist. i just want you to let me know what's happening with you, that's all. i mean, we're in this together . . . aren't we?

jp: yeah. [grasps approximate place on monitor where a hand might be, if iaaph had hands] yeah, we are.

'tis better to have loved and lost . . .

you will be missed so terribly. sleep well, hon.

ap strikes again!

from a recent news piece on the paternity of anna nicole smith's baby girl, who has been determined to be the daughter of larry birkhead (mostly determined? as the dna analyst put it, birkhead is "essentially" the biological father, whatever the hell that means):

Smith's lawyer-turned-companion has been caring for baby Dannielynn since her sudden death in February.

how delightfully "rose for emily" of him. i bet all of you thought the worst smell a baby could produce would emanate from a diaper, but howard k. stern, courageous do-gooder that he is, wants you to know that while that is not the case, the way the baby seems to smile as her slowly wizening lips peel back from her ashen gums makes it all worthwhile.

for pete's sake, people. it's like you're not even trying. but then, this is the first article on the case that i've actually read all the way through; perhaps the public's attention has waned to a virtually nonexistent nubbin as well, and this is how you are reeling them back in. in that case you may have not only tried but succeeded, and i should applaud you. but i will not applaud you, because i hate you. news. feh.

mummified babies, on the other hand, are the bees' blessed knees.

monday punch-in-the-face blogging

this is a very important headline about breaking news:

FOXNEWS.COM HOME > SCIENCE

Deforestation May Add to Climate Changes

Monday, April 09, 2007
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer

it is breaking my head. it is exploding my skull into all sorts of bits and shards that are flying about the room and lodging themselves in the walls and file cabinets and cheaply upholstered desk chairs. but before i succumb to my wounds i would like to draw your attention to the directory line preceding the very important headline, which, if you'll notice, tells us the most important thing of all:

fox news is greater than science. it beats it like a rock beats scissors. now, i recognize that this is an ap article and has been published in all sorts of news forums aside from those overseen by fox, and that's why i'm not going to pound fox, or anyone, into a mushy, fittingly contrite pulp. i'm just going to sit here and watch the bone fragments and gray matter ricochet around the office until my vision fades.

monday punch-in-the-face blogging

to the person who stole the small willow tree in the blue ceramic pot from my front porch this weekend,

you are a terrible human being. what kind of rotten good-for-nothing sneaks up onto a girl's porch in the middle of the night and steals a tree? i raised that tree from a sapling, i tended to it and nurtured it, i turned it regularly so it always got enough sun and cleared the leaves and debris out of its soil and gave it water when it needed it and food when it needed it and pruned away the dry branches and checked it every day for new growth and loved it like a child, and you just picked it up and ran off with it like some kind of crazy herbivorous dingo. are you going to do any of those things for it? are you? because it was just beginning to bud, and it needs care and attention now more than at any other time. is it even still alive, or did you toss it into a ditch somewhere so you could use the pot for something else? oh, my sweet, sad little tree . . . i can't bear to think about it.

listen, you murderous, plant-thieving scoundrel, i may never get my hands on you to pummel you soundly myself, but know that karma and i are tighter than a sausage and its skin, and she is on to you, buddy. if you haven't heard, let me tell you: the girl's got some moves. retribution shall be swift and thorough. prepare to rue the day, douche bag.

watch your back,

juniper


p.s. all imminent catastrophe can be averted if you simply return the tree to its place. you can keep the pot, i don't care; just give me back my baby.