i am a pretentious hack.

boo, nbc! boo!

2010-01-13T12:02:00.002-05:00

i am, have always been, and will always be a diehard conan supporter. i am sick to my stomach about the big ol' shaft nbc is currently trying to give him. jump ship, conan. they don't deserve you. come back to new york. join forces with john hodgman and start a hilarious sitcom about ivy-educated comedy writers who are so tragically underappreciated that they are forced to moonlight as clerks at the strand, or maybe kidrobot. HIRE ME AS CURATOR OF YOUR TIE COLLECTION. you will not be sorry.

the unpriveleged, single, working new york female: a half-day in the life

2009-11-05T13:17:00.010-05:00

november 4, 2009

i got home around 1:00 a.m. and found a large, unidentified male sleeping on the floor in front of my door--not the door to my building but the door to my fourth-floor apartment. he was snoring loudly and didn't seem to notice me at all as i leaped over his leg and scurried into my apartment, but i think you can probably understand that it made me a little uncomfortable to know that he was there. there are children in my building, and nosy pets. also, i could still hear him snoring once i was inside, and i thought the racket might keep me up. i called the police, who arrived pretty promptly but stood in my hallway for at least half an hour haggling with the man about whether or not he wanted to walk outside with them. from what i overheard, which was everything, he was a schizophrenic who was living in a shelter but had taken his medication late and then had "some" beer, and decided he was too tired to make it all the way home. when asked how he got inside the building, he claimed to know and be friends with everyone who lived there, and then said he was thinking of a building across the street and couldn't remember how he got into mine. once he was in, though, apparently he found my front door to be the most welcoming of all the front doors he came across. that's nice, i guess, that my entryway feels warm and homey. at least, it would be, if i wanted anyone to come near my apartment, ever. i got to sleep around 3:30 a.m.

i left my house at 7:45 a.m. to move my car for alternate-side parking. thinking it would take me maybe thirty minutes at most to find a spot, i didn't bother to clean up or even change out of my pajamas, since i planned to shower when i got back. ninety minutes later, i gave up and double-parked two blocks from my apartment to wait for the street sweeper to pass so i could put my car right back where it had been at 7:45. i got back to my apartment at 9:35--five minutes after i was supposed to have arrived at work--and threw on clothes that, i realize now, don't really make any sense. i did not brush my teeth or wash my face, choosing instead to stuff my toothbrush, toothpaste, and a jar of astringent scrub pads into my bag and run out the door. at 10:15 a.m., on the train somewhere under downtown manhattan and still fifteen minutes from my destination, i realized that i had not peed since i'd woken up, and that that was rapidly becoming an extremely unfortunate oversight.

at 12:45 p.m. i ate the remnants of a sandwich that had been sitting out on my desk for 24 hours. i praised myself for not having wept at any point in this calendar day.

at 12:52 p.m., i read this, and i thought, yes. nothing more; just that--yes.

at 1:13 p.m., a cold stillness, part numbness, part calm, settled upon me, and i finally was able to address the three dozen angry, impatient e-mails that i had been staring at blankly for the past two hours. yes, dr. haughty, i did forget to attach the cover sheet. no, i do not deserve to work here or to live. yes, i will sleep uncovered on the hard floor tonight and meditate on my wrongs, if i survive the food poisoning i have undoubtedly contracted from my soggy and aged half-sandwich.

i just want to say one thing . . .

2009-10-26T13:12:00.009-05:00

that's me, after seeing antichrist. just kidding. kind of.

in case you are thinking of seeing it, i will do what i can to keep overt spoilers to a minimum, but i feel obligated to warn you that antichrist is pretty awful. i want to be clear and honest about that. it's the blair witch project with slightly higher production values and an overenunciated moral, neither of which improves it. well, no, it is not really the blair witch project, because the blair witch project is quite good. ironically, even though blair witch had no true script, it is the better-written movie of the two. in fact, it is more than a little unfair for me to use the blair witch project for comparison, as it is in another, superior league entirely. it knows that it is a ghost story, it doesn't try to be anything else, and it succeeds beautifully. antichrist is lame both as the horror its director insists it be and as the psychological-philosophical-theological prod to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex he seems to want it to be. when it isn't making you sick, it isn't doing much of anything at all. its turning points are clunky and ham-fisted, it lacks momentum, the characters are stereotypes, the dialogue is flat. it does, sadly, have an ominous soundtrack refrain that kicks in whenever something SPOOKY is happening, just in case you weren't picking up on it. some people seem to think there is some innovative camerawork and art direction, but i must have been blinking or rolling my eyes or burying my face in my hands during those sequences, as i found none of it visually captivating. it left me feeling . . . well, damaged, and in no mood to defend lars von trier against any sort of attack, personal or professional, despite the beauty of some of his earlier films. but i do hate me some injustice, and i have to say that i think that reviewers of this movie who are up in arms over von trier's perceived misogyny are sort of missing the point. i shall defend my thesis forthwith, and in doing so i shall have to pull things from all over the work, including toward the end. just some fair warning there. *ahem*

briefest possible background synopsis: charlotte gainsbourg and willem dafoe are married and have no names. they have a son, a toddler, who does have a name. his name is nic. nic dies while his parents are gettin' it on. hilarity involving poorly animated woodland creatures and what may or may not be dream sequences ensues.

so. gainsbourg's character is a woman who has immersed herself in critical study of the centuries-long tendency to view sexual, unrepressed, free-thinking and -spirited women as wicked, in order to write a dissertation combating said view. but submerge yourself in mud and it's tough not to get dirty. when her own sexuality gets tangled up with a tragic loss, she blames herself and becomes a bit haunted by all those notions of women's innate evil, and she goes a little mad--with grief, with regret, with self-loathing, what have you. she believes the part of her nature that allows her to revel in wild sex is the same part that essentially killed her baby, and this tying-together, which underlies all of the witch hunting from this movie back to the dawn of civilization, makes her feel, you know, witchy. but we aren't meant to agree with her, or to assume her views are von trier's. the tragedy is that her husband, a cognitive-behavioral therapist who at least in his own mind is a paradigm of logic and understanding and clinical knowledge about human grief and madness, does start to think she might be on to something, and follows her right down that path to crazytown. granted, what she puts him through would bring anyone to the brink--and i'm sure that if you've heard anything about this movie, this putting-through is the bit you've heard about--but it's a METAPHOR. they represent the often losing war that civilized intellect wages against primitive nature. i'm not just tossing out pretentious yet baseless analysis here; there is a conversation sequence in the movie that all but reaches out of the screen and slaps you in the face with this point. dafoe, who is too confident in his scholarly understanding of gainsbourg's girly fragility and her mental state and processes to admit that he might not be the best person to treat his own wife (read: arrogant as all get-out and the textbook domineering patriarchal misogynist), allows her to retreat farther and farther into her own mania without ever waking up to what's happening. this makes him the villain, does it not? i think it does. a grieving woman can be, or become, a crazy woman, and a crazy woman will probably get even crazier if you drag her out into the middle of the woods and make her listen to acorns falling on a tin roof day in and day out, but odds are she isn't the devil. the devil doesn't have to be in the vicinity in order for you to catch that woman's crazy if you are also grieving and subject to incessant acorn plink-plink-plinks. if you are a trained mental health professional, you should know this, and if you decide to pretend that you don't know this, you are responsible for any resulting bloodshed. i think you are responsible even if you just forget, as it's your job to remember. it is easy to blame the devil, and probably the devil doesn't mind the finger-pointing, but i bet we all know what's really going down. and von trier knows it, too. the movie, i think, is warning us, in what i felt was a pretty obvious fashion, not to be so facile and primal and stupid, even though at our best we are basically just a gloppy mound of those traits with a schmear of secondary-schooled frosting. who's the REAL antichrist, oooOOOOooooo. or something.

whatever. the movie is dreck, no question, but when von trier says it is not woman-hating dreck, i am inclined to believe him. i wish i could recommend that you see it and decide for yourself, but . . . i can't. i just can't.

david firth is strummin' my pain with his flash toons

2009-04-07T21:41:00.002-05:00

we have a remedy! we have!

2009-02-05T19:39:00.006-05:00

our economy's cries can be heard all around the world--even in the condé nast building, which is usually a fortress invulnerable to such woes, safeguarded by all manner of magic enchantments against the plight of the common, un-prada-clad citizen. but no more! apparently, when the financial sector screws itself, tragedy ensues for advance publications:

Condé Nast Publications named a new publisher for The New Yorker on Thursday and put the magazine’s previous publisher in charge of Internet ad sales for the entire company. The move is part of a continuing reorganization as the company grapples with the magazine industry’s plunging ad revenue. . . .

Lisa Hughes, The New Yorker’s new vice president and publisher . . . takes over a magazine clearly in need of help. The New Yorker’s ad pages dropped 26.8 percent in 2008, far more than other Condé Nast titles, and more than double the industrywide decline of 11.7 percent. Financial services ads, a New Yorker mainstay, were among the hardest-hit categories last year.

The New Yorker was operating in the black in early 2008, but not by the end of the year, according to company executives who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss finances.

welcome, lisa hughes! may you do my favorite weekly proud. and as a concerned citizen and devoted reader of your foundering publication, i would very much like to do my part to assist in the rescue effort. in that spirit, a suggestion:

FIRE SASHA FRERE-JONES. HE IS A SUCKING WOUND IN THE ABDOMEN OF THE NEW YORKER AND A KNIFE IN THE EYE OF ANY AND ALL SELF-RESPECTING MUSIC ENTHUSIASTS.

come on, lisa. come on. you know it's true. how can anyone who trash-talks pavement for their lyrical obscurity, and indie music in general for its disinterest in prominent rhythm and musical tradition, one week and then raves about animal collective for their penchant for chaos and near-total absence of linguistic sense, rhythm, or melody the next ever expect to be taken seriously? did he think we wouldn't notice? well, here's what i think: every once in a while when sasha tries to skeev on some sweet young thing at webster hall, said thing gives him a once-over, rolls its eyes, and says, "whatevs, old man." this causes a knee-jerk wholesale rejection of youth and indie culture for being ridiculous and inscrutable, followed by a renewed effort to convince said culture that he is still in the game. but it's all crap. CRAP. and we know it's crap—that's right, we're on to you, you fraud!—because he is at least a year behind the curve on profiling anyone of interest. by march of 2008 everyone in america knew who amy winehouse was and what kind of shape her liver was in. no, there was not anything surprising about her being awarded five grammys; nor was there anything surprising in sasha's profile of her, which he very gamely admitted came out about a billion years after her album exploded and her notoriety became fodder for leno and letterman. what would be surprising is if he ever, EVER reviewed ANY album or act before it was old hat, or said anything in that review that wasn't an uninspired, slightly snootier regurgitation of things that were already generally known, even by me, when i am so far from hip that i still rhapsodize about the golden era of radio (i.e., 1991–1997) and occasionally wake up craving counting crows' recovering the satellites. even i can tell, sasha, that everyone at the new yorker ought to be telling you to piss up a rope. i would draw on some of your more recent articles for evidence, but i more or less gave up reading them some time ago. i bet i'm not alone.

that's approximately two pages of every issue, lisa, that you are practically throwing away. two whole pages. with a circulation of between one and two million, i mean, that really adds up. and it's not like he's going to change. the pattern is proven. you have to cut him loose. you just have to. really, it isn't about me; it's about the new yorker. it is an eighty-four-year-old institution, and i know you don't want it failing on your watch. it survived the depression, for christ's sake.

just, do the right thing, lisa. we're all counting on you now. it's in your hands.

p.s. while you are doing right things, perhaps you should take this opportunity to reconsider nancy franklin's tenure. it could be that i don't watch enough television, but i'm pretty sure it's that she's unbearable.

well, shit.

2009-01-27T14:50:00.007-05:00

i know death comes to us all, but . . . even john updike? really? somehow i had thought he might actually find a way out of it.

i'm sorry now, john, that i never left that present at your door. we had our spats, like anyone will, but i always loved you at least a little, and usually more than that. no more lead weights for you, i guess. so more for us.

the taste is completely different from a gummi bear, yet somehow familiar . . .

2009-01-20T12:32:00.005-05:00

i couldn't say a word about it until i was sure it had really happened, for fear of jinxes. i've been cowering in corners with my toes and fingers crossed, lighting candles and turning in clockwise circles, doing my best to keep my tiny black cat from crossing my path at thirteen minutes past the hour—but everything's o.k. now. this

is really finally over. look at those smug bastards in their matching awful ties, like tweedle satan and tweedle satan's evil monkey. but no more! they're done! they're being tossed out on their asses onto the curb of pennsylvania avenue nw as i type. [cue dancing and confetti] hooray! if a little black rain cloud follows me around all day every day for the rest of the year, i won't even care; in my head there is such a parade. i honestly do feel so optimistic.

but no free pass, new guys! you better work. seriously, sashay, shante, make love to a plan for nationwide enforcement of a transition to environmentally sound energy production modeled after california's renewables portfolio standard. 'cause i can work the voodoo both ways.

all your burning lights in the fog shone bright lit our missteps and we saw them and we saw

2008-09-15T10:59:00.010-05:00

*sigh*

vacation week at the new yorker zoology fact-checking desk

2008-05-08T11:13:00.016-05:00

may 12, 2008, p. 59:

In his living room, Myhrvold has a life-size T. rex skeleton, surrounded by all manner of other dinosaur artifacts. One of those is a cast of a nest of oviraptor eggs, each the size of an eggplant. You'd think a bird that big would have one egg, or maybe two. That's the general rule: the larger the animal, the lower the fecundity. But it didn't. For Myhrvold, it was one of the many ways in which dinosaurs could teach us about ourselves. "You know how many eggs were in that nest?" Myhrvold asked. "Thirty-two."

and you know how many birds are in a room with thirty-two ovulating oviraptors? none, because oviraptors are reptiles, like just about all the other freaking dinosaurs, and they were relatively small dinosaurs in their time and environment, and larger animals have lower fecundity because they have longer gestation periods, but reptiles and other animals that lay eggs don't really have to worry about that (on average, an ostrich—an actual bird that is actually large—lays just over one egg a week, and each egg takes about forty days to hatch, so at any given moment during breeding season there might be five or six eggs from one bird in any nest [but ostriches share nests, so there would probably be more like twenty or thirty eggs total in any one nest, and there might be as many as sixty]), and reptiles tend to lay eggs in large clutches rather than one or two at a time, although most paleontologists are pretty sure that oviraptors, being bird-like, but not birds, formed and laid two eggs at a time and laid multiple pairs sequentially in a single nest, and yes, i am furrowing my nerdy brow at malcolm gladwell, and it pains me greatly, but, damn it, you can't start an article talking about a quantum physicist who goes on dinosaur hunts and get my heart all in an uproar and then do something like this and expect to just get away with it, especially not when i've waited five bloody months for you to do it, gladwell, you weenie. you could have left out this entire paragraph and made your point just as well, if not better, and i wouldn't want to swat you with a rolled-up magazine. sometimes you get so greedy for a higher-resonance close that i think i'll have to start calling you mcfuzz.

she was a bird, by the way. ask your myhrvold about that.

postscript, may 8, 1:59 PM: i had to distance myself from this article for an hour or so, to regain my objectivity, but i have come back and finished it, and it, you know, it's fine. it's a very good point, really, that people have a hard time distinguishing scientific innovation from artistic creation, and they should be distinguished: scientific advancement builds on preexisting knowledge, and in that sense every invention is a collaboration. but while artists typically have myriad influences, imagination can function in a near-vacuum. so while it might be art for someone who's never seen a telephone to think, "wouldn't it be neat if there were some kind of machine that allowed me to talk to someone far away," that visionary won't get anywhere without the aid of some other person, or several people, who knows how sounds and machines work, and there is decidedly less "art" in the construction. i think the degree of genius in either case is about equal, though (i know that i, regardless of my era or company, would never, over the course of an entire lifetime, either think up a telephone or manage to build one from its unassembled parts), and if someone has a brilliant idea independently, it shouldn't be considered any less brilliant if it turns out someone else had it, too. this is the problem with equating all invention with art: the originality factor, which doesn't apply equally in both realms, can get in the way of people's recognition of truly impressive accomplishments. it's also the problem with patents; if you come up with an idea and patent it just for the sake of planting a flag, of saying "i made this" even when you haven't actually made anything, and someone else later comes up with the same idea and has the support and means to take it further than you have, or has already gone further, do you really deserve more credit? surely you don't deserve sole credit, if you aren't capable of turning your idea into a practical reality without the knowledge and assistance of others. if you and some other person independently come up with the same idea before anyone has built anything, does either of you deserve more credit than the other? there's often so much emphasis on timing, but that really isn't relevant at all when it comes to gauging the merit of the notion or relative input into an invention. and yet we are taught that every new thing has one source, that it was one person sitting under a tree or on a hill or in a bathtub who all alone saw the answer that no one else could see. i wish we could be more communal. i know i always come back to the ants, but the truth is they're tops when it comes to societal paradigms. which ant decided to build a hill? who the hell cares? now all the ants have hills,* and it's awesome. people, you know, they're sort of silly animals. some of them even think that anything with feathers that lays eggs must be a bird. but they can't all be natural scientists; some of them have to be writers, and that's good, too. it would be better if they devoted more than one column out of twenty-four to their very good point, but i have a feeling that there are a lot more pages where these came from.

* i know that not all ants live in hills, but i had to wrap this thing up. it isn't like i don't know how writers fall into these traps.

joon can read!

2008-03-26T15:14:00.015-05:00

i'm poor, and libraries have strange, inconvenient hours, so sometimes i read books in sporadic one-hour installments during trips to the union square barnes & noble. the barnes & noble has four floors. on the second or third floor, there's a café with a big sign at its entrance prohibiting patrons from bringing in food from outside vendors, but on the fourth floor, where the fiction is, i can sit on the floor or in a folding chair in the section where readings are held and eat anything i want. that’s not true; technically, i'm not allowed to eat in these places, but no one has ever stopped me. once i brought in a sandwich and a beer and sat on the small stage in the front of the room, because i liked the way the light was coming in through the window over it. it’s as if by acting with enough confidence and nonchalance, i can persuade the people around me that i know more about the rules than they do. but all i know is that sometimes, even though there are people everywhere who might object to it, i want to be the way i would be if no one else were around.

is that more? or is the rule that i should be trying to act as if other people are around even when i'm alone? when i act like no one can see me, does it become self-fulfilling?

anyway, i have decided that this is the only way to read this book—in erratic and unannounced bursts, alone in a place that is not my home, in flagrant and yet utterly unchecked violation of the rules of social conduct, surrounded by strangers who are having hushed and incredibly serious conversations about things that strike me as wholly meaningless. really, i think it’s the only way to understand this book.

in eeeee eee eeee’s two hundred or so pages, characters drift in and out, with little or no fuss made over their entrances or exits. some of them have extensive back stories; some of them seem to have no history whatsoever. some of them play main roles for a chapter or two, dominating the entire plot, and then vanish and are never mentioned again. some of them are children. some of them are bears. some of them are so unspeakably isolated and untethered that they can’t visualize their own thoughts or desires clearly enough in their own minds to devote an action to them and instead wander numbly from one stationary object to another, looking, turning away, seeing nothing, responding to nothing. this is a lot like the reading room of a popular manhattan book store, and every public space is a microcosm representative of the broader, surrounding population. so eeeee eee eeee is about twenty-something-year-old pizza-deliverymen who have ironic and seemingly purposeless conversations with their friends, and it is about dolphins who live in an underground city and sometimes bludgeon celebrities, and it is about hamsters trying to explain the underground city to strangers in a park. but through these things, through their randomness and disconnectedness and the flatness with which the characters in the novel receive them, it becomes a spot-on telling of the state of society. it may be my generation's catcher in the rye.

we think we’re bored, but maybe we aren’t, and either way we aren’t sure how to fix it. we try things that don’t work, but we think they should have worked, so we don’t admit that they didn’t; then we are bored and depressed, and we can’t admit that either. we don’t know what to say instead, and we aren’t sure who to talk to, but we’re afraid to stop talking. sometimes we do terrible things and don’t know why; we regret them, we cry about them, and we do them again. sometimes the only way you can think of to tell your sister that you love her and you’re lonely and you want to be her friend is to sit on her head. sometimes people die and no one talks about it at all, and it feels incredibly strange, to know that someone has died and no one is talking about it, and you want to ask everyone why they aren’t talking about it, but you know that you will never ask and that no one will ever explain it, and it makes you desperate. it makes you so desperate that you cover a moose’s head with a blanket and punch it in the face, and when it says, “thank you,” you want to give it a cookie and kill it and drown, you love it and envy it so much.

eeeee eee eeee is about an invisible person in the center of a crowd of millions of people listening to one person nearby saying, “i’m so tired today. every time i try to think about something, i forget and think about something else,” and wondering, “am i tired? is that what’s wrong?” and writing, “i’m so tired today,” and knowing it isn’t the answer, and thinking about someone who isn't there, and moving to a different seat. that person disappears for two weeks and then comes back, and no one mentions it. someone stands on a chair and throws a bottle, and someone starts to cry, and other people look up and think, “i wonder if that would make me happy,” and then go back to their books.

you, all alone in the corner, with the untied sneaker and the hat hair—this book made me want to offer you my sandwich. i wanted to give you a hug. but you never looked up.

a note to my admirers

2008-03-25T12:39:00.003-05:00

i have had enough of this responsible-adult-with-a-full-time-job nonsense. it is not benefiting me either financially or psychologically, and so i can see no point in carrying on with it. i should like very much to instead become a lady of leisure and/or letters, and i will happily accept donations enabling such a transition. if you have an opening for a kept woman and/or a well-positioned apartment* in which to keep a woman, please consider me as an applicant. i am an excellent cook and tend to smell nice, and when i laugh at your attempted witticisms it will be with thoroughly convincing sincerity. i'm not prone to clinginess; in fact, if you never stop by at all, i won't complain. i don't even care for jewelry, really, so you'll save a bit there. you will have to be kind to my cat. that is not a euphemism.

invitation not extended to: men who have slept with or plan to sleep with my sister, anyone who has followed me onto or off of a subway train, people who think nancy franklin is funny, dennis miller.

* minimum requirements: roof access or terrace, oven, dependable hot water, at least one window.

as long as it stays crunchy in milk

2008-03-05T10:14:00.010-05:00

the current democratic contest is officially ridiculous. i can't find any logic or consistency in voting patterns, except that college students *heart* charismatic rhetoric, especially from renegades and underdogs, and that steel magnolias really nailed that whole older-chicks-sticking-together thing. oh, my darling, errant nation; how you never surprise me.

anyway. i cheered and danced when i heard last night that hillary had won ohio (sorry, downstairs neighbors), even though i have been rather disappointed in her recent attackyness, because here's what i've been even more disappointed in: the annoyed swatting at her by obama supporters (including john kerry! holy knife in my heart, batman), and said supporters' inexplicable and desperate insistence that she withdraw from the race if her victories from tuesday on out were not landslide ones. last night's victories were not landslide ones, yet the difference in delegates between her and obama is now, what, 85? if obama wins every remaining delegate from now through june, it still won't be enough to get him to the number needed to guarantee the nomination. it seems to me as though everyone is viable. of course, the claims that hillary's presence is keeping the party from uniting under one candidate are not technically false, but claims that obama is doing democrats a similar disservice would be equally technically true. it's nonsense, though, to say that the current volley is splitting the party; the party was split at the outset--demographically--and its members are voting accordingly. this is the usefulness of demographic categories: people tend to make selections according to them. they also like to make assessments based on emotional judgments and post-snap-decision rationalizing. i think those are usually the worst things to base one's choice for president--or anything--on, but given the vague differences in many of hillary's and barack's political proposals and the immense differences in their presentations and demeanors, really, what chance was there of things turning out any other way? ordinarily, all of those demographic subsets are choosing between candidates who are thirty-second-spot equals--equally white, equally male, equally old and swaggering. we do not know what to do with all of this variety. it's like buying your corn flakes at a three-aisle bodega for an entire lifetime and then having that bodega be torn down and replaced with a super stop & shop. look at all that cereal! look at all of the ways that corn flakes can be so much like and yet so completely different from corn flakes! these ones have frosting! these ones have nuts! you could lose days of your life to it. i understand it, i do. but it's still ridiculous.

i am trying to objectively support what i believe is know-how and substance, but what the hell do i know. i could be rationalizing just as much as everyone else. i mean, i shop at a store that only has a quarter of an aisle's worth of cereal, three measly shelves, and i still can't get in and out in under fifteen minutes. i spent a full five the other day trying to decide between two versions of grape-nuts. i know that there is no difference between grape-nuts. but there is this brand and that brand, and they are very nearly the same price, and i'm not buying them both, so do i like this font or that font? do i want the box that says "i'm delicious!" or the box that says "i am cereal"? this is a poor example, because in the end i chose the box that said "cracklin' oat bran," but i think you all understand what i'm saying. just, you know, stop picking on each other. all that matters is that everyone has a wholesome breakfast.

i'm, um, i'm hungry.

broken-doll blogging

2008-03-03T22:07:00.011-05:00

one day a girl began to feel that something was not right

"something is not right," she said, and for a moment things felt more right, because she had said that, and she wondered if she was mistaken. but she was not.

this girl had a brazen and improper heart which would dance and whoop at inopportune moments. the girl tried hard to muffle it, had tried even harder to retrain it, to break it of its egregiously bad habits, but it did as it pleased and shamed her in public whenever it wanted. the girl checked it now to make sure it wasn't dancing on a table or wearing a ridiculous hat, but it was in its cavity where it belonged, talking quietly to itself, and didn't look up. "that seems right," she thought, but she was still uncomfortable. she looked away and then back, quickly, to catch it. but it only drummed its fingers on a rib, innocent and bored. "that must be right," the girl thought, and looked for something else.

she checked her coat pocket to see if she had her keys. she checked her bag to make sure she had not dropped her wallet. she touched her fingertips to her earlobes and felt for an earring on each. she made sure she had remembered to put on clean socks and underwear, quickly and discreetly sniffed her left armpit. she checked her watch against the local time. all of these things were right.

she looked out the window and saw people moving about on the streets and sidewalks below her. it was daylight and it was supposed to be. the sky was not cloudy and nothing was falling from it. the girl could not see smoke or hear sirens, there was no shouting or crying. while she stood near the window she felt better, she felt that things were more right than they had been, and she sat back down. but as soon as she was in her chair she knew that something was not right after all.

she checked her accounts for overdue bills. she reviewed her calendar for missed appointments. she searched her desk and drawers for not-quite-empty food containers or coffee cups. all of these things were right. "i am forgetting something," she thought, and grew optimistic, but could not think of what she was forgetting, and so could not make it right. this cancelled out the optimism, which she immediately missed.

"i will retrace my steps," she said--she had heard of people having great success with such a method on various occasions--and set about it.

she walked down into the lobby of her office and out the door that she had gone in through, across the street and around the corner to the subway station she had come aboveground at, onto her train which took her back to her neighborhood. she walked from the train to her apartment, looking at the ground for things she might have dropped, listening for someone who might be calling for her to stop. she went through her building's front door, up the staircase, into her apartment, and still she felt that something was amiss, and still she could not say what it was.

"i will retrace my steps farther," she said, because she didn't know what else to do. she liked saying this, but she knew that not saying it was not what had not been right.

she went back outside and got into her car and drove to the last place she had lived in, but everything seemed right there. so she drove to the place she had lived in before that, and before that, and even before that, all the way back and back to a place she barely remembered, to the first place she'd ever been a person in. "there are only a few steps left," she thought, and was suddenly very nervous. but something was not right, and so she went on.

this first place had a porch in front, and on the porch was a small pruny woman rocking in a small creaky chair. "oh," the woman said as the girl stepped onto the porch, "it's you!"

"is it?" the girl asked.

the woman leaned forward, squinting, judging, and then sat back. "no," she said. "not really. something is not right."

the girl's heart rattled and flopped and banged a drum and waved a flag and made a general spectacle of itself, and the girl rushed both of her hands up to her chest and covered it, to keep the woman from noticing. "what?" she asked in what she hoped was a very calm voice. "what is not right?"

"well, that," the woman said, and pointed at the girl's hands. they both stared down at the place where the girl's small palms were spread and pressed over the rippling, thrumming, flashing patch below her collar bone. yes, the girl thought, yes, this is not right. but why is this not right?

"why is this not right?" she asked. her heart lit three red flares and launched them toward the porch, but the girl crossed both her arms in front of her, and the torches rebounded and sputtered under her sleeves.

"a girl lived here once, a long time ago. she lived upstairs, and i lived down," the woman said. she rose from her creaky chair, and her creaky legs tottered her slowly across the creaky porch. she stood very close to the girl and extended one creaky arm up to the girl's wrists, crossed tight and hard over her noisy, embarrassing heart. the old woman closed her crinkled fingers about the wrists and tugged, but the girl pulled her arms tighter to her and took a step back. "that is the wrong direction," she thought, but didn't undo her move. the woman lowered her hand to her side, frowned gently, shook her head. she made her creaky way back to her creaky chair and lowered herself into it.

"the girl i thought you were," she murmured, "would never have done that."

the girl let her eyes fall to the wall she had built to keep her heart in its place, her two mortified hands leaning hard against the clanging and whistling and jigging, the colored lights and firecrackers, her crazy clown of a heart covered in bells and spangles, its unicycle careering into the barricade over and over and over again. "of course," she said, and smiled, and was relieved, and had great hope, and lifted her hands up into the air over her head.

her heart, with all its momentum, accustomed to having to use a great deal of force, hit the wall once more and shot right through and out, and disappeared, leaving a trail of rainbow glitter in the sky like a pixie-powered jet, a wild, flying mardi gras party favor. the girl and the old woman watched it until it wasn't so much as a speck among the clouds.

the woman sat back in her chair, satisfied. "that's you, then, after all."

"it is," the girl answered, dropping her arms. "it is, and it's right."

and then she died.

psychiatry through the looking glass

2008-02-27T12:55:00.012-05:00

from today's new york times:

Depressed teenagers who are not helped by antidepressants like Celexa or Prozac may improve if they switch drugs and receive a certain type of behavioral therapy, a review of studies found. . . . The study of adolescents, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, gives mental health professionals guidance about how to treat teenagers who do not improve using antidepressants, said David Brent, a psychiatrist at the Western Psychiatric Institute at the University of Pittsburgh.

of course they could use some behavioral therapy. this is breaking news for psychiatrists? it's news to the general public? in what up-is-down world do mental health professionals need more guidance in supporting mental health than they do in prescribing mood-altering drugs? i had assumed that the recent trend toward medicating distressed individuals instead of listening to and counseling them was simply one of the more unfortunate results of society's move toward convenience uber alles, a way to "treat" more patients with fewer resources in a shorter amount of time, a way for people with problems to solve them without putting in more than a minimum of effort. the laundry list of antidepressants and antianxiety medications seemed comparable to, and in step with, the explosion of diet aids on the market. but articles such as this one suggest that the profession as a whole has decided that modern pharmacology is preferable to traditional mental health care, and that's deeply disheartening.

when an adult chooses to take a pill rather than implement a lifestyle change, that's on the adult, and i have little sympathy for adults who are less than thrilled with the outcome of such a decision. but all adolescents are a little troubled, and they are troubled in ways that are likely unique in their lives up to that point. an angsty teenager is trying to cope with pressures and upheavals that are entirely new to him or her. what a seasoned adult might see as a small problem can be completely overwhelming to a thirteen-year-old, and when you, as a parent or a medical professional, tell that confused and depressed child that the best solution is medication, they will believe you. but it is not the best solution. the best solution is to help that child clarify the problems in question and come up with reasonable, repeatable ways of facing them. your role as a parent or counselor is to help prepare the child in your care for a lifetime of potentially rough sailing. the world is a tough place, and you are not doing your kids any favors by plying them with pills that will make them feel their sadness less. you have to help them resolve the sadness. you have to foster mental health.

this is not to say that there are no circumstances in which a pharmacological approach is appropriate; sometimes medication makes a significant difference, and sometimes it's truly necessary. but it should not be the go-to therapy, and it's a tragic commentary on the state of the profession that psychiatric professionals need to be reminded by the journal of the american medical association that there are other ways to work with depressed patients, particularly teenagers. so many adolescents just want to be seen and heard; when you stuff a prescription into their hands and tell them to call you in a month, you could be drastically compounding the problem. of course, it may not be all the fault of the professionals--now that prescription medications are not only common and acceptable but marketed directly to consumers in sunny, smiley commercials and magazine spreads, many parents march into doctors' offices and demand medication for their children. but those doctors need to take more control of the situation, because the parents' demands are not the priority. the focus needs to be on the patient, and a doctor's first step should always be to listen--carefully--to the patient's complaint. sometimes that complaint will call for medical intervention. sometimes listening might be enough.

teenagers don't need to be chemically pacified. the period is difficult for everyone, but by attempting to sedate our children through it, we're nearly guaranteeing that every day of their lives beyond their teens will be equally difficult, because we won't be helping them develop the inner resources required to overcome difficult circumstances. this used to be, by definition, the role of counselors and mentors. psychiatric medications should be adjunct therapies, not mainstays. turning to drugs, licit or otherwise, in an attempt to assuage emotional problems used to be viewed as a textbook negative; now people act as if it's the only dependable solution. and by setting the stage for that mindset early in a person's life, you make it all the more likely that that teenager taking antidepressants to get through a bumpy patch will grow up into an adult who takes antidepressants to get through the work week. great news for eli lilly, maybe, but it seems a mimsy sort of progress to me.

lit-dork girly crush of the week

2008-02-21T21:38:00.006-05:00

i was sure it would be susan jacoby, who spoke tonight at the 82nd street barnes & noble about her new book, the age of american unreason, but it turns out that susan thinks i'm an exceptional outlier for being simultaneously reasonably intelligent, not addicted to an electronic messaging gadget, and under thirty, and that vexes me. so instead i'm giving in to my long-burgeoning infatuation with new yorker writer lizzie widdicombe, who wrote a nearly seven-hundred-word "talk of the town" piece on six-word memoirs for this week's issue. in support of the movement, or simply to challenge herself, she wrote the entire segment in six-word sentences. i know, i know, it's so precious . . . but it's so precious! i like her generally, actually. you can just tell she'd be so much fun to listen to wait wait . . . don't tell me! and make "day of the dead" dioramas with. not like susan, who would only snort at me for thinking that maybe my cousin really is promoting intellectual thought when he plays episodes of numb3rs for his high school math students. *sigh*

you regulars will know (and quite possibly lament) that i am not a great crafter of brief sentences. i take my words the way i take my colors: all of them, all at once. but the six-word memoir intrigues me. it reminds me of the habit an ex-roommate and i had of pointing out how unintentionally perfect some of the things our friends said would be as titles of their biographies. sample titles include the door is locked, but the window is open, if i knew where it was, i'd have it, you're breathing on my muffin, and in heaven, the buses play galaxie 500. none of these has six words.

but that one did. and i think that in a world where the goal was to summarize your experience in six words, those would be my six.

tuesday is super

2008-02-05T12:39:00.000-05:00

my apologies for the blog coma, kids; think of it as my token contribution to the writers' strike. but i'm alive and reasonably well (not injured or afflicted by flu or other ailments, warm and sleeping through the night, yadda yadda), and i'm rooting for hillary. if you haven't done so, go out and vote, already. it actually matters this year, a lot, and who knows when that'll happen again. in fact, this year the primary election may have more influence over the fate of the country over the next several years than the presidential election. you count! so be counted.

yes, i watched bush's final (FINAL!) state of the union address. yes, i was underwhelmed, but no more so than usual. yes, i found the speaker to be self-righteous and out of touch and in endless search of applause and approval, but no more so than usual. and i was not surprised at the turn in public commentary following the speech. bush, lame as lame can be and out of favor with everyone except maybe his mom, is no longer someone to pay attention to, and all around this great nation pundits and average citizens alike have shaken their heads and blinked awake from the dream, like jennifer connelly rising up and giving david bowie the linguistic finger in the final scenes of labyrinth. "earmarks? terror? what about the human-animal hybrids and the switchgrass? no, you know what, forget it--you have no power over me."

and yet, i am still disappointed, that it took so long and that there is no sign that the masses will withstand similarly hypnotic antispeeches in the future. here is today's guest speaker, h. l. mencken, with a few words on the strange thrall in which politicians seem to hold their prey--er, public:

It is difficult to believe that even idiots ever succumbed to such transparent contradictions, to such gaudy processions of mere counter-words, to so vast and obvious a nonsensicality. . . . When [the president] got upon his legs in those days he seems to have gone into a sort of trance, with all the peculiar illusions and delusions that belong to a pedagogue gone mashugga. He heard words giving three cheers; he saw them race across a blackboard like Marxians pursued by the Polizei; he felt them rush up and kiss him. The result was the grand series of moral, political, sociological and theological maxims which now lodges imperishably in the cultural heritage of the American people . . . . The important thing is not that a public orator should have uttered such vaporous and preposterous phrases, but that they should have been gravely received, for weary years, by a whole race of men, some of them intelligent. Here is a matter that deserves the sober inquiry of competent psychologists.

he's talking about woodrow wilson, but the message can certainly be applied universally. people are all politicians, but some more and some less, and they will all tell you the thing they think you ought to hear instead of the thing that is true, but some more and some less. we'll get the liars and fools until we decide that what we really want to hear are straight and sensible facts. i don't want to be cheered up by my president, i don't want to be coddled or played. and change, yes, yes, we all want change, we want it by the busload, but "change" could be anything. "change" could mean that all interstate highways will now be paved with yellow brick. "change" could mean that everyone making less than $100,000 a year will be paid in pennies and nickels. i've no use for the vague and the starry-eyed. the people like big, baseless promises, they like charisma and grandiosity, they like being told that they can have all the social and civil services they need and enjoy with no money down, but the people . . . well, we've seen where their fickle, passionate wisdom can get us. silly rabbits.

here are a few of the things i've heard people say while discussing their preference in presidential nominees:

"i'm voting for obama, because the gospels say that women shouldn't be in positions, you know, that women shouldn't have a lot of power, so if hillary clinton were president, that wouldn't be right."

"all i want in a president is someone who's righteous, and it seems like obama will bring that."

"obama's really inspiring, and right now the country needs to be inspired." (doesn't it need to be inspired to do something more than be inspired, though? telling me to have hope is not a reassurance that my hopes will be fulfilled, and telling me that partisanship is bad will not change the day-to-day functioning of congress, the media, or american towns and cities. it really won't. i've been listening and listening and listening, and i know who obama is, and i know what he likes, and i know why people think he can win, but i can't figure out what he intends to do, or how any of his intentions might make him unique. but, you know, i'm a little cynical, generally.)

"we're not voting because one is a woman, we're not voting because one is black. when i go to vote, i'm just trusting that the lord will guide me to the right choice, that he'll lead my hand."

"he speaks with such authority."

interesting to see people citing righteousness and gospels as reasons for electing a liberal democrat--at least in my neck of the woods. also interesting that i have not heard anyone discuss voting for a republican nominee, for any reason. but that's not the point. the point is that you go out into the world and voice an opinion that you have formed with your head, not one that commercials or photographs or your friends and family (and i'm very sorry, but as far as i'm concerned that includes matthew, mark, luke, and john) have formed for you. don't be scared. today* is a super special day; own it.

* unless your state's primary falls on some other day between february 9 and july 12, in which case you should wait a bit and then own that.

post from the wild southwest [corner of my office building]

2007-11-05T11:20:00.000-05:00

busy at work STOP many nights and weekends STOP roommate will not pay internet bill and so can not talk often STOP but have hope STOP moving out soon and many books in final stages STOP in meantime happy about this and this STOP sleeping better since adjusted to white noise and shrieking whistle of heating pipe STOP could live without experimental opera on roommates radio all night but a few more weeks STOP miss you hope all is well STOP joon

the password is "jerkwater"

2007-10-25T10:47:00.000-05:00

so much to say, so little assistance or support from my home internet connection, which runs hot and cold like a neurologic abyssinian cat in heat. it works, it doesn't work, it starts to work and then changes its mind, it loves me, it loves me not, it spits on fidelity, pitou . . .

i am keeping notes and drawing up blueprints, cross my heart. i will tell you something useful and informative, because i do not fancy myself a belletrist, and i still intend to post my summary of ben greenman's appearance in brookline way, way, way back in some other lifetime of mine (or april; i sometimes get the two confused). but i have things to tend to in the office, and at home, well, you see how it is.

but i would like to take a moment to answer a very important question that somehow directed one knowledge-hungry reader to my den of pretentious hackery:

"what does it mean when a hamster pushes your hand away with their nose?"

excellent question. hamsters are very complex and mysterious creatures, and their tendency to express themselves via subtle, dancelike gesture makes them a favorite pet of rodentophiles, and not just those who are specifically cricetinae enthusiasts. i have had some hamsters, and none of them has ever done this to me. one of them often bit my hand, but nobody ever nudged it. a motion of this sort could mean many things, from "you are blocking my light" to "we have a bond that can only be described through the subtle, dancelike gestures of a hamster, which is dandy, as i am a hamster and can offer you just such an expression. in this movement, as i press my tiny nostril, through which oxygen and thus life enter my body, against your hand, which you use to stroke me and provide me with food and water and therefore sustain my life with, i am telling you that i recognize my debt to you, and i am grateful for your care, and the warmth and tenderness that i feel for you exceeds the bounds of my tiny, furry body and is spilling out into the pine shavings around me with every exhaled breath. as i press against you now, i am acknowledging, with no regrets about the fact, that my life is quite literally in your hands." not knowing your hamster, dear reader, and not having seen the pushing of the hand myself in its authentic context, it is difficult for me to offer a definitive interpretation of the action. if, though, the hamster was, as you say, pushing your hand away, then i would err on the side of caution and assume that the hamster kind of wanted you to get your hand out of its face. or their face, as the case may be. if you submit a video of the pushing next time, along with a brief write-up of the events leading up to the contact, i may be able to give you a more concrete explanation.

oh, in that case . . .

2007-10-10T13:00:00.000-05:00

everyone could deal with melting ice caps, right? coastal erosion, elevations in dangerous weather patterns, species extinction--no sweat. no sweat. but no one told us that a side effect of global warming might be increased humidity! finally, though, the hideous truth that no one dared speak has come out. all of those hot gusts circulating in those expansive storm fronts and causing all that ice to melt and flood our beachfronts and waterways might actually lead to there being more moisture in the air. well, fuck. that's a whole other pack of tomatoes. i guess we'd all better buy bigger, more powerful air conditioners.

according to nathan gillett of the university of east anglia, humidity is "an important contribution to heat stress in humans." i'm not a climatologist or an epidemiologist or anything, but i'm going to tentatively concur with this statement. it is certainly a source of stress to me, particularly when it leads to the first thing out of every other human's mouth being,"god, it's so humid!" it has been my experience that humidity tends to increase in tandem with heat, as does human stress, and i'm made slightly more confident in my assessment by the fact that "the finding isn't surprising to climate scientists."

i find the whole bit almost seussian: humans' refusal to actually live in the climate has been one of the primary factors contributing to strongly negative shifts in that climate, which have led to an even more staunch refusal to accept the climate, thus worsening the climate, and wheeeeeee! around and around we go, until we land here in this ridiculous place where this perfectly plain pattern is revealed to us as shocking news. and it is still being presented as if nothing were at stake but the cleanliness of our armpits:

although it might not be a lethal kind of thing, it's going to increase human discomfort.

poor us. couldn't i just cry us a river. i would sweat us one, if any building in the world ever set its thermostat above 50 degrees. it is still pretty warm here in new york; i haven't even noticed any leaves starting to turn. i guess i'll have to wait until it gets cooler outside, when the buildings turn their thermostats up to 75 and i have to take my coat and sweater off the instant i pass through the door in order to keep from fainting from heat stroke. tomorrow we sweat; today, we weep.

what will i do with all these leftover pretzels?

2007-10-09T17:14:00.000-05:00

i know that for a select few, the new yorker festival just goes on and on and on . . . they have their seminars and dinner parties and galas and elegantly lit corner booths, and the conversations and debates spin out endlessly into the twinkling, mirthful night. but there is nothing select about me, and my expendable income for the month of october is more or less used up, and so my party is all over. i'm so sad that i don't live in an era of public conversational salons and roundtable fêtes; even in college i could feel the loss, but i wasn't in despair. there was still one coffee shop that people sat around and discussed ideas in, there was an art gallery down the street that hosted biweekly potluck suppers open to anyone in the neighborhood, and i could always corner someone at a party and pick a fight about the estate tax or the bohr model or whether there is such a thing as a nonmisogynistic french film (i still can't decide). now everything happens in chat rooms or comment threads or text messages, you can't get anyone to engage in three dimensions, and it's dreadful. the internet will be the death of artistic movements, i'm sure of it. something happens when you put people with a common interest or goal together in a room that just can't occur when they aren't face to face. a spontaneous and immediate reaction to an idea or statement will always lead to a more rewarding discourse. there are more coffee shops all the time, and they're always full of people, but those people are all sitting at their own tables, talking on their cell phones or clacking away at their laptops, and it's a completely dead atmosphere. for me, anyway. i guess the people in the coffee shops feel o.k. about it. but my heart will always long for the communal, intellectual atmosphere of the belle époque, and i know that all of those folks were fairly select, too, but at least they were trying. if i had more than twelve square feet to host them in, i might try to start up some gatherings of my own. well, if i had more than twelve square feet and a chair, and maybe some kind of table, even if it weren't round, you know, an end table or something, or a tray table, and more than one glass. *sigh* someday.

anyway.

the closer to the word-nerd party, featuring ira glass as the ringmaster and susan orlean, chuck klosterman, and malcolm gladwell as themselves, was not officially a new yorker event, though there were, obviously, a high number of references to the magazine and its practices and contents. not to disparage the festival, but i think last night's talk was better than any of the other literary events i attended this past weekend, because it was so lightly mediated and loosely themed, and because ira mostly wanted the writers to talk to each other. the event was both promotion for ira's new book, the new kings of nonfiction (which actually contains a lot of not-new nonfiction that apparently had been piling up on glass's desk long enough for him to feel compelled to do something with it), and a benefit for 826nyc, the local branch of 826, a national nonprofit organization that offers free after-school programs and tutoring in creative writing for school kids from kindergarten on up. i love that 826 exists. i love that dave eggers, john scieszka, and sarah vowell are heavy presences on its board and keep it a little wacky. i love that a young, broadly lauded writer with a good amount of clout chose to start up a wacky nonprofit to help kids instead of buy a $7 million brownstone so each of his own kids could have a private floor (man, foer, you really turned out to be one glaring disappointment after another). and i love susan orlean and fidgety lefties who bite their nails and scrape the labels off of their water bottles and pick at the untucked tails of their shirts (aww, my secret boyfriend fiddles with inanimate objects, too! we're so perfect for each other). until tonight i just kind of felt all right about ira, but now i love him too, and i don't think i'd ever heard of or read anything by chuck klosterman until a few days ago (sorry, dude, but i stopped flipping through spin when i was about 16), but what the hell—i love you too, man! i love your sweeping hand gestures that have probably proven dangerous to passersby, i love that you babble and flail like a vertiginous speed freak, i love that you love what you do. structured, mediated, q&a-type discussions are great for what they're worth, and sometimes they're the only way you can get things done. but ira just threw a handful of smart, eccentric spazzos together and let them gab about why they love writing about smart, eccentric spazzos, and it was brilliant. and i learned some things, too:

susan orlean and chuck klosterman both think the word "sequelae" is pronounced "suhkweelia." i don't have a problem with this the way i do with "nucular." i had a conversation with my uncle once about which is worse, someone mispronouncing a word but placing it in an appropriate context, or someone speaking a word beautifully but using it inaccurately. we decided that misusage is a greater sin, because someone who knows what a word means but not how it sounds is someone who reads and retains knowledge and wants to enhance his or her working vocabulary, but someone who has heard a word and repeated it without taking the time to find out exactly what it means is basically a blowhard. and "suhkweelia" isn't an unpleasant-sounding word. "nucular," however, is an abomination, especially now that the incorrectness of the pronunciation has been a topic of public discussion for a while. i'll never fold on that.
malcolm's working on a book about, um, something . . . cultural identity? something unbusinessy, i think, anyway, and it doesn't sound as if anyone will be able to use it to sell more chairs or records or crappy movies,* so that's nice. of course, i could be mistaken; all he really told us was that there's one chapter that he interviewed his mother and aunt for, and i have chosen to grab up that nebulous ball and run all the way to juneau with it. i'm open to most any subject matter, really, as long as little, brown prints it in the same font as the first two. the typeface and leading are so refined, and yet also so approachable and calming. very thoughtfully laid out, those books. so there's no birthday article for me this year, but i can totally live with that.
it's entirely true that most people think of men first when they're asked to name people they admire for intellectual or artistic reasons. my cousin asked me the other day for some music recommendations, and i had listed about twenty artists when he stopped me and said, "it's weird that you don't listen to any girls." but i do listen to girls, and am wild about plenty of them. i just didn't remember them until i was prompted to do so. and then i was very disappointed in myself, because no one should ever forget mirah or ani difranco or mary timony or chan marshall. but i had. it's true for writers and visual artists, too, i think of faulkner and ibsen, chuck close and françois truffaut, but when i sit down and concentrate, all kinds of amazing chicks pop into the foreground. it's really strange, that women don't leap out, or really even lodge. i have to dredge them up, even the ones who've kind of changed my life. but i thought maybe it was me, and now i think it's everyone. isn't that troubling. i mean, i'm not a feminist, exactly, and i don't always get along so well with girls, but there are plenty i'd rather remember than forget. and now i'm worried that i won't.

susan touched on the difficulty of being a woman and a reporter, as opposed to a novelist or columnist or food writer, something that didn't require travel and weeks of immersion in a subject's life, and i thought, why should it be harder for a woman to travel than it is for a man? but it isn't necessarily; it's just harder for a woman with a home and family, and it's harder for that woman than it might be for a man with a home and family. it's easy to write it off as the result of women's desire to stay closer to home when they have a family, and to then write off such a desire as something inherently female, but what you're implying when you say a thing like that is that men don't love or miss their children as much as women do, and i doubt that. but in the end it's a personal choice, and all of my tiny x chromosomes aren't enough to enable me to muster up much sympathy for women who choose to have a child and then miss their lives. it's their choice, isn't it? you can decide that the other parent should give up a life instead, or you can decide that you will both carry on as usual and hire a third party to raise your child, but someone will have to sacrifice something on one or the other front. it's impossible for me to believe that women who are working at jobs they enjoy and then decide to have a child don't have a rough idea, one way or another, of what's going to happen once the child arrives. you want one thing most, right? and you pick it. it isn't gender-based, it's person-based. susan's still a writer, and an excellent writer, she just writes less. and maybe that's difficult for her, but she has the career she wanted and is positioned pretty highly within her admittedly male-dominated field. (no one was rude enough to ask ira why only two female writers were included in the current anthology, but i'm sure he was feeling the heat for a minute or two.) am i an awful woman? am i a heartless woman? maybe i'm an ignorant woman. it seems that people of both genders whine a lot about how they can't have it all, but nobody has it all. my sympathies are with the people who don't have enough, or who aren't free to make a lot of choices about their own lives, and i think that susan is not that kind of person. i mean, i'm not that kind of person, even without a chair or a table, so what is she complaining about? i like you, lady, but suck it up.

in the same vein, as much as i hate having to jab malcolm in the kidney with my pointy stick, he occasionally drives me to it, and it really irks me when he mocks the wealthy. i mean, the man ain't broke. he's not digging through the couch cushions for enough change to buy a box of spaghetti at trade fair. he isn't on the wrong side of any tracks. rally for the underclass, sure, but don't sling mud at the rich. again, i think that most people have more than they need, but maybe someone with way, way more than he needs will actually be more willing to hand some of it off in a charitable manner, because that handoff is so unlikely to impact his quality of life. someone in the middle class might decide that he shouldn't have to help anyone else, because he still has a lot less than the people with the most. but if what ultimately matters about wealth is how it's allocated, i'm going to side with the obscenely wealthy people who are donating a fifth of their income to social programs and charities before i'm going to side with the people making $30,000 or $40,000 a year who glare at homeless people and toss the jimmy fund can over their shoulder when it's passed around the movie theater. the residents of southampton may or may not ever have done much of anything at all in terms of supporting worthy causes. i have no idea, and i don't think malcolm does, either. what i'm sure of is that i'd rather align myself with the people who are doing something, even if it's only for the tax deduction, than side by default with the people in my tax bracket, because they certainly aren't always the same people. some people make their assets a central part of their character, but i don't think there's any call to do it for them. the rennert saga was moronic, and more than worthy of extensive pointing and laughing, but i want to laugh, you know, at the case, and not the individuals. maybe there isn't a way to do that. i'm kind of struggling, lately, with efforts to prevent my hatred of certain aspects of people from emerging as hatred of those people, period, and i don't know yet how effectively it can be accomplished. i'm looking for the gray areas. and i know that malcolm is also primarily mocking the acts and not the individuals, but sometimes it's just so hard to visualize a firm line. don't worry, though, i'm not going to stop hating people. god, can you imagine? what a boring, wasted life that would be.

chuck, um, didn't say anything that i feel strongly about or moved to comment on. he seemed smart and funny, and fun, and a bit manic. mostly he seemed just plain happy, with his life and what he's able to do with it, and that's such a lovely thing. but, it's just, i mean, he didn't want to write about the strokes, but he did, and i don't want to read about the strokes, and i won't. and i can only keep up with one magazine at a time, and he writes for about nineteen, so i don't know how often we'll cross paths. alas and alack, but there are only so many hours in the day.

i guess i'm assuming everyone knows about ira glass, but for anyone who doesn't, here. love him or hate him, but don't hate him in my house.

so, yeah, the end of this party. but all is not lost: reviews are forthcoming on other festival events, i swear. you'd never know it to scroll through iaaph these days, but i do care about things that are not malcolm gladwell. not many, but enough to shut the hell up about him every so often, and i'm going to. honest. tomorrow. i think i'd like to talk about mark danielewski for a while, too, if anyone wants to stop by, and the new mcsweeney's collection of very, very short stories is filling my heart with love and blood and other assorted substances of varying densities. i know there isn't much room in this place; go ahead and climb on the bed if you want, and i'll perch up here on the counter, and if everyone brings a glass i'll make sure there's enough to drink. it won't be the start of a revolution, but i think we'll all get on just fine.

* update, 10/10/08, 1:21 PM: i was, um, really, really wrong about this. the eternal optimist meets with eternal slaps in the face, i guess. this book is more about the creative process than the process of marketing creations, though, i think, and its projected release date is awfully close to my birthday in 2008; he's trying.

i know you're on the edge of your seat . . .

2007-10-07T11:08:00.000-05:00

fact: adam gopnik is even more self-conscious and eager to both please everyone and not let on that he cares about pleasing anyone in person than he is in print. i hadn't known it could happen, but there it is.

fact: malcolm gladwell does an adorably awkward and fidgety-teenagerish thing with his right foot when he's forced to stand still while speaking. he's also left-handed. i am incredibly happy about both of these things.

fact*: despite the official call, based on a highly unscientific (and uncounted) show of hands and made by the heavily and unabashedly biased mediator, simon schama, who is a professor at columbia, gladwell made a far better argument, in that he more fully and roundly supported his point: ivy league schools make judgments and awards based on criteria other than academic merit, and this is unacceptable for academic institutions of any standing, but particularly for those of such legendary standing as harvard, yale, and princeton. the problem, i think, was that his well-made point didn't fully support his position, which was that the campuses of harvard, yale, and princeton should be levelled and the land sold for condominium development. i'm not without bias myself, as we all know, but i don't agree with that at all. if the aim is to promote social equality within the confines of the grounds, maybe it would be better to turn the space into a kind of public orchard, to be maintained by the pinko zealots effecting the takeover, using the amassed funds in the schools' current accounts. anyone could come in and pick fruit from the trees and then lounge around on the grass thinking brilliant thoughts for free. all of these schools have large bodies of water nearby for their crew teams, so irrigation wouldn't be too much trouble. we could keep some of the older buildings intact and turn them into hostels and mulch sheds. i guess we could grow other things, maybe tubers and legumes, but i do think the plants should be more utilitarian than decorative. but it would have to be something like that, an open-access venture. if you want to do away with the schools because they bar entry to intelligent and motivated but poorly connected individuals from the lower classes, it makes no sense to turn them into high-end housing that those individuals also couldn't get into. of course malcolm was joking about all of that, but still, hon, make a joke that's in keeping with the theme.

gopnik's primary counterargument was the same one i would have made: if you do away with those three schools, three more will move up to take their place as the most recognizable brands in american higher education. people love status, they love being affiliated with things that convey status, they love bearing brand labels that tell onlookers that their lives are better than the average life. applicants to schools like harvard and yale and princeton know that they're buying into a brand. there aren't any illusions about it; most people understand that they can get the same, if not a better, education at another, less well-known institution. but the names of those institutions don't open as many doors. people think something about you when they see that you're wearing a designer label, and they think something about you when they hear that you graduated from yale. but they think it at the level of the brand, not the faculty or curriculum, and you know when you don the label that you are only attempting to project at the level of the brand. schools like harvard, yale, and princeton—and internationally coveted fashion lines like versace and prada—will exist as long as human beings are human beings. we don't always have the time to tell someone we've just met about all the ways in which we are better than him or her; sometimes we need something small that we can flash quickly, like a handbag or an alma mater, in order to get the job done and be on our way.

and gladwell's rebuttal was the same as mine would have been: the desire for such instant and ultimately meaningless recognition is asinine, and we shouldn't allow or encourage or enable universities to accommodate it. we should enact changes that make the name on the tag irrelevant to the assessment of the product, and those changes have to happen at every level. published school rankings should reflect more meaningful measures, such as what becomes of students once they're enrolled and how many of them go on to do things that strengthen society, and people reviewing or applying to colleges should demand more information on how the school serves its active students, instead of how the name of the school serves its graduates. naturally, right? and yet so not the way things tend to be done.

just to be up front, i'll tell you that i applied and was accepted to an ivy league school (not one of the three mentioned above) but decided not to attend it because i was offended by its graduation requirements. specifically, i would have had to pass a swim test in order to receive my degree. this was a common requirement at a number of schools until around 1980, when most places began to realize how goofy and unnecessary it was. the current holdouts include cornell, columbia, notre dame, dartmouth, and swarthmore. i can swim just fine, but it bothered me, and continues to bother me, that whether or not i graduated could hinge on something that was 100 percent nonacademic. i think the requirement's aquatic nature got under my skin, too. there's something about water and the gilded upper crust in my mind—the newport oceanfront mansions, sculling, gatsby's pool, i don't know. i kept thinking of those 1980s movies where the rich preppy in his tennis whites finishes waxing his yacht in preparation for the regatta and then goes over and kicks sand on the poor townie schlub who really, really, really needs the prize money but will never win (or so everyone assumes) because he can't already afford a killer boat. but a school that doesn't accept students purely on the strength of their academic merits can't be expected to graduate them that way. i went to a private non-ivy college, spent two miserable years there, and then transferred to the state college down the street. the main building of that college had once been a public high school and still had lockers on its ground floor. there were never more than thirty students in a class, the professors were supportive and always accessible, i was able to pay my entire tuition in cash, and i learned approximately eighty-three times more in a semester than i had at my first school. when it comes to basic undergraduate education, failure should be an impossibility for a student who wants and is trying to succeed. if the school provides access to the proper resources, it is impossible. at my state school, there was a very high degree of support for students in terms of assistance outside of the classroom, arrangements made for students who had to hold jobs, flexible scheduling, etc. at the private institution, where i was paying fifteen times the tuition, those things were not really available. of the twenty or so people i became friendly with during my freshman orientation, all incredibly bright and driven kids who'd been near the tops of their high school classes, only about half graduated on time, and some never graduated at all. do i think this means all state schools are boffo? absolutely not. nor do i think all private or top-tier institutions are full of crap. what i think is that you can find outstanding colleges, and lousy ones, at every level of the current ranking system, and i can't help but think that that must mean the current ranking system is pretty full of crap. so i agreed with malcolm before he said anything. what, are you shocked? like that never happens.

i agreed with gopnik, though, too, to a tiny degree, in that it makes less sense to get rid of elite institutions than it does to attempt to reform their operations or enlighten the public so that they can, i guess, demand reformed operations. but he didn't offer any suggestions as to how we might do that. he didn't offer any suggestions at all, really. what he did was call malcolm the pol pot of parchment (at least three times); compare the grouping of harvard, yale, and princeton to the factitious but catchy "axis of evil" triad; insist that the ivy league provides tremendous opportunity without referencing anything even resembling a fact in support of that statement (and even then he was talking about opportunity for its students, or maybe just its graduates, when the problem is that it is denying opportunities to deserving applicants based on snooty, capricious whims); and closed with the warning that a vote for malcolm gladwell's america is a vote for george bush's america, but a vote for gopnik's america is a ballot cast in obama-esque optimism. a gimmicky and failed (and sort of rovian) presentation, i thought, which was too bad, because if he'd tried he could maybe have gone somewhere with the original idea. or maybe that was the best he could do, i don't know. on the quasi-upside, i have decided that his smugness is affected rather than intrinsic. i'm having some trouble figuring out why anyone would choose to project smugness. it could be a defensive posture (new york in the 1980s was a rather fierce place), or perhaps it's the result of parisian influence. i really can't say, never having lived in either place, and especially never having been a short canadian man in either place. i do not like him more, exactly, but i am infuriated by him less. and that's the best i can do. there was no ass-rolling, anyway. sorry to disappoint, kids, i know some of you were keeping your fingers crossed for an old-school rumble, but he was so sweaty and ill at ease up there under those bright lights (which only he had to speak under, weirdly; when malcolm was talking the hall was dimmed. does anyone know what that was about? it was so odd) with his shirt collar open, trying to look so smooth, grasping at liberal straws, that even i would have felt too mean to end it all by letting his sizable audience watch him get beat up by a girl. he and i both know the truth, and that's enough for me.

it was all pretty light, as it should have been, because in the end there's just nothing to it. if we all agree that there are excellent schools that are more willing to accept funny-looking students with no legacies or trust funds than the ivy league schools are, then we could probably agree that those students should attend those schools instead of harvard, yale, or princeton, since they'll probably have a better time somewhere else, anyway. it's an undeniable irritation that someone who went to harvard can simply say "i went to harvard" and be greeted with more and better job or postgraduate offers, despite his high-C average, than a student who maintained an A average at the university of virginia. but the things that need to happen in order to change that can either be brought about now, with schools operating as they already do, or not at all. we have to change our priorities. razing a few lecture halls won't help with that. refusing to pay top dollar and beyond for a designer logo might help that. but that isn't really the american way.

* fact: i really do say "fact" in this way when i'm speaking out loud. it's one of my less endearing conversational traits, right after my unfortunate air-quotes affliction, but you're here for the real me, right? and that's what you're getting.

the language of the industry

2007-10-03T20:46:00.000-05:00

today they threw a surprise party for my department's vp, who was recently inducted into the publishing hall of fame. i didn't know there was a publishing hall of fame, but there is, and my boss's boss's boss has been recognized by it. and i'm happy for him, i am. he's a good guy. he thought enough of me to escort me down to human resources after my return interview for my current job, he came by my office on my first day to welcome me. he wants to explore options for making the company carbon neutral, he's promised to save me a spot on the committee. a good guy who does good things—not always the type of guy who receives a lot of notice, sadly enough, and i wasn't at all put out at the thought of applauding him as he entered a room.

the forty or so minutes of standing around uncertainly after he had entered and the applause had died down weren't so great. picture me in my standard social-gathering position: back to the wall, hands in my lap fiddling with some inanimate object (in this case my keys), gaze fixed upon a point in the unknowable distance, acknowledging no one. and i'm listening. i'm listening to the entire room, waiting for any line of conversation to resonate in my ear, to speak to me. the odds of that happening aren't always great even at a normal party, where people generally know each other and have made a firm choice to be together, when they're in it for more than the free cake and root beer. but office parties, man, they're interesting-idea vacuums. they're communication voids. the guy who wrote the neverending story, with its nightmarish threat of the Nothing, the emptiness that replaces all beauty and creativity in the universe after people forget how to dream? i bet he'd gotten stuck at a lot of office parties.

"hi, i'm me. you're you, right? what division are you in? oh, i'm in a different division. how long have you worked here? really? that's a very interesting length of time. i've worked here for a different length of time, and that person over there, she's worked here for a whole other length of time. she also used to have long hair. gee, it sure is nice to be away from my desk. this windowless space is such a refreshing change of pace from the one i'm usually in."

"i'm working on a project. it's a very big project. i'm incredibly busy. i'm so busy that i shouldn't even be standing here right now eating this cake and drinking this root beer and telling you how busy i am, because it's taking up so much of my time, and i don't have any time to spare, because my very big and important project keeps me so very busy. oh, you're busy too? yes, everyone's so terribly busy. but not like i am."

"i like this bar. do you like this bar? what about that bar? i never go to that bar. i used to go to one bar, but now i go to another bar. except for sometimes when i go to a different bar."

"hey, let's all talk about that woman over there. she's a bitch, isn't she? i hate her. just look at her. look at her standing there all bitchy in those clothes, wearing those shoes like a bitch who wears shoes. now she's looking at us, what a bitch, let's smile and wave like we've been trying to get her attention and ask her about her division and her very important project."

"hi! i'm unnervingly eager to speak to you with tremendous enthusiasm about something of absolutely no consequence! i'm going to stand very close to you while i do it to impress upon you how deeply sincere i am about my desire to share this utterly irrelevent fragment of nondata with you! i dare you to refrain from recoiling when i grab your arm and lean toward your face so fast and so far that you are momentarily convinced that i'm going to break your nose with my skull! ha, you flinched! we have such a bond now, even though we've never spoken before, i feel like i could tell you anything! i'm in this division, i'm working on a very important project with that woman over there, who's such a bitch that i never tell her when i'm going to this bar that i like!"

and so on and so forth, etc., ad infinitum, or until everyone realizes that if they don't leave within the next thirty seconds or so they may be asked to help clean up. someone always approaches me at these gatherings to offer me cake and a vast "what's your name, little girl?" smile, and to tell me that i look so sad. and i'm sure that i do. but it isn't because no one is speaking to me, and it certainly isn't because i don't have cake.

all social animals establish working relationships of varying degrees of camaraderie and intimacy. some relationships are purely functional and require no friendship or pretense of friendship in order to satisfy the needs of all involved parties. others seem to require an inordinate quantity of pretense in order to be functional. human animals are overwhelmingly in favor of pretense when it comes to any relationship that's likely to last for more than forty-five seconds. in unfamiliar group settings, we default to bland approximations of cordiality; in more familiar groups, we default to conspiratorial cattiness. apparently, there is something in our coding that tells us this is comforting. i find it maddening. i am sitting with my back to the wall and pressing the teeth of my apartment key into the pad of my thumb because i am so afraid that if i stand or look up or draw any kind of attention to myself one of those default, pretense-heavy conversations will pounce on me and suck me into its gray, chilling vortex, and i don't want cake, i don't want cake! did you hear that bush vetoed the proposed expansion of children's health-care coverage? do you know where myanmar is? yes, i know that you've been very busy with your large, important project, but sometimes i take a break from building books and try to read one. have you read one? any one at all? can we talk about that? *sigh* no, actually, i kind of like her shoes.

by the time i dragged myself back upstairs i was exhausted and tense and incapable of focusing. i spent another hour, hour and a half, trying and failing to get back into a working rhythm, and then i gave up. the day was shot. i needed a walk, a long, hard walk, and while i was lacing up my sneakers so i could tear down the street and away from the office, the cleaning lady came in to empty the trash. i like the cleaning lady. she's older, in her early sixties, maybe, small and wrinkled but straight-backed and nimble. she always says hello when she walks into the room, softly but making sure that i hear her, so she doesn't startle me. she always smiles. and then she hushes about, emptying bins and straightening blinds and checking on plants, so quiet, like a mother cleaning around her sleeping child. one day i saw her in the kitchenette fishing photocopies out of the trash barrel and tossing them into the recycling barrel next to it. she looked up at me, half-smiled, shook her head. "people always make this mistake," she said, her accent slavic and heavy. she has one gold tooth, her upper right canine or first premolar. she wears her curly brown hair down, it falls over large gold hoop earrings. i half-smiled back. "i know," i said.

today when she came in she smiled as always, reached for the trash. i was happy to see her. the last few times i'd been in the office that late there'd been someone else, a younger girl, sullen and abrupt. she didn't care about the paper. i told the cleaning lady i was glad she was back, the other girl hadn't been friendly. i asked if she'd been on vacation. no, she said, her brother had died.

i looked at her for a few seconds. her english isn't strong, i think maybe she thought i hadn't understood. "an accident," she said, "in his car. for nine days i had to go, for my family. everyone is very sad, and i went for them, very far. but only nine days, and now i am here."

i know what i am supposed to say when someone tells me that he is running on empty because of a Very Important Project. i know what i am supposed to do when someone tells me that her commute was a nightmare and she's had the Worst Morning Ever. i'm supposed to draw my eyebrows together and up and tilt my head to the side, tsk my condolences, say it'll all be better soon. that's the line. i have to recite it so the performance can continue, so the relationship will function. there isn't a line for "my brother died." there's just the fall-back ad lib, "i'm sorry."

"i'm sorry," i said. she smiled. "he is seventy, was not young man." "but still," i said, "he was your brother." "yes," she said. "yes. my brother." she looked down at the floor, and then i did, too, because i didn't know what else to do. normal social involvement doesn't prepare you for these moments. they require special training, intensive courses and fieldwork, rigorous self-discipline. "i'm so sorry," i said, and stood up to leave.

as i was picking up my backpack she turned and reached toward me, took the hem of my cardigan between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand. "i like your sweater," she said. "i like the pattern. so pretty. very nice." it was a white crocheted sweater with tatting in a vaguely leafy pattern, acrylic fabric, something i'd picked up from a thrift shop years ago. not fancy, but one of my favorites. i thanked her. she ran her thumb over the raised stitching, across the wide weave along the bottom edge. "my sister makes fun of it," i told her. "she says it's an old-lady sweater. but i love it."

the cleaning lady looked up, her eyes bright. "my sister, she make things, like this, everything. no one teaches her, but she's so smart, her mind, she can look at it and see this stitch and that stitch, and then she just does for herself, dit, dit, dit." she dropped the hem and made sharp sewing motions in the air. "not now, it's too hard for her eyes, they've gone bad. but when she was young, a girl, anything, she could do. she lived with my brother who died, and now she is so sad, she cries, and i cry for her, i try to help, but is just too bad." and she did cry for her, right there in my dim office, in her powder blue uniform dress with its wide white collar and her worn white reebok sneakers and her gold hoop earrings. just for a second she cried, and then she drew it back in. "i'm sorry," she said. "is so hard to be not with them at this time."

some relationships don't function, exactly, in and of themselves. instead they support functions, those of the parties immediately involved and other external goings-on, the way the subterranean foundation of the cn tower supports its sky pod, its spire. i hugged her, suddenly and tightly, let her hug me, and out of her poured a rapid broken story of her family, its entire history. i caught pieces, just pieces, even though i struggled for the whole, wanted so much to receive this small, wracked woman's every utterance, to hollow out a space in myself for her words and carry them like a new and eminently vital organ.

her brother had died in the car accident with his friend, who was not his brother but was, and her brother was not her brother but was, they had different mothers, his mother died when he was twelve and he had come into her family, two families but still one, different blood but still family. her father had died when she was not very old and her brother, the new not but still brother, had mourned privately and briefly and then become a man, become a father, took care of the children so the children could be children, and they were so close, all of them, so close [and she banged her fists together in front of her face to show me, like this, there was no space between]. her mother had lived a long time, her aunt too, but now they are gone and she misses them, so much she misses them, but she has family still, even though they are far away. she has to live here, she can't be with them, and it's so hard, it's very hard, but for everybody it is this way. her sister, now, she is alone, and she is so sad for her, everybody is too sad, but for everyone it is this way.

again she told me that her brother had been seventy years old. "but he was like forty-year-old man, so young in his soul, he took no medicine, was healthy and had life, but was accident, you know? sudden. is hard. my english is not good, but you understand me. he was old man, but in his heart, in my heart, in my head was my young brother, and i didn't think the time. seventy, but still."

i thought of my grandmother, at seventy-five, clapping her hands and squealing like a child when she spotted a cardinal on her front-porch railing. i thought of how no one had been more shocked by her death than my grandfather, who had seen her every day and watched her weaken over her last few months and still expected to go first, had been counting on it. "but still," i said, "your heart breaks. no one thinks it's the time. how can it ever be time?"

she hugged me again, apologized. "maybe i talk too much," she said, "but i need to get the words out of my chest. thank you. thank you. i'm sorry, i'm sorry, but thank you."

"don't be sorry," i said. "please don't ever be sorry. i wanted the words."

she held my hands between hers and smiled, wept, smiled. "i pray that your family and who you love is healthy and strong. i pray. do you have family here?"

i told her no, that my family is far away, and here in the city i am alone. she sighed. "is too sad. is too hard. but is this way for everyone." and i thought, is it? is it? do we talk about nothing and laugh at unfunny nothing and enforce the familiar laws of cocktail-party prattle and beige, unprovocative, impersonal nothing because beneath all of that everyone actually is too sad? even to speak of it, too sad? i think most people would tell you that's rubbish, but maybe this woman knows something we don't. and maybe all of the important words are being held back by people who don't think they have a right to speak them. i didn't know this woman's name, she didn't know mine. some working relationships aren't "relationships." sometimes those are the only relationships that work.

on the street, on the train, in the atm vestibule, the same conversations, nothing, nothing, nothing. and i'm staring at the floor, i'm staring at the ceiling, i'm staring at the walls and out the window and i'm listening. i'm listening for the sound of a person who wants to say something that resonates, i'm listening for someone who's trying to speak. you can hold my hand, maybe we'll say everything wrong but we'll understand, refreshments will not be served but you can wear any shoes you like. don't tell me what you do, i won't tell you what i do, and when it's over i'll thank you. and i'll be sorry. and i'll thank you.

losing my appetite

2007-09-21T23:15:00.000-05:00

september 14 was a big red letter day for one miss juniper pearl, ladies and gentleman. on that day, she woke up rather late, made herself some coffee, and sat down in her living room to read a chapter or two of some book or other before she got to work proofreading the copyedited chapters of some manuscript or other that was on its way to being a book. and that was that.

perhaps you are wondering which of the above letters struck her as so big and red, as they all look rather small and standard here on the page. but it's a trick, you see; the big red letters are not up there. there is a small sign pointing in their direction, and my most loyal and observant readers may have noted it, but then again they may not have, so let me help: miss pearl took her coffee and sat down to read a book.

do you see? DO YOU SEE????? a book! she read a book! it's been months and months, so many endless and interminable months, since she even considered reading a book! but she was able to do it that day, my friends, because

she did not have an unread issue of the new yorker in her possession.

woohooooo!!!!! woooooo!!!!!!!! hooray!!!!!!!! and let me tell you, folks, it was a good thing. see, the issue she had finished the day before was the september 3 food issue, and some of the articles in the food issue were about as tasteful and tantalizing as nineteen-day-old beef lo mein, slick with heavy lubricants and and packed with colorful but bland and oversteamed vegetables, all of it laminating the tongue and throat with its swampy bilge, leaving the eater quite certain that he or she is going to deeply regret having eaten it in an hour or two . . .

well, it was a much needed break. and no one is sadder about that than miss pearl, because she hasn't needed or wanted a break from the new yorker since 1995. she is so sad about it, in fact, that she is having some trouble accepting it and has been driven to speak about the incident in the third person. but she's coming to terms with it, and i think that maybe taking a moment to discuss some of her grievances will help everyone move on. so.

nauseator #1: calvin trillin on the street food of singapore. there would have been nothing wrong with this article if calvin had happened to be in singapore and decided, while he was there, to sample some of the local vendors' fare. in fact, that would have been a delightful article. i like asian food, i like street vendors, i like things on sticks, and i am passionate about noodles. i'm also fond of calvin overall. what i do not like so much is the idea of anyone, anyone, in this age of rampant pollution, impending fuel shortages, and the vast and relentless publicity surrounding both of those concerns (some of it spewing forth from the new yorker itself, hype whore that it is these days), hopping on a jet and flying to the other side of the planet for the sole purpose of sampling the local vendors' fare. the thought of it makes me crazy in all kinds of ways. of course the blind self-absorption of the act hurts my heart, but i think trillin's choice to write a gleeful six-page article about the act as though it were worthy of global notice and commendation hurts it more, and the new yorker's decision to run that article positively breaks it, since it means they have decided that they are catering to a readership that wants that kind of article. now, by "that kind of article" i don't mean food writing; lots of people love that, and i am often one of them. but while reading this article, one gets the feeling that trillin thinks he is a crazy, crazy rebel, eating food on the street while standing up like some kind of rough-knuckled, down-to-earth anydude, even though we all know that a round-trip business-class flight from new york to singapore costs somewhere around $7,000 and the quantity and variety of food he crammed into his oblivious, bottomless gullet while in singapore could easily have rung in at something similar. he may have said some intriguing things about singaporean cuisine, but the premise of the article was so ludicrous that i could just barely hear them. does anyone really go on vacation to eat? in all of singapore, there was nothing that trillin wanted to see more than the country's food courts? and he's planning his return trip before he's even landed back in the u.s., that's how natural all of it seems to him. well, it seems grotesque to me, and i am tempted to start up a "keep trillin fat in nyc" fund and buy the man some cooking lessons, so he can learn how to make char kway teow in his own home. i might love to read about his successes and follies in the kitchen. it isn't his style that's jogging all those greasy burps loose from the murky depths of my roiling bowels.

swerve from this to judith thurman, who chose to spend her vacation eating nothing at all. this is an endeavor that could, potentially, have some merit; alas, "could" is as close as we come. all promise is negated by her choice to (a) fast in an elite spa; (b) fast for only three days; and (c) attempt to draw correlates between this experience and the highly significant, often world-changing hunger strikes of various historical and religious figures, including gandhi. she speaks with great authority about the giddiness and energy some long-term fasters, including anorexics, can experience after many days without food—something i question her right to do, since "many" in this case means many more than she spent sipping juice in the swank california courtyard of We Care. i don't know who she thinks she is to lecture anyone about ramadan or christ's forty days in the desert, but after reading her piece i do have a new understanding of and empathy for job, who "got too depressed to eat." if anyone is interested in a writerly account of a non-"ultra-lush" fast, i recommend david rakoff's in don't get too comfortable, which describes a twenty-day diet of strange and intricate teas that the writer brews up in his own apartment. no facials, no core radiance breathwork practitioners, no yearning to achieve more highs by struggling through three more days of nectar-fueled pampering and therapeutic colonics in an isolated, high-end resort; just one hungry writer explaining that sometimes the things we think will build character by teaching us to endure suffering do build character, but in a completely different way—by showing us how dumb it was to think that what we were enduring was the kind of suffering that builds character. i think there is a very good chance that darling judith has not read this book.

but the star of the show, the mystery container on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator that has been leaking something sinister and cloudy and freckled with small mobile clots for the past three weeks, is adam gopnik, for his hopelessly and infuriatingly backwards foray into local eating. i have loved adam, i have, for many many moons, i have loved him with an everlasting love—but no more and never again. he has proven himself an insincere jumper of other people's trains, the very worst kind of ersatz environmentalist: the narrow-thinking, narrow-acting self-congratulator. and now he is my enemy. what a crying shame.

the idea of eating locally is a fine one, and the idea of defining acceptably local food as that grown within the confines of the five boroughs of new york city is about as extremist as local eating can get—even if you are only doing it for a week, as gopnik was. but the generally accepted point of local eating, as gopnik explains, is to "encourage sustainable agriculture by eating things . . . that don't have to be shipped halfway around the world, guzzling fossil fuel, to get to your table." gopnik claims to have been motivated at least in part by a desire to further the movement, to prove that city folk can hug trees, too. but how does he go about obtaining this local food, in a city with one of the most extensive and accessible public transportation systems in the world? why, he gets in his car, of course.

from somewhere on the upper east side, gopnik travels to the decker farm in staten island, reachable by subway and bus but only "fifteen minutes across the verrazano-narrows bridge." he heads to the red hook community farm in brooklyn, nine miles away and easy to get to by subway if you aren't afraid to walk a few blocks, which i can't imagine any long-time new yorker being. but he and his kids and his greenmarket-guru guide tool on over and back in their own car. he drives to the bronx—a distance of five miles, a little less than the distance i commute to work every morning—to try to bully some kindhearted man into slaughtering one of the beloved egg chickens he has been raising in a carefully and determinedly maintained city coop. and at the end of all this he has the balls to refer to his toe-dip in the pool of conscientious living as "M.T.A. localism," even though he mentions having made use of the m.t.a. over the course of his week-long experiment exactly once. you do not get to make up for the food miles you have spared by buying locally, adam gopnik, that is not how the plan works, and if this flirtation with the hip new shade of green were more than a fleeting whim for you, you would have realized that. at the very least, you might have felt compelled to leave the references to your car out of the article. but you didn't mean it, did you? it was just something to write a story about. one week, to prove that it could be done, even by someone like you, and then everything could go back to normal. because "normal" has, obviously, been really great for everything so far.

he got his chicken, you know; not from that decent man who read him the riot act outside of the bronx's garden of happiness but from a different place (also in the bronx, between ten and fifteen blocks from the garden, and which he also drove to) that seems to have suited him better, where someone was happy to butcher and bag a chicken that had been "born elsewhere, arrived in hope, lived in cramped quarters, ended its New York existence violently and unexpectedly at the hands of someone with a fatal amount of money." of course, it isn't the money that's fatal, is it? it's the mindset; it's the choice of the person with the money to use it to do whatever makes him or her happy, the rest of the world and all that's living in it be damned. some of these people have children who seem like spoiled brats, by the way, and i'm fairly certain that isn't a coincidence. when your parents can't understand that local eating is a tiny corner of the vast landscape of environmental action, not a trendy new ribbon to pin to their suit jacket, of course you're going to wind up guzzling snapple on your central park safari. did he not bring his kids along in an attempt to teach them something? did he simply think his story required a cynical foil for his own pureness of heart? the trek through the urban pasture with wildman steve brill is something that was also done by david rakoff and recounted in don't get too comfortable. i think it is wholly possible that gopnik has read the book, but i'm not sure he read it right. in any case, it is disappointing that rakoff doesn't have some kind of byline in this issue. its writers appear to owe him tremendously for reminding them of their station.

ohhhh, sick, sick, sick. is this what the new yorker is going to be from now on, snooty blather interspersed with masturbatory jaunts into common living and faux deprivation? i read the september 17 issue; i have no recollection of it. i'm halfway through the september 24 style issue, but the only strong thought i've had associated with it is, "didn't they just put out a style issue?" i'm pretty sure it hasn't been a full year since the last one, and what's that all about? the new yorker isn't supposed to be about style, it isn't supposed to be stylish; it's supposed to be smart. i thought i could count on the better part of its staff to refrain from being pompous blowhards between the pages, at least. maybe someone is giving them too much leash. maybe someone is setting a poor example. (*ahemREMNICKahem*)

and yet, like a battered, co-dependent lover, i can't say good-bye. i believe that everything could still be turned around, if we both want it enough. be it optimism or delusion, it's led me to purchase a ticket to gladwell v. gopnik at this year's new yorker festival. i trust my malcolm to make a case i can get behind, or at least appreciate. he'll never offend me so much as this last batch of vainglorious twaddle did, and he'd have to work awfully hard to top his highest offense to date: the "talk of the town" piece on student discipline, in which he tried to convince me that the world would have been far worse off if robert oppenheimer had been expelled after trying to kill a teacher with a poison apple, because if he had been we'd never have been able to melt the faces off of all those women and children in japan. ohhhhh, i was very angry that day, and the day after that. but i forgave him, because his heart was almost entirely in the right place, and because he was thinking about sports. he gets a little irrational about sports. sadly, even when he isn't thinking about sports at all, sometimes he doesn't think his arguments through from every angle. it's sweet, in its way, that he thinks everyone must see the same shades of good and bad as he does, because they tend to be sweet shades. but it's also naïve and a substantial soft spot in his armor, and i hope that it doesn't create problems in the upcoming debate, because if he doesn't mop the floor with gopnik, i will, and i will not do it in a polite, parliamentary manner. i will rush the stage and roll his fool ass. and i'll take the subway both ways to do it.

a latchkey kid is still loved

2007-08-31T14:02:00.000-05:00

when my mother was young, in her teens and early twenties, when she was a girl in love and then a young bride and then a new mother, she made things, pottery and jewelry and paintings, she crocheted scarves and cross-stitched wall hangings and redesigned dresses. and then she became an adult with a full-time job outside of the house and a family to keep running within it, and she didn't do those things anymore. in fact, when the choice was hers to make, she didn't do anything at all. she sat very still with a paperback romance in her hand, open but not really being read, and shushed us over her coffee or diet coke. our job was to pretend she was not there, because that was what she was trying to pretend herself. when i was old enough to understand that the woman i knew as my mother was not the only woman who had ever occupied that body, i wondered why she had let that particular transformation take place. why would you give up all of your interests and hobbies and passions? how could you let the world compress you into such a drab, hard, uninspired shape? why would you choose to put your free time toward doing nothing rather than something?

well, i get it now. for the first time i have a full-time job that requires that i do honest work all day, every day, and sometimes even longer, and i'm not unhappy with that. but i am not looking for something to busy my hands with when i finally get home, and i am putting more and more of my ideas inside of a little mental box, swearing that i will come back to them later . . . the odds of my doing so aren't even hopeless, because i don't have a husband and children to tend to, so my last few sparks of energy and vision are always actually mine. but you, my little chickens, between my scrabbling wall-to-wall workday and my thoroughly unreliable home internet connection, are likely to walk into an empty house more often than not. and i'm so sorry, for you and for me. sadly, this is the state of things in my modern world. of course, if you need help with your diorama or halloween costume or clay sculpture of mark twain, i will always be here for you, no matter what kind of day i've had. that's what love is all about.

i do want to let you know that the office tries very hard to reward us for our hard work and encourage our professional progress, and in that spirit they chartered a bus for about twenty of us this week and drove us up to a courier printing plant in massachusetts. i won't regale you with the intimate details of the book-binding process, but i was very excited to come across a pallet of unbound book blocks for stephen colbert's new book, i am america (and so can you!), due to come out october 9. i haven't had cable here in new york, and i am missing colbert and the daily show in a big, droopy way, so i was not shy about grabbing up one of those blocks and flipping through it hungrily. spoiler alert: there are two pages of stickers, making the book somewhat interactive, and the page edges are spray-painted a very fetching, all-american shade of flag-stripe red. i didn't steal a copy, seeing as how i was representing my company and all, but someone's book may be, um, missing a sticker. just one. think of it as finding the golden ticket, only in reverse. if you get that copy you can dust it for my fingerprints, and when you track me down i will give you the sticker, and maybe a cold drink too, depending on how far you've had to travel. if you live, like, three blocks up the hill or something, i mean, come on. i had to wake up at 5:30 in the morning and spend nine hours on a bus for that sticker.

and that is why i didn't post anything on tuesday. or wednesday. but i was thinking of you. i left some tvp chili for you in the fridge. and there's grapes, did you find the grapes? come on, sweetie, don't sulk, o.k.? it's hard for me, too.

celebrity sighting #2*

2007-08-15T19:49:00.000-05:00

i passed jim jarmusch on bowery today. he was rockin' that crazy eraserhead hairdo and drawing hard on a cigarette, taller than i'd thought he was and wearing a signature patterned button-down shirt, looking real cool, even though it was damn hot. i had been walking for about an hour and was dirty and sweaty and bedraggled, wearing an ugly, unevenly faded pair of cropped khaki pants with a blood stain on the leg that are really only good for being dirty and sweaty and bedraggled in, and i did not look cool. but even if i had looked cool, i wouldn't have, because i was also trying to shove half of a very crumbly cookie about the size of my fist into my decidedly un-fist-sized mouth, and this futile square-peg-into-oblong-hole effort had spattered spelty debris all over my chin and chest. in addition to being elephantine, the cookie was fairly dry, which made it that much more difficult not to choke when my brain stage-whispered, "HEY! that's jim jarmusch! holy crap, that's jim jarmusch! jim jarmusch, who made down by law and night on earth and dead man and broken flowers! jesus, don't look at him! not with your cheeks all puffed out like a hamster's around that mouthful of cookie you can't swallow and that trail of grimy crumbs parading into your cleavage, come on, stop looking, he'll know and then he'll look at you, and then he'll see you, and it'll be AWFUL OH MY GOD DON'T LOOK DON'T LOOK!!!!"

but it was too late. i was lost in the beautifully confident ease of the hand holding his cigarette, of his stride, and i stared dead into his face, like a possum in love with a goodyear tripletred. our eyes met and we held the gaze for what seemed like an impossibly long time; what could he have been thinking? perhaps, "i wonder if that homeless girl is going to ask me for money? or maybe even an autograph? either way, i can always burn her with my cigarette and run." or maybe, "jesus, how stoned do you have to be to eat that much cookie in those pants in public?" maybe something less complicated, like, "please don't talk to me."

but then again it could have been something entirely different, something thoughtful or even touching, such as, "now that looks like a girl who would love a juniper titmouse." who knows? no one but jim, which means i will never know, and honestly, since what's done is done and i can't change any part of it, i guess i'd be equally willing to accept any of the above. he didn't try to burn me, anyway, so there's that.

* celebrity sighting #1 occurred a few weeks ago, but i didn't mention it, because really it's only alleged celebrity sighting #1. i am 99% certain that i passed jack mcbrayer in the union square station. for those of you who don't know, jack mcbrayer plays kenneth parcell on 30 rock and looks like this (on the right):

magically geekalicious, no? and i am thrilled to say that, if my sighting was legit, his actual everyday haircut is just like that, only dweebier. awesome.

WOOOOOOO!!!!!!! WOOOOOOO-HOOOOOO!!!!!!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2007-08-13T14:06:00.000-05:00

karl rove to leave white house:

Karl Rove, President Bush's close friend and chief political strategist, announced Monday he will leave the White House at the end of August, joining a lengthening line of senior officials heading for the exits in the final 1 years [sic] of the administration.

On board with Bush since the beginning of his political career in Texas, Rove was nicknamed "the architect" and "boy genius" by the president for designing the strategy that twice won him the White House. Critics call Rove "Bush's brain."

"Karl Rove is moving on down the road," Bush said, appearing grim-faced on the White House's South Lawn with Rove at his side.

"We've been friends for a long time and we're still going to be friends ... I'll be on the road behind you here in a bit," he said ruefully.

hell yeah you will, you furrow-browed, lint-brained nitwit! i'm so happy i'm doing a little dance!

A criminal investigation put Rove under scrutiny for months during the investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's name but he was never charged with any crime. In a more recent controversy, Rove, citing executive privilege, has refused to testify before Congress about the firing of U.S. attorneys.

Rove's departure reinforces Bush's lame-duck stature and declining influence, particularly with Democrats in control on Capitol hill.

look at me dance! dance dance dance! with such abandon i am dancing! it's as if i were weightless and free from all care or worry! i could weep, i am so fully packed with joy and glee and dancing!

is this the first good thing karl rove has ever done? it doesn't atone for everything, but it's a tremendously positive step. and no, i will not read his book--but i will dance on it! dance and stomp with my mirthful tapping feet! and after i've paused for air and caught my breath, i shall dance on it some more.

and then i will recycle it, lou cona, and you had better start doing your part to make it worth my while. the world is on an upswing; now is totally the time.

new york minute

2007-08-10T23:37:00.000-05:00

weather: 58°F, which is quite cool, i think, for early august. it is wet, all kinds of wet, wet air, wet sidewalks, wet floor beneath the kitchen window--but also wet soil in my pepper plant's pot, and its two tiny wet fruits are the prettiest things i've seen all year.

odor: and lo, the rains did pour forth and wash away the sins of the world, and cleanse it of its old-bologna funk, and short out its third rails, and the wretched masses huddled on street corners and crowded together underground and were too angry to notice how great a rain-washed street smells early in the morning, but after they had huddled and crowded for a bit everything smelled like coffee breath and armpits anyway, so it was just as well.

maybe some people become deadened to the sidewalk's layer of refuse over time, and perhaps i will too, but so far living in new york has blessed me with a drastically heightened appreciation of a clean street. david lynch would also like to encourage you to refrain from littering:

and i would like to encourage you to refrain from tampering with the united states mail. the other day my roommate came upstairs and handed me a packet of sra paperwork, the august 13 issue of the new yorker, and a white envelope that had once contained an offer for a 0% apr on balance transfers but which now contained a small ziploc baggie filled with bullets. i don't know much about munitions and so can't describe the bullets in great detail, but they were about as large as my thumb between the tip and the uppermost knuckle and looked to be made of brass. there were fifteen of them. granted, i do not need another credit card, and if i did know something about bullets i might be able to take better advantage of the ones that have been given to me--for all i know they have a high street value--but still; after a long day at work, it just isn't the kind of thing i want to ponder.

i am almost caught up on the new yorker--only three weeks behind! that's the nearest i've come to closing the gap in about a year--and it is just beginning to dawn on me that, if i wanted to, i could probably attend almost every new yorker festival event this year. i doubt that i will want to, but it sure is something to have the option. if anyone would like to join me, you're more than welcome, but be warned that i may embarrass you by hugging deborah treisman for an uncomfortably long time against her will to thank her for packing the fiction issue to the gills with miranda july, or poking louis cona with a stick until he admits that, yes, condé nast probably can afford the extra ten cents a pound it would cost to print on one-hundred-percent post-consumer recycled paper, or paintballing nick paumgarten for, oh, so many things. you are equally welcome to watch me embarass myself from a safe distance, as long as you keep your hands off malcolm. if not, there'll be an extra paintball just for you. but no brass bullets--that's just creepy.

dreams, nightmares, and the irresistible middle ground

2007-08-06T20:23:00.001-05:00

warning: this post is unrepentently verbose. you may think of it as an attempt to make up for lost time, but really i just didn't care to stop myself. read some of it, read none of it, read the whole thing twice; i ask only that you, as i always do, follow your bliss.

when i was not quite four, my parents surprised me with my first real bed, a floral-print twin mattress and boxspring. up until then i had been sleeping happily, insistently, and, as a tall-for-her-age not-quite-four-year-old, rather snugly in the crib i had started out in as an infant, and the new bed was not a welcome surprise. i loved my crib; it was high and enclosed and safe, like a cotton-lined aerie. i did not want a big-girl bed. i wanted my bed, where i had cooed and dreamt and preened like a downy wee bird, but my parents, like, i understand now, all good parents must, were tumbling me out of it. i found it all inexplicably and unnecessarily cruel, and so began one of the first arguments i had ever had with my parents.

the new bed was, in truth, less a gift or rite of passage than a necessity: my mother was pregnant with my sister, and the new baby was going to need a place to sleep. so they persisted, and after much cajoling and some outright pleading they convinced me to lie down, just once, just to see. i did, and immediately began to cry. the bed was HUGE! it was mammoth, endless, i felt as if i were floating in the middle of the ocean. i was terrified, and the terror itself was terrifying, because i had never really been afraid before. making matters worse was the fact that i was extremely aware that my parents were not only failing to save me from this horror but were, in a way, inflicting it. it was a brutal disillusionment; my trust in my parents was shattered, and in that moment, as i wailed and struggled to sit up and they held me back against the pillow, smiling and sweet-talking and—were they? they couldn't be, but, yes, they were; how could they?—now and then laughing, insisting that i give it one more minute, i hated them.

but it was to be the bed, things being the way they were and me so small and powerless and not yet prone to disobedience. it was a difficult transition, though, and i began, for the first time, to have nightmares. i would run into my parents room, wide-eyed and shuddering, and they would steer me back toward my own room, bleary-eyed and muttering, and after enough nights of this routine in a row bedtime became a dreaded punishment that began weighing on everyone's hearts the moment the sun started to set. then they started in with the pep talks.

the gist of the motivational speech was that i was going to be a Big Sister, and Big Sisters have to look out for their little sisters, and that meant i had to be Brave, because sometimes taking care of someone means protecting that person from things that are Scary, even things that we're afraid of ourselves. my sister and i were going to share a room eventually; what if she had a bad dream and woke up scared? how could i tell her that everything was o.k. if i was scared too? didn't i want to be a Good Big Sister?

had my parents realized how solemnly and seriously i would don my new role as Fearless Protector of Innocents, they might have foregone the speech and simply purchased a nighlight or two. but they had no way of knowing; as the eldest children in their respective families, it's likely they heard similar speeches themselves, and no lasting damage was done. but i was not them, and the events leading up to the situation converged in my peculiar child's mind in a very, very strange way.

here is what i knew: my parents, who i had been certain would rescue me from any and all dangers, had turned on me and chosen to force me into a known and massive danger night after night. they could not be trusted or counted on, not in the least, and therefore my baby sister was going to need all the help she could get. i, according to all reports, had been designated her guardian, and i was not about to leave her stranded in this unpredictable place. i began training.

every night, after my parents had performed the prescribed bedtime rituals, turned out my light, and left me to the shadows, i would scan the room for an eye-catching shape—a bathrobe hanging from the back of the rocking chair in the far corner, say, or a mound of toys spilling out from behind the closet door. the shape didn't have to be threatening outright, only potentially threatening; it had to suggest, at least obliquely, some other shape that would inspire dread. i would fix on the chosen object and stare, and stare and stare and stare, until the suggestion became the reality—the bathrobe was suddenly a hunched witch in a black cloak, eyeing me in salivatory anticipation, the jumble of playthings by the closet a skulking troll. once these monsters appeared i would seize on them, expand the ghoulish details of them until my heart was racing and my little jaws clenched tight against a shriek, and then i would close my eyes and will myself to fall asleep. when the inevitable nightmare woke me sweating and gasping, i resisted the desire to run to my parents, my heartless, treacherous parents, and instead rolled over to face my bête noire. the witch, by now, had rolling yellow eyes and toadlike skin, and her long, ragged fingernails rasped against one another as she lurched toward me, cackling under her breath. i stared at her, stared and stared and stared, shaking and panting and fighting tears, and whispered,

"you can't eat me. you're a bathrobe."

and so she was. slowly and not always so surely, i walked myself back from the brink of hysteria, reminding myself that the world was the world, and maybe it was packed to the gills with trolls and hags and hideous things, but this was my room, and that was my chair; all of these monsters, at least, were things that i knew and could explain to myself. i named them, one by one, night after night, and by the time my sister was born i was afraid of nothing. i was proud of my accomplishment, but also alone within it. i felt like a superhero, invincible and isolated, my great strength a secret i could never fully share.

i think that, in a way, this process is similar to the one christian bale undertakes when selecting and playing a role. having, to put it tactfully, studied (*ahem*) bale as he's inhabited various personas over the past fifteen or so years, and after watching some of his films enough times to commit entire scenes to memory verbatim, i feel qualified to argue that the connecting thread between almost all of his characters and certainly all of the recent ones, the thing that draws him to them, is terror—of the character, of the character's situation, and of the knowledge that, with some relatively minor shifts in circumstance, he, or any of us, could find himself in that terrifying place. undoubtedly this allows him to stretch and perfect and prove himself as an actor, but that can be accomplished, for most, via all kinds of characters. bale consistently opts to embody harrowed, haunted, desperate men, and specifically those whose desperation stems from an awareness that they are plummeting toward a state of being something not quite human, something callously, unrepentently animalistic, and knowing that they don't want it, and having no means of stopping it. talk about inviting a nightmare. did his early work in empire of the sun have a damaging psychological effect? or was he drawn to the work even then, as a twelve-year-old boy? could it be innate and inescapable? after all, his name is christian bale, a not-uplifting moniker better suited to a james joyce novel than modern hollywood. whatever the cause, the trend is undeniable.

bale's latest foray into tortured misery is rescue dawn, directed by the mad and exalted werner herzog, whose film sets are historically nightmarish regardless of plot. the story is based on true events and builds on an earlier work by herzog, little dieter needs to fly, released in 1997. in the current film, bale plays dieter dengler, a u.s. navy flyboy about to embark on his first official mission: the secret bombing of guerilla targets in laos in 1965, when the american involvement in vietnam and the far east was just beginning to reveal itself as engagement in war. dengler's plane is shot down early on in the mission, and, after successfully outrunning them at first, he is taken prisoner by a band of militiamen, some viet cong, some local tagalong thugs. presumably, for bale, since he hurls himself toward it time and again with such unflagging, all-in commitment, this is where the real fun begins. naturally, by "real fun" i mean endless days and sleepless nights of starvation, gruesome physical abuse, and sadistic psychological torture. and this is before he reaches the p.o.w. camp. you see where this is going.

oh, christian, how i fear and fear for you and your unemotional, single-minded, seemingly joyless devotion to these romps. as for the machinist, bale dropped close to sixty pounds over the course of the shoot—about thirty more than he'd initially planned to lose—whittling himself down to a shaggy, rag-clad scarecrow; in a later scene, bale wades into a river and his pant leg lifts up as he hoists his knobby knee over a rock, revealing a taut calf the circumference of the average teenage girl's forearm and a shark-finned ankle bone you could lose an eye on. yet i am hopeful that bale may finally have put himself through this enough times to have exorcised whatever demon was at the root of the compulsion: unlike his other wraiths, who plod and seethe through their sentences like enraged automatons, not wanting to go on but unable to stop, dengler is an optimist who believes he is the maker of his own fate and whose faith in his ability to propel himself to salvation never winks out. he is perhaps the most embraceable of bale's characters so far: a suffering man surrounded by evil and the muffled voices of the defeated, yet insistent upon the ultimate triumph of the human mind and heart. in the camp, he says that he is still hoping his fiancée will wait for him. he bolsters his fellow-prisoners, distracting them from the hopelessness of their surroundings and comforting them in their lowest moments. he is the kind of friend everyone wants to face death by disease and/or starvation and/or random, unprovoked execution alongside. there comes a moment, of course, where dengler finds himself up against something even he can't stare down, and in the aftermath of it it is clear how perilously close he is to losing, if not actively discarding, the humanity he has fought so consistently to retain. but up until then he is generally upbeat; remarkably stable; and, when he is not eating live insects, the warmest, most endearing character bale has portrayed since newsies. this, of course, makes the break all the more devastating, but i have convinced myself that it suggests that bale is ready to submerge himself in some slightly less icy and turbid waters. of course, he has said that he wanted this role largely because he was crazy about the idea of working in the jungle with herzog, so only time will tell.

to be fair, herzog suffers through most everything his cast and crew suffer through, and as traumatic as those goings-through may be, no one could accuse him of not knowing what he's doing. rescue dawn is visually flawless, filmed in a color range and with a hint of graininess suggestive of 1970s nature documentaries. the work is hypnotically devastating from its opening scenes, a protracted montage of warheads being dropped in pairs on bamboo huts in a rice field, the shells blossoming in slow motion into smoldering anemones that dissolve into gaping rosettes of orange flame. and it doesn't let up: nearly every shot is framed to evoke not only the mood of the central character or characters but also the ambient mood of the surrounding environment, and, if such a thing can be captured on film, the environment's feelings toward the characters—typically indifference at best and active, immolating resentment at worst. the latter is ever present in the second half of the film, but most strikingly so when dengler, after hacking through dense shrubs and tangled, snarling undergrowth for days, comes across a clearing containing the remnants of a small village. the huts have been almost completely reclaimed by the jungle: from a distance, their shapes are barely discernible, their exteriors a seamless, faintly contoured mat of interwoven vines. it is an image capable of inspiring either comfort or panic, depending on the perspective of the viewer: the earth, in the end, will always win out, try as we might to force ourselves on it, and all the work we undertake with the belief that it is of such great importance will be swallowed and digested in instants by that earth if we aren't there to stand guard over it. only we believe in ourselves; the rest of the world is scratching at us like a rash, waiting for the blasted infection to heal.

earlier on, though, herzog presents the relationship more gently, with the jungle regarding its human trespassers as merely nonentities rather than enemies. dengler, in an attempt to signal an overhead plane, climbs a hill and then scales a rock outcropping rising above the drop-off. standard hollywood form would be to shoot tight and close on dengler as he fights his way up the rock, his boots slipping against the crags, his fingers stirring up dust and sprays of pebbles as they scrabble for a grip, the sweat beading up on his creased brow and tracing clear swaths in the caked dirt on his grimacing face. *yawn* but herzog, because he is better than this and because he believes that we, the audience, are better than this, widens the shot to take in the entire rock, the hillside, the stony cliff beyond it, and the jungle unfurling endless and claustrophobically thick below. the camera is pulled back so that dengler is a speck on the skin of all this immensity. the sound is natural and unamplified; we hear dengler's small grunts of effort from a distance, and the clattering of gravel pushed over the edge of the rock by his foot is piffling and devoid of moment, like the tapping of chalk on a sidewalk heard from inside a building. this is, of course, the accurate, in-the-instant relationship. dengler is not the center of anything on an honest, real-world scale; he is just one man, tiny, without allies, standing on a rock, holding an inches-wide flat of mirrored glass up toward the infinite sky, too minuscule to attract anything's notice. the plane flies by and doesn't circle back.

these are nightmare outtakes, the scenes and sensations that send us shooting up in bed drenched in sweat, that bring on panic attacks in crowded trains and elevators or in wide-open parks. all at once we realize that we are one of many in so much space, points in a field that extends forever, and we know nothing of that space, because that is what we are. we are human in the way that we conceive of being human because we insist upon it; no law makes it so, and if our discipline wavers, nothing will save us. the life we trust, in the order we trust it to keep to, can—is probably trying to—unravel. and are you strong enough to force it to cohere? if your plane went down, would you stand up and follow the river?

the scene cuts, production closes, the lights come up, you wake in a familiar place and inhale, the dream falls away. you can let go of the question then, if you need to, if the darkness at the edge of the room is too dark, if the world is too large, if you can decide there's nothing worth confronting today. but some people need an answer; fortunately for them, there is no shortage of nightmares with which to test their mettle. but for bale's sake, i hope that it is equally true that on some night each of them wakes up assuredly in control and tells the bathrobe to shut the hell up, it's just a bathrobe, and falls into a far more peaceful sleep, and that the knowledge that this can be done is enough.

nothing exciting [enough] ever happens here.

2007-07-26T09:09:00.000-05:00

while i was crossing fifth avenue this morning, around 8:45 AM, a person on the opposite side of the street started jumping up and down on the sidewalk and waving her arms at the driver of a bus that was turning left into the crosswalk spanning 34th street. at the same time, a number of other people on the sidewalk started shouting, and someone ran out into the road. i was in the middle of a cluster of bodies and couldn't see until i got across the street that a man in a wheelchair had been in the middle of the crosswalk when the bus started to turn, and the bus had basically sideswiped him: his chair was pressed up against the side of the bus, his foot was underneath it, and if the bus had turned any farther to the left it might have toppled him over on his side and crushed him under a rear wheel. several people on his side of the street rushed out to help him, and the bus driver stopped the engine and leaned out the window to make sure everyone was all right. people on my side of the street went as far as the curb, to see what was happening, and then went on their way. most had expressions of genuine concern and upset on their faces.

one man, older, balding, gray suit, maroon tie, starbucks coffee in his left hand, pushed two women out of his way in his rush to see what had stopped a bus in the middle of the street and made someone scream. apparently, his internal build-up yielded disappointment at the actual scene--no blood, no broken limbs, no unrecognizably mangled twists of chrome or spray of splintered glass. as he turned away from the corner a second later, he sighed and rolled his eyes.

some folks are never satisfied.

holy oblivious, batman.

2007-07-19T11:50:00.001-05:00

i, um, had no idea that a steam pipe under a street near grand central station, just seven blocks from my office, had erupted like a fucking volcano yesterday afternoon until i read it five minutes ago in a news feed. there was an unintelligible announcement on the subway this morning about there not being service to somewhere, and someone in the hallway mentioned being late because of "roadwork," but if i weren't the sort of girl who reads the news i'd probably never have known. i was still in manhattan when it happened, only three miles from the scene, and there was no indication of anything having gone wrong. this upsets me, because three miles is not so far, and people were hurt and frightened, and when things are exploding in my city--or any city--i would like to know about it. this is the price i pay, maybe, for not having a television. but for no one, not a single person, to be talking about it this morning, or asking if everyone was all right, if everyone they knew was all right . . . i mean, what the image of a dust-covered, rubble-strewn new york street must have done to some people, regardless of context . . . *sigh*

is everyone all right?

new york minute

2007-07-02T09:18:00.000-05:00

weather: 60°F and breezy—chilly, even.

odor: my street—reminiscent of the underside of a kitchen-sink drain trap; midtown—none detectable.

subway conditions: because people have gone away for the holiday, i was forced into unwanted physical contact with only one person, a young man who slammed into my left hand, which was gripping a center pole, for absolutely no reason as he passed me, causing a significant amount of flesh to be pinched between the pole and one of my rings; aside from this, a pleasant, inexplicable-stop-free ride.

walking conditions: one might think that, because there are fewer people on the streets, it would be easier to get from one place to another, but not so; the more relaxed commute appears to have given everyone the feeling that there's no reason to rush, or move, and all these trendy bitches in their high heels and flip-flops are strolling at a pace so leisurely it is actually causing me pain. i can, in fact, walk in my shoes; please allow me to do so.

i have been trying to take advantage of the fact that i can walk in my shoes, or, rather, that i am not too self-conscious or silhouette-obsessed to wear shoes conducive to walking, to explore different routes between my office on 35th street and the subway stop on canal street, where i catch a train to brooklyn. this is about three miles of walking whichever way i decide to go, and it carries me through what i imagine is a decent mix of manhattan neighborhoods. here is the surprising thing about that:

it's all the same. from lower park avenue all the way to the upper edge of chinatown, the blocks are basically indistinguishable. they all house the same combination of uninteresting stores—usually an h&m next door to a banana republic, next door to either a gap or an express—and the people walking in and out of and back and forth between these stores are also fairly similar and, from the distance and speed at which i am walking among them, relatively uninteresting. wait, that's not entirely true; between 35th street and union square, i get a lot of disdaining glances from the women i pass, because, i've concluded, i am carrying a giant green backpack instead of a stylish handbag and wearing sneakers and chunky sport socks with my work skirt. (i believe it is a sort of love-hate disdain, in that they are disgusted with my indifference but also envious of my comfort and freedom, but, really, no one is holding them back but themselves.) from union square on, where there are more students and fewer women who *heart* calluses and bunions, this doesn't happen so much. also, once you reach the lower east village and start heading into soho, the gaps and expresses are replaced by something called "necessary clothing." i haven't ventured inside one of these stores, but i can only assume that the moniker is accurate and the items being sold inside are utterly essential, because i can't imagine how so many of them could stay in business otherwise. i find myself growing immensely nostalgic for boston, a city i'd never thought i'd love and had actually tried hard not to live in, because it has managed to confine blocks like this, which possess the air of a large open-air mall, to a meager handful of concentrated areas downtown. in most outer areas and bordering neighborhoods, it has resisted brand infestation. manhattan, defying all expectations, appears to have caved almost entirely. this is very disappointing. also, boston, even in its grittiest areas, rarely smells funny.

now, i didn't come here with the starry-eyed expectation that this city would knock me on my ass with its crazy, one-of-a-kind "it"ness and make me regret every second i'd ever spent anywhere else. i had been here before. i knew about the monster whole foods on bowery, and i'd been listening to various residents gripe about the stem-to-stern gentrification and crate-and-barreling of the city for many, many moons. but still, walking through it and realizing that any pockets of true uniqueness of character are holdouts unlikely to survive through 2015, given the current rents in the fricking bronx, is definitely a downer.

i do love being out in it, though, in the noise and the dirt, the clouds of exhaust hanging in the hot, swampy air. no one is a friend, everyone is either rude or insane—and i feel safer and more at ease moving anonymously through the center of that hateful crowd than i have felt anywhere else. it's like a family reunion. the city itself, really, is like a member of the family now—it's got flaws and everyone can see them, and i'll talk down about it all i want, but if you and i don't share a gene or two, i'd sure as hell better not hear you say a bad word. in three weeks, it has permeated me. and i have caved. maybe at this point in its history, the myth of new york, the city the starry-eyed people come here expecting to find, contributes more to its energy and to the mood of its inhabitants than any facet of its physical reality. sure, i can shop anywhere. sure, it is more and more, on the outside, just a city, like any other city, if even that good. and yet . . .

last week, while waiting for the downtown r at atlantic avenue, i saw two rats run out onto the tracks and chase each other around, squeaking and nattering like little kids in a high-voltage game of tag. the lead rat stopped suddenly and turned, and its pursuer, startled, lost its footing and fell off the track into the stagnant pool of murky, rubbish-infused sludge beneath it. it jumped out, shook itself, and resumed the chase, unfazed by the dunk or the dirt, and the two scampered off into the the dingy underground, chipper as the day is long. and i thought,

right on, my brothers. right on.

chapter 5

2007-06-24T13:35:00.000-05:00

in which our heroine attempts to climb a flight of stairs, gets caught up in the moment, and barrels straight up onto the roof, where she proceeds to take a flying leap over the edge and into the wide blue yonder

o.k., kids, here's how it went down:

my employers, whom, if you'll recall, i was not always elated to be working for, herded all of us cubicle gophers into a conference room one day toward the end of april and said, "sorry, folks, but we're shutting it down. you can stay until the end of may, and after that we wish all of you happy lives and good fortune." in truth, they were not shutting down; they were simply shutting it down under its current title, so they could declare it bankrupt while keeping it going under a different name, and with a starkly reduced staff. they may or may not be successful with that, and i don't exactly wish them the best, but their intentions changed nothing for yours truly: i had to find work by the end of may, or i couldn't renew my lease. what to do? well, i applied for this job, and that job, and this job, and that job, and all the jobs i could apply for . . .

a month later, i had received one offer—from a book publisher in manhattan. i accepted it. i had a week to pack and prepare, a weekend to move all essential items to my new apartment, and three hours to get used to the fact that i was going to wake up in the morning, get on a train in brooklyn, get off that train in midtown manhattan, and start a job that i had no idea how to do. the last two weeks have been dedicated to trying to figure out how to do that job before the people around me catch on to my incompetence, and i think it's working, but it hasn't left me with a lot of free time to read the news or ponder the ethical implications of various developments or chat with any of you. don't think i haven't been sad about that. but things are coming together, and this hushed, dormant blog should be rising from its deep slumber any day now. i'm so sorry that i left you without warning, and i hope no one worried too much, but think of all the thrilling nonsense i'll be able to regale you with from here on out. somerville is lovely, but it's still massachusetts: prim and well manicured, a bit stodgy, a titch self-congratulatory. new york is just ridiculous. and it's all mine.

give me a just little more time, lovelies, and it'll be all yours, too.

and justice for all

2007-05-12T11:48:00.000-05:00

as i predicted (and also angrily demanded), all criminal charges have been dropped against peter berdovsky and sean stevens, the men who hung the now-infamous mooninite signs around boston and were scapegoated mercilessly for the city's trigger-happy, terror-heavy overresponse. massachusetts attorney general martha coakley had this to say yesterday:

Based upon the defendants' apologies and acceptance of responsibility for their actions in January and the attendant consequences, as well as the positive and substantial efforts at restorative justice made by both men through their community service, we believe that this was the most appropriate resolution to this case.

oh, sure, martha, you believe that now. at the time you said their apology was woefully inadequate and you pressed for felony charges, so don't waste your diplomatic-politician spiel on me. i know who you really are: the kind of attorney who demands $2 million for a misguided exercise that only cost about $500,000 and then drags a couple of hired lackeys through the ringer for four months while the blush fades from your cheeks. obviously i believe this was the most appropriate resolution to this case, but it should have been resolved in february. and if michele mcphee can't understand why the state had no case or see the difference—and how essential it is to differentiate—between legal justice and personal vengeance, well, i guess it's a good thing she's chosen to make a living commenting on police proceedings rather than taking part in them. coakley's high but amenable choler is a preferable option to mcphee's brand of indignant, a-head-for-an-eye brainlessness any day. as usual, though, that's the difference between the globe and the herald.

menino has been largely silent on the matter, and i imagine he sides with mcphee, but he can scowl and fume about it all he wants; the case is closed. facts and sense one, angry bostonians zero.

hmm.

2007-05-08T09:16:00.000-05:00

i think it's a little strange that there is no write-up anywhere on the internet—at least, not that i can find—about this weekend's new yorker conference. i think it's even stranger that the involved staff couldn't get it together enough to change the opening on the conference promo page that says the event is still in formation and changes will be added as they are made. apparently the near future will be awash in secrecy and misinformation, as we all struggle to hide our ingenious innovations from the grasping paws of the public and the cold, ever-present eye of big brother. or we will all be as lazy as i am, and no one will ever write anything ever again. it's bleak either way, i suppose. thanks a lot, new yorker. you've practically tripled my optimism. i can't wait to rush forward into that brave new world.

update, may 8, 5:18 PM: i found this. it's, you know, kind of like what i said, only more mature.

so torn . . .

2007-05-01T10:44:00.000-05:00

i can't decide if i want you all to watch my boyfriend tonight on the colbert report or not. i don't need a million irreverent-sass-loving viewers falling for him and challenging me to dance-offs and scrabble tournaments in his honor . . . but he wouldn't go on tv so he could not be seen . . .

fuck it. i can take you. watch, damn it. watch hard. and know that i have memorized every two-letter word in the dictionary, and i am not afraid of you, and i will beat your ass.

reader poll

2007-04-30T21:40:00.000-05:00

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 . . .

2007-04-28T23:57:00.000-05:00

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

2007-04-27T15:33:00.001-05:00

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 . . .

2007-04-24T10:35:00.001-05:00

"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

2007-04-23T07:16:00.000-05:00

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

2007-04-17T22:15:00.000-05:00

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]

2007-04-16T16:05:00.000-05:00

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 . . .

2007-04-12T09:24:00.000-05:00

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

ap strikes again!

2007-04-10T15:55:00.000-05:00

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

2007-04-09T16:41:00.000-05:00

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

2007-04-02T09:23:00.000-05:00

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.

it's the food chain, stupid.

2007-03-29T14:04:00.000-05:00

from today's washington post:

Overfishing of powerful sharks--a top predator in the ocean--may endanger bay scallops, a gourmet delicacy.

With fewer sharks to devour them, skates and rays have increased sharply along the East Coast and they are gobbling up shellfish, particularly bay scallops, researchers report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

Ecologists have known that reducing key species on land can affect an entire ecosystem, but this study provides hard data for the same thing in the ocean, said lead author Charles H. Peterson of the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of North Carolina. . . .

"We were able to show why these top predators matter," Peterson said. "We knew the answer right there, that there was a consequence."

[insert sound of head banging on cheap formica desktop]

i'm sorry, i'm currently suffering a pamela-isley-esque fit of antihuman rage and would like to wash the majority of folks right out of the planet's hair and repopulate the world with vines and reeds. i know that isn't nice, but sometimes i simply can not control my despair. did someone think the sharks didn't matter? did some ecologist somewhere think that the ocean was immune to the laws governing the rest of the natural world? is no common sense being exercised by anyone anywhere at all? why do we have to work so hard to convince people that there are consequences? WHY DOES NO ONE CARE ABOUT THE CONSEQUENCES UNTIL THEY CUT INTO THE SUPPLY OF FRESH SHELLFISH???

despair, i say, and i'm going home to tend to my lilies. enjoy your scallops while they last, fools, and please, please, do not decide the solution is to take out the skates and rays. or do, i don't care; maybe it will be the thing that finally puts the plants in the lead.

monday punch-in-the-face blogging

2007-03-26T10:36:00.000-05:00

after a boston-area woman was shot in the head and killed by a stray bullet while leaving an acquaintance's home around 4 AM this past saturday, boston's mayor menino demanded an immediate end to--what? can you guess? not gun sales, not gang violence . . .

late-night parties. these, according to menino, are the root of all of the crime and assorted evils taking place in the commonwealth of massachusetts. and this most recent call to arms is simply icing on the mayor's fold-up-the-streets-at-dusk cake: in january the city instituted a mandatory 11 PM stop time on all events allowing the attendance of people under the age of twenty-one, a move the mayor and his staff have offered zero concrete data in support of and which strikes me as arbitrary, knee-jerk, and poorly informed. i've been going to clubs and concerts since i was fifteen, and from what i've seen it's never the people under twenty-one who are causing problems; the troublemakers on the streets are generally drunks of legal age who just happen to be idiots and/or assholes, and while boston's done its best to keep them in line with a hopelessly insufficient late-night public transportation system (i'm still not sure if city officials are trying to keep people from going out or to effect some sort of darwinian drunk-driving-induced thinning of the herd), that particular crowd will not be stopped by any such measure.

i used to think menino was a bit of a magoo--well-intentioned, if somewhat bumbling and slightly socially oblivious--but now i'm under the impression that he is, at his heart, a crotchety, delusional old coot. forget the fact that saturday's gunfire was apparently entirely unrelated to the party the victim was leaving and was initiated by individuals who had not been in attendance; forget the fact that the victim was doing nothing more rowdy or rebellious than walking from a house to a car in front of that house; forget, too, that even if she was minding her own business, she was on the street in the middle of the night in a known high-crime neighborhood: ALL PARTYING AFTER MIDNIGHT DRAWS THE DEVIL. in menino's own words, "we know all those parties bring bad events in our city." not the weapons or the potentially inadequate law enforcement--the parties. THE PARTIES.

do you think those puritans would ever have braved the open seas and colonized this forbidding wilderness if they had known that in only a few short centuries it would be the hedonistic free-for-all it's become? you night owls have dedicated your bacchanalian lives to disgracing an entire state and its honorable legacy, and now your revelry has claimed another victim. for shame.

grunge gone green

2007-03-22T10:07:00.000-05:00

could pearl jam be any cooler? not only have they produced consistently stellar tunes since almost single-handedly saving the world from cheesy metal bands and rallied for political righteousness every chance they've gotten, they've also put together a carbon portfolio strategy, which comprises nine environmental organizations the band has deemed most worthy of backing, and included it on their web site, right next to the merch table. from the band's "activism" page:

The Carbon Portfolio Strategy is the newest component of our ongoing efforts to advance clean renewable energy and carbon mitigation. Through this Strategy, we will donate a total of $100,000 to nine organizations doing innovative work around climate change, renewable energy, and the environment.

We hope that by highlighting and creating a commons for these groups, we can advance preservation of existing ecosystems, restoration of degraded environments, and continued investment in clean, renewable energy technologies. Furthermore, by working with these groups and others to mitigate our own carbon emissions, we ultimately hope to get Pearl Jam at 0% net emissions for our tours and businesses.

i can't tell you how warm and fuzzy it is to know that musicians i've loved as long and hard as i've loved pearl jam are every bit as dedicated to the earth as they are to their fans. and they are exceptionally dedicated to those fans: when i was in their fan club, in the early 90s, i was able to score pre-sale tickets to all of their concerts--a perk they still offer. in tenth grade, my best friend wrote a letter to the band's drummer, inviting him (largely, but not entirely, jokingly) to our class ring dance. when he got the letter he called her house and talked to her for about an hour. the dance had come and gone, but to prove how flattered he was by the request he set her up with seven floor-seat tickets for the band's next show in the area. that's some serious fan appreciation. everyone said i would regret having "pj" etched onto the inside of my high school class ring, but i still don't believe it. these guys just get better and better. while none of their t-shirts are made from organic cotton (yet), they are running their tour bus on biodiesel, and the truth of the matter is that using their status to promote environmental and political awareness as ardently as they have will likely have a far greater impact than switching up their fabrics ever could--not that they shouldn't consider doing it anyway (hint, hint, boys). rock stars are heroes to a lot of people, some of them still young and malleable, and their actions--whether they're smashing instruments on stage or protesting strip mining--can have significant and lasting influence. eddie vedder has said that continuing to play an activist role has helped to make him feel eternally young; the fact that he and his bandmates are still inspiring and motivating me sixteen years after i first heard of them makes me a lot less concerned about getting old.

overheard in the office: the tragicomic banter of boston's finest

2007-03-22T09:35:00.000-05:00

"i like ellen--as long as she keeps the gay stuff out of it, i like her fine. i don't care for the gay stuff. i'm an old-fashioned girl, and i say she needs to get back into the closet where she belongs. narrow-minded of me, i know, but i don't care. i'm trying to be a better person, but it isn't working."

oh, honey, we know you're trying. you're trying so hard it hurts. of course, it mostly hurts me, but still . . .

the blue-chip blues

2007-03-17T01:36:00.000-05:00

since last summer, when i sat in on my first-ever 401k meeting and was told that if i had any brains i'd start building a diversified portfolio that included some top-notch, dependable corporations like wal-mart and philip morris right that second, i have wondered how i will survive once i turn 65. i do not want to invest in wal-mart. i do not want to support philip morris. i have no interest in funding or benefiting from any business i am not a contented consumer of. but where does that leave me? the most successful businesses, to the best of my knowledge, are almost never the most planet or people friendly, and the trend seems to be for the big, bad companies to get bigger and badder and the earnest, kindhearted endeavors to be mushed into so much opaque goo like fruitflies on a countertop. i feel bad enough about where my paycheck is coming from—ever since sonia shah enlightened me about american pharmaceutical companies' tendency to conduct dubious clinical trials overseas, unfettered by the burdens of informed consent or structured oversight, i have scanned every medical study submitted for publication with a squeamish, twitching eye—and i'm generally quite careful about where i spend it, though i accept that there's no such thing as a perfect business. but if investing turns out to be as essential to my future financial well-being as everyone keeps insisting it is, will my sentimental pinkoism be an option? is this why activism is predominantly a youth-centric phenomenon? is my choice doomed, in the end, to be between my soul and my savings?

at the time of the meeting, my decision was to not devote any time to anwering those questions and to instead go on putting my money into a bank account like i've always done, because i'm relatively young and don't intend to bring any dependents into the world, and at this point even surviving to 65 is a notion i'm fairly ambivalent about. so i'll never retire early and spend my golden years learning how to play the piano and speak perfectly accented gaelic; so what? i'll have done what i believed was right—or at least, i'll not have done some things i was pretty certain were wrong—and that'll be just fine.

but once i turned 28 i found i was unable to stop thinking of myself as 30, and 30 kind of looks like 40, and when i'm 40 my parents will be getting ready to retire, and god knows they're not holding significant stock in coca-cola, or anything at all, and they're still paying off the second mortgage they took out to remodel the kitchen, which isn't quite halfway remodeled, and someday someone will have to take care of them, and it won't be my sister because even though she's finally moved into her own apartment she still stops by my parents' house once a week to demand cash for gas and cigarettes, so it'll probably be me, but if i pay off my car loan just so i can take out a new loan for a condo and never manage to put more than $200 a month into that savings account with its 4.5 percent apr, how will i make sure that they never have to sell that house, which they've dedicated all that time and labor to remodeling, because they can't afford the heating bills anymore? what if someone gets sick? what if a satellite crashes through the roof? what if i have a near-death experience at 43 and decide i must spend at least a year in the rainforest canopy of madagascar documenting the mating rituals of ring-tailed lemurs? how will i afford to pay someone to water my plants while i'm gone?

*sigh* it seemed i would have to start feathering the nest after all, even if only because i am neurotic and plagued by obsessive guilt and an overbearing tendency toward fix-it-ness. knowing i wouldn't be able to wring any satisfactory advice from my coworkers, i turned to other venues. the search yielded both good news and bad, and i would prefer to get the bad out of the way. so.

some of you may already be familiar with the vice fund, a mutual fund that invests exclusively in industries considered immoral, unhealthy, or otherwise distasteful, and which are thus guaranteed to be profitable until the rapture and beyond (the web site refers to them as "recession-proof"—essentially the same thing, but slightly more inviting). it specializes in tobacco, alcohol, gambling, and, curiously, aerospace and defense. i say curiously not because i think the u.s. aerospace and defense programs are spectacular or spectacularly moral—i do not—but because even i would never have thought to categorize them as a vice. a waste of money, maybe, or a national penile implant . . . leave it to the experts, i suppose, to remind me that a vice is simply an unnecessary, self-interested, often misguided indulgence that does the indulger little to no net good, whether that indulger is an individual or country. the fund was started in 2002 and has provided average returns of nearly 19 percent to antihumanitarians devoid of any semblance of a social conscience for the past three years. i had the heartbreaking misfortune to catch charles norton, the vice fund's portfolio manager, speaking to debbie elliott on a recent npr broadcast. if i had to pick one favorite quote, i guess it would be this one:

one of the most important things that we like about these is that the government is a large beneficiary, uh, particularly in gaming and tobacco. what that means is that the government has a financial incentive to, uh, make sure that these industries flourish. . . . we don't perceive socially responsible funds as our competitors; socially responsible funds need to do what's in the best interests of their shareholders, which is all we try to do as well.

well, we already knew that the government *hearts* tobacco, didn't we? and i hope you weren't kidding yourself about how it honestly felt about you. "but," debbie wants to know, "don't you ever feel bad or even guilty about investing in products that do take such a toll on society and, in the case of tobacco, even kill people?" i bet maybe some of you are curious, too; well, mr. norton? don't you?

no, because when you're a serious investor, you have to check your emotions at the door. emotions are the enemy when it comes to making sound investment decisions, so we don't come at this with any personal biases. we come at this just as a purely objective analyst, and in our perspective, those types of judgments have no place in the investment process.

well, i thought, that settles it: i am not cut out for serious investing. i'll have to make one final investment in a new mattress big enough to hide all my money in and/or under, because my emotions refuse to be left anywhere, regardless of the circumstances, and now i'm all worried about what sort of bedevilment my bank might be up to. sorry, mom; i know we grew up in that house and all of our childhood pets are buried next to the deck, but one of us will probably have a pet when you move to your economy retirement village, so we can bury something there, too. dad, you'd better lay off either the beer or the burgers, because i'm not going to be able to help you out with hospital bills for liver and heart problems; you pick one or the other and commit to it. if you need me, i'll be in a fetal position on the floor of my closet, whimpering and cursing the free market. sometimes when i do that i don't hear the phone right away, so go ahead and leave a message, and yes, i am getting enough calcium. oh, woe and anguish, oh sadness and despair, oh world where a successful portfolio manager's number one rule is "don't sample the merchandise."

but you remember, don't you, when i said there would be good news?

socially conscious, or "virtue," funds have been around for years—longer than the vice fund—and while they do pretty well and certainly make investments worthy of their title, most of the funds are affiliated with specific religions. i am not affiliated with a specific religion, and while i feel fine about all of the religions out there, i wasn't sure about throwing my lot in with one i wasn't a part of just to make a few bucks. it seemed, well, sinful. in addition, it's rare to find a virtue fund that's truly virtuous across the board; an environmentally focused fund might look the other way if a company with a strong record of conservation and minimal pollution exercised poor corporate governance, for example, and vice versa. you are forced, effectively, to choose your poison and either inject it into the veins of the working class or dump it into a river. this may be a preferable alternative to zero-conscience investing, but it didn't exactly ring my bell.

well, a few days ago i discovered the blue fund, which offers two diversified mutual funds based on "core progressive values like environmental sustainability, community participation and respect for human rights." companies included in the portfolios are routinely investigated to ensure their commitment to these values—all of them—is sincere and ongoing; they're also required to have made the majority of any corporate political donations to democratic candidates or organizations. while i'm iffy on the political mandate, there is, as i said, no such thing as a perfect business, and since i can't remember the last time i backed a candidate who wasn't a democrat it's not the end of the world for me. and even if i were a republican, if i still felt as strongly about all of those other issues as i do i'd probably be willing to accept the trade-off. this being the wonderfully free country that it is, conservatives are more than welcome to do their best to organize a red fund that accomplishes all of the same goals for the other side. the blue fund portfolios are still peppered with pharmaceutical companies and retail monoliths, but at least they are being watched by people who appear to have clutched their emotions to their chests and barreled right through the door with them. take that, charles norton.

probably, in the end, the ideal approach for me would be to build my own portfolio one fastidiously researched company at a time; but given my utter dearth of investment savvy and the degree to which i overanalyze the merit and morality of EVERY SINGLE FREAKING LITTLE THING, that task is a bit more than i could accomplish right now. at this point i am simply relieved to know that i am not alone in my desire to back things i'm actually happy to stand behind, and that more motivated people who share that desire have created some options for me. it's such a relief, in fact, that it's almost like being 28 again. that means i can wait to fill out that ira paperwork until next year, by which time i'm certain the stock market will be dominated by wind farms, electric cars, and cradle-to-cradle computer manufacturers, making the whole process that much easier. i may get to keep my soul—in all of its pink, blue, and green glory—after all.

tuesday picture-round blogging

2007-03-13T12:56:00.000-05:00

the photo above depicts:

a) a serious policy discussion taking place between two high-ranking british officials regarding plans for aggressive reductions in carbon dioxide emissions.

b) a pivotal scene in the new bbc docudrama, coming out of the cabinet: the secret lives of the downing street elite.

c) a surprisingly bawdy tony blair telling environment secretary david miliband that if he's "interested in warm globes, i've got a pair you might like to explore."

d) all of the above.

friday celebrity-letter blogging

2007-03-09T14:30:00.000-05:00

dear ralph nader,

my articles editor told me this week that he was a year behind you in college at princeton and was very impressed by your investigations into the goings-on in the campus kitchen. he didn't mention your attempts to reveal the chilling impact of ddt; i suppose he wasn't aware of them, seeing as how you were laughed out of the campus newspaper office when you spoke up about your ideas. anyhow, this means that i am now separated from jon stewart by only two degrees, and this makes me very happy. i'm sorry so many americans still blame you for making bush president instead of blaming themselves for having hard-ons for tax breaks, and i hope people are saying lots of nice things about your movie.

buckle up,

juniper

let your lite (brite) shine down

2007-03-07T11:35:00.000-05:00

berdovsky and stevens, guerilla advertisers for hire and enemies of the state, went quietly and peacefully to court today to face the ham-handed, farcical charges of placement of a hoax device and disorderly conduct and were sent away sans resolution, their hearing having been continued to march 30. i can only hope that this means the charges will be quietly and sensibly dropped in a closed-door discussion on a day when people will not be camped out waiting for a verdict, allowing city officials to do the right thing while scraping the dried, crusty egg off their faces in a slightly more private fashion.

monday punch-in-the-face blogging

2007-03-05T10:50:00.000-05:00

here's ann coulter being ann coulter, an act that warrants some distaste at its best and makes me choke back vomit and tears of fury at its nadir:

note the reaction of her audience, which transitions smoothly from "oooooh, you rake!" sounds of faux shock to indulgent applause. she was following mitt romney, who is now the stepford wife of the hard right but who pretended to forgive abortion and care about civil rights while he was working in massachusetts. he lied to us, people, and he will lie to you. i'm sure you're proud of him now for tying himself up in knots to make sure gay marriage was as difficult to come by as possible in the state in which he was governor even after the populace had voted to make it readily obtainable, but the truth is he's only out for himself. and ann coulter. and that's a bad thing.

tu deviens responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as apprivoisé

2007-03-03T20:59:00.000-05:00

i'm sure that by now you've heard about the mysterious and massive drop in the honeybee population that has occurred over the last six or so months. the source is an undefined ailment being referred to, in the gently sterile and simplistic manner in which so many conditions are now discussed, as "colony collapse disorder." the problem was first reported on by bee experts at penn state, who were notified last november by dave hackenberg, a pennsylvania-based beekeeper who lost close to two-thirds of his bee colonies in about three months for no readily discernible reason. along with deaths and disappearances, the "disorder" appears to cause behavioral changes in the bees that amount to a sort of dementia--the bees don't care for their young or tend to the hive the way they typically would, they seem reluctant to eat their own honey stores or offered food, and queens have been seen ambling around outside their hives. while similar events have occurred in a more limited fashion in american bee populations in the past, ccd has reached pandemic proportions in past months and is leaving workers in both the apicultural and agricultural industries chewing their lips and furrowing their brows. professionally maintained honeybee colonies are responsible for close to a third of commercial plant pollination, and decreases in the population as significant as those being reported across the country right now could have serious impacts on produce yields, which could potentially shake up the economy in a big way. bugs matter, apparently. i can't help but think i've heard someone say that before . . .

in an ironic, unfortunate, and perhaps poetic-justice-infused turn, there's a chance that the industry may have, at least in part, brought this upon itself. postmortem examinations of afflicted bees have revealed signs of severely weakened immune systems, including high rates of fungal and bacterial infections. some showed evidence of the honeybee equivalent of kidney disease, with tubule inflammation and pyloric scarring apparent in up to 45 percent of the samples studied. the digestive tracts of dead bees contained pollen grains that seemed intact or undigested, an entirely abnormal finding. one theory is that immunosuppression could have been brought on by stress caused by things like frequent hive relocation (many beekeepers are migrant and move bees from location to location depending on which crops are currently flowering and/or in need of pollination) or hive splitting, an intrusive but fairly routine procedure in which ill or weakened colonies are physically merged with healthier colonies or given a new queen. hive splitting can also increase the rate of infestation or disease spread; if the beekeepers don't recognize the symptoms before they attempt to replenish the hive, they could be infecting an otherwise healthy colony and then moving it across state lines. in some cases, drought, hive overcrowding, or forced pollination of crops with minimal nutritional value for the bees led to diminished bee health, which would have left them more vulnerable to microbial or parasitic infestation. by treating their charges as a commodity rather than as living creatures with health requirements, even the most knowledgeable and seasoned beekeepers may be inducing their own losses. in the past these losses have been manageable and generally compensated for, but everything catches up with everyone eventually.

another theory, widely posited but difficult to prove, is that pesticides and insecticides used in commercial agriculture are responsible for the die-outs. the ccd working group has zeroed in specifically on neonicotinoids, a relatively new class of pesticides that the epa has classified as highly toxic to honeybees in cases of acute exposure. in combination with certain fungicides, the toxicity of neonicotinoids displays a thousand-fold increase. both neonicotinoids and the fungicides in question are widely used, particularly in corn and sunflower production. imidacloprid, a chemical in the neonicotinide family whose use in agriculture has recently increased, has also been shown to impair the memory and brain metabolism of bees, which would explain ccd-stricken bees' reported tendency to disappear from the hive or behave in a generally addled manner. unfortunately, there is little documentation of the pesticide's long-term or cumulative effect on bees, and it can be almost impossible to verify an entire colony's pollen sources. investigations into the levels and types of pesticide residues in affected hives are ongoing, but the lack of official proof to date hasn't led most researchers to cross it off their list of likely causes. the mites, viruses, and fungi affecting honeybees now have been common for decades and have never led to colony deaths on the current scale; something has to have changed.

i am, as you could probably have guessed, deeply saddened and more than a little frightened by the bee plague. i'm also terribly disappointed, as a lack of human foresight on at least one front is probably at its root. what has to happen before we learn to explore an action's consequences beyond its immediate impact on our finances? why would any farm that depended on honeybees to pollinate its crops use a pesticide that was proven to be dangerous to honeybees? a single night of frost in california makes network news broadcasts everywhere, leading every fruit-consuming individual in the continental united states to groan and whine for days about how much more they'll have to pay for orange juice, but a 50 percent reduction in an essential link of the food chain responsible for $14 billion worth of crop production warrants zero public discussion? nobody thinks they'll miss the bees, i guess, but we are, on the whole, not very smart about deciding what we do and don't want.

well, i love you, bees. i love you and i'm rooting for you, and i hope that all of you who have wandered away from your hives have banded together and formed a brave new colony in some bee shangri-la that no human can reach or pollute, and if you must remain there giggling and buzzing while we all kick ourselves for not treating you right while we had the chance, i won't hold it against you. if, on the other hand, you are in need of a place to hang your hats, you are always welcome in my mother's compost bin, no matter how many rude things my father mutters at you on his way past. ignore him. he doesn't understand.

and all was well.

2007-02-28T10:11:00.000-05:00

tuesday morning: woke up feeling crappy. went to work. worked. had brief, futile debate with managing editor about the dubious ethics and general distastefulness of using previously published research from one journal to meet page count of a different journal without telling the authors we were using their work or telling the readers the work had been published previously, by us. felt crappy.

tuesday afternoon: left work feeling crappy. parked car in moat of slush interspersed with rock-solid chunks of ice. found recycling bin in street alongside three or four items apparently deemed unworthy of recycling by the city's crew. slipped on ice picking them up. felt crappy (and wet).

tuesday evening: went to see the lemonheads at the paradise. read an excellent short story by cate kennedy, called "black ice," in between opening acts; felt better.

tuesday night: rocked out like a fool to the lemonheads for just under an hour and a half. clapped my hands and hopped up and down like a small child being presented with a gingerbread house big enough to live in at the start of every song i recognized (i.e., every song), amusing the gentleman to my right no end. realized my own happiness had inspired mirth in others. felt awesome. skipped and danced down the street to my car to the tune of "great big no," the rhythm warming all my insides like sunshine jelly. found a dry place to park. fell asleep grinning like an idiot, with my ears not even ringing.

wednesday morning: woke up with small black cat draped over my entire face, her bony right elbow digging into my surprisingly pain-free jaw. realized my eyes were clear and i could breathe normally. upon leaving the apartment, saw that all of the ice had melted from my front steps and sidewalk. at work, did not have expected instructions from boss to revamp year-old articles for sneaky reprinting. heard birds chirping sweetly from sun-warmed rooftop outside window.

it's an old story, but i'll tell it again: evan dando fixes everything. perhaps he's a god of something other than rock. at the very least, i intend to go on worshiping him as my private household deity, as he's done me nothing but good over the past fifteen years. if only i'd thought to throw myself a dance party a week ago, we might never have had to suffer through these long, dark days of numbing separation. no matter--i am healed. a round of applause for mr. dando and all of his magical, medicinal qualities. and i bow my head gratefully to all of you, as well; your support has been tremendously appreciated. we now return you to your regularly scheduled programming, already in progress.

. . . so screw you, inhofe, you impossibly ignorant madman! three cold days does not a climate make! try running this great machine called america with both of your eyes swollen shut, you crazy fool.

lest you grow unduly concerned . . .

2007-02-23T09:53:00.000-05:00

my apologies for my extended absence. i have caught a light sneeze, which has taken up residence in the upper quarters of my left nostril. it is a very rude sneeze and has blocked the stairwell in my sinus with its moving boxes and excess packing materials, and the tears living in the apartment above it have been forced to come and go via the fire exit, i.e., my face. they are very busy tears, apparently; i had not been aware of the tremendous number of errands they were accustomed to running until they were forced to take this more conspicuous route, but they are back and forth in droves at all hours of the day and night. this has left the exterior of the building in quite a bit of disarray; yesterday i overheard two of my coworkers discussing the possibility that there had been a death in my family. all of this is more frustrating than debilitating, of course, but i have not been up to fulfilling my superblogger role. i hope you understand. i am getting as much rest as possible and sipping dutifully at my steaming miso soup, and should be back on top of things in no time.

shame on . . . uh . . . not gonna fool me again!

2007-02-15T13:55:00.000-05:00

bush to america:

"listen, guys, i know you think i haven't been right about everything in the past, but iran is bad. really, really bad. like, seriously--even though i can't prove it. support the troops!"

america to bush:

"did someone say something? i thought i heard something. it sounded a little like 'wolf'; no one else heard that? really? huh."

happy valentine's day!

2007-02-14T13:26:00.000-05:00

because the past twelve months haven't provided me with anything better, i am recycling last year's valentine from david firth, who also loves you platonically. it is yummier than chocolate and less likely to wither and die than flowers, and hallmark's got nothing on it when it comes to filling my days and nights with warmth and cheer. laugh and be merry, my darlings, for tomorrow you might be stabbed sixty times in the abdomen by an unassuming coworker who will then make tender love to or near your seeping corpse.

whole foods and lobster: smooth on the outside, slimy in the middle

2007-02-13T11:37:00.000-05:00

i remember being floored by the animal-rights uprising and whole foods' subsequent acts of contrite concession last year regarding the sad plight of the supermarket lobster, my shock resulting primarily from the fact that the debate was taking place at all. if anyone did not know or has forgotten, advocates were up in arms not (publicly, at least) over the fact that the lobster was destined to die horribly in a vat of boiling liquid like a medieval heretic but rather that it was forced to come into routine physical contact with other lobsters in the days prior to its execution. yes, yes, yes, all living creatures should be granted the opportunity to live the best possible life, and lobsters are solitary creatures in the ocean, challenging most any other lobster they encounter in the watery atlantic wilderness to a duel, and your local supermarket's lobster tank is a lot like a veal pen, and the whole thing is endlessly troubling to our beautiful minds. but if you are willing to purchase a lobster and drop it flipping and thrashing into a roiling cauldron--even if you plan to give it a few shots of whiskey first, as my family always did*--there is really no way for me to take your pleas for mercy and humane conditions seriously. the best possible life means the most peaceful death, and head-first into the steaming pot ain't it. if the lobster must die, it seems to me that it ought to be killed right on the boat in the quickest and most painless manner possible. and life in a pvc tube, while perhaps affording a sense of security, isn't really living, and certainly isn't living well--even for a large aquatic arthropod. the innate hypocrisy permeating the entire discussion left a taste in my mouth not unlike that of turned shellfish, as does the senseless rule prohibiting the execution of a condemned prisoner when he or she has a fever. you are against putting others to death or you are not, and the drawing of arbitrary lines regarding when killing is cruel and when it isn't is a meaningless practice that serves only to soothe the draftsman. still, though, when whole foods agreed to stop selling live lobsters, i viewed it as a baby step in the right direction and smiled a weak, less than defeated smile. for about eighteen seconds.

banning the sale of live lobsters was never going to have any impact on the chain's pursuit and acquisition of live lobsters, since the walruses and carpenters who were shedding empathetic tears in the deli department were still dreaming buttery clambake dreams. because the customers are always right, whole foods found a way to get all of the lobsters' blood and sadness off of said customers' hands and put it back where it belongs: in the water--the 87,000 psi water, which kills a lobster via intense compression (probably in a less than instantaneous fashion) and blows the shell clean off its body, leaving the shiny, succulent, sterilized corpse to float to the surface.

yummy! and cruelty free! if it's true that lobsters can't feel pain, which would be the result of their not possessing anything that we might recognize as a brain. (this sensory deficit has been supported and contested a number of times by various entities, but i think it wise, or at least thoughtful, to err on the side of caution; it might do us well to remember that for many, many years, doctors believed newborns and infants weren't developed enough to feel pain, either, and surgery was routinely performed on very young children with minimal anesthesia.) of course, if lobsters do lack the sort of neural anatomy that would allow them to register being slowly and simultaneously crushed and blown up, are they really likely to suffer psychological trauma from being enclosed in a crowded, confined space? and if that isn't likely, why did whole foods bother to change anything about its practices at all?

well, because their customers are sensitive. and whole foods cares about its customers--especially their hands, with which they reach into their pockets and bags and withdraw their wallets. so when the chain decided to open a new store in maine, they asked the sensitive customers in that part of the country how they were feeling. and the customers said, "we feel like we want you to sell live lobsters, and it makes our hands tired when you tell us you aren't going to." and whole foods was disarmed by their openness and honesty, their willingness to make themselves vulnerable, and it relented: live lobsters will be sold in portland.

perhaps you, as i did at first, have leapt to the conclusion that the shot-callers at whole foods are a bunch of two-faced, money-grubbing ne'er-do-wells who will say anything to placate their sprout-loving, organic-hemp-draped base. but their commitment to compassion is as strong as ever: the lobsters will be housed in private rooms (the sort that were previously deemed insufficient), and each one sold will be killed via a 110-volt shock administered by an employee in the store, thus "spar[ing] them the agony of being boiled alive in a pot of water." the rest of the country is, apparently, not strong enough even for this method of lobster dispatch, which still forces the customer to be in the room while his or her meal is rendered lifeless. but up in the north country the natives are hewn from hardier stock, and if they want their lobsters to be electrocuted before their very eyes, well, by god, that's what they'll get, store policy or no.

listen, eat lobster, don't eat lobster, but choose a side and stand on it. i think there's something wrong with supporting an action one couldn't bear to participate in, and so i don't eat anything that i would have a problem killing with my own hands. my grandmother loved lobster but couldn't take hers apart by herself or eat while the lobster's head was "looking at her." this bothered me, so i taunted her with lobster-face puppet shows. i felt justified in forcing her to face her own contradictions. i think it's something everyone should do. maybe what whole foods ought to do is set up a tank like the tide pool exhibits at large aquariums, where children get to handle starfish and horseshoe crabs, and force customers to capture and stun their own crustaceans. it would be a fantastic back-to-nature experience for everyone, even the lobsters, and those who insist it's all right to eat shellfish because they're incapable of experiencing discomfort could prove that that opinion is more than just a security blanket. it wouldn't be the first time someone had made a sport of it. we claim to favor accountability in our politics and our business dealings, and members of our society have been known to praise, and occasionally engage in, acts motivated by sincerity and conscience. isn't it time, finally, for everyone--including and especially whole foods--to put their money where their salivating mouths are?

* my father and uncles also liked to place the liquored-up lobsters on the kitchen floor and encourage them to race and/or fight with one another or the family pets, as they had generally had more than a little to drink by then themselves. i do not miss the taste or smell of seafood, nor do i yearn for the summers of my childhood.

monday punch-in-the-face blogging

2007-02-12T10:03:00.000-05:00

ahhh, boston's channel 7 news team, bringing you nonstories in the form of overhyped, heart-stopping high alerts for as long as anyone i know can remember. my first and fondest memory of their brand of committed pseudoreporting is the segment they ran in early 2000 on the dangers of automatic doors, in which an elderly woman using a walker was assaulted in slow motion by a thuggish, hands-free sliding panel again and again and again; i laughed, i cried, i hurled a pillow at the television so hard i almost threw my shoulder out. i never thought they'd top it, but, masters of the trade as they are, i should have known i was mad to doubt them. because my descriptive skills fall short of those needed to accurately portray their most recent triumph, i'm going to let the work speak for itself.

ryan schulteis, mike boudo--this thud's for you.

i am confused.

2007-02-09T15:16:00.000-05:00

how does the resignation of the head of the cartoon network help anyone "move on" from the mooninite bomb-hysteria incident? didn't an entirely different company come up with the idea for the ads? wasn't the network absolved in the settlement proceedings? how is jim samples, who has served the network beautifully for thirteen years, at all responsible for any part of this fiasco? i'm looking at this and thinking turner had a bad day at work, so it went home and kicked the dog, which is sucko, 'cause it was a really good dog. why are corporate politics--or any and all politics, really--so ass-backwards and dependent on fall guys and buy-offs? bunk, i say. bunk right to the core.

friday celebrity-letter blogging

2007-02-09T09:35:00.000-05:00

dear david lynch,

i had the same dream two nights in a row this week. when it starts out, i'm in the brookline trader joe's. i have a friend with me; he isn't human. he appears to be a cross between e.t., an ewok, and glomer from the punky brewster cartoon. he speaks very eloquent english, though, and i think he's older than me. anyway, we turn the corner of the last frozen-foods aisle expecting to find the produce section, but instead we walk into a large, offset wing that neither of us has ever seen before. it has hardwood floors and shelving with a dark finish, maybe red mahogany. it turns out that trader joe's has begun selling small pets, like gerbils and fish, and this section is where they're being housed. i decide to get a mouse and spend an interminable amount of time picking out toys and food and yummy yogurt-drop treats for it, and i wind up abandoning all of the food in my carriage in favor of my new pet and his paraphernalia. strangely, they don't sell enclosures or terrariums or anything of that nature, but i'm not concerned because i remember that i have a lovely habitrail at home. the trader joe's pet specialist tucks my mouse into a cardboard box, about 8"l x 6"w x 6"h. i am very happy, and i like to think the mouse is, too. my companion offers no clues as to his mood, but he is exceedingly polite and offers to carry the cedar shavings.

we arrive at a house, presumably my house. it seems very familiar, but i don't know if this is because it's a place i've actually been in before or not. it might be a place i saw in a movie. it's white and separated from the main street by a large, hilly lawn and a dirt road, in that order. a screened-in porch stretches across the entire front of the house, and there's only one other house in sight. it's to the left of mine, if you are facing mine, and is about a hundred yards away. it's summer and sunny. the street is silent aside from the sounds of my feet moving gravel and the leaves brushing against one another in the nearby maple trees. there's no driveway, but the dirt road is very wide, so we park in it on the side closest to the house. i guess i don't plan on staying long, because i leave the mouse and the bag holding his food and accessories on the ground next to the driver's-side door of the car and run indoors. my furry companion does not accompany me, choosing instead to stand with his hands/paws behind his back on the grass across the road from the house and stare fixedly at a dandelion. i go into a room toward the back of the house--i can't remember what i do once i'm in there, but, curiously, i do not go in with any intention of finding the habitrail--and as i'm coming out i see the neighbor's large pickup truck driving past through the front windows. my stomach knots; at this point in the dream i know that everything is about to start barreling downhill and i begin asking myself to wake up, but i never listen. dream me tries to take a deep breath as she runs out the front door, aware-that-we-are-dreaming me says, "please stop this now," and me me ignores all of us and lets the scene unfold, knowing exactly what we are all about to find.

the cardboard box is on its side in the road, open and dusty and torn on one end. e.t.-wok-er is still standing on his patch of grass, quiet and placid. the mouse is lying on his left side at the place where the road meets the grass in front of the house, gasping and paddling his tiny feet, his bruising and internal bleeding beginning to make him look bloated and distorted. i pick him up carefully and hold him in my hands, and then i freeze. he has tiny human eyes, and they are expressing a pain so intense that i can feel it radiating from his body up my arms and into my chest. from across the road, e.t.-wok-er says sedately, "i told him to run. he could have run away, but he didn't want to leave you. he loved you that much."

dream me can't move or blink or close her mouth. me me suggests calmly that i probably ought to find something heavy to finish the mouse off with. aware-that-we-are-dreaming me shrieks, "OH MY GOD WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP!!!!!!"

and that time i listen. i sit up in bed, trembling and sweaty, and press both my hands over my face for about fifteen minutes, trying not to cry.

what do you think that means, mr. lynch? i figured if anyone would have a theory, it would be you. you've employed a lot of perturbing dream sequences in your work over the years. have you studied dream theory, or do you just go with your gut? i don't have or want a mouse, but i had one when i was a freshman in college. i stole him from the biology prep lab. he lived for a while, and then he died, just like anything else. i don't think he suffered, but it's hard to say. could i be experiencing residual guilt? i mean, i experience a lot of guilt. it could be about anything. i just wondered, you know, if you ever have odd, horrifying dreams that leave you distressed and heartbroken, and if you have any suggestions as to how to not have them anymore. would you recommend transcendental meditation? does incorporating your nightmares into your work hasten the exorcism? i'm really only asking because the last recurring dream i had appeared at varying intervals for about twelve years, and i couldn't handle that with this one. any advice you can give me would be tremendously appreciated.

your shaken fan,

juniper

p.s. i'll still watch inland empire if you don't have anything to say about this, so please don't worry or make something up. that won't help anyone.

p.p.s. is your coffee fairly traded?

the truth, with jokes

2007-02-06T15:09:00.000-05:00

remember about a month ago when i wrote that endless, angry post about, well, about all kinds of stuff, but which was intended to be mostly about how steamed i was at everyone who had voted for bush in 2004 and who was now having a temper tantrum about bush having done everything he had promised to do in the campaign leading up to the 2004 election--and for the full term preceding it--since a modicum of common sense on their parts at the time could have spared millions of people a whole lot of suffering in the years to follow? well, wayne gladstone made it funny. thanks, wayne! perhaps the combination of glowering and pointing/laughing will be more effective than either on its own.

but you hurt our feelings!

2007-02-05T13:23:00.000-05:00

so, it looks like menino and curtatone did decide to milk the "emotional distress" angle and have managed to squeeze turner broadcasting for about $1 million more than the response effort to quell the mooninite invasion actually cost the city and the surrounding areas of somerville and cambridge. greedy, greedy bostonians--it's people like you who are driving conservatives to stump for caps on damages for pain and suffering, and in this instance i might be persuaded to concur. sure, $1 million is no great loss for tbs and probably less than they would ultimately have paid to put an end to all this, and you've vowed to put the money to great use in our homeland security and transportation departments--but you demanded it because you were in a position to do so, not because it was your legitimate due. that isn't justice, it's bullying, and no one likes a bully. once the money was promised to you you agreed not to pursue legal action against the network or the ad agency, but you're still pressing those ridiculous charges against berdovsky and stevens, who were operating as agents of the network and the ad agency. how is that sensible? and will any percentage of your winnings go toward making it more difficult to attach a magnetic battery-operated device to the I-93 bridge? because as proud as you all are of the hub's coordinated ground operations, the real issue here is that these things were all over the place before anyone responsible for examining them knew of their existence, and all the mbta improvements you can pull out of your hat won't erase that fact from the public consciousness--particularly the consciousness of those interested in doing harm. these were blinking and flashing and you didn't see them; an actual bomb would probably call far less attention to itself. how much does expanding homeland security response capabilities really count for if we don't have any reliable preventive measures in place? and what exactly do you mean by "other important community initiatives," ms. coakley? because if any of this money funds measures not related to citywide safety, you'll have proven that you support a legal system that caters to well-represented and well-connected plaintiffs out for all they can get. at least, you'll have proven that you support such a system when you are the plaintiff. i have a friend in public defense who would be very, very disappointed in you.

at any rate, your vindictiveness in this matter is incredibly unbecoming--common and predictable, but unbecoming. and now you've hurt my feelings. i expect this wrong will be rectified in the issuance of my state tax refund.

monday punch-in-the-face blogging

2007-02-05T09:50:00.000-05:00

i was angrier than usual for a significant stretch of time last week over the shameful, media-fueled misapplication of the term "hoax" and associated criminal charges, and it made me uncomfortable. i'm a placid individual by nature, and i'd much rather smile at something goofy than send a barrage of fuming e-mails off to city hall. but i believe in justice above all else, so i stayed angry until there was nothing more i could do, and now i'll just have to monitor the case for new developments. i am, as i mentioned, optimistic, since even the judge at the arraignment couldn't stop himself from asking the prosecutors if they were sure the charges they put forth were really something they wanted to pursue . . . but we'll see.

anyhow, i know i owe you a rant today, and i have a list of items that i plan to explore in detail: the second gold rush in recent history to threaten a significant portion of the brazilian rainforest with mass deforestation and mercury contamination; the slimy way in which the bush administration is attempting to distract us from iraq by reiterating, almost word for word and with the same dearth of evidence, its road-to-war rhetoric in opposition of iran; the incredibly late admission that the u.s. military has not come anywhere close to adequately training the iraqi military--a report that makes me batty largely because it got swept under the rug with such head-spinning, breakneck speed--coupled with reports that bush understated the number of troops he plans to send to baghdad by about fifty percent, even though the soldiers already on the ground in iraq have declared an increase in ground forces of any size will be a losing strategy if it isn't coupled with a dramatic increase in support from iraqi citizens, which no one in washington seems to think they should have to work to win . . .

ohhhh, so much to be angry about that i have not taken a second to unhunch my shoulders in days and days, and my body isn't wired for this kind of turmoil. i'm training it to bear the load, one extra pound at a time, because i want to play a part in every fight i say is worth fighting--but i can't go at it 24/7 just yet. i needed a reprieve.

and i got it. lesson of the week: nothing bolsters one's strength like a little jelly.

but first that jelly depletes one's strength by inducing a giggly, breathless languidness. i imagine i'll recover with great haste, but today my golden gloves are bedridden.

boston legal . . . ish.

2007-02-02T13:43:00.000-05:00

if berdovsky and stevens are actually prosecuted for possession of a hoax device and disorderly conduct--the witch-hunty and specious charges they were held on bond for yesterday--i'm going to flip out like a ninja. michael rich, the attorney representing the two men, has a paypal account in place for clients; if you felt like it, you could donate some sympathy bucks and a note to compensate him for the time he's had to waste thus far refuting those charges. i'm not giving up hope that reason will prevail; since the boards were magnetic, their posting had zero physical impact on any of the structures they were mounted on, making the act of hanging them a lesser example of disorderly conduct than walking up and down the block taping "have you seen my cat?" fliers to telephone poles. and possession of a hoax device requires that a person knowingly place another person in fear of serious physical injury by suggesting that a harmless device is an "infernal machine"; how could they even attempt to prosecute these guys for such a charge in this case? all they knowingly engaged in was a sponsored ad campaign, which happened to involve batteries; if anyone's responsible for placing others in fear of bodily harm, it's the local media. crazy. crazy.

and while we're discussing state laws, seeing as how we've (for now, at least) legalized same-sex marriage and all, don't you thing it's about time we emended this section a smidge?

friday celebrity-letter blogging

2007-02-02T09:57:00.000-05:00

dear punxsutawney phil,

this is the scariest picture i've ever seen. i can't imagine how fast and hard your little groundhog heart must have been pounding when these top-hat-clad lunatics grabbed you and forcibly removed you from your home so they could encircle you, leer at you, and then wave you around in the air while a crowd of strangers hollered and blinding flashes went off in your face. i'm sorry. i'm so, so sorry.

please forgive us (but if you can't, i understand),

joon

rage within the machine

2007-02-01T13:23:00.000-05:00

i can not get over this aqua teen hullabaloo and how many local politicians are squeezing it for every penny it's worth in an attempt to puff up their case for squeezing turner broadcasting for every penny it's worth, and i've never been so ashamed to be a lifelong boston local. i thought moving to somerville was the best, most happy-making thing i'd ever done, but now somerville's mayor, joe curtatone, has climbed atop a soapbox all his very own to do his part in rousing the rabble. i find the level of public ire aimed at the network and the men who planted the ads perverse and somewhat baffling, and i would like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt dismay and bewilderment at my homeland's eagerness to promote paranoia and irrational levels of fear and outrage. so here are some excerpts from mayor angry joe's announcements, and following those excerpts are my rebuttals.

Somerville’s Mayor Joe Curtatone has joined the growing chorus of city and state officials who want charges brought against those responsible for putting electrical devices under area bridges and overpasses.

Curtatone announced Wednesday night that Somerville is exploring both civil and criminal legal action against all of the parties responsible for putting suspicious electrical devices up. Curtatone said he will coordinate his actions with the City of Boston, the state Attorney General’s Office, and the Middlesex County District Attorney, but he did not rule out the possibility of the city taking unilateral legal action.

"These devices may not be explosive, but they’re far from harmless--they’ve done a lot of damage to local budgets and to the taxpayers of Somerville and other area communities," Curtatone said. "It doesn’t matter if they were discovered after three hours or three weeks. You can’t put circuit boards with battery power packs under bridges and overpasses without somebody eventually--and correctly--deciding that they’re potentially dangerous."

no, mayor angry joe, it was not correct for people to decide they were potentially dangerous. it would have been correct for people to wonder whether they might have been dangerous, and it would have been correct for a police team to quietly inspect one or two in order to decide whether or not they were dangerous, but it was shockingly far from correct for the city to be disabled from one end to the other because people had decided, without any exploration into the issue, that these things were probably dangerous. the devices didn't damage local budgets--insanely reactionary local officials did, and that only happened in boston. in new york, where things have actually been blown up, local officials employed reason and tact and concern for public mental health and dealt with the devices sanely. their budgets aren't ravaged, because they took the time to uncover the fact that the devices were, in fact, one hundred percent harmless.

Curtatone noted that the city would not only seek reimbursement for its costs but would work hard to impose criminal penalties or fines that would discourage similar stunts in the future. "In the current climate, we need to make sure that no one else decides that this is a cost-effective marketing strategy," Curtatone said.

no one is responsible for the disruption but you, menino, and whoever else was involved in revving up the sirens; if the city requires reimbursement for the costs of a disproportionately alarmist and massive bomb-squad scavenger hunt, it should come out of your pockets. let these poor guys out of jail already. they were hired to disperse promotional materials, which in and of themselves caused zero damage to the city or its public works. in the current climate, you have a responsibility to make sure you don't sound false alarms or needlessly terrify your constituents. we need to make sure no one else decides yours was a cost-effective defensive or investigative strategy.

"There may be a tendency on the part of some people to laugh this off because it was a marketing stunt designed to promote a cartoon show on cable television. But I guarantee that the taxpayers of Somerville and surrounding cities aren’t laughing--and neither are the commuters and the public safety professionals who had to cope with the consequences," Curtatone said.

i'm laughing. at least, i was, until you made me too angry to carry on with it. i get that you're mad, you're embarrassed, you feel as if you've been punk'd, and you want to focus the blame on someone else. but that's childish, and it's not the sort of behavior taxpayers and commuters like to see from their elected officials. we want our public safety officials to make us feel safe, and there's no worse way for them to fail us in that respect than to prove, as they did yesterday, that they don't know what they're looking for or at or how to manage us and our city when they come across something eye-catching. and the consequences, as i've mentioned, were of public safety professionals' actions, not those of a cartoon show or a cable network. their actions were harmless, as was proved by the lack of harm caused by identical actions all across the country. boston screwed up, and now it's time for it to 'fess up. you guys wicked flew off the handle. i know it, you know it, everybody knows it; own it.

According to the Boston Herald, Boston spent $1 million in overtime costs investigating the stunt and dealing with its aftermath.

As city and state attorneys laid groundwork for criminal charges and lawsuits, cops seized 27-year-old Arlington multimedia artist Peter Berdovsky, who posted film on his Web site boasting that he and friends planted the battery-wired devices, and Sean Stevens, 28, of Charlestown. Both were jailed overnight on charges of placing a hoax device and disorderly conduct.

these charges are obscene. these guys hung pictures on poles. if the pictures hadn't been battery wired, we'd be hailing them as underground art superstars. they'd be the commonwealth's christo and jeanne-claude. there was no hoax; the objects were what they were, and no one tried to portray them as otherwise until city officials became involved. in other, less excitable cities, police took one down, found out what it was, and called the television network. the network told them where the rest of the ads could be found, and people took them down--end of story. no disorder resulted, and none was called for. these men are not responsible for what went on yesterday. let them go. seriously. let them go.

"This is outrageous activity to get publicity for a failing show," said Menino, referring to the battery-operated light-up ads for the Cartoon Network’s "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," which sparked at least nine bomb scares in Boston, Cambridge and Somerville.

Menino promised to sue Turner Broadcasting Co., the Cartoon Network’s parent company, and criminally prosecute Berdovsky and anyone else responsible for the devices, and to petition the FCC to pull the network’s license.

"I am pleased by the prompt, professional and well-coordinated response of law enforcement at all levels to this series of discoveries, and relieved that none of the devices presents a danger to the public. The investigation is ongoing, but there is no reason for anyone to panic."

first, this show is anything but failing. it's one of the most popular shows the network has ever aired, and has been practically since it debuted about six years ago. second, the ads didn't spark bomb scares; the bomb squads who shut down traffic to take soil samples and detonate LED panels at sites where the ads were found sparked bomb scares, and that should never have happened. the lawsuits are rubbish, as i've already discussed, and the idea of getting the fcc involved is so outrageous that i'm practically licking the carpet, my jaw's dropped so far open. the fcc doesn't regulate the actions of television fans or any of the things that television network employees do in any arena outside of a national broadcast, and cable channels are by and large out of the fcc's jurisdiction. pull their license? because you didn't get their ads? and now, now, he understands that there's no reason to panic? get the fuck outta here.

Laura Crimaldi and Michele McPhee of the Boston Herald contributed to this report.

hats off to you, ladies. in your place, i could not have performed my journalistic duties so unemotionally as you have done. but really, i mean, you can tell me: how many times did the two of you almost choke on your coffee while collecting these quotes? spit-take city, right? it had to have been. it's o.k., you and i, we're not alone. honest.

listen, joe, tom--all over america, people are rolling their eyes at us, and you're only making it worse. this thing got botched in a big way, but it isn't too late for you to save face. say you overreacted out of a sincere and profound concern for your citizens, but you have realized your error and want to apologize to the public for causing unwarranted distress. say in the future you won't act so thoughtlessly, and let's all get on with our day. do not say berdovsky and stevens deserve to be in jail for threatening public welfare, because that's bollocks, and don't try to convince me that the city was damaged by a few dozen colored bulbs. it was damaged by your failure as leaders. don't continue to fail us by refusing to take responsibility. the city doesn't need to hear from politicians about this; be men.

update, 2/1/07, 2:49 PM: berdovsky and stevens have been released on bail, and mumbles is maybe beginning to blush a bit about having come down so hard on them, claiming now that the only culprits he has any real interest in are the board executives at turner broadcasting. but that's still crazy, and he's still not sorry, and i'm still pissed.

in a post-9/11 world

2007-02-01T10:06:00.000-05:00

what does this look like to you? a lite-brite, right? or something that might be hung on a refrigerator in a house where an eight-year-old child lives? perhaps you recognize it as what it is--a depiction of a relatively (though, apparently, not universally) well-known cartoon character who will be making an appearance in a feature film that's coming out in march. but you have failed the "war on terror" rorschach, because anyone who appreciated the constant peril america is facing in these dangerous and troubling times would instantly recognize this object as a bomb and make numerous hysterical calls to authorities, who would react in an accordingly hysterical manner and deploy multiple bomb squads, halting traffic for hours and sending an entire city into a shrieking, swooning fit. or, alternatively, such a person would make a calm and informative call to authorities, expressing muted curiosity over the nature of the object, and authorities would react in an accordingly hysterical manner and deploy multiple bomb squads, halting traffic for hours and sending an entire city into a shrieking, swooning fit. at least, that's how we roll here in beantown.

i appreciate the need for swift measures to ensure public safety, and of course it's better to be safe than sorry when dealing with a mysterious, blinking box. but the way boston officials dealt with this situation created mass panic where there had been none and where there had been no need for any, and the fact that these innocuous circuit boards have been up and functioning all over the city for about three weeks isn't likely to quell anyone's fear about the ease with which a person could install a less harmless electronic device. the ad campaign has been running for weeks in nine other cities, and police in those places managed to cope with the situation with a minimum of shouting and foaming and public uproar. governor deval patrick, whom i was so proud of only a few short months ago, wants to prosecute the two men who, after being hired by a third-party ad agency, hung the boards, as well as turner broadcasting, the parent company of the cartoon network, for the full cost of the response effort, and i think that's ridiculous. if my son's friend leaves a plastic snake on my kitchen floor and i see it and lose my mind and throw my microwave at it, i don't get to sue that boy's parents for the cost of the appliance and the amount i'll have to pay someone to come in and fix the dent in the linoleum; that boy isn't responsible for my extreme overreaction. a non-crazy person would take a moment or two to assess the situation before calling in a swat team--even if that non-crazy person had once been bitten by a snake. what happened in this city yesterday was nonsensical and embarrassing, and turner broadcasting isn't to blame for it.

mayor menino, whom i've also stuck up for adamantly countless times in the past, says, "it is outrageous, in a post-9/11 world, that a company would use this type of marketing scheme." but what's really outrageous is that, knowing the emotional and psychological state of most americans, we still can't take the time, or simply don't have the means, to distinguish between a marketing scheme and a citywide act of terrorism before we initiate the kind of large-scale response that leaves a still-shaken populace soiling its misinformed drawers. there are plenty of people who deserve some disappointed glares, but i don't think any of them work for adult swim.

the two men currently being held on bond in the incident, peter berdovsky and sean stevens, are local multimedia artists who specialize in lighting effects and vj events. you can see photos of events they've worked on here, and you can tell mayor menino to take a deep breath and admit to some culpability in the madness here.

spider-man countdown blogging

2007-01-31T15:41:00.000-05:00

count: ninety-six days, eight hours, nineteen minutes
analysis of timeline: that is way too fucking long
status: tense and fidgety; difficulty concentrating on things that do not involve webbing

i don't know how many of you are aware of this--i'm certain nobody was aware of it at the time--but my very first post was about the amazing spider-man and my enduring and immensely geeky love of peter parker and the peter-parkeresque. it is also about kirsten dunst's ability to inspire the exact opposite sentiment, but i've changed my mind somewhat about her appropriateness for this particular screen role; in a way, her single, unappealing dimension makes her a perfect mary jane. mj was always flighty and simplistic. when she spoke she did so in trite slang, and she expressed little to no intelligence or introspection for the first decade of her existence as a regular spider-man character. she toyed with peter relentlessly, even while dating other people, and sometimes by dating other people. some say it was all a desperate act she put on in order to keep peter from realizing she was aware of his superhero identity, but you have to wonder if even her creators took her seriously (witness her go-go-dancer phase), and she was every bit as pouty and helpless and irritating after she confessed her knowledge. one way or the other, i never liked her, and if someone else were playing her i might, so i retract the statement i made all those years ago. retroactive kudos to francine maisler, and infinite kudos, obviously, to sam raimi, for this and everything else he's done to better my world and yours.

so, this movie: it's gonna be big. in fact, i'm wondering if maybe the bite they've taken this time around isn't too big. first, you've got the symbiote/venom plot, which is definitely more than a movie unto itself (and which i absolutely forgive the writers for tweaking the origin of); if we're going to have a chance to really explore the psychological battle peter has to wage with himself once the symbiote starts to exert its influence--and that's, like, all the trailers are about--brock will have to be just plain brock until almost the very end of the film, and that means there won't be time to get into the deep, dark, messy dynamic that emerges between those two characters, which is maybe the most fascinating hero-villain rivalry in marvel history. an open door leading to a future film? i can't allow myself to speculate, as i'm having a hard enough time catching my breath as it is. but the idea that brock is just an egomaniacal journalist for the first three-fourths of the movie would explain why raimi felt compelled to incorporate another villain, and while i might not have chosen the sandman, he's bound to make for some bad-ass graphics. but the addition of harry's evil, windsurfing goblin incarnation on top of the sandman makes me think they're tying up loose ends; wouldn't one or the other have been enough when coupled with the good spidey/bad spidey drama? did they have to stuff everything into this sequel? maybe harry won't come around and they'll keep him as a way to bring in the chameleon in a fourth installment (OH MY GOD THAT WOULD BE SO RAD), but i can't imagine spidey fighting the chameleon and venom; that would be madness. how can they cover as much ground as they seem to be attempting to cover in under three hours? will the radioactive aspect of the sandman's origin be retained? will spidey reform him? will venom incapacitate him? it's too much! it's tooooo muuuuuuch!!!!!

aw, hell. no it's not. it could never be enough.

(about something that happened on) monday punch-in-the-face blogging

2007-01-30T11:44:00.000-05:00

following stephen colbert's command last night to alter the wikipedia entry for the word "reality" so that it includes the sentence, "reality is now a commodity," wikipedia pulled up the drawbridge on "reality," "commodity," and "real." this is, i suppose, their right as an entity attempting to dispense verifiable knowledge, but it defies their marxist roots. it also makes them enormous hypocrites, one way or the other; ibm might have been able to write biased things about microsoft that could benefit ibm financially, and bloggers might have been able to rewrite those possibly biased entries while on the microsoft clock, but colbert can't offer people five bucks to write a philosophical statement about society and media that hurts no one and has zero impact on the free market? wikipedia has allowed all sorts of other philosophical explorations into the notion of reality; why not this one? do you think alexius meinong was taken at his word right out of the gate? only we can fully appreciate the nature of our own realities, can we not? perhaps your notion of reality only becomes reality once you "sell" it to someone else, or at least once it sells itself to you. and it's inarguably a mass-produced, unspecialized product (gracias, merriam-webster). so this one sentence should be permitted, even if only when prefaced with the phrase, "stephen colbert posits that . . . ." troubled, i was, and after mulling it over, i've decided that i will punch wikipedia in the face for being infofascists about an idea that no one can claim to know the definitive truth of.

i've also decided to submit the following word and definition to merriam-webster's open dictionary. don't bother trying to rip me off; they've got all my data, and the rights are mine. MINE!!!

colbereality, noun

1: a commodity
2: an entirely subjective reality in which the observer/creator manifests all of his or her desires by unwaveringly asserting the existence of such desired manifestations as truth
3: the realm in which far-right conservative pundits and all human beings between the ages of one and five exist

example sentence:
don't pester me with the findings of the iraq study group; your namby-pamby liberal delusions have no power in colbereality!

take that, wikipedia. all lexicographers accept that language is fluid and evolves over time. dare to take that flying leap into the nineteenth century and let usage dictate definition--by letting me and stephen colbert dictate usage.* that's the wiki way. become what you are.

* this statement was made by a person ensconced in colbereality.

from the ground up

2007-01-28T16:07:00.000-05:00

last sunday, the queen of trees, a documentary profiling the ecosystem that has developed around africa's sycomore fig tree, aired on pbs, and naturally i was glued to the set. i've watched it twice since then, and it only gets more enthralling. forest ecology, particularly in tropical or riverbank forests, involves enough staggeringly complex and precise relationships and interdependencies, sometimes directly between the largest and the smallest organisms in the environment, to make even the most diehard pesticide enthusiast question, however fleetingly, the wisdom of raining organophosphates down on his or her vegetable garden. if you are the sort of person who ponders dynamic relationships, or anything at all beyond the mesmeric circumference of your own navel, once someone points out to you how much of the world can hinge on a millimeters-long insect that you likely would have smooshed without a second thought, it becomes difficult to see any living thing as beginning and ending with itself. i've been up to my neck in food chains since i was in the single digits, and my bug love knows no bounds, so this documentary's painstaking exploration of the life cycle of the fig wasp, the sole pollinator of the sycomore, moved me to tears and applause. (youtube has some clips, and the pbs page explains how the filmmakers, victoria stone and mark deeble, obtained some of the within-fig footage.) the sycomore fig feeds more different types of animals than any other tree fruit in africa—and there wouldn't be a single fig on the whole of the continent if it weren't for this thing right here:

how could that not be the most beautiful thing you've ever heard? of course, depending on what else you've heard, it might also be the most terrifying; human beings don't have an impressive record when it comes to preserving the minute and essential fractions of the earth's microcosms. we're a bit short-sighted, aren't we, and prone to the occasionally unforgivable opinion that anything that does not immediately benefit us is an inconvenience which should not have to be tolerated. i was reminded of another pbs program (seriously, guys, send those folks some love) about brazil nut forests, which i commented on a while ago. it explains how another itsy pollinator, the euglossine bee, is carrying the weight of the peruvian jungle on its wee, irridescent back. this is the part that gives me nightmares, though: no one knew how important the bees were until the bees and the trees were separated. fortunately, there were still plenty of bees on the planet; they just had to be reunited with the appropriate flora, and all was as it should have been. but that isn't always the case, and it's likely that as we forge boldly forth into new and thrilling realms of global development and industrialization, it will be the case less and less frequently.

while scavenging the intertubes for more pictures of and research on fig wasps, like the devoutly dweeby entophile i am, i came across a discussion of what are known as "the living dead"—plants that are alive and technically well, on an individual level, but are no longer able to fruit or reproduce because a species, or more than one species, essential to the pollination process has disappeared. the example given was that of the calvaria tree, whose seeds were thought to have to pass through the gizzard of a bird before they were able germinate. theories put forth in the 1970s speculated that the extremely small number of calvaria trees on the island of mauritius—only thirteen were known to be in existence at the time—was the result of the disappearance of the dodo, which was driven to extinction in the late 1600s by extreme overhunting and the introduction of non-native species. there's been a good deal of debate over the validity of this theory since then, and many people now believe that a more probable explanation for the trees' decline is that new plant and animal species brought to the island by settlers damaged seedlings and competed for growing space. but in the book watching, from the edge of extinction, authors beverly and stephen stearns describe close to thirty plant species on mauritius that are similarly poised for slow extinction due to breakdowns in habitats and mutualistic relationships that are the result of changes made by humans. whether you connect a disappearance to a single species or a collection of disturbances, the underlying lesson is that every environment is surpassingly fragile and relies on precise interactions between all of its inhabitants, and we can not afford to disregard any one piece of the puzzle. i am perpetually flummoxed by the fact that this is such a difficult concept for people to absorb. it seems to only be fully embraced by fringe groups at either pole of the worldview spectrum—creationists on one end, who believe only god could have created such intricate structures, and zealous natural scientists on the other, who seem to be shunned by a fair percentage of the scientific community for embracing a creationist talking point and for not believing that mankind can overcome its own stupidity by employing its own brilliance. science is promoted as a means of fixing everything we have broken, but it's a losing game of catch-up if we don't, at some point, stop breaking things, which is all the delicate-web scientists are trying to convince us to do. and if it's all the creationists are trying to get us to do, then i don't really care what their reasoning is; a common goal is a common goal, and i'll be happy to have them on my side.

sometimes preserving a continent means loving a bug. care for selfish reasons, care for altruistic reasons, care because god says so, whatever it takes to get you motivated—just care. care because you don't like getting your ass kicked, maybe, because if anything happens to this bug,

and i find out you're responsible, i'm coming for you.

juniper pearl adores foreign film unlikely to dominate u.s. box office; nation rocked

2007-01-28T00:35:00.000-05:00

watch pan's labyrinth. then watch it again. then watch it again. when you're done, watch pan's labyrinth. after that, watch it again. once it's over, watch pan's labyrinth. at that point you should be ready to begin sculpting a tiny idol shaped like guillermo del toro, which you will want to build a small but elaborate and tasteful shrine to in your yard or garden—some place where it will be cradled in soil and the sound of growing things. you might also want to fashion a second one, slightly smaller, that you can wear as a charm to remind you that the phrase "a fairy tale for grown-ups" is nonsensical and redundant. fairy tales are written by grown-ups, they're told and retold and embraced and remembered and passed on by grown-ups; they're only heard by children, and they aren't really important to them then. they become important later, when those children become adults and the color starts to bleed out of their lives, and they realize how essential that magic was, what all of those grown-ups were trying to accomplish with those stories. we tell our children fairy tales because we are grown-ups, and our days are so rarely beautiful or capable of inspiring hope or faith or neatly tied off in happy endings. children already believe that the world is full of brave, pure hearts and hidden miracles; we're the ones who can't keep sight of such things, in or outside of ourselves.

but we can read a story and remember, and we can watch this movie and be grateful that someone has been kind enough to remind us. and if you're afraid you'll forget that the next story starts with you, that you have to believe in and live that beauty before it can exist elsewhere, you can watch it again. and i think you should watch it again.

it's the way w. plays the game

2007-01-26T11:20:00.000-05:00

"the decider" would have been an excellent name for a batman villain, don't you think? he could have tag-teamed with the riddler and the puzzler, spinning our gadget-laden protagonist into tizzy of flabbergasted reeling. batman would be challenged to come up with an answer to a dauntingly complex query, and then, when he offered his answer, no matter how solidly reasoned or correct it was, the decider would cackle, "that's a presumption that's simply not accurate," and the torture would begin anew.

bush has traded in his "decider" crown and scepter for the more grown-up military uniform of the "decision maker," but in this case the clothes don't make--or reform--the man, and his antics are every bit as bullheaded and loathesome under the new design. "i've picked the plan that i think is most likely to succeed," he says, and "some are condemning a plan before it's even had a chance to work." but this is such an obscenely and infuriatingly oblivious line at this point that robin and i are left too speechless and fuming to even toss up the obligatory "holy tunnel vision, batman!" that the audience is so rightly expecting. those of us faithful to the series know that the "plan" has had myriad chances to work, but it has not done so and will not do so, and trotting it out again with a fanfare in the key of e instead of c makes one wonder if the scripts for this particular drama are being written by the ghost of chuck jones. maybe somewhere some hopelessly sensitive child is sincerely rooting for wile e. coyote's success, but the majority of onlookers have always only snickered softly, shaken their heads, and muttered, "dumbass."

of course, no one dies when the bombs being detonated in the desert are made by acme, and when your favorite fictional dc evildoer reappears after an absence with a bag full of the same old tricks you're more than happy to welcome him, confident that he'll be summarily thwarted in the end. here in the real world, though, i'm afraid that the forces of good and sensible thought may have met their match in the decision maker. who will save us? anyone? anyone? i need a hero, and cowboys need not apply.

(signal courtesy of ElvenSarah)

friday celebrity-letter blogging

2007-01-26T09:46:00.000-05:00

dear joseph rotblat,

thank you for trying.

juniper

tuesday feel-the-love blogging

2007-01-23T14:39:00.000-05:00

so, i thought about hitting somebody on monday. i had my target all picked out and the links copied and coded and a post half finished, but then i just, i don't know . . . my heart wasn't in it. i think it was because it snowed here yesterday for the first time this winter, and watching the flakes strike and stick to the glass before they melted i realized that they actually do look exactly the way we all imagine snowflakes look--perfectly symmetrical, sharply delineated, head-of-a-pin stars, all those tiny spikes and lacy spaces miracles of architecture more precise in their geometric harmony than anything i could put together with all the measuring equipment in the world at my disposal, every single one flawless, and it was so moving, that something so hard to see could be so much more beautiful and deserving of study than any of the macroscopic objects surrounding it . . . it was like hearing a who. and i didn't want to fight with anyone. so i didn't. that thing that made me angry will still make me angry next week, and probably it was in my best interests to save my strength for the state of the union address, anyway.

of course, you might not have snow where you are. but you should have something to not fight for, too--so here's wendy molyneux telling you everything she knows about football, which is everything i know about football, which we both agree is all anyone really needs to know about football. and maybe for a second you'll want to fight with me over that--but then you'll notice how sparkly the gemstones in my earrings are and how they refract tiny beams of light all around the room, and before you know it you'll be completely hypnotized by the eensy-weensy rainbows flickering all about my head, and the fight'll go right out of you. honest. and if it doesn't, you can always yell at me later.

i'm hit!

2007-01-23T14:21:00.000-05:00

spine has lovingly thunked me with the meme stick, and because he's been so faithful and asks so little of me, i am taking up the baton and running like hell for the ribbon. so outta my way, suckas--this train ain't got no brakes.

1. my: you’ve heard the saying, “i’d give my right arm for . . .”--so, what would you give your right arm for?

a: a guarantee of perpetual planetary homeostasis. this would primarily require that people both realize and care when they had overstepped their bounds in a disruptively and/or destructively self-interested manner every single time they did so, so i guess i'd be sacrificing the limb for a prolonged global heightening of human empathy and other-directed awareness. a safe choice, perhaps, but to be fair, i really do use my right arm quite a lot.

2. me: what’s one word that describes how you want people to see you?

a: well-intentioned.

3. meme: if you could be any blogger, which blogger would you be, and why?

a: um, i'm actually pretty happy being me, thanks. i've managed to endear myself to a handful of people i respect a tremendous amount, and that's all the recognition i need. besides, the degree of anonymity i'm enjoying allows me to talk about anything or nothing without getting dragged through the mud by mean-spirited web bullies, and i don't have to restrict myself to a handful of predictable areas of expertise, or even attempt expertise. not that i don't try to be as accurate as possible every time, but i like that i can get hung up on whatever i want for a day or a decade, because i'm so scattered and pathologically eclectic; yep, i am extremely pleased with and very much at home in the pressure-free forum i've erected. unless . . . does christian bale's wife have a blog? no, just kidding; still me. it'd be sort of hellish having to put up with psycho blogchicks running up to my husband and trying to lick his face all the time. if the question were "which blogger would you be for between one and three hours this coming saturday," my answer might be different. but that, i assume, is a meme of a different color--a naughty color.

i am, i think, obligated to pass the torch at this point. so i'm just going to close my eyes and point: hans, mikey b., and dina--RUN!!!!!

this is not to suggest that i don't think each and every one of you would handle the task gracefully and with great insight; it's just that there are rules to be followed, only so many people to a team, that sort of thing. you understand. don't you? i know you do.

design does matter . . .

2007-01-21T14:40:00.000-05:00

albeit less than other things.

if anyone wanted to hear malcolm gladwell and his mother, joyce, discuss their books and international cultural experiences on debbie millman's program, design matters, on january 5 but, like me, has a job or other responsibilities that couldn't be shirked between the hours of 3 and 4 PM, even on a friday, fear not: i have hunted down a link to a recording of the program—no small feat, i'll have you know. there is no link on ms. millman's page or on any of the many media outlets her page directs readers to. i had to search and search and ultimately dig the url out of the text encoding of an rss archive, but i did it with a smile on my face, damn it, because i refuse to be bested by the internets. so here it is, commercials and all, and believe that i am standing over my laptop in my pajama pants and invader zim beanie and holding my coffee mug over my head like she-ra's nerdy, less inspiring stunt double. i do it all for you, kids.*

people seem to like debbie, and i thought i would try to do the same. but it takes her all of eight seconds to make me think that's immensely unlikely, and after about nine minutes of a bewilderingly irrelevant introductory discussion of peonies and plato she admits that the mass distribution of footage of saddam hussein's execution left her horrified and dismayed at the turn her country was taking—but not so much so that she didn't voluntarily watch it herself. this, i think, was meant to tie in somehow to her disappointment over changes in new york city's landscape, but it does not, and neither topic ties in to her guests in even the most abstruse manner. but whatever, it's her show. and as the host of her show, a role which she swears drives her to immerse herself in her guests and their work for weeks leading up to their interviews, she introduces malcolm as joyce's youngest grandchild and misstates the title and address of his blog. she then drags him through his rebellious conservative youth—only the fourteen thousandth interviewer to do so—and fails to ask a single useful question until at least a third of the way in. but joyce is straightforward and blunt in a very fun way, and at one point malcolm calls her "mummy," which makes the entire ordeal so much more than worthwhile.

they do eventually get around to design and how much it matters when debbie brings up the reprint of joyce's book, brown face, big master, that malcolm recently put out with the help of some friends at helicopter. i have to admit that i'm a bit taken aback when malcolm says a sadly minimal amount of thought and time goes into the design of a book, having worked with book publishers and designers and watched them nearly kill themselves trying to ferret out cover images that perfectly capture the soul of the text. those designers may have been stand-outs, but it's still hard to believe that no one at major houses is putting in a decent effort. malcolm actually goes so far as to say that "books are ugly," and this i can not stand behind at all. for an example i only have to go so far as the jacket of his own book, blink, which is so exquisite and hypnotic that it took me three days to get past it and actually start reading. everything about it is perfect—the stillness of the font, the illusion of simplicity offered by the textured paper, god, even the amount of space between the "i" and its dot; my palms get a little sweaty just thinking about it. that book makes me want to buy yoori kim a pony and a lifetime's supply of sherbet. and while there are plenty of books that don't exactly call to me, i don't think i've ever picked one up and thought, "man, i don't even want to look at that." i guess malcolm and i have different notions of ugliness. of course, mummy's new cover is lovely:

green! and i'm so much more drawn to clothbound books without jackets than with. i love that font, too. well done, folks—but don't go thinking you're the only ones who could have done it, even if you were told so by malcolm gladwell. he doesn't know everything.

he does, however, know more than debbie millman—even about design, which, while important, doesn't hold a candle to content. not to anyone i'd want to sell something to, anyway. of course you have to lure someone who doesn't know anything about what you're about to you with some sort of enticing aesthetic, but once you've got that person interested, you have to actually be about something. was the peony memoir bait? was it filler? i have no idea why debbie started off with it, and if your design doesn't make sense in its context, if the viewer can't understand how it represents the product, it's useless. and now the product of debbie millman shall remain forever useless in my mind. sorry, hon; maybe visual-arts professionals should stick to jackets and leave the writing to the writers.

* 1/23/07, 10:30 AM: naturally, there are now links to this broadcast all over the bloody place. something to be said for patience, i suppose, but three weeks seemed like more than enough time. please do not doubt my sincerity; i was in no way exaggerating the extent of my quest. but i feel it's appropriate to acknowledge the silliness of said quest now that i'm aware of how entirely unnecessary it was. so: silly. there.

today my heart has been uncharacteristically warmed by technology's intrusion into nature by:

2007-01-19T16:33:00.000-05:00

an ap article via the canadian press:

The pilot of a TV news helicopter used wind from the aircraft's rotor to push a stranded deer to safety after it lost its footing on a frozen lake and could not get up.

A small crowd had gathered to watch the deer struggling, its hooves repeatedly slipping, near the shore of Lake Thunderbird [in oklahoma] around 4 p.m. Wednesday.

With the helicopter's camera rolling, KWTV pilot Mason Dunn used the wind from the rotor to push the deer, initially sending it into a break in the ice where the animal managed to hold on to the ice with its front legs.

Dunn then lowered the helicopter and the wind sent the deer sliding on its belly across the ice until it reached shore. It then scampered into a nearby wooded area.

thank you!

friday celebrity-letter blogging

2007-01-19T09:47:00.000-05:00

dear manolo blahnik,

why are your shoes so boring and/or ugly? i think you've played a mean trick on the wealthy and fashion-obsessed women of the world. see, i've figured out that "manolo blahnik" is actually an anagram for "loon makin' blah," which is obviously exactly what you are. how you managed to become globally revered for it i'll never know, but then i probably wouldn't have run away from home to live in andy warhol's factory, either. perhaps i am simply missing some sort of artistic irony in your cobbling. is there a message? shoes are generally designed to provide one or both of two things: comfort and attractive design. your shoes provide neither, and so from my point of view they are failures. yet for years now they have been the platonic ideal against which all other pumps are measured; why should this be? all i can think of is that they are not shoes but art, which is allowed to be unbearably ugly if it embodies meaning or inspires a visceral reaction, even a negative one, and i have been misunderstanding your aims all of this time. even if that is the case, though, i think i'm likely still correct in saying women are crazy to spend the kind of money you're charging on things that look like that only to put them on their feet and limp smilingly down a dirty street in them. but then, only an artist can speak to the purpose of his own art.

so speak. explain yourself. tell me what a thousand-plus-dollar ankle boot covered in black lace and adorned with a ring of the sort of tassels normally reserved for heavy drapery really means. i will hear you out to the end, i promise. but if you refuse to justify your actions, i will be forced to conclude that you have been off in a villa someplace laughing yourself to tears at the hopeless sheepliness of females everywhere--and probably, even though what you are doing is a little mean, i will laugh right alongside you.

i am not yet certain enough of your position to assign any sort of emotion to this closing,

juniper

stories about my family

2007-01-17T16:44:00.000-05:00

toward the end of world war II, my father's father, the tall and somewhat scrawny son of french-canadian immigrants, lied about his age so he could enlist in the military. at seventeen, he was assigned to the coast guard, and between 1944 and 1945 he toured southeast asia extensively, spending the majority of his active duty in the philippines. once the war ended, his ship was stationed in a japanese port as part of the occupation. my grandfather was not pleased about this. it was one thing to be a thousand or so miles from japan, keeping an eye on the enemy, but the idea of having to share a shore with them, to walk and live among them after all those months and years of being singularly focused on destroying them, knowing they had been every bit as hellbent on destroying him, made him extremely ill at ease. not that there was anything he could do about it, and he's always been the sort to make the best of whatever situation he finds himself in--so off to japan he went.

lo and behold, it wasn't even awful. the nearby town accepted the crew's presence (outwardly, at least), the girls were very pretty, and sometimes the local theater showed american movies. while he understood it was in his best interests to remain vigilant, he started spending more and more of his leisure time away from the boat--where his shipmates didn't do much of anything besides gripe about having to babysit the japs and drink themselves sick--and in the town. one night while he was walking along the main street a young boy, maybe seven or eight years old, ran up to him and followed him along the road, asking for money. my grandfather isn't sure now whether he would have given the kid any money if he'd had it, and maybe if there'd been some change in his pocket this story would end differently, but there wasn't any change; all there was was three-quarters of a hershey bar. chocolate he could part with, especially less-than-scrumptious war-ration chocolate, and he handed it over. the boy's eyes grew huge and he started talking excitedly, but my grandfather couldn't make heads or tails of it; he understood that the boy was happy, though, so he smiled at him and patted him on the shoulder before he continued on his way.

about a week later, my grandfather was standing in line outside the movie theater when he felt someone tug on his sleeve. he looked down and saw that same boy, and he reached into his pockets, turned them inside out, and said, "no candy." but the boy grabbed his arm again and started pulling for all he was worth, trying to get my grandfather to follow him. gramps thought about it for a minute--it wouldn't necessarily have been impossible for some adults he had told to have talked the boy into luring my grandfather into an ambush; after all, an enemy who has surrendered doesn't magically turn into an ally--but in the end he let the boy drag him down the road to his home.

from the entrance they descended a small staircase into a tiny room, where six pairs of eyes turned silently toward them. the boy raced over to his family and started in on an animated speech involving much wide gesturing and some jumping up and down, the gist of which was not at all apparent to my grandfather. none of the listeners offered up any clues in terms of facial expression, and my grandfather started wondering what he had gotten himself into. finally, the oldest man in the group, presumably the boy's grandfather, rose and filled a cup. he held it out to my grandfather, motioning for him to drink. my grandfather, who still had no idea what was taking place, motioned back, "you first." after the old man drained the cup, my grandfather accepted a drink of his own, and then, finally, everyone in the room smiled.

the boy's family managed to get across that night, through their very minimal english, my grandfather's very minimal japanese, and extensive charades, that the boy had brought the chocolate home to share it with them and had told them all about his friend the soldier. they thanked him many times and offered him what little food they had, and my grandfather was more moved by their sincerity and kindness than he could remember ever having been. the next day he got his hands on a japanese-english dictionary and an entire hershey bar and went back to the boy's house to thank the family properly for welcoming him into their home.

over the next several months, my grandfather came to think of that family as his own. whenever he could he would gather up leftovers from the ship's kitchen and bring them along on his visits. he and the boy spent hours poring over the dictionary, teaching each other new words for things they'd been talking about all their lives. the men talked about the war, what it had done to their countries, how much they all wished everything that had been done could be undone. the day before he was scheduled to depart, my grandfather went to the house with all the food and supplies he could carry and told his family, with a speech he had pieced together on his own and rehearsed for days, that he would not see them again. everybody cried, but silently and reservedly, and my grandfather left them and returned to his ship.

the next morning when he went up on deck, he saw his family on the shore, waving. behind them was another family, and another, and another, dozens of people my grandfather had never seen before, all smiling at him and waving.

"who are these people?" my grandfather called out, sweeping his arm toward the crowd.

"they are our friends, and they are your friends," the boy's father answered, "because you are our friend."

all those months, the family had been taking the food my grandfather had brought them and sharing it with almost everyone they knew. a simple act that had cost him nothing had touched and bettered the lives of an entire neighborhood and convinced everyone involved that even among enemies, even in war, you can find someone who will see you only as a person and offer you what he can.

the crew didn't know what to make of the scene, didn't understand what was being said or why my grandfather was weeping. one shipmate asked who the fan club was, and my grandfather told him, "they are my friends." this statement and his lack of interest in drinking himself unconscious at the end of every day left the other sailors with little to say to my grandfather, but he was all right without them, and anyway, they were on their way home. after he married and started a family, he showed his children important words in the japanese-english dictionary. when my sister and i were young, he showed them to us.

"this means 'give' . . . this one says 'love' . . . that one is 'friend' . . . let me teach you how to say 'hope' . . ."

i made it! i made it!

2007-01-17T09:56:00.000-05:00

in my inbox this morning:

Dear blog author:

We recently came across your site, weloveyouplatonically.blogspot.com, while searching for bloggers who blog about the hit tv show American Idol, now starting its sixth season.

A small group of us have started a new site called American Idol Bloggers. Our intent is to bring American Idol bloggers closer together, and make a positive contribution to the Internet community.

Would you be interested in joining American Idol Bloggers? Please take a few minutes to have a look at what we are trying to do, and if you are interested, there is a sign up page to get the ball rolling. We would greatly appreciate your support in this endeavour.

If you do not feel that your blog would be a good fit for American Idol Bloggers, but are an American Iool fan, come visit us and one of our member bloggers. You can also check our FAQ Section to learn more about American Idol Bloggers.

We look forward to hearing from you and seeing you on American Idol Bloggers.

Craig Cantin
American Idol Bloggers
info@american-idol-bloggers.com

now, to the best of my knowledge, this is the first post on my blog to ever include the phrase "american idol." if i have been sleeptyping about this program, which would be amazing on several levels, especially since i have never seen the show, i extend my most humble apologies to each and every one of you.

still, though . . . it's something to hear the judges say you rocked it--even when "it" is imaginary. and i may very well be an American Iool fan; when that program airs i will be sure to tune in. if i'm lucky, it'll be the sister show to it's always sunny in philadelphia and will fill in all the empty spaces left by that show's absence. i mean, its season is only, what, like, two months long, isn't it? i needs the crack!

crack . . . crack.

update, 1/17/07, 1:30 PM: as if the program hadn't already done its fair share and then some of making my life complete, sunny's adorable little web site has now alerted me to the existence of the philadelphia insectarium, a multistory interactive bug museum. this is so cool--the right kind of beetlemania and a person-sized spider web . . . it's like my dream house. way to go, philadelphia. you really moved me.

monday punch-in-the-face blogging

2007-01-15T09:53:00.000-05:00

if someone in my office says something that makes me recoil as if i'd just opened the door to a sauna filled with rancid meat and everybody laughs at it but me, can i forget that i ever heard the sound?

co-worker 1: we don't get martin luther king day off? seriously? do you think they'll see through it if i say i need to take it off out of principle? [chucklechuckle]

co-worker 2: come to work in blackface; that'll fix 'em. [hearty chortles all around]

no. no, i can not. all i can do is retreat to my happy place, where dean and gene ween launch into a 12-inch-casio-and-ukelele rendition of "push th' little daisies" every time i enter a room and these guys serenade me in my secret garden every afternoon at cake time. there i can recoup my strength in preparation for the next time someone says something that makes me want to crawl under my desk and keen while i dig up tiny bits of industrial carpeting with my gnawed, nubby fingernails. because there is always, always, a next time.

pictures in invisible ink

2007-01-12T23:48:00.000-05:00

it's secret pal day here in the states—at least, i think it is. it might have been yesterday, and it might be this coming sunday; the little-known holidays are a bit like floating islands. but they're no less worth celebrating for that, and of course there's no one i'd rather secretly celebrate with than my #1 secret boyfriend. awwww, aren't we cute? now forget you ever saw us. i can neither confirm nor deny having anything to do with that image.

what i can confirm is that this week's new yorker contains malcolm's latest article, which he made a point of speaking right up about the second the issue hit the stands. obviously, after our unfortunate misunderstanding regarding his last piece, he wasn't taking any chances about provoking my bitter, secret wrath. he needn't have worried, though; it's early yet, but all signs point to the universe being more solidly on our side in this new year.

when i stepped through my front door the wednesday evening before last, i did so onto my january 8 issue of the new yorker, which had fallen open to the table of contents after being violently shoved through the (more than wide enough) mail slot. i looked down at its ragged edges and crunched corners and thought, first, "if that poem was from the mailman, i'm in bigger trouble than i thought, because he's taken to destroying the things i love," and second, "oooohhh, i see; the mailman is jealous—'cause my boyfriend sent me a leeeeeetter!" you might be interested to know that january is national letter-writing month, making this revelation all cosmic and adorable. but you might just as easily be not interested at all, and so i'll get on with the story. *ahem*

malcolm's name is very pretty in italics, with all its graceful "l"s and round, welcoming vowels. it's so pretty that i sat right down on the hallway floor to gaze at it, and once i did that i had my third thought:

"enron? aw, damn."

fact: i am not business minded. i don't follow stock reports or bone up on mergers or care what steve jobs calls his company, i'm not shocked or whipped into a scandal-ogling frenzy when corporations do things that hurt their shareholders or employees, and i don't expect anyone i invest my money with to care about what happens to me after i've handed over that money. i have a checking account and a savings account, i pay my bills, i avoid stores that utilize business practices i can't get behind, and that is everything that i have or would like to have to do with global markets. so i was pretty sure that there was nothing more i'd be excited to learn about enron, and besides, malcolm had already written an article about enron, and while i appreciate his enthusiasm and his willingness to doggedly worry a subject until the knot of it gives and falls into a simpler, more linear construct . . . actually, i appreciate that rather a lot . . . and that first enron article was only kind of about enron, and it wasn't half bad . . . i mean, i had to at least give it a chance, didn't i? because i trust the guy.

so i leaned back against the front door in my zipped-up coat and started reading, and i was on the third page before i realized i'd never taken my bag off from over my shoulder, that's how right i was to keep the faith.

i won't lie to you, kids, i really don't care about the enron case in and of itself, and nothing malcolm or anybody else says is likely to induce any radical upheaval in the extent to which my eyes glaze over at business speak. but at some point along the way, out of sheer necessity, this piece changes from an article about enron into something that is only shaped like an article about enron, so that it can more fully become the thing it started as. see, knots come undone a loop at a time, but you can't untie one without constantly reminding yourself of the string's continuity; the process of disentangling a knot has to be as much about the whole as the loops. you have to picture the whole, follow that length of material from one end of the snarl through all its ups and downs and ins and outs, imagine the twists and snags at the center, the part that's hidden from sight—and then you have to move that picture to the back of your mind and focus the rest of your attention on one small, isolated section at a time. i can do this with actual, physical knots; malcolm can do it with stories, which, when they're worth telling, are built just like knots. and while nothing, apparently, is gnarlier than american corporate law, and even though business transactions can be vast and fluid and abstract, at the middle of this particular knot there's nothing but us—us, not just a handful of enron employees and some ruined investors. what went wrong with enron goes wrong in countless other realms all the time, and this story works because it, nearly all alone in the googolplex write-ups on the company's downfall, actually points that out.

so, i don't know what to say about jeffrey skilling. i have absolutely no idea, after reading the piece twice and following the public discourse on the case and studying the law review that inspired and informed the article (the key points of said law review being so surprisingly enthralling, by the way, that i'm not even going to comment on its more wince-worthy spelling and grammatical errors—starting now), whether "fraud" is an entirely accurate description of the wrongs that were committed, and i'm not at all convinced that skilling should have been held as singularly responsible for those wrongs as he's been, regardless of how one chooses to categorize them. if i didn't know what good company i was in, i'd probably be deeply troubled by that. instead, i'm going to accept that there are things going on in the world that are currently beyond my grasp and focus on the fractions of the article that, for me, lit up parts of various other big pictures. like this one:

mysteries require that we revisit our list of culprits and be willing to spread the blame a little more broadly. because if you can't find the truth in a mystery—even a mystery shrouded in propaganda—it's not just the fault of the propagandist. it's your fault as well.

ooooooooooh, he's mad. he's also right. naturally, people have already tried to run him up a pole for saying a thing like that, misconstruing (or misrepresenting; i'd swear on a chicago 15th that at least a few of them are definitely misrepresenting) his stance as a defense of enron's practices, which were unquestionably sketchy (if, perhaps, not exactly shady; but again, i'm not certain) and deserving of condemnation. in his own explanation of his intentions malcolm refers to the article as a "semi-defense," but i doubt i'd have phrased it even that strongly. what the work boils down to is a reframing of enron's breakdown, and it should force people to think about why the word "enron" inspires such an instantaneous flood of negativity, and why we feel justified in giving that feeling free reign. i can't imagine the majority of americans not saying skilling deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison, but i'm every bit as skeptical that a majority of that majority could enumerate skilling's sins. it's imperative, though, that we force ourselves to understand why we've come to the conclusions we've come to in matters like this—matters where futures, where lives, are at stake—because if we fail at that step every subsequent action is rendered utterly indefensible.

i'm going to walk away from enron for a bit, though, now, and venture into the deep, dark, chilling woods that are home to all of the other ideas the phrase "mystery shrouded in propaganda" brings to mind.

the president's approval rating in the united states right now is, according to the most recent zogby poll, about 30 percent. (i think that's dizzyingly high, but i'm just one girl.) in april of 2003, right after the start of the war in iraq and the "fall" of baghdad, his approval rating was closer to 70 percent. in 2002, when he was busy trying to make his case for invading iraq, approval of the president dropped consistently from its october, 2001, high of nearly 90 percent to a low of just above 50 percent in february of 2003, and then skyrocketed when he declared the end of major combat. but he's been the same president the entire time, and the war in iraq has been the same war the entire time; most reasonable people recognized that the combat hadn't ended in may of 2003 and was unlikely to wind to a close over a day or two just because the president had said so. the problem, i guess, was that too many people at that point weren't being reasonable; but does it make sense to assume they've become more reasonable since then? the nation's shift in attitude regarding the war is being touted as a collective awakening, hundreds of millions of people suddenly coming to their senses about a president's, a cabinet's, a party's persistent self-interest and disingenuousness. but i don't see it that way.

when bush presented his new strategy for iraq on wednesday, the plan that had won him approval ratings twice as high, not to mention reelection, a few years earlier was torched for being neither new nor, in truth, a strategy. it might seem like the american people have woken up, since they're no longer buying the rhetoric and propaganda they'd seemed so moved by in the past. but it's got nothing to do with learned lessons. a few years ago, what the american people wanted was revenge. now, they want their families back. they haven't learned anything except that they don't enjoy putting their money where their mouths are, and what's worse is they can't see it, because they aren't putting any effort into understanding—truly, completely understanding—why they've changed their minds, or why they made the decision they made in the beginning.

in the previously cited law review, jonathan macey says this about group decision-making dynamics:

[O]nce boards of directors have been in place for a while, they are likely to embrace management’s perspective. More specifically, after a decision is made and defended by a board, it will affect future decisions such that those decisions will comport with earlier actions. For example, studies of the decision-making process that contributed to the escalation of the Vietnam War showed that leaders paid more attention to new information that was compatible with the earlier decisions. They tended to ignore information that contradicted those earlier assumptions. As one researcher observed, “there was a tendency, when actions were out of line with ideas for decisionmakers to align their actions.” Once ideas and beliefs become ingrained in the mind of a board of directors, the possibility of altering those beliefs decreases substantially. As Tom Gilovich has argued, “beliefs are like possessions, and when someone challenges our beliefs, it is as if someone criticized our possessions.”

in fact, someone had criticized our possessions, and us ourselves, and had ended 2,973 lives to bring the insult home. everything we knew and trusted had been brought to its knees; our hearts were broken. in order for oversight to be effective, macey says, it must be objective, and there was no hope of the average american citizen approaching objectivity at that time. when management's perspective was that we should invade afghanistan and take out the people who had attacked us, no one would have dreamed of dissenting. but when the management selected a new enemy and proceeded to paint it as every bit as much of a threat as the original enemy, if not worse, when they tried to take 300 million people's fear and confusion and misery into their hands and squeeze it, pressing their thumbs into the tears and punctures until everyone was wailing and blind, it stopped being an issue of choosing whether or not to dissent; under those circumstances, most people, if they don't fight to retain it, lose the ability to think objectively, or at all.

so objective refutations of flimsy assertions not only got buried in obfuscations and distractions and reiterations of catch phrases but were actively ridiculed by party members and newly rabid patriots who couldn't imagine any circumstances under which questioning the direction their leader's finger was pointing in didn't amount to treason. when that finger pointed to war, they didn't seek out information that would prove that such a move was neither inevitable nor necessary, even though such information was abundant, and they didn't embrace those ideas when other people pointed them out again and again and again.

the united states chose bush in 2004, after he ran on a platform of intimidation, threadbare slogans, and a guarantee of business as usual. and now that they've gotten what they asked for, what they've earned by failing to recognize or even look for the truth about a situation they had a massive investment in and should have been scrounging for every shred and scrap of objective intelligence on, what they've built for themselves by failing to just plain think,

they've turned en masse to point their own fingers at the people they placed the order with and say, "how dare you. how dare you be dishonest. how dare you do this to me."

when people thought enron was winning, they didn't want to know anything else. someone was responsible for providing them with information, and the information they were getting from that someone was to their liking; they let that be the end of the story. but the information being furnished wasn't the whole story, and while its purveyors must be held accountable for their actions, it is not their fault that no one involved wanted to admit—or even know—that they were meeting with far less success than they were being led to believe.

as dense as the bush administration's fog of propaganda was, there were elements of information that shed enough light to cut through it. some people affixed them to their pith helmets and marched up and down the street ringing bells, while 200 million people hurled fruits and vegetables and stones and slurs and flags and ribbons at them. those rioting mobs weren't different people at the time of last november's election; they just voted differently. the information they're getting isn't pleasant anymore, and they'd like to hear from someone else. but how much sense does that make? how does that signify an awakening? you could throw every last republican in the country into the grand canyon with a pocket full of trail mix and a pound of jerky and tell them that it's their turn to fight and sacrifice, but of course your problem wouldn't be solved. because the untruth that was sold to you was one you, at the time, said you were willing to pay for, and when that transaction leads to disaster, it's your fault as well. america, like a willful child, has gone from a parent who won't give it a cookie to one it thinks probably will. certain circumstances might change, but the practice that brought them about won't, and when we decide we don't like this cookie in however many years and would actually like a popsicle, we'll switch loyalties again. no objectively reasonable thought in sight, not from sea to shining sea.

i couldn't care less about enron. what i care about is people making solid decisions based on all of the verifiable information at their disposal and then accepting responsibility for the fallout from those decisions. what i care about is blame being assigned as it should be, by people who are in a position to know where that blame honestly lies.

jeffrey skilling is taking a hard, more or less solitary fall for a collective wrong that involved all kinds of irresponsible investments and convoluted hand-offs and insufficient models and impossibly unreadable documents—but he's been convicted of fraud. i don't know enough about corporate law to say whether or not, based on what i've read, that's a crime he committed, but i, like malcolm, would like his conviction and associated sentence to be something no one had any questions about. i'd like as many convictions as possible to go that way. whatever your interest in business, whatever country you hang your hat in, you owe it to, at the absolute least, yourself to make certain your legal system is operating in a just and clear-eyed manner.

sometimes ours fails. but it's our fault as well, and i am pointing my very angry finger at an extremely broad population of people who i'm afraid will never, ever care about a word i'm saying.

*sigh* i won't fix the universe tonight, anyway. so i'll close my little rant with this: all of you out there fighting the good fight, working like hell to think with the best parts of your heads, trying to hold yourselves and each other up while you watch the world around you fail you and fail you and fail you, doing all you can to make sense of it even when you have no reason to hope that it will ever make sense: you've got an extremely loyal pal.

friday celebrity-letter blogging

2007-01-12T12:09:00.000-05:00

dear theo ratliff,

a co-worker of mine just came back from the supermarket across the street and told us he was behind you in line at the register. he also told us that you played basketball for forty-four minutes this year and made $11.7 million. i just wanted to tell you how great i think it is that with all that money, you're still willing to get out and mingle with average citizens while you buy your own groceries at the neighborhood mart, especially with the back injury and all. i go to that store sometimes, they stock some decent produce. did you buy any apples? the gala apples they have right now are bitchin'. no lie. i'd eat one with every meal if i could, but i can't always get all that many of them, because i can't afford to spend more than $70 a week on food. oh well; nobody's fault but my own that i didn't become a professional athlete. and nobody's fault but your own that you didn't pick soccer instead of basketball, right? because right now beckham's making you look like a pauper. no way that dude's popping out for a loaf of bread at lunch time; he's not like us.

anyway. i hope you enjoy your purchase and the 525,000 or so minutes a year you don't spend working. feel better, man.

*swoosh*,

juniper

i feel bad about other people's necks

2007-01-10T16:25:00.000-05:00

victory, noun: achievement of mastery or success in a struggle or endeavor against odds or difficulties

here is the monologue that i imagine took place in bush's head after the nineteen trillionth person asked him what he actually meant when he said "victory in iraq is still a possibility" and, when bush appeared confused by the question, one of his aides showed him how to look words up in the dictionary, yielding the above definition:

"so, 'victory in iraq' would be . . . well, let's see. since the difficulty we are struggling to master is primarily that the united states has never put enough troops on the ground in iraq to quell an insurgence which has spread its little wings and taken flight as a fledgling civil war and which at this point requires far more political restructuring than policing while simultaneously training what, from all reports, is an almost entirely green iraqi military, 'victory in iraq' must mean more troops. right?

"right! round up the men and load the humvees, boys! victory is ours!"

oh, um, that middle part? out of character for the president, right? that's the monologue that took place when i temporarily inhabited bush's body and grabbed his brain up in my hands and shook it like a tambourine, which, of course, jogged all the bats and goop loose and totally freaked me out, forcing me to flee and return control of his mental processes to him just in time for him to come to that dastardly, simple-as-a-two-piece-jigsaw conclusion.

the problem, i think, is that "more troops" is as far as the president--and possibly a vast number of other officials--cares to quantify matters, and he doesn't seem to grasp that there are different levels of "more," each with its own degree of effectiveness. our version of "more," to date, has had a degree of effectiveness of somewhere between 0 and -174.

between february and april of 2004, the coalition presence in iraq increased by close to 23,000 troops. it held about steady until november of that year, and between november 2004 and february 2005 it increased by about 18,000 troops, to 180,000. but in march it was down to 172,000, by april it was down to 164,000, and it dropped and dropped by dribs and drabs . . . so between september and november of 2005, we sent another 23,000, bringing the total up to 183,000. by january of 2006, that number was down to about 157,000. by the end of 2006, the troop strength was around 160,000, give or take.

at no point since the invasion have coalition ("coalition"? it sounds goofy now, doesn't it? my coach told me there was no "i" in "team," and even in "coalition" there are two of them) forces totaled more than 185,000 troops--and at no point since the invasion have the coalition forces been on the receiving end of anything that might be even loosely referred to as "victory." so one could conclude that the "more"s we've been contributing--20,000 here, 20,000 there, but all bringing us back to about where we started--are the wrong sort of "more."

and, of course, many people have come to that conclusion. "bad president!" they cry. "you can bang our heads into this wall until the end of time, but i swear to you, they will never break open and shower you with candy!"

"unpatriotic naysayers!" the president shouts back, swinging his stick in aimless arcs and reaffixing the elastic of his party hat over the sides of his blindfold. "staying the course always leads to candy! it's candy land! iraq is just a comma-shaped molasses swamp! now shut up and give me my Now and Laters!"

bush's Now and Laters are extra sticky and taste like ass, and the wrappers read a little like this:

Defying public opinion polls and the newly empowered Democratic leadership, Bush on Wednesday moved to send 21,500 more U.S. troops to Iraq while saying it was a mistake not to have had more forces there previously.

"The question is whether our new strategy will bring us closer to success. I believe that it will," Bush said in excerpts released by the White House before the speech. Stepping back now "would force a collapse of the Iraqi government" and could mean U.S. troops staying even longer, he said.

bleccchhhhhh.

yes, it was a mistake to not have had more forces there previously. here's the thing: YOU ARE NOT GOING TO HAVE MORE FORCES THERE NOW. YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE EXACTLY AS MANY FORCES AS YOU HAVE HAD THE ENTIRE TIME. I AM TALKING VERY LOUDLY, MR. BUSH, JUST IN CASE THE PROBLEM FOR THE PAST FOUR YEARS HAS BEEN THAT A BIT OF FLUFF HAS BLOWN INTO YOUR LEFT EAR AND GOTTEN STUCK.

this "surge" isn't a solution--or a surge; it's maintenance, and that maintenance is of a failing status quo. 21,500 more troops means leaving our military and the citizens of iraq where they've been, and that means thousands more dead. it isn't enough to effect the change that needs to take place. it isn't enough to fill the positions our soldiers have been scrabbling to fill. it isn't enough to do anything but make bush look worse in the eyes of americans and the world and deepen the pool of blood that's accumulated in the middle eastern desert. it's more of the same, and in my opinion a lot of the people who are up in arms about that have little or no right to be: more of the same is exactly what they demanded when they put bush back in office in 2004. i, on the other hand, ought to have the right to secede by now, i've been so staunchly against him since day 1. i want to hope that there's still a chance that a more convincing show of humility and regret on bush's part could win over a few global allies and earn a troop commitment from other countries that could put us, finally, on solid footing. i want to hope that--but i don't. the pompous stubbornness of a few old men has likely doomed us and our soldiers to a sacrifice most people never cared or intended to make.

i don't want one more death, and i don't want this war to go on for one more day. i never wanted it. but we destroyed a country, we did, and i am equally disinclined to watch us stick our hands in our pockets, shrug, and back away from the ruins like a clumsy kid in a mikasa outlet. bush wants to devote another billion dollars to reconstruction efforts, but the buildings are not all that got broken, and even if you pay for the vase, when you get home and open its box it will still be shattered. when you close the box back up, put it in the back of the hall closet, and walk away from it, it will still be shattered. to make it a vase again, you have to fix it. you can't reassemble it, glue up a third of the fractures, and say, "well, it isn't my fault if it doesn't want to try" when the water you pour into it blows out the sides and soaks the carpet. you have to fix it.

21,500 new troops is not how. it hasn't been how for the past four years, and yet we have done it again and again. not that i know how; i'm starting to wonder if, at this point in the debacle, there is a how. but to do nothing, to cut our losses (but they wouldn't really all be our losses, would they? or even mostly ours) and withdraw, as some people are suggesting? to holler "suck it up and you'll be fine!" over our shoulders as we flee the scene? i don't want to try to live with that.

was there a solution, for a while? and we ignored it? and now we have all this blood on our hands, and because we can't bear to look at them we squeeze our eyes shut and sit on them.

stop it. hold them up and own them, and apologize. and beg--beg--the rest of the world to help you put this thing you've broken into some kind of order. forget about victory, forget it; just do what's right.