Dangerous and True

Why I'm Glad I Took a Bible Lit Class

2009-10-09T07:28:00.003-06:00

Having read the old testament, every single word of it, and parts of it more than once, I can attest that the commentary below is largely accurate. There is ONE problem: Betty Bowers neglects to mentions the marriages between humans and giants described in the old testament. That's right: in the OT, people can also marry other species.

Something I Was Glad to See Emerge from The Ark

2009-02-25T21:14:00.001-07:00

I don't know if you've noticed this, but our culture seems to have a lot of Facebook angst. Most recently, there's been outrage about its new privacy terms and conditions for use. Before that there was a brouhaha about its other privacy terms and conditions of use. There was a brouhaha about its layout. There were people who HATED the "25 random things meme," and people who LOVED it, and people like me who just ignored it, having posted way more than 25 random things about myself in various blog memes. There was even an NY Times piece offering advice on how to actually say something interesting and worth hearing about when one updates one's status.

I've posted a few entries about my own problems with Facebook.

Recently I had a real shock--one that made me start and left me nauseated throughout the day--when someone I'd known almost 25 years ago friended me, with a cheerful note.

This was a person I loved very much at the time I knew them. It wasn't until later that I realized this person had been emotionally and psychologically abusive, and deliberately cruel. And one of the primary tools this person used to hurt and intimidate others was the church--which of course is why I didn't recognize the abuse; I had been trained to believe that such behavior was actually love.

But I did love this person, very much. They had good points. They could be generous. They had a commitment to a certain type of goodness that everyone could see and everyone admired.

And as is true of most really abusive people, they'd probably learned how to dish out the abuse by being abused themselves.

Partly out of shock, partly out of curiosity, I accepted this person's friend invitation. I stared at the photo a long time. This person has gained a lot of weight. Never graduated from college, though I think they were close to graduating at one time--dropped out, got married and started a family instead.

I thought about writing a letter to this person, explaining just what a destructive force they were in my life. I imagined a couple of different versions. And I talked myself out of every one.

I also thought deleting this person from my friend list. I may yet do that. I may also leave this person on my list and ignore them, until my book gets picked up by a publisher (god, I picked the wrong time to finish a book--publishing is in such disarray because of the general economic horribleness) and comes out in print, at which point I will tell this person to read it.

But since then I have been thinking about a completely awesome song that made me weep when I first heard it, because it so succinctly and beautifully expressed my feelings toward the Mormon church. In particular, I love the lines

Please don't give me no warm reception
What you call peace to me is a call to arms
Some are singing to raise affection
But this piece of poetry is meant to do harm.

Pretty much.

More Facebook Freakiness

2009-01-24T10:16:00.002-07:00

A few weeks ago, after much deliberation, I added my high school and the year I graduated to my Facebook profile. I did it because there are a few people from high school that I've completely lost track of and would actually like to reconnect with, and while I didn't find them by searching the list of people already identified as graduates of my high school, I hope someday these people I want to find will find me.

There weren't many people from my graduating class who'd declared that affiliation--about half a dozen--which isn't all that surprising, given that there were only about 80 kids in my graduating class. I didn't "friend" any of the six people already in the network, not even one person who had been my roommate in college.

There were different reasons for this, some general, some specific. In the case of the former roommate, I didn't "friend" her because: 1) by the end of our stint as roommates I'd grown to dislike her fairly intensely, 2) she married a complete weirdo (they met while I was rooming with her, and I was forced to witness some of the more unpleasant parts of their courtship--I used to come home and find them on the couch, not making out, but him with his shirt hiked up his back while she picked at his backne, and they kept this up even after I walked in the door), and 3) she's gotten more matronly and Mormon and annoying and I don't want to know what she's doing.

I also didn't friend one of the unpleasant bullies I graduated with, a nasty, self-important, entitled little bastard, who tormented me gleefully from the day I met him in first grade until the day we graduated. Admittedly, he wasn't the meanest guy in my grade, and there were some girls who actually liked him, and some girls he was nice to. I, however, was someone he purposely made unhappy with some frequency, someone I was glad to see the back of after graduation, and hoped never to encounter again.

So imagine my surprise when, at our ten-year class reunion, he came up and shook my hand, acted like he was glad to see me, and told me some things about his life, in what was the first real conversation we ever had in our lives.

And then yesterday he goes "friends" me.

I just stared at the friend request for a while. And then I "confirmed that I was 'friends' with this person," because, well, he's not mentally unstable like the strange student I won't be friends with, he's just someone who used to be a jerk. The fact that he at least tried to talk to me when he finally grew up suggests that he might have turned into a nice guy. Why hold a grudge?

And then someone else he'd become "friends" with--someone even further down the social scale, someone he never would have deigned to notice while we were in high school--also added me as a friend. And I went ahead and confirmed my "friend-ness" with this person too, despite the fact that we'd never hung out, never played at each other's homes, even though--or maybe because--we were third cousins, which we knew because this was a small Mormon town and everyone knew who was related to whom.

But the thing is--and this is the larger issue--there's the Mormon business. I'm not Facebook friends with anyone I'm related to, because we already tried that. My Facebook profile is pretty neutral, but my family, being typical Mormons, are not willing to refrain from being politically aggressive assholes who parade their stupid ideas ("So&So is pumped about Palin!"). When I responded in kind with some of my political views and pointed out that Palin is NOT someone intelligent, ethical people should be pumped about, well, there was hell to pay, and I was the one who paid it.

By and large, Mormons are not willing to edit or censor themselves--that's what everyone else has to do. You can't swear around Mormons, because that's "offensive" to them, but they can go on and on about how being gay or supporting legislation for gay rights is going to bring about Armageddon--in fact, they typically display quite prominently a statement informing the world of precisely that belief.

If you're Mormon, answer me this: how would you feel if you walked into the home of a family member and were confronted by a high-minded, pompous announcement informing everyone that supporting the Mormon church wasn't just sorta dumb, something that would retard your spiritual development and make it hard for you to have real friendships with people who aren't like you, but something that would bring about the end of the world?

So we'll see how this works out. I did look at the pages of my new "friends" and they seem to be fairly banal--not much about their church callings or their enthusiasm for the stupid, evil political beliefs and practices that got the US and the world into the nasty mess we're dealing with now. So maybe things will be OK.

I just hope that some of the guys (and they are all guys, 'cause I can track down quite easily all the girls I hung with in school) I actually want to find track me down. Todd, Kieran, Curtis: are you out there?

Pathetic Loser Tries Again

2009-01-22T21:08:00.003-07:00

Almost a year ago, an unpleasant former student attempted to "friend" me on Facebook. I was surprised and mildly annoyed, but I ignored his friend request and blocked him, wrote a blog entry mentioning this, and didn't waste another thought on this strange, troubled, annoying person.

And then, he goes and makes up a new profile with a silly pseudonym and tries once again to "friend" me.

I don't believe this is a friendly or even an innocent gesture. He didn't send a message saying, "Hi, Dr. Bluestocking! I hope you're doing OK. I am sorry for what an insane asshole I was, but I'm getting the professional help I need and now I hope we can be friends."

No, he just thinks that.... Well, god only knows what he thinks. Perhaps he knows that the only way I will ever think of him is if he intrudes on my life like this. Perhaps he imagines he will find something titillating or satisfyingly upsetting or potentially useful through being able to see who my friends are or where I am or what I'm doing. Who can say. I don't know what's going on in that disordered brain.

But it's pathetic and sad. I will admit, I feel sorrier for the guy now than I ever did when he was in my class. I really do help his family is finally able to see how much help this guy needs, and they're taking the steps to see he gets it.

Random Fact About Me #8

2008-11-19T11:37:00.002-07:00

I talk to myself, and I don't trust anyone who says they don't. Either they really do talk to themselves but are too cowardly to admit it, or they don't talk to themselves, which suggests they don't really have anything to say. Why should anyone else talk to you if you aren't thinking thought interesting enough to capture your own attention and engage you in a conversation?

FLIP MONSON, FETCH THE TWELVE

2008-11-09T11:00:00.001-07:00

That was written on a sign I saw at a rally in Salt Lake City on Friday, November 7, protesting the Mormon church's huge financial efforts to pass Prop 8 in California, amending the CA constitution to ban gay marriage.

If you're Mormon, you'll know what it means. In case you're not, I'll explain it.

"Flip" and "fetch" are both euphemisms for THE f-word as expletive, but not the f-word as verb. If you're Mormon and you want to talk about sex, you wouldn't say, for instance, "I saw two dogs flipping." Or, "Mormon newlyweds are often so sexually ignorant that they can't figure out how to fetch." It just sounds silly.

But you would say, in order to remain unsullied by profanity but still convey a certain intensity, "I am so flippin' angry," or "That idea is really fetchin' stupid," or even, "What a firetruckin' mess."

The current president of the Mormon church is a pompous blowhard named Thomas Monson. He's ridiculously vain about his looks (seriously, the guy is UGLY) and not nearly as smart as he thinks he is. He became prophet by achieving seniority in "the quorum of the twelve apostles," the dozen old men who, along with the president, govern the Mormon church.

So the statement "FLIP MONSON, FETCH THE TWELVE" is a clever way of saying what I want to say now:

FUCK THE HIERARCHY OF THE MORMON CHURCH.

Ralph Nader Can Kiss My Ass

2008-11-05T14:43:00.002-07:00

In 2000, I had all these friends in the Green Party who were always going on and on about how great Ralph Nader is, and how there was no difference at all between Republicans and Democrats. I tried to say that there was a lot of difference--I should know, having been a Republican most of my life. "It's because you used to be a Republican that you can't see how liberal Democrats AREN'T," my friends would tell me.

"That may be," I'd reply. "But that doesn't mean there's no difference between Democrats and Republicans."

"But most of the legislation that gets enacted in this country reflects a very narrow ideological view," they'd say.

"But that doesn't necessarily mean the parties are the same," I said. "That has something to do with the compromises that have to be when you have two different parties arguing about the direction the country should take."

And I remember one barbecue where this guy was going on and on about how Nader was our only hope, blah blah blah, and we had to vote for him, because really, it wouldn't make any difference if a Republican or a Democrat was in the White House. "We should just give this election to the conservatives," he said. "What's the worst that could happen?"

What's the worst that could happen, indeed.

And then Ralph Nader goes and says this:

You're a pathetic old irrelevancy, Ralph. Fuck you.

PRESIDENT OBAMA

2008-11-04T21:10:00.001-07:00

9 p.m. Mountain Standard Time. MSNBC calls the presidential race for Obama.

We did it. We elected the right guy.

For the first time this millennium, I am actually proud of my country.

He Loves America That Much

2008-11-04T13:39:00.001-07:00

One More Reason Not to Join Facebook

2008-02-11T12:32:00.001-07:00

Lately I have encountered many articles on why Facebook is bad. One detailed the fact that Facebook claims the right to share your info with the CIA. Another discusses how hard it is to break free. I pay attention to all this stuff, and frankly wish I had read it sooner.

Not that I jumped on the Facebook bandwagon early. And it might seem silly for a blogger to worry about Facebook--the information there is banal and minimal compared to what I’ve revealed elsewhere. But the fact of the matter is, I have greater control over what goes up here and how long it stays up.... I don’t know. Something about Facebook's commandeering of my personal information creeps me out. Plus I get annoyed when people who have my email address communicate with me through Facebook, necessitating all this extra clicking and so forth to read and reply to said message, instead of just emailing me.

But a few months ago I did sign up for Facebook. I still have a Friendster profile, though I do nothing with it.... I briefly was on Myspace but it was too young and frenetic for me. Facebook seemed OK, and I actually spent a lot of time adding stuff to my profile--mostly titles of books I’d read and so forth.

Something else that really annoys me about Facebook is its insistent use of the plural pronoun “their” to refer to a single person, as in “John Doe has added The Fountainhead to their bookshelf.” Surely the site has access to software that can plug in the appropriate pronoun, so that John Doe can put things on HIS bookshelf and Jane Roe can write something on HER wall.

I have avoided the whole networks aspect of Facebook, though people have told me that’s what they like best about it. But there are people in various networks that I’d just as soon not share my profile with, and this story is a case in point.

A few weeks ago I got an email informing me that someone had added me as his--make that “their”--Facebook friend. The name was familiar, but it took me a moment to place it precisely: It belonged to a highly contentious, very demanding student who’d been in my class two years ago. When the semester began, he did solid B work but thought he deserved A’s, and he refused to accept my explanations for why his work did not meet my criteria for A work. As the semester progressed, his work deteriorated; he failed to turn in two papers, and was outraged when I informed him that he would receive a 0 rather than a mere F for those papers–he wanted a grade of 55% for work he hadn’t even done. He complained to administrators about me, blah blah blah, which gave me the opportunity to show others what sort of work this person had done in my class–and the grades I awarded were upheld.

I admit I was glad when this person disappeared from my classroom and my life. But I didn’t much think about him after that--I didn’t waste time wishing his life would suck or that we’d get over our differences and become buddies. In fact, unless I was confronted by his existence by running to him on campus or some such thing, I didn’t think about him at all.

And then, he goes and adds me as a friend on Facebook. I can only speculate as to his motives; I’m guessing that he wants as many “friends” as he can have and is indiscriminate about how they are. I, however, am quite discriminating about my friends and would rather have a few really dear, genuine friends than a multitude of people I call friends but never actually interact with. So needless to say, I refused his request to be his “friend” and that has been the end of that.

In general I like my students and feel knowing them has enriched my life, some significantly, some not so much. But there are darn few I want to be “friends” with; I just want to be “friendly” with them--you know, polite and pleasant when I run into them, but without the pretense that we’ll actually stay involved in each other’s lives or invite each other over for coffee or something. Admittedly a few students have morphed into friends, but they’re rare. Most of them, I’m content to pass out of their lives and let them pass out of mine. And I don’t want to give them updates, via Facebook or any other networking site, as to what I’m doing. If they want that sort of information, let them do the work of tracking down my blog(s) and reading entries from time to time.

Textual Analysis

2007-09-18T11:18:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I walked into my house and heard my cell phone make the little tinkling jingle it trills repeatedly when I have an unread text message. “Oh, shit,” I muttered as I picked up the phone, thinking that it was probably a wrong number, because few of my friends ever text-message me, and I’ve told the few who have that I don’t like the form of communication in the slightest. (There are all kinds of reasons, including the fact that I have better things to do with my thumb and hate all the cutesy abbreviations.) I didn’t know whether to be annoyed that I was getting a message from and intended for someone I didn’t know, or relieved that at least this annoyance hadn’t come from someone who actually claimed to be my friend.

But wouldn’t you know, when I checked the message, it was indeed from a friend. The message began, “I know you don’t like text messages, but....” and it went on at length from there, though the gist of it can be summed up as “I wanted you to know I’m thinking of you.”

I know you don’t like text messages, but.

This guy does indeed know I don’t like text messages, because we’ve been through this before--several times. It started out with my saying, “I don’t really like text messages,” then saying, “I really don’t like text messages,” then saying, “Not only do I dislike the basic form of communication, but the whole thing is even more annoying because I have to pay extra for every lousy unwanted text message I receive,” before finally informing him (via email, in my response to this most recent text message), “Never text message me again unless your avowed intention is to make me so angry that I refuse all contact with you for a good two weeks.”

I haven’t heard back from the guy, but I’m sure he’ll be very hurt and think I’ve over-reacted. But I’m angrier than I can say that 1) he not only does something he knows I don’t like, 2) he does it as part of something he expects me to be happy about: a message telling me that he’s thinking of me, even though that thinking of me involves no thoughtfulness, no attention to my explicit and unequivocal statements about my preferences in the matter.

I wouldn’t be so angry if this were an isolated incident, but the guy has a long habit of saying, “I know you don’t like what I’m about to do, but I’m going to do it anyway,” before embarking on some action he really expects me to be happy and/or grateful about. Two significant examples are his way of telling me stuff he already knows I already know, as if I’ve never heard or thought of the idea myself; and more importantly and offensively, giving me really shitty unsolicited advice, even though he knows that I HATE and RESENT unsolicited advice because it’s almost always a condescending, worthless suggestion to do something that is either completely inappropriate or else something I’ve already considered and in some cases already tried and discovered doesn’t work. Not only that, but I find it hard not to despise and contemn people who insist on dispensing such worthless advice.

And the whole “I know you don’t like what I’m about to do” part--is it an insincere disclaimer, a way of letting me know he doesn’t approve of my disapproval? I think more likely it’s a way of trying to prevent me from getting upset, to essentially withdraw my right or opportunity to express any displeasure I might feel by expressing it for me right off the bat. I don’t know what he’s thinking when he says that, but I do know that the fact that he does it so often makes the whole proposition intellectually and emotionally dishonest. It makes it clear that it's all about him, that the point is for him to do things for me that make HIM feel good--offer crappy facile advice, so he gets to feel proactive and wise, or say "hi" in a way he's fine with but I hate--rather than doing things for me that make ME feel good.

Last week I went to this presentation on the gender inflections of communication styles. Since men control most of the discourse, men tend to expect women to adapt to their way of communicating, rather than attempting to understand and become fluent in female forms of communication. Perhaps that’s part of what’s going on in this situation: this guy just expects me to get used to the fact that he wants me to be happy about his reliance on media and actions that really upset me, and to accommodate him. But that ain’t gonna happen. And I’ve already mastered one traditionally male form of communication: a flat command. So I’m telling the whole world: NEVER TEXT MESSAGE ME AGAIN.

Get Your Own Blog

2007-09-12T08:14:00.000-06:00

Given that I have another blog where I post with some frequency, and given how seldom I post here, and given how far I've strayed from this blog's mission statement (most of what I post is true, but little of it is dangerous), you may wonder, why do I still make any effort to maintain it? Why do I ever post anything here at all?

Well, there are a couple of reasons. One is that I really like the name (which comes from the Poe song "Not a Virgin"--she sings, "Tell me something dangerous and true," and it's a sentiment I like) and another is that I really like the banner: the painting is "Venus Verticordia" by Dante Gabriel Rosetti, one of the founders of the Pre-Raphael Brotherhood, and I have been an ardent fan of the Pre-Raphaelites ever since I saw an exhibit of their work at the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain) in 1984. (I actually saw the exhibit three times. I couldn't stay away. I even paid to see it, which was a big deal because I was a poor college students and most other museums in Britain were free. I also bought the exhibit catalogue, which is how I looked up the title of the Rosetti painting.)

But another reason is that it's a place where I can post links and photos and rants without disturbing anyone unless they want to be disturbed. As almost no one reads this blog, I don't have to worry about upsetting or inconveniencing very many people here. And I wish more of my friends would follow my lead, and acquire a blog where they publish links and photos and rants that people can visit and view as their schedules and their moods allow--or not.

See, I have friends whose email correspondence with me consists almost entirely of forwards: forwards of political commentary designed to alert me to what the opposite side of the political spectrum thinks. Forwards of photos of children who went missing thousands of miles from where I live. Forwards of thoroughly familiar statements by Nazi officials on how to get a country to go to war. Forwards of amusing cartoons. Once, back in the days when I had dial-up, someone even sent me a movie, which mucked up my email for hours.

And then I have other friends who send me interesting stuff, but I'd just as soon read it on their blogs and keep it out of my mailbox.

I'm not saying I want people to stop sending me interesting new articles or cool links. Just yesterday a friend sent me a link so wacky I had to blog about it on my other blog. But I am saying I want people to be WAY MORE SELECTIVE about what they do send.

If you regularly forward stuff to most of the people in your address book, you need a blog! If you forward something virtually every day to one or two people, you STILL need a blog! Get your own damn blog, and install the links you want people to visit along with a brief message about why this is worth someone else's time! Take some time to digest and comment on the long news stories you forward!

In other words, keep this shit (even if it's not really shit) out of my inbox unless you KNOW, with the calm, comforting certainty provided by revelation from the Holy Ghost, that it's something I'm A) unlikely to see on my own and B)vitally interested in! (A good rule of thumb: If I like the email you sent well enough to post a blog entry of my own about it, your judgment is sound.) The rest of the time, let me visit YOUR BLOG and see what you're thinking about and reading, instead of forcing this stuff on me.

Sheesh.

Really. Bloggers are so much more considerate than plain old emailers. I'm glad I joined the ranks of the former and stopped being one of the latter.

You Haven't Heard from Me in Two Years; Now Please Fix My Life

2007-08-06T09:11:00.000-06:00

I just got the most annoying email from a former student. It reads:

Greetings, Dear Dr. Bluestocking,

I'm hoping you remember me. Also, I can hope that this is still your email address. So how are things? Getting ready for the new semester I'm sure. I miss all that shit. Well, sometimes anyway. I hope all is well.
I'm writing to ask for some advice. I am now 26, still unpublished, although I've never tried, currently unemployed as of four days ago, and I'm feeling as though I'm right on the verge of losing whatever potential I may have had. I think I'm asking if you've got any suggestions. Maybe a job, maybe a publisher, an agent. Maybe something else entirely. Until then I'll just play the lottery. Or something like that.

What am I supposed to do with that? I had suggestions when the kid was in my class, when it was my job to give him suggestions, and he chose not to take them. Now he has a crisis and he writes to me so I can find him "a job, a publisher, an agent"?

I don't think so.

My New Favorite Word

2007-06-29T11:38:00.000-06:00

Thanks to the "word a day" newsletter from Wordsmith, I have a new favorite word: ataraxia, meaning "a state of freedom from disturbance of mind."

I realize this blog doesn't get many comments, because, after all, I don't post much. But hey, if you would like to leave a comment here using "ataraxia" in a sentence, that would be way wicked cool.

Career Goals

2007-06-13T10:03:00.001-06:00

The other day, I suddenly realized that what I really want to be when I grow up is a dowager. I'd prefer the second definition given here but would settle for the first.

Thank You Very Mulch

2007-06-05T15:50:00.000-06:00

Or, Look Ma, No Weeds!

To borrow from what Dorothy Parker said about writing: I hate mulching. I love having mulched.

If you don't garden, you won't know the important part in this photo is the stuff on the ground--the shredded plant material that prevents seeds from sprouting where you don't want them. I hate spreading mulch, I really do, but I admit that it beats weeding your garden over and over and OVER.

Once in a Blue Moon

2007-05-31T20:35:00.000-06:00

Tonight is a blue moon, which means (according to the modern definition) that the moon is full for the second time in one calendar month.

Blue moons can't occur in lunar calendars, because a new month starts every 28 or 29 days, usually tied either to the new moon (meaning it never rises) or the full moon (everyone knows what that means). But in our calendar, with its months of 30 and 31 days, blue moons can occur from time to time--on average, about every two and a half years. Which means they're rare, but not as rare as Leap Year.

Still, "once in a blue moon" is indeed a more poetic and interesting way of saying something's uncommon than "once every leap year," in part because leap years occur at regular, well-known intervals, while the average lay-person would have no way of saying definitely when the next blue moon would occur--and indeed, this blue moon, which is in May where I live, might occur in June somewhere else.

Tonight's blue moon is in Sagittarius, which is my sun and moon sign, so I'm taking this as a time of great power for me. I might even do something to celebrate.

WTF

2007-01-30T20:09:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I look at my life and say, this is what I'm doing with my portion of consciousness? This is what I'm fucking doing with my portion of consciousness?

Jesus Fucking Christ, this is fucking fucked up.

Hauling out the Big Guns

2007-01-29T06:36:00.000-07:00

Every time I take an on-line quiz, I ask myself, "Why do I take on-line quizzes?" If there were a quiz that could tell me that, I'd be truly grateful.

I just took the book quiz, which I found through The Passion of the Dale (indeed, PotD has helped me find so much) and it informed me that

You're The Guns of August!

by Barbara Tuchman

Though you're interested in war, what you really want to know is what causes war. You're out to expose imperialism, militarism, and nationalism for what they really are. Nevertheless, you're always living in the past and have a hard time dealing with what's going on today. You're also far more focused on Europe than anywhere else in the world. A fitting motto for you might be "Guns do kill, but so can diplomats."

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Now, I actually really like The Guns of August, I think it's a fabulous book. But I don't know how, after asking me only half a dozen questions, they'd arrive at the opinion that out of all the books ever written, this is the one that most aptly summarizes my personality.

Wankers.

Random Fact about Me #7

2007-01-27T06:24:00.000-07:00

I hate, hate, hate, hate, HATE, with the fiery burning of a thousand angry suns, the dreadful, wretched task of mowing my lawn.

However, I sort of don't mind shoveling snow off my driveway and sidewalk. I'm not saying I LOVE it, mind you, so don't come along and think you're being all clever when you volunteer to let me shovel yours. But I sort of enjoy seeing how the snow behaves when you push it along.... I've lived with substantial snowfall for well over a decade, but I still find it a fascinating substance.

Driving in it, however, is another matter entirely. I once lived in a place city that just didn't own enough snowplows or hire enough drivers for the ones they had. That really sucked.

Three--Make that Four--Good Things

2007-01-22T07:18:00.000-07:00

Revena at First-Person Narrator recently began taking some advice her mother gave her--her mother said she'd read some study that suggested that people who think of three good things about themselves each night before going to bed have better mental health and self-esteem or some such thing. (I'm paraphrasing Revena here--she too was a little fuzzy on the details--the important thing is the exercise itself.) Anyway, Revena tried it, so I'm trying it too. I figure I might as well, especially since I haven't done a damn thing with this blog in MONTHS.

So. Here are the good things I thought about myself in relation to yesterday, just before I went to bed.

1. I exercised, thoroughly. Not only did I bundle up and go for a vigorous long walk even though it was 25 F out, I did yoga for an hour, including some poses I hate and find really hard.
2. I didn't eat ANY chocolate. (I ate caramels instead. But still, most days, I eat SOME chocolate.)
3. I got all my prep work for the coming week finished before 3 p.m. on Sunday.
4. I wrote a poem last night--a serious one I think might be good enough to send out.

OK, that's four things. But yesterday was a productive day so I'm going to go with four while I've got them, to make up for some day when I can only think of two.

Where Were the Credits?

2006-10-28T09:44:00.000-06:00

Early this morning I had one of those bizarre before-waking dreams that make you doubt your own sanity and would make you doubt the sanity of the world if you didn't already know it was nuts.

I dreamed a movie--I know it was a movie because I wasn't in it and movie stars were, a fact I noticed even as I was dreaming. "Hey!" one part of my mind said to itself. "I'm not even in this dream! But movies stars are! I must be dreaming a movie! How interesting and artistic of me!" And then I went on to observe with horror the movie that unfolded.

The star with top billing was Drew Barrymore, and her character was supposed to charmingly kooky. The cast also included Jennifer Anniston and Kevin Bacon, and the plot centered on the discoveries by Barrymore and Anniston that they were each carrying Bacon's child. Barrymore dealt with it better than Anniston, whose character was supposed to be frighteningly psychotic.

There was a scene where Barrymore had to hide from Anniston in a very scary cobwebby, duct-filled basement, and another where Anniston chased Barrymore through the stands of some college football stadium while a game was in play--I didn't much care for the events of that scene but I was impressed by the camera work, which involved one of those extreme long shots filmed by a helicopter flying over the brightly lit stadium, filled with cheering extras pretending to be fans.

Having knocked both women up, Bacon didn't do much but stand around and make people wonder how he was still able to get two attractive women to sleep with him, or why, having done so, the women would be willing to carry his child to term.

That is all I remember of the dream--or rather, it's as much as I care to remember. I don't even know how it ended, so I can't tell you.

No Neighbors Make Good Neighbors

2006-09-27T10:53:00.000-06:00

I am pretty sure I stole that title from Dale, though I can't find the specific post where he says that.

Monday my next-door neighbor, who always listens to country music, which I generally loathe, turned her radio up REALLY LOUD, set a ladder against her house, climbed up to her roof, lay down on it, and started yelling at the guy across the street about how cool it was to be up there.

Sometimes I really hate living within a mile of anyone else.

Why It's Cool to Have Friends Who Used to Tend Bar

2006-09-24T19:46:00.000-06:00

I used to think I liked tequila.

Then I met someone who convinced me that I should spend the outrageous sum of eleven bucks for a single shot of something called herradura.

And that's when I realized that I REALLY like tequila.

The Difference a Couple of Commas Make

2006-09-15T08:01:00.000-06:00

A student recently turned in an exercise containing the following bit of inadequately punctuated dialogue:

"Why fuck guys, it's so cold my nipples are never gonna unharden."

It is a very different statement from the one she intended to make, which was this:

"Why, fuck, guys, it's so cold my nipples are never gonna unharden."

For that matter, you also get a different effect when you write "Why, fuck guys" or "Why fuck, guys."

A good many students arrive in my class already knowing how to use commas, which is what you hope for college students majoring in creative writing or English. For the ones who don't, I sometimes despair of persuading them that they must develop the ability to make what they intend to write match what they actually do write. But examples like this, which are funny and potentially embarrassing, help.

And I don't remember what part of speech the "guys" is there, but when you say someone's name, you need to offset it with a comma as well. There's a big difference between "I don't know Bored Dominatrix" and "I don't know, Bored Dominatrix," or "Let's eat, Grandma" and "Let's eat Grandma."

It's a constant struggle to convince some of them that this matters in the first place, or convince them that once they learn the rules, they need to proofread their work before they give it to me to read. I do what I can to explain the concepts, like I singing what I remember of the Interjection song from School House Rock to help them understand why "fuck" should be off-set by commas. I also have an extended analogy I came up with in which I compare typos to boogers--like commas, they're just little things, those slimy bits of nose mucus, not nearly as offensive as turds! Nonetheless, you're supposed to keep your own out of other people's sight as much as possible. It's not OK to sneeze and let the contents of your nose go any and everywhere, and it's not OK to fail to proofread your work.

Emily Dickinson's First (Discarded) Draft

2006-09-12T23:05:00.000-06:00

This is my letter to the world
That never wrote to me--
and it goes,
"Fuck you, World!"

Toes

2006-09-02T15:49:00.000-06:00

Once, long ago, I promised a picture of my freshly pedicured toes. Here they are, though not wearing the fore-mentioned shade Grass Stain.

If Dale Tells You to Watch a Movie, Do It

2006-08-25T20:47:00.001-06:00

My most recent post on G2S was about watching a movie Dale recommended.... And now I'm writing here about watching a movie Dale recommended.

I just saw Kathy Griffin's stand-up dvd Allegedly, all because Dale recommended it for the way she rags on Gwyneth (and a whole bunch of other people too). I freakin' loved it! I realize this is kind of second-hand--it's not like I can claim to have "discovered" this movie on my own--but if you like really witty, incisive observations and smack-downs of snotty celebrities delivered by a smart "D-list" celebrity who is only a little bit bitter that she's not the revered diva she deserves to be, then you will thoroughly enjoy the 85 minutes it takes to watch this dvd.

Bowie: "Life on Mars," or E Costello: "Veronica"

2006-08-21T10:33:00.000-06:00

Couldn't decide on the best title....

Anyway, the important thing is that SEASON II OF VERONICA MARS IS RELEASED ON DVD TOMORROW! How fervently, how feverishly, how anxiously I have been waiting for the day to arrive! I will be at Best Buy bright and early (well, right after another trip to the physical therapist, because although my hip was all better before I went to Utah, sitting on the plane fucked it back up) to pick up my very own copy.... and then I'll be heading home to sit on my loveseat, work on my knitting (yes, I'm getting ready to blog about that) and watch as many episodes in a row as I can stand before my eyes fall out.

Favorite Fluff Daughter

2006-08-07T07:47:00.000-06:00

I have a finicky, fluffy, black and white, high-maintenance cat, Dinah, who likes a lot of company and who likes to licks the gravy off canned cat food but rarely eats the meat. And I have a very nice neighbor who comes to my house when I go away, feeds Dinah, turns on my stereo, then hangs out for a while and plays with her. And I have refrigerator magnet poetry, with which he composes messages to me about said cat. Here's one of my favorites:

favorite fluff daughter
always be happy
little rock symphony played
singing like ships through trips
she licked meat
and cherished friend
our never shave whiskers

Sword Lily

2006-08-03T14:15:00.000-06:00

I totally dig gladioluses, which have been blooming recently in my garden. They are also known as "sword lilies," by the way--the "gladi" in the root of the word is the same as the root in "gladiator." Isn't that fascinating?

I tried to upload a photo of a gladiolus here, in case you don't know what they look like, but the technology is currently beyond my grasp. Yeah, I'm an idiot. Here's a link to one instead.

Random Fact about Me #6

2006-08-01T01:02:00.001-06:00

I LOATHE both canteloupe and honeydew.

Random Fact about Me #5

2006-07-26T06:05:00.001-06:00

I really sort of like ironing, in small doses and at reasonably spaced intervals. Every few weeks I set my ironing board up in my living room, put a movie in the dvd player, and iron any recently washed items that might need pressing. It's not hard labor and the results are satisfying and useful: nice, crisp clothes!

Random Fact about Me #4

2006-07-23T08:53:00.001-06:00

I eat whatever I want for breakfast, whenever I am so moved (one of the benefits of not having to be at work until after noon), including chocolate cake with fudge sauce or a grilled cheese sandwich. Today I had leftover blueberry crumble. Yesterday I developed a hankering for black beans and rice, so I whipped up a batch, at 9:30 in the morning.

Boob Job

2006-07-20T17:36:00.000-06:00

I just had a mammogram--the second of my life. I understand that the procedure is necessary, an important screening tool for a deadly disease, but good god, it's weird! There's something about having your breast tissue pulled away from the wall of your chest and squeezed between slabs of plastic that just somehow makes them not breasts anymore: while you're standing there holding your breath so the technician can x-ray those things on your chest, those things on your chest are well and truly boobs.

A Shy Bald Buddhist

2006-07-19T10:14:00.000-06:00

Just as Mellowlee predicted in the comments to my post about my freak dancing accident, I have bursitis in my hip, a nasty but temporary inflamation of the bursa. What's a bursa, you're asking? Well, it's this little pad of fat that sits over your hip joint and protects the muscles in and around your hip--if the bursa wasn't there, by the time you were 25, the friction of bone against muscle every time you took a step would have sawn every last muscle around that joint right in two, and we'd all be crippled.

Doctors and such don't know why something can upset and inflame a bursa, but sometimes something does. And when a bursa gets upset, it can get REALLY freakin' upset.

Yesterday, after reading a few blogs and commenting here, I went to eat breakfast. I was suffering simultaneously from great hunger and a lack of appetite: my stomach was as empty as a promise from George Bush, but all I felt when I thought of eating most things was mild revulsion. I finally made a bowl of oatmeal but could hardly choke it down. I thought, "What's going on? I don't have food poisoning again. I didn't drink last night, so I'm not hung over. What's wrong?" And at that point I realized that I was nauseated by pain. And I decided that if something hurt badly enough to prevent me from eating, I might want to discuss the matter with a medical professional. So I called my doctor's office, spoke to a nurse who scheduled me an appointment a few hours later, and then I burst into tears.

People whose jobs involve hurting me--massage therapists, orthodontists, etc--have often commented on how remarkably high is my tolerance for pain. Although I was not stoic enough to satisfy my mother, I was still more stoic than most other kids. I am really good at telling myself that although something is so painful it's darn near debilitating, the solution is to just buck up and bear it. Unless a particular pain A) is completely mysterious in origin or B) seems to indicate some acute condition with far-reaching consequences (say, for instance, that I had pain and tingling down my left arm and thought I might be getting ready to have a heart attack) or C), is, to quote "Stop Me If You Think That You've Heard This One Before" by the Smiths, "enough to make a shy, bald Buddhist reflect and plan a mass murder," I usually try to live with it, especially if I know it will pass if I just wait long enough.

But there are times when I am forced to relinquish my stoicism and admit that something hurts too much even for me, and that I am scared. There's this book I keep trying to read but have never managed to finish, called The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry–it's all about torture and pain and the way that pain "unmakes" us. (I've never finished it because it just upsets me too much. Reading accounts of other people's pain sometimes bothers me more than experiencing my own pain, because I can do things to manage my own pain, and I know it rather than imagine it. There's a purity to how I experience it that doesn't happen when I read about someone else in pain: when I read about or watch a movie in which someone is in agony, I sort of feel it in my own body, but I feel it outside of my body too. I don't quite know how to explain it. But it's why I can't watch slasher movies and the like.) Being sick, being in pain, brings you right back into your body and reminds you how much your body IS you, not something separate from your consciousness or soul. It's an interesting moment.

This is not at all the post I intended to write. I was mostly just going to say that the doctor figured I had bursitis, and prescribed x-rays, physical therapy and lots of ibuprofen. I was also going to say that I was lucky enough to walk into the physical therapist's office (he's right next door to the doctor) at just the moment when he'd had a cancellation, so he did some diagnostic stuff, then gave me some very simple exercises to help heal the injury, and hooked me up to some machine that stimulated my muscles so they'd expel liquid and regenerate more quickly etc etc–it was uncomfortable but as I say I'm stoic and the one kind of pain I always make myself endure is the therapeutic kind.

And I'm much better today. That's the main thing I was going to say.

Hippy Hippy Shake

2006-07-17T11:47:00.000-06:00

I used to know this guy who injured himself in what I mockingly termed "a freak standing accident." He was just standing there, then he shifted his weight, and then he both felt and heard a big POP in his hip joint, and then his hip was fucked up for, like, a long time.

Well.

Friday night I went to a party featuring lots of alcohol and 80s dance music, one of my favorite combinations. (It was billed as a Bastille Day party, but no one stormed anything and no revolution took place.) I was the first person to start dancing, and as is my wont, I danced with enthusiasm and much tossing of the head and shaking of the hips. (I did not do a solo interpretive dance to "Bohemian Rhapsody," but that was only because they didn't have the song.) But there was a point where I both felt and heard a big POP in my left hip, and then I felt some pain, but I kept dancing, soldiering on as any dedicated dancer would, even though I limped later in the evening.

The next day I had a killer hangover, which was bad enough, but as for my hip--how shall I say this--well, it REALLY FUCKING HURT. Walking was extremely painful, and I did it so ungracefully that I felt I should have a cane in one hand and a tube of Ben-Gay in the other. If I lay on my back or stood perfectly still, the pain lessened somewhat, but I wouldn't say either position was exactly comfortable.

I became convinced I tore a tendon or ligament or some such thing, which really surprises me, because I have danced for 42 years without injury. (And no, I didn't go to the doctor, because I know what doctors tell you to do with injuries like that: they tell you to stay off them. It's like when I broke a rib and went to the emergency room and the doctor said, "Oh, you broke a rib; try not to put any strain on it and it will heal in a month or two." Thanks, Doc!) I finally started icing the whole area and that seemed to help--I still limp today, but I don't look quite so much like an elderly woman with really great fashion sense and good hair. Also I can stand all the way up without wincing. But having injured my hip in a freak dancing accident, I will never again mock someone who injured his hip in a freak standing accident. I guess those little balls and sockets take a lot of pressure, and sometimes, they just give.

Random Fact about Me #3

2006-07-11T08:40:00.000-06:00

I am often reluctant to count my chickens even AFTER they've hatched. Let them molt their down, leave off being cute, delicate chicks and become sturdy, stupid, serviceable layers of eggs, and THEN I'll count them. Only then.

Wind and Water

2006-07-06T08:54:00.000-06:00

My stint as a missionary for the Mormon church in Taiwan was--that's right!--among the most miserable 18 months of my life, but it did clarify a few valuable things for me:

1. The Mormon church is not, as it claims, "the only true and living church on the face of the earth"--more accurately, it's a load of horse shit

2. How to eat a pork chop with chopsticks

3. How to pronounce feng shui

I've been thinking about pronunciation of Chinese words lately, because I just read a book with a lot of references to Chinese places, people and ideas, most of which were romanized in Pinyin, the system used on the Mainland and not the system I learned. I learned to speak Mandarin via the Yale system of Romanization, which was designed by Americans to help other Americans learn to speak Mandarin, and is most effective at that task.

When westerners study oral Chinese, the most important thing they must learn is a consistent system for how to pronoun Chinese words in whatever dialect they are going to speak--written Chinese differs only slightly from place to place (Taiwan and the Mainland might occasionally use different vocabulary words, just as England the US do), but variations in pronunciation can be huge--Mandarin (the official language of the Mainland and Taiwan) sounds very different from Cantonese (which is spoken in Hong Kong).

I don't know much about systems for teaching spoken Cantonese, but as far as Mandarin goes, there are several such systems, and some of them are really goofy, the goofiest being Wade-Giles, the system by which Beijing was rendered Peking and Mao Ze Dong became Mao Tse Tung (or, as I would have rendered it in Yale, Mau Dz Dung) and dofu (which means, remarkbly enough, "soy bean curd") became tofu. Chiang Kai Shek, by the way, is a cantonese romanization, one of the few normalized in American usage--the guy himself spoke Mandarin, and would have said his name something more like Jyang Jye Shr.

But all of that is pretty esoteric and arcane, and not truly central to my project, which is to explain how to pronounce feng shui.

Feng shui, in case you don't know, is a mystical approach to architecture and decorating, and stresses that the elements of a space must be in harmony, or the well being of people who hang out there will be endangered. The character transliterated as feng means wind, and the character transliterated as shui means water.

I can live with all kinds of Mandarin mispronunciations that have been standardized into American usage--I used to say "dofu" instead of "tofu," because I never liked dofu when I thought of it as tofu, but I've quit bothering--it's just too fastidious a distinction for most people, and they don't know what I'm talking about.

But feng shui--oh, the ways people mangle that word drive me nuts! It's not "fung shwee"! It's not "fung shoo-ey"!

In Yale, it is romanized feng shwei, which is clearer I think than feng shui but still not ideal for explaining how to say it. So I'll try something else: The vowel is in "feng" is pretty close to the vowel in "phone"--just say "phone" and end it with a dipthong. The vowel in "shui" is a plain old long A, as in "hay." The consonant group is the same as in "Schwinn."

So the clearest way I can think of to romanize feng shui is fong schway. Say it with me, people: fong schway! And correct anyone you hear who says it wrong!

Random Fact about Me #2

2006-07-03T17:17:00.000-06:00

I hate the way an unmade bed makes an entire room look messy, and I make my bed every single morning, very shortly after I get out of it.

Random Fact about Me #1

2006-07-01T10:41:00.000-06:00

I HATE thongs, of both the shoe and the underwear ilk. I don't like little straps of leather riding between my toes, and I don't like little straps of fabric riding up my ass. Men defend the thong to me as sexy, and women defend it as the best way to avoid panty lines. Wrong: the best way to avoid panty lines is to forego panties.

Why Are People So Uninterested in What Disinterested Means?

2006-06-29T19:55:00.000-06:00

This is another one of those really fastidious distinctions, but I am annoyed that most people can't be bothered to use disinterested correctly. The primary definition of disinterested is "free of bias and self-interest; impartial," as in, "the decision should be made by a disinterested third party." But most people use disinterested when they should use uninterested, which means "not interested, indifferent," as in, "he is uninterested in his school work."

The reason behind this problem, I think, is that the noun disinsterest, which means "impartiality," sounds OK, while the noun uninterest sounds really dumb. People want a decent word meaning the opposite of interest in the sense of "His extreme and sudden interest in her is really creepy," and it somehow sounds silly to say, "His profound uninterest in her is really not surprising." It sounds better to say, "His profound disinterest in her is really not surprising"--better, that is, except for the fact that it's technically wrong.

At least, it's wrong right now. Someday, disinterest will come to mean uninterest, all the time, end of story. But that will probably be after I'm dead, and until then, I'm going to use the words correctly.

Read my other complaints about the misuse of language here and here.

What I'm Doing with My Summer Vacation

2006-06-22T16:10:00.000-06:00

This is how bored I was yesterday:

I put on eyeshadow.

Yeah, that's right, and mascara too.

There was no particular reason, except that I had time to put it on and wouldn't see anyone who would notice this deviation from my standard routine.

I can't remember the last time I wore mascara--I think maybe I put some on for some occasion during the 2004-2005 school year but I can't be sure. I've never been someone who had to wear makeup every day, but I wore mascara, eyeliner and lipstick more days than not throughout my mid 20s. Some days I got pretty dolled up: along about 1987, after all, even guys wore makeup, and almost no one went for the natural look--what was the point? You could get teal mascara and lavender eyeliner, both of which look fabulous with a mullet. Fine freakish fun for everyone!

And then I got a job where I had to be up early each morning and didn't give a shit about impressing anyone, and I got out of the habit of coating my eyelashes with what is basically the same stuff used to pave streets. And I sorta discovered I liked not having to remove the crud every night before I went to bed. Lipstick was still fine, because it just wears off normally in the course of the day. But I couldn't be bothered with the other stuff.

Then I started a PhD program in English. PhD programs in the humanities are places were few people wear makeup. Plus it was the joyless 90s--was there a "look" to the 90s? I'm sure I couldn't identify one, but maybe I just wasn't paying attention. Anyway, there came a point when I realized that since I never wore eyeshadow, I should just throw it away--after all, every last fashion magazine insists you can give yourself a horrible infection if you use mascara that's more than six months old, because tight enclosed tubes are perfect breeding grounds for all kinds of icky bacteria: "Applying synthetic chemical concoctions to the most sensitive areas of your body is all fine and good, girls, until someone loses an eye!"

And for, oh, six or seven years, I didn't even own mascara.

And then two years ago I got a really good haircut and realized that looking pretty doesn't suck. And I went out and bought two tubes of mascara: fancy black waterproof something or other and that dependable cosmetic workhorse, Maybelline Great Lash in royal blue. (Yeah, so I still like blue mascara. It matches my eyes. So sue me.) I stroked the stuff onto my eyelashes about four times and forgot about it.

Until yesterday. I was trying to find the right shade of lipstick to match the red dress I was wearing, which necessitated pawing through all my makeup. And there was the poor, neglected tube of Aren't My Lashes Sexy. Realizing that I risk disfigurement by using old mascara, I still figured, What the hell.

And it looked fine. So I thought a little eyeliner wouldn't kill me, either. And then there seemed no reason not to use some eyeshadow, too.

I sorta like the idea of wearing makeup on special occasions, but I don't like how wearing makeup only occasionally announces that an occasion is special. Perhaps this is because people comment on makeup in ways they don't comment on clothes or hair. I really like getting way overdressed. And when I do, people might tell me I look nice, but they don't generally seem surprised, or seem like I don't know that I look better in some fabulous dress, stockings and nice heels than I do in mismatched sports socks and a housedress with juice stains down the front. When I walk into a party wearing party clothes, no one ever says, "Wow, you clean up well! You should wear expensive cocktail dresses and impossibly uncomfortable but still highly flattering shoes more often." But this does not hold true for makeup: Someone generally feels obligated to say, "Wow, don't you look glamorous! You know, you should wear makeup more often. Your eyes are much more dramatic with a little liner around them."

I mean, what am I supposed to say in response to that? Do these people think I'm too stupid to realize that there's a difference in the "before and after" moments of my own personal makeup application? Are they too tactful to say "You look ugly without makeup," or too tactless to care just how inappropriate it is to give unsolicited advice on personal grooming to adult women?

Frankengirl raises this issue with regards to weight, the way people just feel entitled to issue dictums on your appearance. The thing is, I hate unsolicited advice in generally, but I especially hate it when it comes to personal grooming. OK, there are some times when even I feel obligated to say something, like the time one of my friends strolled out of the bathroom in a bar with toilet paper dangling like a tail from the waistband of her jeans, walked up to the jukebox, presented her backside to the view of the entire bar, and started leisurely searching for songs she might enjoy. But actually I would tell a complete stranger if she had toilet paper hanging out of her pants, because however mortifying it is to be told that, it's better than finding it out all by yourself at the end of a long day.

Anyway. Makeup. Boredom. Yeah, highlighting my brow bone helped relieve the boredom yesterday, so I did it again today. And then, this afternoon, I did something I haven't done for 15 years: I bought a swimsuit. I rarely buy swimsuits because I rarely swim; I'm not good at it, I am mildly scared of water deep enough to cover my head, and the chlorine is bad for my hair. Still, even sitting in a jacuzzi (at which I am naturally adept and not the least bit frightened) will wear a swimsuit out after a decade and a half. But now I've got a stylin' new suit, so I just need to remember to pack it next time I'm heading out to a hotel with a hot tub and pool. I guess the same goes for my eye makeup, which I didn't even bring with me on my recent holiday and cruise.

OK, Now I'm REALLY Pissed

2006-06-17T14:40:00.000-06:00

As if waking me up early with lots of noise weren't bad enough, the roofers my neighbors hired have committed a much graver sin: today I noticed a piece of metal sticking out of one of my tires. So I went to have it repaired, and learned that not one, not two, but THREE of my tires had roofing nails in them.

This really sucks.

I Just Want to Get This Off My Chest

2006-06-17T08:08:00.000-06:00

To all my friends in the Iowa City Green Party who supported Ralph Nader in 2000 because "It won't make any real difference whether there's a Republican or a Democrat in the White House, because the parties and the candidates are essentially the same, but it might make a lot of difference if the Green Party were to become a stronger third party":

I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO.

Banging While I'm in Bed

2006-06-16T08:25:00.000-06:00

One of the good things about being single and having summers off is that I can keep whatever schedule I damn well please, which right now means staying up until 2 a.m. doing nothing in particular. Staying up that late should mean that I sleep in until 10 a.m. as well, but unfortunately my neighbors decided to get a new roof and forgot to check with me about scheduling this procedure. Workmen arrive at 7 a.m. and start banging away with hammers while I'm still trying to sleep. I was out of town for over two weeks; any decent neighbor would have gotten their noisy new roof while I was away and had everything back to quiet normalcy before I returned.

Sometimes Technology Really Does Make Everyone's Life Easier

2006-05-31T11:22:00.000-06:00

I recently called a good friend of mine. When her partner answered the phone, I asked to speak to my friend. Her partner then said, not all that politely, "She's unavailable. Who's calling?"

And of course I didn't want to antagonize anyone, so I very politely identified myself and explained why I was calling. And as this partner knew me slightly, he was somewhat mollified, and said he'd pass on a message that I'd called.

But what I wanted to say was, "Just fucking get fucking caller ID and then when the fucking phone rings you'll fucking know who's fucking calling and won't have to fucking ask like a fucking fuckwit, so fucking there, you fucking fuck."

Maybe next time, if the message isn't urgent, I will.

Why You Shouldn't Consider Church Manuals Scripture

2006-05-19T12:44:00.000-06:00

If you are or ever were Mormon, you'll get this.

Today I Saw a "Rick Santorum 2006" Bumper Sticker on a Hummer

2006-05-17T10:41:00.000-06:00

Sometimes I really fucking hate where I live.

Carnival of Feminist XV

2006-05-17T10:37:00.000-06:00

The 15th Carnival of Feminists is up on my other blog. Please check it out!

Because Even an Atheist Lesbian Feminist Republican Can Have a Sense of Humor

2006-05-15T21:11:00.000-06:00

Contrary to current popular belief, Mary Cheney is not the only well-scrubbed Republican lesbian ever to write her memoirs. Before it was Mary Cheney's turn, it was Florence King's.

Lest you think, "Oh, great, so there's more than ONE selfish, humorless female lackey of patriarchy who likes having sex with women, and wrote a book about it," let me reassure you: Florence King may be selfish, but she's not humorless and while writing for the National Review (as Florence King did for many years) does of course make one a lackey of patriarchy, it's somewhat mitigated by the fact that FK was a hardcore feminist. Oh, and an atheist, too.

King's memoir, Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady, is one of the funniest books I have ever read. It's one of those books you can't read while you're drinking something, because you might reach for you glass and take a sip just before you read a passage that makes you laugh so hard you spray iced coffee all over yourself through your nose.

It's a great book to teach to undergrads, especially if you want to introduce them to gender studies, because a central premise is that femininity is constructed--and that southern ladyhood is a particularly wretched and debilitating form of femininity:

One of the joys of growing up Southern is listening to women argue about whether nervous breakdowns are more feminine than female troubles, or vice versa. They never put it quite that bluntly, but it is precisely what they are arguing about. These two afflictions are the sine qua non of female identity and the Southern woman is not happy unless her family history manifests one or the other. Her preference is dictated by her own personality and physical type. Well-upholstered energetic club women usually opt for female trouble, while languid fine-drawn aristocrats choose nervous breakdowns.

This argument comes, moreover, from the perspective of someone born in 1936 who isn't so much a man-hating separatist as a misanthrope in general: King calls children "watery moles" and readily announces her scorn for the adult versions of both sexes equally.

King herself becomes a feminist without realizing it in high school, when she associates with other intellectually ambitious girls:

If any of us had heard the word "feminist" we would have thought it meant a girl who wore too much makeup, but we were, without knowing it, feminists ourselves, bound together by the freemasonry that exists among intelligent women who know they are intelligent. It is the only kind of female bonding that works, which is why most men do not like intelligent women. They don't mind one female brain if they can enjoy it privately; it's the idea of two or more on the loose that upsets them.

The book has far more to do with gender than with conservative politics, though certainly that aspect appears at times, as when she writes:

A passion for social change was not part of my rebelliousness; I was content to let the world stay exactly as it was, provided I could have special privileges. I wanted to be a token. I saw the situation in individual terms, and I was the individual who mattered.

And yeah, that sentiment is fairly reprehensible, but I find it refreshing to read such a bald, honest admission of what conservative values really are.

King's memoir is also joyously bawdy, full of both hetero and lesbian sex. In college King dates plenty of guys, the first of whom she fails to properly restrain, mostly because she's really horny. Apparently in the 1950s there was a whole set of rules for what could be done on what date, which King fails to follow:

Leaving a party to go neck in a car was permissible on the fourth date, but if matters got out of hand it was called "the girl's fault." Matters got completely out of hand, and it was my fault.

I failed to "draw the line," i.e., I let him touch me "up top." Covered tit was for the fifth date and bare tit was for the sixth date, so when I let him unhook my bra, I was two tits too early.

As for when she falls in love with a woman in graduate school, neither she nor her girlfriend suffers any "coming out trauma":

Our reactions were not unusual. Southern women tend to go to pieces after a homosexual experience and have to be "put away," or else we take it eerily in stride. The middle ground, as in so many other Southern reactions, simply does not exist. In both extremes the joker in the deck is the South's worship of femininity. Viewed through this lens, Lesbianism can emerge as conventional behavior. I doubt there is any other place in the world where eating pussy makes a woman feel like just plain folks.

In case you haven't figured it out by now, I strongly recommend this book. Read it yourself if you haven't already, and if you possibly can, add it to the reading list of a course you teach.

They Hate Almost Everything, and They Want to Make You JUST LIKE THEM

2006-05-11T08:00:00.000-06:00

Gay Prof at Center of Gravitas offers this observation about Mormons:

Maybe this is why I can trust Mormons a bit more than evangelical Protestants. Yeah, Mormonism is just as insidious as other forms of Protestantism. Mormons hate everybody different from themselves. They hate sex. They hate gays. They hate birth control. They hate sheep (Uh -- I think). They hate women. Mormon’s anti-caffeine, anti-liquor stance, though, means I hardly ever encounter their crazy asses. If an eatery doesn’t offer either caffeine or liquor, I’m not showing up. Mormons don't come to my bars and coffee shops and I don't go to their stake houses or temples. We understand and respect each other’s space.

It's true: Mormons hate a lot of things. And they claim they don't want to eradicate these things: tea isn't intrinsically evil, we would tell the good people of Taiwan when I was a Mormon missionary there; it's not a problem that this plant exists. It's just that consuming tea is a sin you must repent of, and swear never to do again--if you want to be a Mormon, which you must be to earn the right to enter heaven.

And the church spends MILLIONS of its own money--and church members spend MILLIONS of their own money as well--to send young people out into the world with the avowed purpose of getting everyone else to hate these things too.

I don't really think that constitutes a reason to trust them.

Unforgivable Sausage Weirdness

2006-05-07T15:33:00.000-06:00

Normally I avoid shopping on Saturday, because so many other people go grocery shopping on Saturday--I hate crowds; I hate busy places; I hate having to wait in lines that take more than about four minutes from my life. But yesterday I was sadly in need of a few items, and I really wanted sushi for lunch (that's right, my grocery store does decent sushi), so I stopped by to buy a Wegmans sushi combo pack, salad, orange juice, marizpan and bubble bath.

The upside of shopping on Saturday is that you're more likely to get free samples, and as I mentioned, if there's free food to be had at my grocery store, I'm willing to take it. I had a bit of arugula salad topped with raspberry vinaigrette and feta; I had a bite of freshly broiled shoulder steak; and then I encountered the middle-aged affable woman, who was handing out pieces of sausage--but not just any sausage: no, this was chicken sausage flavored with blueberries.

Another woman and I accepted the chicken blueberry sausage sample at the same time. We chewed. We looked at each other. I cannot be certain, but the look of consternation in her eyes made me suspect she was thinking what I was thinking: How rude would it be to spit this out? And what else can I eat that will erase this flavor from my mouth? "That's, uh, really, uh, different," the other sampler said to the affable woman offering the samples. She didn't smile when she said it.

"Yes, it is different," the affable woman said, smiling broadly and motioning towards an empty package bearing the product's label. "You can get them with apples too."

I said nothing, just wheeled my cart toward the one cooking station I hadn't visited yet, where a far less affable woman was handing out far superior samples of stir-fried vegetables and grilled chicken with teriyaki sauce. The sauce was sweet and a bit fruity, but did not contain whole blueberries, and for that I was grateful.

Marzipan Is Good

2006-04-30T20:50:00.000-06:00

I am a sucker for grocery-store giveaways and free samples. If someone is offering chunks of papaya speared on toothpicks, or tiny slices of a freshly made hamburger on a cocktail napkin, or braised lamb and dill-adorned sweet potatoes in a little plastic cup (little plastic fork provided so you can eat it without getting your fingers dirty), then hey! I'm in line, and I might even ask for seconds if I think I'm likely to get them.

This past week, for whatever reason, my grocery store has been promoting and offering discounts on foodstuffs imported from Germany, including such exotica as herbal teas of both the chamomile and mint variety. I admit I passed on those products this time around--I like chamomile tea a lot and think mint is OK, but I'd already bought this German brand and found it weak and not special, so why buy it again?

As part of the German foods promotions, an affable middle-aged woman was offering slices of a marzipan pound cake. Marzipan, in case you don't know, is a mixture of ground almonds, confectioner's sugar, egg whites, vanilla, and that's about it. It's good. It can be molded into shapes and eaten on its own, or it can be an ingredient in other things, like pound cake. So this pound cake tasted like almonds.

And it was on sale and I'd eaten some of it for free, so I thought, what the hell, I'll buy a damn pound cake.

The affable woman pointed me to the display where more of these cakes were available to consumers like me. And under these cakes was a pile of more marzipan goodies, not mixed into cakes, just shaped into rolls and coated in chocolate.

And I thought, Hmm. Marzipan. It's been years since I've eaten or thought about marzipan, and maybe now it's time to go all out.

I bought the pound cake, but I also bought the chocolate coated marzipan roll. I didn't check the weight and I already tossed the wrapper, but based on the size and heft I'd guess it was the equivalent of two regular candy bars.

And I ate the whole thing in 24 hours. It was really yummy, and I wish I had another. There's still the pound cake, but it's got all those other ingredients, like flour and eggs and butter. I just want more ground-up almonds and sugar.

Fresh Coat

2006-04-26T10:20:00.000-06:00

Saviour Onassis has posted photos of his bathroom, which he recently painted ultra white. When I talked to him on the phone Sunday afternoon, he was busy painting his kitchen cupboards some shade of black--I don't know if it was ultra black or just black. In any event, we had to sing the chorus of that Stones' song--you know, the one that goes, "I see a red door and I want to paint it black...."

Yeah, yeah.

Anyway, I did some painting myself last weekend: my toenails. Saturday afternoon it was FINALLY warm enough that I could strip off my socks and give my toenails a fresh coat of polish.

I admit I get very lax about pedicures in the winter: it's just too cold to be barefoot long enough for the polish to dry. Plus I like to see how long it takes for the very last bit of polish to come off on its own. Because the last pedicure I gave myself last fall involved this industrial strength black polish with bits of glitter in it, it never did wear all the way off by itself: I had to use nail polish remover to get the last persistent bit before I painted the nails up again on Saturday.

I chose a nice spring color, a pale frosted green the manufacturer calls "grass stain." My toes look great, and if I were any less lazy, I'd post a photo of them. They won't be seeing much sandal action, unfortunately, because the weather has chilled down again and I'm back to wearing socks.

Subject vs. Object

2006-04-17T08:14:00.000-06:00

I hate it--I really hate it--when people can't tell the difference between a subject and an object.

In grammar, a subject acts, and an object is acted upon; in English, we have different pronouns to signify the distinction between those grammatical categories. In other words, "I" is a subject while "me" is an object while "my" shows possession; "we" is a subject while "us" is an object and "our" shows possession. This shifting of pronouns (and nouns) depending on the slot the word fills in a sentence is called declension. (Not all languages bother with all these distinctions. Chinese, for example, does not decline its pronouns in this way: the singular personal pronoun, transcribed as "wo," is always "wo," whether it's a subject or an object; to make the personal pronoun plural, you add a uniform ending to "wo" and have "a bunch of I's," or "we." It makes Chinese grammar very easy to master. What makes Chinese hard to learn is its intricate, elaborate writing system and the fact that it is a tonal language--tones can be very hard for a Westerner to distinguish, memorize and pronounce correctly.)

Very small children often have a problem with the concept of declining pronouns--hence a toddler might see a cookie and declare, "Me want that!" Older people, however, often manage to master the idea--up to a point. People want to sound smart, and they've been told that it sounds smarter to say "he and I" than "him and me"–and certainly that is true if we're talking about subjects: if you informed your listener that "Him and me went to the movie," you'd sound like an illiterate yokel who couldn't find the exit sign after the film. So some people have fallen into the habit of ALWAYS saying "he and I," even though there are times when the phrase "him and me"is exactly what is needed.

Example: "Mom bought an ice cream cone for he and I."

Well!

You wouldn't say, "Mom bought an ice cream cone for I."
You wouldn't say, "Mom bought an ice cream cone for he."

You would say, "Mom bought an ice cream cone for me."
You would say, "Mom bought an ice cream cone for him."

Thus you would say, "Mom bought an ice cream cone for him and me."

The worst violation of this rule was committed by a friend of mine who, when discussing problems in her relationship with her boyfriend, would say, "I'm really worried about Mike and I's relationship."

That's right: Mike and I's relationship. Hearing that made me feel like my brain was a pat of hard, crumbling butter being scraped over burnt toast with a bent knife. In other words, it grated. I'd correct her as gently as a I could--she was, after all, an English major, an aspiring poet who claimed to love nothing in the world (not even Mike) as much as she loved words. Her grotesque abuse of certain words was not the reason we stopped being friends, but I admit that after our falling out, I took comfort in the fact that I'd never have to hear about "Mike and she's relationship" ever again.

In a Pickle without Pickle

2006-04-08T17:04:00.000-06:00

The Korean grocer's where I buy my kimchee (actually, the only Korean grocer's I've found in town) has been closed the last couple of times I've dropped by, with a sign on the door apologizing for the fact that the owners must attend to urgent business. This worries me: first of all, the owners are really nice, and I don't like the idea of some tragedy, great or small, befalling them. Second, how on earth am I going to make kimchee soup if I can't get kimchee?

Some New Additions to My Music Collection

2006-04-05T08:17:00.000-06:00

Yesterday when I went to BestBuy to pick up the new Morrissey album, Ringleader of the Tormentors, I paused to wander through the store and see if there was anything else I should buy. I found a display of "Greatest Hits" album, all for a mere $7.99, and couldn't resist buying a few.

The first one to catch my eye was of course Morrissey's greatest hits, but I already had it, and paid a hell of a lot more than $7.99 for it.... Oh well. I guess it's been worth something to listen to it for all these years.

There were, of course, plenty of "best of" collections in the display I had no desire to own, but four seemed worth forking over the better part of ten bucks for, so I grabbed them and headed to the cashier. And then I came home with five new albums: Morrissey, plus The B-52's Time Capsule, James Taylor's Greatest Hits, The Best of INXS, and, uh, The Very Best of Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

Some commentary:

Morrissey: I'm not going to say anything about Moz's new disk, aside from observing that it looks REALLY cool, all black-plastic vinyl-y appearing. I hope Saviour Onassis and I will review it on Genius to Spare after we've both had a chance to absorb it.

B-52's: I was in high school when the B-52's released their first album in 1979, but I was too busy listening to Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie et al to give a shit about some weird boppy pop band who sang about lobsters. Of course I eventually came to appreciate their genius, but they turned up so often on the radio that I never felt the need to actually pay money for the privilege of listening to them...until now.

James Taylor: I owned Sweet Baby James on vinyl as an undergrad, and liked it a lot. JT has the perfect voice to be sad to. But then I got rid of my vinyl at some point, and never replaced JT...until now.

INXS: Like pretty much everyone with ears and a sense of rhythm, in the mid 1980s I went absolutely NUTS over "What You Need," the first song on Listen Like Thieves. I bought LTT as a casette....what crap casettes were. I loved the album, but when the tape died, I never bothered to get more INXS, partly because they never released another album I liked as well as LLT. I wasn't sure I did the right thing in buying this greatest hits collection instead of just buying LLT again, until I put the album on, and then I couldn't believe I'd lived without it. This band fuckin' rocks, and I'm mourning Michael Hutchins all over again!

Emerson, Lake and Palmer: See, I'm just not a huge fan of punk. The whole punk aesthetic was that rock and roll should kind of suck: actually knowing how to play your instruments or understanding anything about music but the most basic chord progressions was seen as a bad thing. Careful engineering was one of the things punks REALLY hated; instead of cool effects like the ones you find on Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, where sound travels from speaker to speaker, a listener should just be hit by a consistent wall of loud, fast noise. And the only instruments allowed were drums, electric bass and electric guitar--no pianos, keyboards, or saxophones, or violins or harps, or anything else--certainly not weird electronic shit or ambient sounds or bells or whistles! Nope, just things you plug in and strum, and things you bang, and yelling, and feedback. And OK, I like loud guitar and I love drums (I wish I'd played the drums in band instead of the clarinet) but I also like keyboards, and saxophones, and stringed instruments besides electric guitar and electric bass.

One of the bands punks hated most was Emerson, Lake and Palmer, with all its electronic keyboard stuff and elaborate producing. I never owned any of their albums (though I owned plenty of Alan Parsons Project, another band loathed by punks, and I still love and will always love Pink Floyd, the uber-evil in punk-lore) but I did like a few of their songs, like "From the Beginning" and "Still...You Turn Me On" and their cover of Copeland's "Fanfare for the Common Man." So I figured, what the hell, I'll pay eight bucks to revisit this part of my adolescence and shoot punk the finger....

and I still like the three songs I liked before, but Jesus, that other ELP shit is annoying! I would start a musical movement in opposition to that nonsense too.

et al, et cetera, et ux

2006-03-15T08:19:00.001-07:00

I just came across a document in which the author used "et al" when he should have used "etc."

This is a mistake common among people who are trying to appear smarter and better educated than they really are, and it annoys the crap out of me. So as a public service, I'm going to explain what these three phrases mean.

et al: this means "and all the others." It's used for lists of people. You see it in bibliographies, as in "Title of Important Book (by Jane Doe, June Smith et al)," and in legal documents, as in "John Smith et al do hereby convey to Jane Doe et al the northeast quarter of the southwest quarter of the northwest quarter of Section 17, township 34, blah blah blah." It's not used for things.

et cetera, abbreviated etc: this means "and all the rest." It's used for things, both tangible and intangible.

et ux: this means "and wife." You see it in old legal documents, as in "John Smith et ux do hereby convey to John Doe et ux all of section 15 blah blah blah." (A funky related word is uxorious, which means "Dotingly or submissively fond of a wife; devotedly attached to a wife.")

Please make a note of this.

Just Wondering

2006-02-11T16:42:00.000-07:00

Um, does this template make my blog look fat?

Why We Should ALL Be Feminists

2006-02-08T09:50:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't seen this post on Shakespeare's Sister about why she is a feminist, you need to. If you haven't already joined the cause and you have any sense, it should make you a feminist too.

What's under your Couch?

2006-02-05T08:59:00.000-07:00

I just learned an upsetting term for dust bunnies: slut's wool.

Five Things Meme

2006-02-03T06:47:00.000-07:00

Instructions: Remove the blog in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up one place. Then add your blog to the bottom slot, like so.

1. Ultimate Writer
2. Golgotha_Tramp
3. FrankenGirl
4. Holly at Self-Portrait as
5. Bored Dominatrix

Next select five people to tag:
1. Saviour Onassis on either While You're On Your Knees or Queerest of the Queer
2. Spike
3. Mr. Chaps
4. Chris
5. Alexi

What were you doing 20 years ago?
Kicking against the pricks

What were you doing 10 years ago?
Kicking against the pricks

What were you doing 1 year ago?
Kicking against the pricks (it's hard to avoid, since the pricks are usually in charge)

Five snacks you enjoy:
1. hot tamales
2. Cypress Grove Purple Haze Chevre, and a nice fresh loaf of crusty French bread
3. guacamole
4. popcorn, but ONLY if it has never come within ten feet of a microwave
5. the red chili burros from Mechi's in Safford, Arizona

Five songs to which you know all the lyrics:
1. "Fuck and Run" by Liz Phair
2. "That Day" by Poe
3. "Not a Virgin" by Poe
4. "Good Person Inside" by Jill Sobule
5. "Express Yourself" by Madonna

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire:
1. Buy a house in Tucson
2. Pay off all my debt
3. Quit my day job and devote myself to writing
4. Start doing yoga again regularly and become certified as a yoga instructor
5. Give money more often and more generously to causes I support

Five bad habits:
1. trying to persuade men who are only marginally interested in me to become more interested
2. trying to figure out why such men aren't more interested in me
3. chastising men who've mistreated me for their bad behavior and trying to get them to apologize, instead of moving the hell on
4. engaging in conversations with assholes who don't respect or trust me
5. revealing more about myself than I should to complete strangers

Five things you like doing:
1. blogging
2. writing
3. research
4. teaching
5. fantasizing about how much writing and research I could get done if only I didn't have to teach

Five things you would never wear again:
1. anything that doesn't look fabulous on me
2. I just like clothes, so I wear lots of different things

Five things that scare you:
1. not getting tenure
2. getting tenure and being stuck in one place for the rest of my career
3. environmental degradation, including but not limited to global warming, pollution, and destruction of rain forests
4. bigotry in general and misogyny in particular
5. the blogosphere, both because it's so public and because I can't resist its appeal

Five favorite toys:
1. my own body
2. my entire book shelf
3. new courses--how can I put a bunch of cool texts and ideas together?
4. textbook order forms--free books!
5. the blogosphere

Asking for It

2006-01-31T09:06:00.000-07:00

OK, I'm going to complain about something else that happened at school.

This semester, two of my classes are lit classes: a senior-level class for English and creative writing majors on contemporary nonfiction prose, and general education class on women's literature.

The majors are reading nine books, and the gen ed students are reading seven. So that I don't DIE under the reading load, I've assigned two of the same books in each class.

One is Through the Narrow Gate by Karen Armstrong. I taught it last year and the students very nearly threw their books at me when I told them we were going to read something about a teenage British nun in the 1960s: "Can't we please read something else? Can't you please substitute another book?" But I stood firm.

"We're going to read this book, and that's that. Besides, I really kind of think you'll like it. The first 50 pages are a bit slow, but it gets better. You'll like it. I really think you might like it."

And lo and behold, when they came to class after the weekend, they said things like, "I couldn't put it down. I started reading it in the bathtub and I just stayed in while the water got colder and colder because I couldn't stop reading." Some of them loved it so much they ran out and bought Armstrong's other books, which have titles like A History of God and Buddha.

But this year, many of my students ain't so happy. They can't see why they should be expected to care about the life of a naive, unhappy religious woman who slowly figures out that becoming a nun was kind of a big mistake. In discussion last week, my class of English and writing majors said things like:

"Well, OK, the nuns training her are really mean to her, but she volunteered to become a nun. They told her she'd be signing a blank check and would have to do everything asked of her, no matter how hard it was, so what did she really expect?"

"Well, OK, it would really suck to be told that you can't read literature because it interferes with your spirituality, but she signed up to become a nun, so obviously she loves God more than she loves literature, so you can't really feel that sorry for her."

"Well, OK, it would be really awful to have someone tell you that you've got to eat cheese even though you're allergic to it and it makes you vomit, all because nuns aren't supposed to pay attention to their bodies, but if she doesn't ask to see a doctor, you can't feel like she's really that worried about it. Maybe she's just gotten used to throwing up."

And then, one kid said, "I haven't read very far, but I don't like this book and I don't like HER. I feel like she's asking us to pity her. I'm sick of it."

And another guy said, "Yeah, she does seem to be asking for pity. I guess what I can't decide is how much we should."

"Well," I said, "think about it in a Christian context, since that's the context of the book. Is there a religious ideal that corresponds to pity?"

The guy shook his head.

"Are you sure?" I asked. "Anyone know of something like this?"

"What's the first and great commandment?" I asked.

"Thou shalt have no other gods before me," someone said.

"That's the first of the ten commandments," I said. "I'm talking about something in the new testament, a commandment Jesus gave and called ‘the first and great commandment.'"

No answers. So I wrote "Matthew 22" on the board and recited verses 37 and 38:

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.

"The second commandment is like unto it," I said. "What is it?" I waited. No response. "Thou shalt..." and I waited again– "love...."

"Thy neighbour as thyself," someone finished up.

"Exactly," I said. "So what would Jesus have us do with this woman?"

"Love her as ourself?" the person offered.

"Yeah. And what would Jesus want us to do when we encounter someone who's suffering?" I asked.

"Suffer with them," a guy who'd spoken earlier said.

"And is there a word with any kind of ethical or spiritual connotations, that means to suffer with someone?" I asked.

"Compassion," he said.

"This book is all about compassion, and what it does to people to live without it. It's not just that the older nuns show the narrator no compassion; it's that it's THEIR JOB not to show her compassion, because they're supposed to break her will. That costs both the people who get no compassion, and the ones who don't show it.

The narrator is indeed asking for our compassion. And I am asking you, as a literary, intellectual and spiritual exercise, to extend it to her."

And I felt I managed to make my point adequately, but it really rather astonished me that I'd have to explain to a group of college students why compassion matters, and that I'd have to ask them to try to find it.

We've entered the second week of discussion in the majors class, and they've accepted my challenge: they're doing their best to care about a pathetic, confused, desperately ill young nun, but it's clear most of them don't find it easy. As for the gen ed class, we started discussion last night. There were a few lapsed Catholics who found the book really compelling, but there was also a trio of students who said, "I can hardly stand this. It's so boring. I just don't care."

So I talked about Coleridge's "willing suspension of disbelief" and how we have to be willing to play the game art asks of us; we have to be willing to enter into an imagined or recreated world and pretend it's all real, right now, and that the situations and scenarios we're reading about MATTER.

I'm lucky that in this class is one of those students who has a face you just LOVE, not because it's aesthetically perfect but because it registers a broad range of emotions and mental states: interest, agreement, concentration, comprehension, consternation, confusion, even amusement from time to time. I always pay close attention to such students, because I know that if they ever stop looking at me and start staring at the ceiling or inspecting their shoes, whatever I'm saying is utterly boring or thoroughly incomprehensible and I better change my tactics FAST.

Anyway, this student sat quietly for a moment, cocked her head and frowned, then raised her hand. "Why do we have to pretend that something like this matters?" she asked. "It just does matter. It just does. It's the story of someone's life and that life is full of suffering. I mean, don't we want other people to care about our lives and our pain?"

I wanted to give her a hug and say THANK YOU, but instead I said, "You've cut to the heart of the matter: how do we learn to care about the suffering of someone who isn't us?" And then I did the whole "love thy neighbour as thyself" and "what does it mean to suffer with someone" thing but it was to an audience containing at least a few people who'd figured out on their own that the concept was important.

Which gave me a little hope for humanity as a whole.

Short-Answer Quiz

2006-01-30T09:11:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I think that writing about sex is not nearly as scary and threatening as writing about my job. Any blogger who pays the least bit of attention to what goes on in the blogosphere has read about another blogger who lost his/her job because s/he wrote about it. I don't want that to happen to me.

But I do want to vent. Specifically, I want to know if anyone else has ever had to send an email message like the one I sent over the weekend to the students in an undergraduate literature course:

I graded all the quizzes from Friday this afternoon. Unfortunately a couple of people used the quiz as an opportunity to make dirty jokes. If you don't know the answer to a question, DO NOT provide a guess that involves sexual content--I try to avoid such matters when writing quizzes, and you should avoid such matters when you take them. If, in the future, I receive quizzes that include answers I find excessively inappropriate or offensive, the quiz will receive a grade of zero, no matter how many other answers are correct.

I should add that all the jokes involved mocking female sexuality, and while there was one woman who wrote inappropriate answers, the worst offender by far was a young man.

It might seem weird that a "dominatrix" is chastising people for talking about sex. But the thing is, I'm a BORED dominatrix: Not only am I tired of dealing with men who don't want to take responsibility for much of anything that happens in a relationship, I'm also really tired of having to tell people to sit down, shut up and act like grownups, just so I can do my job.

I'm far more interested in balanced exchanges between equals. But when I can't get that, I'm not going to put up with the crap so many people want to offer instead: whiny, pathetic defenses for why they can't be expected to behave like adults; self-important explanations for why they don't have to be accountable for clearly stated expectations; sheer meanness.

I have learned to deal with such behavior by saying, "This is not acceptable work. This is not acceptable behavior. Do not produce such work or engage in such behavior again," in a measured and even tone. And OH MY GOD from the shocked, open-mouthed stares and silent bewilderment such statements produce, you'd think I'd produced a pair of handcuffs and cracked a whip! People are sometimes more flummoxed than if I'd lost my temper and started yelling (though I would never suggest that I don't believe there are times and places when it's utterly appropriate to lose one's temper and start yelling, to be not just churlish but downright bitchy). Still, while I wait for people to process my matter-of-fact declaration that I will not approve or accept their work or behavior, I can see them scan the room, my face, the inside of their brains as they try to find the answer to this perplexing question: What kind of frustrated, dominating bitch must she be to assert her authority so decidedly, so assuredly?! Something is wrong!

Something is wrong indeed.

First Name Basis

2005-12-11T12:47:00.000-07:00

I would apologize to my devoted readers for sadly neglecting this blog in favor of 1) keeping my day job and 2) posting on my primary blog, but I doubt this blog has attracted many devoted readers, given just how sadly I've neglected it.

This has to stop, doesn't it. I've got to be a better Bored Dominatrix, and maybe that involves expanding my interests, horizons and repertoire. I had particular and specialized goals for this blog when I started it, but now perhaps it's time to broaden its scope.

My friend Saviour Onassis has two blogs: While You're on Your Knees, where he writes about his life and stuff; and Queerest of the Queer, where he bitches about celebrities he hates and fawns over those he loves. I don't live in Hollywood and work in "the industry" like SO, so I know much less about famous people and what they do; I have a geeky academic job in the Northeast, and mostly I blog about my life and literature and religion and so forth. But every so often I do feel the need to say something about fame, and my other blog isn't the place for it, so I guess I'll say it here.

What I have to say right now is this: don't the people who follow celebrities realize that there is a freakin' HIERARCHY? And that this first-name basis business only works if we all agree who is famous enough to be identified accurately by a first name?

For instance: on Thursday, December 8, in an email digest of Salon's current offerings, I read this headline from its column the Fix: "Nicole dumped?" Of course I was anxious to know what new heartbreak had befallen that luminous blonde actress who first captured my fancy in To Die For. I was all set to be indignant, because this woman deserves some happiness to go with her talent and success, goddamnit!

But when I clicked on the link, it was about freakin' Nicole Richie! Nicole Richie?!? Nicole Richie is NOT Nicole; she is Nicole Richie. The only person who deserves to be known only as Nicole is Ms. Kidman.

This better not happen again.

The Queen of Swords

2005-11-05T08:20:00.000-07:00

I used to be a kickass tarot reader.

I suppose I still might be--I haven't been asked to do it for someone else for a while, and I became too frustrated to do it for myself. It was too much an exercise in wish fulfillment, except that the wishes were rarely fulfilled: I would go to the cards when I wanted not an answer, but a particular answer; when I didn't get that answer, I'd get frustrated and pissed off. They're just 78 pieces of cardboard that help you work out a narrative, consider other possibilities, I'd tell myself. They're a prompt towards insight, not the insight itself. But the fact remained that I usually went to the cards because I knew what narrative I wanted to see unfold, and I sought reassurance that things would turn out as I hoped. I rarely got it, so I figured I should quit asking.

For many years before that, however, I was a serious student of the tarot, and for a long time I found it useful. I was so into it, in fact, that one year for Halloween I dressed up as a card I really liked, the Queen of Swords. I made a slinky green dress, found a tiara, bought a cheap plastic sword and used a length of heavy green cord slung round my hips to secure the scabbard to my side.

This was not a costume people understood quickly. I've written elsewhere about various Halloween costumes I've worn throughout the years, and how some of the pleasure is lost if people have to ask what you've dressed up as. One guy asked me, "What are you, besides attractively dressed in green?" In fact, there was only one person at the party who understood my costume, and she kind of freaked out.

What made it worse was that I didn't understand her costume: she had on a beautiful pink dress, and a crown of flowers, and her dark hair hung down her back. "I'm the Lady of Shalott!" she said indignantly, adding, "Aren't you a grad student in English? You should know this!"

"I've read the poem," I said. "And I've seen the painting by Waterhouse at Tate Britain. I don't know, maybe it's because you're not weaving or sitting in a boat. I just didn't get it. Sorry."

"Well, I understand your costume," said the Lady of Shalott. "Why on earth would you dress up as her?"

"I dig the Queen of Swords. She comes up in my readings a lot, and she seems to represent me."

"The Queen of Swords is a tough card," she said. "It's all about suffering."

"Believe me, I know," I said.

Not long ago someone told me they'd done a celtic cross reading about a situation involving me, and of course, there she was, the Queen of Swords. I hadn't thought about her in a very long time; in fact, I'd begun to feel more affinity to the Queen of Wands. But I still think the Queen of Swords is a remarkable card. Here's what Rachel Pollack, my favorite authority on the tarot, has to say in her remarkable guide, Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom, about the Queen of Swords as depicted in the Rider-Waite deck:

As the yin aspect of the suit, the Queen of Swords symbolizes experiences of both sorrow and wisdom, and especially the connection between them. Having experienced pain (the card sometimes signifies widowhood), and having faced it with courage, acceptance and honesty, she has found wisdom.

The tassel hanging from her left wrist (the side of experience) resembles a cut rope (compare the Eight of Swords). She has used the sword of her intellect to free herself from confusion, doubt and fear; now, although she frowns at the world, she opens her hand to it. Though clouds gather around her, her head remains above them in the clear air of truth. One bird, a symbol of the purity of her wisdom, flies high above her. Her sword, like that of Justice and the Ace, stands straight up.

In the sense that powerless women will often suffer from the actions of men, the card refers specifically to women. In its character, it can represent someone of either sex, for neither sorrow nor courage are restricted by gender.

I can think of many worse images to compare myself to.

The Allure of Knee Socks

2005-11-01T06:47:00.000-07:00

Leather will, of course, remain a fashion staple in the wardrobe of any dominatrix. But there are times when one wants to wear something besides leather.... Well, there are times when I want to wear something besides leather.

Ten years ago I paid $200 for a pair of fierce Italian black leather motorcycle boots. They remain as fabulously wearable as they were the day I bought them--and I wear them often. They've got enough of a heel to look formidable, but it's not so high that I can't walk comfortably around Paris all day in these boots everyone admires.

The thing about boots is, if you're going to have them on for any length of time, you've got to wear something under them. With these boots, I've worn regular nylons (serviceable and utilitarian), fishnets (pretty hot), and at one point I bought a garter belt, but I can't say I found that garment particularly practical for any situation where it wouldn't be on display. But lately I have been indulging in the joys of and sexiness of knee socks.

That's right, knee socks. I think there's something thoroughly alluring about pairing fancy knee socks with short black boots tough enough that you could kick in a door wearing them.

I mentioned this to Saviour Onassis and he laughed, thinking it was some kind of bored dominatrix joke. But when he realized I was actually ardent and serious, he had to demur. "I find calves really sexy," he said. "I wouldn't want them covered up or obscured."

"I'm not talking about tube socks or athletic socks," I said. "Women's knee socks are generally tight enough that while they may cover a calf, they don't obscure it. In fact, they accentuate it, if you ask me."

Recently I purchased a dozen pairs of knee socks, all of them ornamented in some imaginative way. I have a black pair with wee pink roses all over them, and a dark blue pair with pale blue cornflowers. I have a blue pair, a black pair and a brown pair with dark and pale micro stripes. I have a couple of pairs of argyle socks....OK, argyle isn't all that sexy, but it's at least visually arresting. And the best socks of all have large roses climbing in vines up the side: I got a gray pair with lavender roses and a black pair with bright red roses. I wear these socks under a long skirt with those black boots, and the effect, when I raise my skirt to ascend a staircase and you catch a glimpse of sock, really is quite fetching.... Trust me, I've been told. There's an even better effect when I'm wearing the boots, the socks and a fairly short miniskirt--not that I wear such things often these days, because I don't really want my 20-year-old students to check out my legs. But I used to wear ensembles like that. They get noticed.

In October ago I attended an open house at a very chic tattoo parlor/ spa outside Toronto. (God, I want a new tattoo!) Because it was a newly renovated 19th century carriage house with brand new hardwood floors, we were asked to remove our shoes as we wandered the establish, ate hors d'oeuvres, and talked about tattoos and Canadian politics. I was wearing the black socks with the red roses up the side, and I was very glad that if I had to walk around in my stocking feet, those were the stockings I was wearing.

A Man I LOVE

2005-10-30T16:39:00.000-07:00

I LOVE Saviour Onassis, who is brilliant and artistic and generous, and who helped me create my new banner.

Isn't it STUNNING!?

Men I Like

2005-10-27T15:44:00.000-06:00

I really like men who agree with me, not because they want to placate or seduce me, but because they're smart enough to realize I'm right.

I'm Bored

2005-10-04T19:54:00.000-06:00