The no. 5 most-popular headline today at The Washington Post was "The Trouble With Men."
Well played, WaPo, well played. Even a media cynic like me, hardened as I am to cheap headline ploys, had trouble resisting such an invitation.
Sure, I have my own ideas about the trouble with men (chafing stubble; blind, universal devotion to Zooey Deschanel, AC/DC and Monty Python; cigars; a weird need to beat each other up, even when they like each other), but I wanted to see what someone else thought. (As an aside, I'm going to start using this headline technique more often, starting with the title of this post!)
It turned out that the column was as easy as the headline: Let's use the Schwarzenegger and IMF chief scandals to make generalizations about men and cheating, complete with a humdinger of an opening: "What is it with men and sex?"
As an intro to incisive social commentary, that seems comparable to "What is it with humans and breathing?" or "What is it with puppies and chew toys?" or "What is it with teenage girls and boy bands?" I mean, do you really need to break it down?
The troubles with this column are many. First of all, it lumps together consensual infidelity with an alleged (and it's important to say alleged, even though the column basically convicts "DSK" anyway) rape. The justification for that gross oversimplification is that both incidents supposedly demonstrate male abuse of power.
The fact that this "abuse of power" conceit was derived from statements by the writer's wife does not mitigate its inherent sexism. He lumps together Schwarzenegger, Mark Sanford, Bill Clinton, John Ensign, John Edwards and Newt Gingrich as examples of power abusers. Does anyone think that Rielle Hunter was "taken advantage of"? Or Mark Sanford's lover? Do we need to assume that, whenever a prominent man commits adultery, the women involved are powerless and naive?
Of course, men in power have a long history of exploiting women, either criminally or morally, which is why this line of reasoning is both facile and cheap. To blame these recent scandals on a disease of the modern "alpha male" is ridiculous. Chris Rock put it more succinctly and more scarily (at the 2:10 mark): "A man is basically as faithful as his options." The men Mark Miller cites were weak, and allowed circumstances to triumph over morals; but they weren't necessarily predators, nor can their lovers be characterized across the board as victims.
However, a recent study suggests that Miller does have reason to link power with infidelity. Apparently, both women and men who consider themselves to be the shit are more likely to be cheating fools. We just don't see this played out publicly as much among women in power. More often, we see women in power (Oprah, Hillary) portrayed as closeted lesbians or asexual.
Miller's column neglects to mention several mostly non-political scandals, such as those of Tiger Woods and Jesse James (or, if he wanted to cite criminal cases, Kobe Bryant and Eliot Spitzer). To me, what's salient about these stories is not so much that the men are cheating or the idea that they are abusing power. It's the fact that they have created such huge schisms between their public and personal lives, and also, in some cases, the apparent indulgence in unprotected sex. Dudes, why, especially when you are cheating, so much unprotected sex?
Women are cheating, too. Are they also resorting to illegal and dangerous means? Why does anyone of either gender, -- in an age of supposed sexual liberation, gender equality, psychological enlightenment and oversharing -- still feel the need to commit such destructive clandestine behavior? To me, these are much more compelling topics to explore than the sadly well trodden ground of "hey, men sleep with underlings and commit sex crimes."
Music: "Creep"
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Wednesday, May 04, 2011
Betrayed.
Hello, friends. How is spring treating you?
I decided to usher in the season by: sneezing copiously, bitching about the unseasonably cold weather in D.C., wearing compression stockings (which is a separate post) and getting a "Sun Safety Kit" from Sephora. "Sun Safety Kit" translates to "lots of beauty samples that seem like a bargain but probably are not and yet are irresistible."
For those of you who have actually seen me, it might surprise you to know that I have a beauty product addiction. Nonetheless, it's true. It's built into my DNA. My childhood memories involve my mother transforming herself via drawers full of cosmetics before meeting my dad for their nights out at Houlihan's in Chevy Chase. Where Proust's key sense memory was of madeleines, I remember Oscar de la Renta perfume. I liked to waltz in while she was getting ready and say, "Hi, Tammy Faye."
To this day, she has drawers and carousels booming with products, and is a V.I.B. (Very Important Beauty Insider, i.e. prime spender) at Sephora. And though Sephora is truly genius at marketing products, my mom has sold me (a mere Beauty Insider) more things than any Sephora salesperson ever would or could. (Me: "I want this Tokidoki emery board set, but it seems so silly." Her: "Why? You know, that's about the same price as you would pay in the drugstore for emery boards. And you know you'll use them. Oh, I like that case!")
Yes, I'll do the frivolous Tokidoki and the high-end skincare products and the Nars makeup that somehow evinces a lifestyle I no longer live. But kits and "deluxe samples" are my drug of choice. They allow you to flirt with various brands without really committing. They give you the quick hit in a world of long, plodding commitments to lotions and powders that overstay their welcome and sit silently judging you for leaving them to languish in the drawer. "I cost $28 and you loved me two years ago! Why are you letting me go to waste? I won't be ignored, Christina..."
I wasn't always this promiscuous. For a long time, I felt very loyal to Shiseido. That's because, when I was about 15, my mom took me to the Shiseido counter at Woodward and Lothrop (or Woodies, as it was known) in Montgomery Mall, where we got a consultation and subsequently bought some products. I underwent the "Makeup Simulator," which was very high-tech in the olden times, also known as the '80s.
It was all so seductive. Firstly, it was adult. As a teenager, I was being invited into the world of mature secrets, which for women involves various sera, tonics and masques (that's with a "que") of indeterminate but significant value. Second of all, it involved transformation, which is something any teenager desperately, desperately wants, especially if her looks are plain and her bangs are -- well, you can see the picture. Third of all, there were many smells, which in my experience is second nature to women but seems to confuse men. Fourth of all, it involved lists and cataloguing: My needs were boiled down to checkboxes such as "enchanting eyes" and "a touch of color."
Shiseido was my first.
Everything about the brand corresponds to what's appealing about many Japanese things: simple, beautiful packaging; the evocation of purity, of being immaculate; not too little, not too much; a sense of science uniting with nature. (Similarly, Tokidoki, which is a Japanese name but an American company, represents the other side of what's appealing about many Japanese things: cartoony, childlike packaging; mini, mini, mini; totally artificial.)
That's why it's sad to find myself estranged from Shiseido now that we have more information about what we are putting onto our skin every day, thanks to the Environmental Working Group and others. Of the 50+ Shiseido items in EWG's Cosmetics Database, none falls into the "green" range. It has not signed the Compact for Safe Cosmetics, and apparently it conducts tests on animals.
To be honest, I haven't been super attuned to the animal-testing issue. I have been super attuned to the human-testing issue. I am convinced that the epidemic of cancer in women is linked to the beauty industry. I have no scientific proof for this. It's just common sense. The only way we can protect ourselves is to avoid products that we know to be toxic.
I bought my last Shiseido product several months ago. Unfortunately, we've grown apart, and it's time to break up.
Music: "Mirror in the Bathroom"
I decided to usher in the season by: sneezing copiously, bitching about the unseasonably cold weather in D.C., wearing compression stockings (which is a separate post) and getting a "Sun Safety Kit" from Sephora. "Sun Safety Kit" translates to "lots of beauty samples that seem like a bargain but probably are not and yet are irresistible."
For those of you who have actually seen me, it might surprise you to know that I have a beauty product addiction. Nonetheless, it's true. It's built into my DNA. My childhood memories involve my mother transforming herself via drawers full of cosmetics before meeting my dad for their nights out at Houlihan's in Chevy Chase. Where Proust's key sense memory was of madeleines, I remember Oscar de la Renta perfume. I liked to waltz in while she was getting ready and say, "Hi, Tammy Faye."
To this day, she has drawers and carousels booming with products, and is a V.I.B. (Very Important Beauty Insider, i.e. prime spender) at Sephora. And though Sephora is truly genius at marketing products, my mom has sold me (a mere Beauty Insider) more things than any Sephora salesperson ever would or could. (Me: "I want this Tokidoki emery board set, but it seems so silly." Her: "Why? You know, that's about the same price as you would pay in the drugstore for emery boards. And you know you'll use them. Oh, I like that case!")
Yes, I'll do the frivolous Tokidoki and the high-end skincare products and the Nars makeup that somehow evinces a lifestyle I no longer live. But kits and "deluxe samples" are my drug of choice. They allow you to flirt with various brands without really committing. They give you the quick hit in a world of long, plodding commitments to lotions and powders that overstay their welcome and sit silently judging you for leaving them to languish in the drawer. "I cost $28 and you loved me two years ago! Why are you letting me go to waste? I won't be ignored, Christina..."
I wasn't always this promiscuous. For a long time, I felt very loyal to Shiseido. That's because, when I was about 15, my mom took me to the Shiseido counter at Woodward and Lothrop (or Woodies, as it was known) in Montgomery Mall, where we got a consultation and subsequently bought some products. I underwent the "Makeup Simulator," which was very high-tech in the olden times, also known as the '80s.
It was all so seductive. Firstly, it was adult. As a teenager, I was being invited into the world of mature secrets, which for women involves various sera, tonics and masques (that's with a "que") of indeterminate but significant value. Second of all, it involved transformation, which is something any teenager desperately, desperately wants, especially if her looks are plain and her bangs are -- well, you can see the picture. Third of all, there were many smells, which in my experience is second nature to women but seems to confuse men. Fourth of all, it involved lists and cataloguing: My needs were boiled down to checkboxes such as "enchanting eyes" and "a touch of color."Shiseido was my first.
Everything about the brand corresponds to what's appealing about many Japanese things: simple, beautiful packaging; the evocation of purity, of being immaculate; not too little, not too much; a sense of science uniting with nature. (Similarly, Tokidoki, which is a Japanese name but an American company, represents the other side of what's appealing about many Japanese things: cartoony, childlike packaging; mini, mini, mini; totally artificial.)That's why it's sad to find myself estranged from Shiseido now that we have more information about what we are putting onto our skin every day, thanks to the Environmental Working Group and others. Of the 50+ Shiseido items in EWG's Cosmetics Database, none falls into the "green" range. It has not signed the Compact for Safe Cosmetics, and apparently it conducts tests on animals.
To be honest, I haven't been super attuned to the animal-testing issue. I have been super attuned to the human-testing issue. I am convinced that the epidemic of cancer in women is linked to the beauty industry. I have no scientific proof for this. It's just common sense. The only way we can protect ourselves is to avoid products that we know to be toxic.
I bought my last Shiseido product several months ago. Unfortunately, we've grown apart, and it's time to break up.
Music: "Mirror in the Bathroom"
Friday, April 22, 2011
Tracks of My Tears.
This recent piece on crying in public in The New York Times struck a chord. In the past I have noted that one of the advantages to living in New York is that you can cry with impunity on the streets. No one will care.
The writer of the NYT piece, Melissa Febos, also raises another public UncMo: tripping on the street. The public wipeout elicits a different response from open weeping: you’re more likely to be ignored on the latter, and you want to be ignored; but with tripping, people usually reach out -- and if they don't, you feel even worse. Somehow, this unspoken rule makes perfect sense.
I don’t cry while going about my business in public these days as much as I used to. There are many possible reasons for this: I don’t live in New York anymore, I’m not an emotional wreck of a twentysomething anymore, I have developed a new inner strength, and/or some tender, precious part of me has simply died. Take your pick. But on a recent day, a freight train of tears hit me, and it would not be deterred by the presence of strangers’ eyes.
It started in a yoga class, at the very end. There is a part in many of the classes between the resting period and sitting up, where the teacher tells us to roll onto our right sides and pause there. This is where I’m mostly likely to tear up, or want to. It’s a fetal position, and to me, there are only two things you do in a fetal position: sleep, or sob.
On this particular day, I couldn’t hold it back at fetal time. I’d been fussing and fighting the whole week, and it all finally overtook me. I barely got my quivering lip through the last of the class and had to turn to the corner of the room at the end. Hard to tell if anyone saw me. If they did, they decided to let me alone.
The jag continued along P Street as I walked to the grocery store. I once again composed myself (sort of) before walking into the store (because somehow, crying on the street is more OK than crying in an indoor public place) and walked up to one of the counters to get some meat. The guy took my order, and as he was wrapping the meat, he said, "Are you OK?"
I hadn’t expected this – I mean I knew I didn’t look OK, but in a city (and especially if you’ve trained in public crying in New York), you aren’t prepared to be called out on it. "Yeah," I said.
This did not satisfy him. "Are you sure?" he said.
I repeated the lie, but by this point the tears were coming again, because my pitiful guts had been reflected back to me, and there was no stuffing them back in now. But I wasn’t exactly going to get into a heart to heart on the spot with the meat guy. I wasn’t even capable of saying, "No, it's been a rough day." So instead, I said the thing that was completely untrue, but also less likely to increase my visibility. Another rule of public crying: As long as you don’t make contact with anyone, or acknowledge that anyone can see you, you are invisible.
I took my purchase from him, corners of my mouth turned down, eyes watering, feeling that I was now not only pitiful, but a closed-off liar. I weeped on through the rest of the store, getting it together for the cashier and promising myself I would really let it out when I got home. And here's where another truism about public crying comes into play: When you're finally in private and have the freedom to let it all out, you can't anymore.
There are many times I’m publicly happy, too: laughing or smiling to myself while I’m alone. But I get more self-conscious about that than I do about crying or looking sad. After all, I don’t want to seem crazy or something.
Music: "Tracks of My Tears"
The writer of the NYT piece, Melissa Febos, also raises another public UncMo: tripping on the street. The public wipeout elicits a different response from open weeping: you’re more likely to be ignored on the latter, and you want to be ignored; but with tripping, people usually reach out -- and if they don't, you feel even worse. Somehow, this unspoken rule makes perfect sense.
I don’t cry while going about my business in public these days as much as I used to. There are many possible reasons for this: I don’t live in New York anymore, I’m not an emotional wreck of a twentysomething anymore, I have developed a new inner strength, and/or some tender, precious part of me has simply died. Take your pick. But on a recent day, a freight train of tears hit me, and it would not be deterred by the presence of strangers’ eyes.
It started in a yoga class, at the very end. There is a part in many of the classes between the resting period and sitting up, where the teacher tells us to roll onto our right sides and pause there. This is where I’m mostly likely to tear up, or want to. It’s a fetal position, and to me, there are only two things you do in a fetal position: sleep, or sob.
On this particular day, I couldn’t hold it back at fetal time. I’d been fussing and fighting the whole week, and it all finally overtook me. I barely got my quivering lip through the last of the class and had to turn to the corner of the room at the end. Hard to tell if anyone saw me. If they did, they decided to let me alone.
The jag continued along P Street as I walked to the grocery store. I once again composed myself (sort of) before walking into the store (because somehow, crying on the street is more OK than crying in an indoor public place) and walked up to one of the counters to get some meat. The guy took my order, and as he was wrapping the meat, he said, "Are you OK?"
I hadn’t expected this – I mean I knew I didn’t look OK, but in a city (and especially if you’ve trained in public crying in New York), you aren’t prepared to be called out on it. "Yeah," I said.
This did not satisfy him. "Are you sure?" he said.
I repeated the lie, but by this point the tears were coming again, because my pitiful guts had been reflected back to me, and there was no stuffing them back in now. But I wasn’t exactly going to get into a heart to heart on the spot with the meat guy. I wasn’t even capable of saying, "No, it's been a rough day." So instead, I said the thing that was completely untrue, but also less likely to increase my visibility. Another rule of public crying: As long as you don’t make contact with anyone, or acknowledge that anyone can see you, you are invisible.
I took my purchase from him, corners of my mouth turned down, eyes watering, feeling that I was now not only pitiful, but a closed-off liar. I weeped on through the rest of the store, getting it together for the cashier and promising myself I would really let it out when I got home. And here's where another truism about public crying comes into play: When you're finally in private and have the freedom to let it all out, you can't anymore.
There are many times I’m publicly happy, too: laughing or smiling to myself while I’m alone. But I get more self-conscious about that than I do about crying or looking sad. After all, I don’t want to seem crazy or something.
Music: "Tracks of My Tears"
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
The Week in Skirmishes..
Monday, 9:45 a.m. A random bumper lies forlorn on 16th St. near the Methodist Church and P. It looks like it's waiting to be picked up. By Wednesday evening, it will be stripped of its license plate, but still sit on the sidewalk as if it means to stay.Tuesday, 9:30 a.m. A cop is directing traffic at 18th and Connecticut Sts. The World Bank and the IMF are meeting, so there are a lot of police blockades in place. People in D.C. are used to being interrupted by blockades and motorcades the way people in N.Y. are used to being interrupted by production assistants on film productions.
All the pedestrians on the corner are waiting through the "walk" sign for the cop to give us the go-ahead when a lone bicyclist emerges and crosses Connecticut, ignoring the cop, who yells at him to stop. Whether out of cluelessness or hubris, the man on the bicycle has made a grave error in judgment, but he does not know it yet. He vaguely smiles as he passes the cop, which could indicate anything from "Fuck you, cop" to "Whoops, sorry, it's too late for me to turn around" to "I am autistic and do not react appropriately in certain situations." He is a vision of pale: pale skin, white shirt, khakis. Helmet and glasses. Extra weight around the middle. Not threatening.
The cop, who is also pudgy, breaks into a sprint after the cyclist passes him. The cyclist has no idea what's about to hit him. As the cop catches up, he brings the full force of his weight, via his front forearm, into the cyclist and knocks him off the bike and onto the cement just as he's nearing the other side of the street. The cop immediately cuffs him behind his back and makes him kneel on the sidewalk. The guy obeys, looking both sheepish and shaken. All of us on the sidewalk are appalled.
I'd expected the cop to yell at the guy, or maybe pull him over by the wrist and give him a ticket -- not slam him to the pavement, cuff him and call the wagon. "I have one in custody," the cop radios his cohorts, as an older lady asks the cyclist if he is OK. He nods, but he's not OK. He kneels in shame. It's clear from all of the bystanders' expressions that we're in disbelief at what just happened, but no one knows what to make of it. As I walk away, two cop cars are roaring up to the corner, and the poor nerdy cyclist looks as if he might cry. Meanwhile, traffic has backed up without anyone to direct it. The traffic cop has become distracted by his big arrest.
Wednesday, 3:00 p.m. The CVS on Connecticut and L Sts. does not yet have self-service checkout, and it's hard to revisit this period in our history once you have experienced the self-service. A sizable line is forming at the cash register, but one woman has decided that she is going to jump the line by decreeing that there is a second line. The cashier does not accept the rogue customer's decision, and a battle ensues.
"There's no sign or anything saying 'form one line' or anything like that," the customer argues. "If they want to stand over there, they can," she says, referring to the silent majority of customers who have agreed that one line for all registers makes the most sense. "I'm getting behind this woman right here. I'm starting this line right here."
The cashier is inaudible from where I stand, but apparently is unmoved. The queue-breaker gets more agitated. "I am a paralegal. I know my rights," she declares. "I want to see the manager." Apparently she is talking to the manager, or the manager is unavailable. "Well is there a complaint form I can fill out? I want to file a complaint."
At this point, the rest of us in the consensus line start laughing. The cashier keeps calling people up, ignoring the line interloper while she talks about filing a complaint and leaving money for her candy without it being scanned, a proposal that the cashier refuses.
The paralegal is STILL arguing when I leave the store. In other words, she could have been through the line in the time she took to argue about it. And remarkably, no one on the CVS side decided this bird was not worth the trouble and let her pay out of turn just to get rid of her.
These aspects of human nature are why today we still have problems in the Middle East.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Big in Japan.
Recent coverage in The New Yorker of the Japan earthquake and tsunami aftermath included a mention of song requests at Tokyo FM. It got me curious about which pop songs were speaking to the Japanese at this horrible moment in time for them. I remembered that right after Sept. 11, for some reason "Trouble" by Coldplay was the song that kept surfacing in my head, and then I turned on the TV and saw that it also happened to be the No. 1 requested song on MTV.
Yes, Coldplay, lame, haha. You can also laugh at the fact that the Japanese apparently love Cyndi Lauper, and that "True Colors" now sits at no. 29 on the Japan Hot 100 Billboard chart. But I think it's pretty awesome how pop -- however banal, ridiculous or beautiful -- can still unite people in ways that other institutions no longer can.
Here's a survey of what's going on pop-wise in Japan, near as I can tell.
"Samurai Soul," Ulfuls
This song isn't new, but was one of the requested songs mentioned in the New Yorker piece. The first thirty seconds of it is rough, but soldier through. This song is completely radical in every way. It howls triumphantly. The video is hilarious. The lyrics are touching. Listen to this and see if you aren't singing it for at least a day (to the extent that you can).
"Slow," Rumer
This British sensation's single is right behind "Born This Way" by Lady Gaga on the Japan Hot 100. My friend marceltr had already alerted me to her popularity in the U.K. Her other single, "Am I Forgiven," is a nice Burt Bacharach throwback, but "Slow" is the song that really has captured me, as it has Japan. What's fascinating to me about Rumer is that she defies pop convention in the sense that she has a very languid, seemingly mediocre alto voice, and she does not fit the superficial requirements of the pop machine (usually non-slender, average-looking singers only merit success if they are powerhouses like Adele), but she has earned comparisons to Dusty Springfield, Karen Carpenter and (from me, at least) Basia, not to mention a ton of play internationally. But is her voice really that much of a find? It must be, given the response she's getting. Call me a sucker, but I am sold too. Also, the harmony on this song mesmerizes me and I'm trying to nail it down.
"Shock," Beast
I can't really endorse this, but offer it as a sampling of completely ridiculous pan-Asian dance-pop (in the top 10 on the pop charts) and invite you to check out in the YouTube comments how controversial it is.
Other links, per The New Yorker:
"Sunshine Sunshine," Superfly
"Michishirube," Orange Range
"Flowers," Mr. Children (I think??)
And footnotes from TV sound:
Discovered kd lang's cover of "Theme from Valley of the Dolls" via Nurse Jackie. Love it, and Dionne Warwick's original. God, if this hasn't been employed in Mad Men, can it be soon??
Richard Marvin is my new Thomas Newman (American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Six Feet Under title theme, this), in other words the person who composes quirky and/or haunting pieces of music for my dysfunctional white-people dramas such as "In Treatment" and "Six Feet Under." Thank you Richard Marvin. I want to go sailing on your halcyon river of piano calm.
Yes, Coldplay, lame, haha. You can also laugh at the fact that the Japanese apparently love Cyndi Lauper, and that "True Colors" now sits at no. 29 on the Japan Hot 100 Billboard chart. But I think it's pretty awesome how pop -- however banal, ridiculous or beautiful -- can still unite people in ways that other institutions no longer can.
Here's a survey of what's going on pop-wise in Japan, near as I can tell.
"Samurai Soul," Ulfuls
This song isn't new, but was one of the requested songs mentioned in the New Yorker piece. The first thirty seconds of it is rough, but soldier through. This song is completely radical in every way. It howls triumphantly. The video is hilarious. The lyrics are touching. Listen to this and see if you aren't singing it for at least a day (to the extent that you can).
"Slow," Rumer
This British sensation's single is right behind "Born This Way" by Lady Gaga on the Japan Hot 100. My friend marceltr had already alerted me to her popularity in the U.K. Her other single, "Am I Forgiven," is a nice Burt Bacharach throwback, but "Slow" is the song that really has captured me, as it has Japan. What's fascinating to me about Rumer is that she defies pop convention in the sense that she has a very languid, seemingly mediocre alto voice, and she does not fit the superficial requirements of the pop machine (usually non-slender, average-looking singers only merit success if they are powerhouses like Adele), but she has earned comparisons to Dusty Springfield, Karen Carpenter and (from me, at least) Basia, not to mention a ton of play internationally. But is her voice really that much of a find? It must be, given the response she's getting. Call me a sucker, but I am sold too. Also, the harmony on this song mesmerizes me and I'm trying to nail it down.
"Shock," Beast
I can't really endorse this, but offer it as a sampling of completely ridiculous pan-Asian dance-pop (in the top 10 on the pop charts) and invite you to check out in the YouTube comments how controversial it is.
Other links, per The New Yorker:
"Sunshine Sunshine," Superfly
"Michishirube," Orange Range
"Flowers," Mr. Children (I think??)
And footnotes from TV sound:
Discovered kd lang's cover of "Theme from Valley of the Dolls" via Nurse Jackie. Love it, and Dionne Warwick's original. God, if this hasn't been employed in Mad Men, can it be soon??
Richard Marvin is my new Thomas Newman (American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Six Feet Under title theme, this), in other words the person who composes quirky and/or haunting pieces of music for my dysfunctional white-people dramas such as "In Treatment" and "Six Feet Under." Thank you Richard Marvin. I want to go sailing on your halcyon river of piano calm.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Thank You for Your Blood and Urine.
My new primary care doc conveniently has a lab located right in the basement of his office, which means no annoying, separate trip to a depressing vendor like Quest Diagnostics to get routine bloodwork.Instead, I could go to a depressing LabCorp (apparently) vendor right down in the basement. In the white, laundry-room-like atmosphere (there was literally a washer and dryer on the way to the bathroom), a fortysomething woman sat in flower-print scrubs with a neon-lime manicure. She barely looked in my direction when I arrived.
"Have a seat in the gray chair," she said, took my labwork sheet from me without eye contact, and rolled back over to her computer to create my file. She thanked me, very properly, for every single thing I did: giving her my birthdate, checking the spelling of my name on the pee cup. I was curious to see if she could get through the whole deal without looking at me at all.
On the wall directly to the right, next to the computer monitor, was a hand-printed version of the Office Serenity Prayer:
Grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change
The things I cannot accept,
And the wisdom
To hide the bodies of those people I had to kill today
Because they pissed me off.
Help me to be careful of the toes I step on today
As they may be connected to the ass
That I may have to kiss tomorrow.
Handwritten. In print large enough for me to read a few feet away (and my eyesight isn't that good).
A LabCorp-branded centrifuge (at least, I think that's what it was) whirred loudly, like an air conditioner, on the counter. On the cupboards above the counter, three signs hand-drawn with colored marker hung in a row. One of them said, "Thank You for Your Blood and Urine!" and at the bottom had a rudimentary smiley face with the word "smile." A second one said "God Bless You" with the same smiley-face signature. I can't remember what the third one said, because I was too busy trying to also watch the person who was about to stick a needle in my arm.
I instinctively wanted to talk to this woman. It's so great that this office has you right downstairs! Wednesday, huh? Did your kid do those pictures? I like your nails.
But she was On Her Grind and possibly not mentally stable. So I kept quiet.
She finally rolled over to me and (yes!) made brief eye contact with the barest, most perfunctory of smiles. "Make a fist for me." "Thank you." "Release." "Thank you." "Hold this for me." "Thank you."
I held the cotton while she labeled and stored the blood and grabbed tape as quickly as if it were a grocery-store transaction.
She rolled back over to me with the tape to secure the cotton ball over my arm. She was readying to make a plus sign: first, a strip across my elbow, then one vertically.
But before she put down the second piece of tape, she took out a magic marker and made exactly the same sloppy smiley face on the first piece as on the cupboard signs. I gave a little laugh. She gave me the quickest (quickest) of smiles and put the second piece of tape over it.
"Thank you and god bless you," she said as I headed back up the stairs.
"Thank you!!!" I said in a tone that at once relayed "Wow!" "Thanks!" "Godspeed!" and "We're OK right? Don't hurt me."
I really love that she drew a smiley face at my needle site, but unfortunately it is so diffuse (see photo above) that I have startled myself about three times since thinking that I am hemorrhaging from the arm.
Music, in Memory of Nate Dogg: "Regulate"
Thursday, March 10, 2011
The Rise of "Really?"
This morning I was wondering why the interjection "Really?" has become so prominent in the last couple of years. Most recently, Bachelor host Chris Harrison invoked it to shame women who were piling onto Michelle during the "Women Tell All" installment. His "Guys! Like, really?" moment (visible at around the 6:35 mark in this clip, which is a stunning and revealing document of just how cruel women, or girls, can be to each other) echoes last year's Windows 7 phone ad, the title of a New York Times health column, an SNL Weekend Update sketch, and any number of conversations I've had or overheard lately.
It seems like there is so much over-the-top behavior out there, and so many dubious claims, that we as humans now need a phrase to distinguish the merely commonplace or entertaining craziness from that which crosses into complete disconnect from the rest of humanity. And apparently this line-crossing is happening so much that we often spend our time in sheer disbelief at what we are witnessing. We literally need to ask if things are real.
It's actually perfect that this latest language trend (which, to me, is a successor to "Oh no you di-ent" and "Get out" before that, only with more subtlety and cynicism) is in the form of a question, like so much of our speech now, especially among the kids today.
It's such a dead-on expression of how I feel so much of the time that, naturally, I'm now starting to apply it to all kinds of disappointments. The other salient aspect of our society right now, especially in the United States, is that we want everything to run smoothly and this minute. So when some piece of technology or service acts up on me -- a normally functional application starts delivering errors, or a doctor's office number goes to voicemail multiple times, or Amtrak stalls not once but thrice en route to New York -- my utterance is "Really?"
It's a response that somehow rolls childhood, adolescence and adulthood all into two bitchy syllables. We're incredulous, petulant and jaded all at the same time. We can't believe it. We're amazed all the time, but only in an OMG WTF LOL #fail sort of way, because if we were to react at the full throttle to the sheer volume of shit that demands our reaction on a daily basis each day, we would implode.
It seems like there is so much over-the-top behavior out there, and so many dubious claims, that we as humans now need a phrase to distinguish the merely commonplace or entertaining craziness from that which crosses into complete disconnect from the rest of humanity. And apparently this line-crossing is happening so much that we often spend our time in sheer disbelief at what we are witnessing. We literally need to ask if things are real.
It's actually perfect that this latest language trend (which, to me, is a successor to "Oh no you di-ent" and "Get out" before that, only with more subtlety and cynicism) is in the form of a question, like so much of our speech now, especially among the kids today.
It's such a dead-on expression of how I feel so much of the time that, naturally, I'm now starting to apply it to all kinds of disappointments. The other salient aspect of our society right now, especially in the United States, is that we want everything to run smoothly and this minute. So when some piece of technology or service acts up on me -- a normally functional application starts delivering errors, or a doctor's office number goes to voicemail multiple times, or Amtrak stalls not once but thrice en route to New York -- my utterance is "Really?"
It's a response that somehow rolls childhood, adolescence and adulthood all into two bitchy syllables. We're incredulous, petulant and jaded all at the same time. We can't believe it. We're amazed all the time, but only in an OMG WTF LOL #fail sort of way, because if we were to react at the full throttle to the sheer volume of shit that demands our reaction on a daily basis each day, we would implode.
Sunday, February 06, 2011
Revisiting Old Friends.
I felt like a real sham logging into "blogger" just now, because I have not been a blogger. I have been a shirker.
However, some things:
- I am currently blogging on another site about my attempts to reduce energy usage. Overall, it's a very cool project that also has participants from eight other countries. While you may think that phrases such as "energy diet" and "carbon footprint" are less than compelling (and you would be correct about this), in reality this blog involves lots of other matters that are undeniably fascinating, such as milk machines, sunflowers that dwarf children, going straight from a cross-continental flight straight to protest in Cairo and commuter pain in one of the world's worst cities for traffic.
- Prince is currently on tour, and I have not bought any tickets, nor do I have plans to buy tickets. My friends, who know (more or less) about my Feelings, have helpfully pointed out that he and I are going to be in California at the same time. He also was in NYC when I could have been there. And, well, I don't know. In NYC, ticket prices hovered around $150. They are lower in Oakland, but my time in the Bay Area is limited, and if he is going to drag Jehovah's Witness proselytizer Larry Graham out on stage, it's really best that I sit this one out. I'm excited that he's selling out arenas on short notice and still looks eerily the same as 20 years ago even though he's 52 years old, and that he's still rolling with Sheila E. But brothers and sisters, Prince is not even stopping in DC, and hasn't made an album I want to listen to in seven years, if I'm generous enough to include Musicology, which I am, but still. I refuse to acknowledge that our relationship is over, because he is Forever in My Life. But my affections have been sorely tested.
- Recently, I needed some reading material for the train and, a propos of nothing (well actually when I think about it it's because at my new workplace, there's a woman named Jo, which put the book in my subconscious, along with having read about the new Susan Cheever biography of its author), decided that I felt like re-reading Little Women. It seemed like the answer to my craving for characters and comfort.
As a child, I was given a whole library of abridged classics for young readers. I devoured 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Poe's stories ("The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Gold Bug," "Fall of the House of Usher") Treasure Island, Little Women.
Basically, I'm a sucker for any book that involves women sitting by fires, reading books, longing for excitement and anticipating "gay parties" or encounters with desirable gentlemen, maybe because that pretty much sums up my girlhood, except for the fireplace part. The March girls fit the bill.
When I took the Bantam paperback up to the register, the college-age cashier paused. "Oh, I read this when I was little," she said. "So did I," I said, a little surprised that girls now and girls then might still be reading the same things. "I thought I'd revisit it."
"Aw," she said in a way that suggested she thought I was kind of cute but also kind of sad.
Had I picked up a children's book? Was Little Women going to be less satisfying to re-read than, say, Jane Eyre or The Woman in White?
I'm sad to say it, but.... kind of yes. I've been struck by how Louisa May Alcott really hits you over the head with how wonderful and virtuous the girls are, not to mention with Jesus Christ.
The book opens at Christmas, when the four sisters are lamenting their fate of being poor and without their father, who is away during the Civil War. They know not to expect any presents, but their beloved mother (Marmee) promises that they will find something under their pillows in the morning.
Seriously?
I have a pretty high tolerance for pious, ridiculously upstanding heroines (Clarissa, holla), but this and other elements of the book bummed me out a bit, to be honest. I just remembered the March girls as being more earthy, more real. But then, I read this book at a time when I thought the Brady Bunch and Olivia Newton-John were spittin' truth.
So yeah, it was disappointing to encounter a book that felt less authentic than the first time I read it. But then Jo meets the Laurence Boy, and the girls bicker, and I'm all swept up again. Despite Alcott's heavy-handedness with the characterizations sometimes, I can't help but be charmed by passages like this:
Reading that, and knowing what happens to Beth, well bless my own heart, I have to keep going, because this is where Louisa May Alcott becomes a cross between Beverly Cleary and Charlotte Bronte in capturing the young and the female Sentiments. So now I am more than halfway through Little Women, even though it makes me want to say "capital" instead of "great" and may be even more embarrassing to carry around than a Twilight book. But I do not care.
Music: "Old Friends 4 Sale"
However, some things:
- I am currently blogging on another site about my attempts to reduce energy usage. Overall, it's a very cool project that also has participants from eight other countries. While you may think that phrases such as "energy diet" and "carbon footprint" are less than compelling (and you would be correct about this), in reality this blog involves lots of other matters that are undeniably fascinating, such as milk machines, sunflowers that dwarf children, going straight from a cross-continental flight straight to protest in Cairo and commuter pain in one of the world's worst cities for traffic.
- Prince is currently on tour, and I have not bought any tickets, nor do I have plans to buy tickets. My friends, who know (more or less) about my Feelings, have helpfully pointed out that he and I are going to be in California at the same time. He also was in NYC when I could have been there. And, well, I don't know. In NYC, ticket prices hovered around $150. They are lower in Oakland, but my time in the Bay Area is limited, and if he is going to drag Jehovah's Witness proselytizer Larry Graham out on stage, it's really best that I sit this one out. I'm excited that he's selling out arenas on short notice and still looks eerily the same as 20 years ago even though he's 52 years old, and that he's still rolling with Sheila E. But brothers and sisters, Prince is not even stopping in DC, and hasn't made an album I want to listen to in seven years, if I'm generous enough to include Musicology, which I am, but still. I refuse to acknowledge that our relationship is over, because he is Forever in My Life. But my affections have been sorely tested.
- Recently, I needed some reading material for the train and, a propos of nothing (well actually when I think about it it's because at my new workplace, there's a woman named Jo, which put the book in my subconscious, along with having read about the new Susan Cheever biography of its author), decided that I felt like re-reading Little Women. It seemed like the answer to my craving for characters and comfort.
As a child, I was given a whole library of abridged classics for young readers. I devoured 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Poe's stories ("The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Gold Bug," "Fall of the House of Usher") Treasure Island, Little Women.
Basically, I'm a sucker for any book that involves women sitting by fires, reading books, longing for excitement and anticipating "gay parties" or encounters with desirable gentlemen, maybe because that pretty much sums up my girlhood, except for the fireplace part. The March girls fit the bill.
When I took the Bantam paperback up to the register, the college-age cashier paused. "Oh, I read this when I was little," she said. "So did I," I said, a little surprised that girls now and girls then might still be reading the same things. "I thought I'd revisit it."
"Aw," she said in a way that suggested she thought I was kind of cute but also kind of sad.
Had I picked up a children's book? Was Little Women going to be less satisfying to re-read than, say, Jane Eyre or The Woman in White?
I'm sad to say it, but.... kind of yes. I've been struck by how Louisa May Alcott really hits you over the head with how wonderful and virtuous the girls are, not to mention with Jesus Christ.
The book opens at Christmas, when the four sisters are lamenting their fate of being poor and without their father, who is away during the Civil War. They know not to expect any presents, but their beloved mother (Marmee) promises that they will find something under their pillows in the morning.
[Jo] remembered her mother's promise and, slipping her hand under her pillow, drew out a little crimson-covered book. She knew it very well, for it was that beautiful old story of the best life ever lived, and Jo felt that it was a true guidebook for any pilgrim going the long journey.
Seriously?
"Girls," said Meg seriously, looking from the tumbled head beside her to the two little nightcapped ones in the room beyond, "Mother wants us to read and love and mind these books, and we must begin at once. We used to be faithful about it, but since Father went away and all this war trouble unsettled us, we have neglected many things. You can do as you please, but I shall keep my book on the table here and read a little every morning as I wake, for I know it will do me good and help me through the day."
I have a pretty high tolerance for pious, ridiculously upstanding heroines (Clarissa, holla), but this and other elements of the book bummed me out a bit, to be honest. I just remembered the March girls as being more earthy, more real. But then, I read this book at a time when I thought the Brady Bunch and Olivia Newton-John were spittin' truth.
So yeah, it was disappointing to encounter a book that felt less authentic than the first time I read it. But then Jo meets the Laurence Boy, and the girls bicker, and I'm all swept up again. Despite Alcott's heavy-handedness with the characterizations sometimes, I can't help but be charmed by passages like this:
There were six dolls to be taken up and dressed every morning, for Beth was a child still and loved her pets as well as ever. ...One forlorn fragment of dollanity had belonged to Jo and, having led a tempestuous life, was left a wreck in the rag bag, from which dreary poorhouse it was rescued by Beth and taken to her refuge. Having no top to its head, she tied [um hello Louisa, dangling modifier much? -- ed] on a neat little cap, and as both arms and legs were gone, she hid these deficiencies by folding it in a blanket and devoting her best bed to this chronic invalid. If anyone had known the care lavished on that dolly, I think it would have touched their hearts, even while they laughed. She brought it bits of bouquets, read to it, took it out to breathe the air, hidden under her coat, she sang it lullabies and never went to bed without kissing is dirty face and whispering tenderly, 'I hope you'll have a good night, my poor dear.'
Reading that, and knowing what happens to Beth, well bless my own heart, I have to keep going, because this is where Louisa May Alcott becomes a cross between Beverly Cleary and Charlotte Bronte in capturing the young and the female Sentiments. So now I am more than halfway through Little Women, even though it makes me want to say "capital" instead of "great" and may be even more embarrassing to carry around than a Twilight book. But I do not care.
Music: "Old Friends 4 Sale"
Thursday, February 03, 2011
Uncomfortable Moments With Putin.
Clearing your cache can lead to some unexpected discoveries. Tonight I meant to go to my blog and typed "uncomfor" --
and lo, what do you think comes up in Google's auto-suggest? It isn't UncMo, my friends. It's Uncomfortable Moments With Putin.
My hat is off to this site, a compendium of awkward national leadership rivaled only by Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things.
The search term "uncmo," fyi, brings up a lot of inscrutable results from UNCC, such as UNCC Moodle. I don't know what a moodle is, but I respect that the good people at University of North Carolina Charlotte came up with it, and thus captured search results for uncmo.
and lo, what do you think comes up in Google's auto-suggest? It isn't UncMo, my friends. It's Uncomfortable Moments With Putin.
My hat is off to this site, a compendium of awkward national leadership rivaled only by Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things.
The search term "uncmo," fyi, brings up a lot of inscrutable results from UNCC, such as UNCC Moodle. I don't know what a moodle is, but I respect that the good people at University of North Carolina Charlotte came up with it, and thus captured search results for uncmo.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Death.
How did you first come to understand what death is?
I can't remember the answer to this, myself. It probably involved a goldfish. But I can remember experiencing, for the first time, being lied to about death.
My grandmother had a golden retriever that I absolutely loved when I was a kid, maybe 5 or 6 years old. Cindy was one of the highlights of my visits. She was furry and let me ride her and was my friend.
Then, one visit, Cindy wasn't there. Where was Cindy, I wanted to know? I was informed that Cindy had gone to the vet.
Cindy was at the vet for a super long time, but that was OK. I would simply wait until she came back.
But it took a really long time for Cindy to come back. I was on this story like Geraldo Rivera. Was Cindy back yet? When was she going to come back? Why did she go to the vet, anyway? WHERE THE FUCK IS CINDY?
I never got a satisfactory answer. Cindy never came back. Eventually I, the most Gullible Child in America, figured it all out.
It was (and is) not my mom's style to lie to me. However, it was my grandmother's style to lie, and she insisted that the situation be dealt with in this manner.
It seems like parents get kind of stressed out (I sure would) about this moment -- the moment when death must be explained somehow. I'd like to come down with a firm verdict and say that being lied to scarred me forever. It did not.
I advocate honesty. But whether you're straightforward, roundabout or downright deceptive, our culture tends to be severely fearful of death, and you're not going to change that in one instant.
This post was inspired by a friend's comment on Facebook about how she dealt with this same situation:
"[I had] to explain to J. yesterday that a dog he knew died. ...This dead dog has been dogging me since September!" she wrote. "It belonged to the physical therapist J. sees twice a week, and he'd fed him treats before. When we came back after the summer break, there was a photo of Freddy posted, and a message saying he'd passed away.
"And now, in January, the photo is still there, so naturally J. has started asking when Freddy is coming back. I decided to use the word "died," but now he is working it into everyday conversation and saying "so and so died," which is usually untrue, but kind of jarring to hear!"
My mom -- though she lied on behalf of her stepmother to me about Cindy -- taught me more about death than anyone, because she experienced it so harshly and so soon. Her mother died when she was 9 years old, and her father died as she was rounding her 20s. She also lost her beloved grandmother too soon. She communicated this loss in the way she talked about those loved ones after they were gone, and in the way she hugged us and said "I love you."
In college, for a sociology of religion class, I decided to write my final paper on belief systems around death. I thought (and still think) that the way religions and cultures explain death is fascinating. I was printing out my paper (dot-matrix) in the university lab and encountered a student from Israel who asked what it was about.
As I told him, he looked confused and dismayed. "Why would you write a paper about something like that?" he said. He had served in the Israeli Army and had witnessed a lot of death. He couldn't understand why anyone would dwell on this subject willingly, make it an academic topic. A paper.
I felt, in the moment, like a dirty voyeur, because that's what I was. At the heart of my academic interest lay a desire to find an coping mechanism that would work for me when death inevitably came my way.
I liked the idea of no mirrors. I liked the idea of setting a time limit on mourning. Other than that, not much insight. Because you can't prepare.
The first time I had to face death -- for real -- came when my grandmother died of colon cancer. It was the first time I'd ever seen a person on her deathbed.
It was horrifying. It was horrifying not only to see my grandmother, so beautiful and proper, reduced to a rattling skeleton where she lay, but also to see my father hunched over her, weeping, clasping her hand and telling her what a good mother she had been.
I remember being very angry. I was angry about what happened to her, and then about the fact that we were all asked to convene at the restaurant Grandma liked to visit for her birthday dinners.
What the fuck? Why would we go to the RESTAURANT where we celebrated her BIRTHDAY after her DEATH, as if she were here? That was, like, a cruel joke to me. I ran and ran on the treadmill that day, dry-eyed, trying to work it out. I never did. I just had to accept that that's what her kids -- the ones who mattered -- wanted to do.
If someone could tell me a good lie today, as an adult, about death -- if I could somehow revert to the child I was, and believe that lie -- I daresay I'd prefer it.
Music: "Sometimes It Snows in April"
I can't remember the answer to this, myself. It probably involved a goldfish. But I can remember experiencing, for the first time, being lied to about death.
My grandmother had a golden retriever that I absolutely loved when I was a kid, maybe 5 or 6 years old. Cindy was one of the highlights of my visits. She was furry and let me ride her and was my friend.
Then, one visit, Cindy wasn't there. Where was Cindy, I wanted to know? I was informed that Cindy had gone to the vet.
Cindy was at the vet for a super long time, but that was OK. I would simply wait until she came back.
But it took a really long time for Cindy to come back. I was on this story like Geraldo Rivera. Was Cindy back yet? When was she going to come back? Why did she go to the vet, anyway? WHERE THE FUCK IS CINDY?
I never got a satisfactory answer. Cindy never came back. Eventually I, the most Gullible Child in America, figured it all out.
It was (and is) not my mom's style to lie to me. However, it was my grandmother's style to lie, and she insisted that the situation be dealt with in this manner.
It seems like parents get kind of stressed out (I sure would) about this moment -- the moment when death must be explained somehow. I'd like to come down with a firm verdict and say that being lied to scarred me forever. It did not.
I advocate honesty. But whether you're straightforward, roundabout or downright deceptive, our culture tends to be severely fearful of death, and you're not going to change that in one instant.
This post was inspired by a friend's comment on Facebook about how she dealt with this same situation:
"[I had] to explain to J. yesterday that a dog he knew died. ...This dead dog has been dogging me since September!" she wrote. "It belonged to the physical therapist J. sees twice a week, and he'd fed him treats before. When we came back after the summer break, there was a photo of Freddy posted, and a message saying he'd passed away.
"And now, in January, the photo is still there, so naturally J. has started asking when Freddy is coming back. I decided to use the word "died," but now he is working it into everyday conversation and saying "so and so died," which is usually untrue, but kind of jarring to hear!"
My mom -- though she lied on behalf of her stepmother to me about Cindy -- taught me more about death than anyone, because she experienced it so harshly and so soon. Her mother died when she was 9 years old, and her father died as she was rounding her 20s. She also lost her beloved grandmother too soon. She communicated this loss in the way she talked about those loved ones after they were gone, and in the way she hugged us and said "I love you."
In college, for a sociology of religion class, I decided to write my final paper on belief systems around death. I thought (and still think) that the way religions and cultures explain death is fascinating. I was printing out my paper (dot-matrix) in the university lab and encountered a student from Israel who asked what it was about.
As I told him, he looked confused and dismayed. "Why would you write a paper about something like that?" he said. He had served in the Israeli Army and had witnessed a lot of death. He couldn't understand why anyone would dwell on this subject willingly, make it an academic topic. A paper.
I felt, in the moment, like a dirty voyeur, because that's what I was. At the heart of my academic interest lay a desire to find an coping mechanism that would work for me when death inevitably came my way.
I liked the idea of no mirrors. I liked the idea of setting a time limit on mourning. Other than that, not much insight. Because you can't prepare.
The first time I had to face death -- for real -- came when my grandmother died of colon cancer. It was the first time I'd ever seen a person on her deathbed.
It was horrifying. It was horrifying not only to see my grandmother, so beautiful and proper, reduced to a rattling skeleton where she lay, but also to see my father hunched over her, weeping, clasping her hand and telling her what a good mother she had been.
I remember being very angry. I was angry about what happened to her, and then about the fact that we were all asked to convene at the restaurant Grandma liked to visit for her birthday dinners.
What the fuck? Why would we go to the RESTAURANT where we celebrated her BIRTHDAY after her DEATH, as if she were here? That was, like, a cruel joke to me. I ran and ran on the treadmill that day, dry-eyed, trying to work it out. I never did. I just had to accept that that's what her kids -- the ones who mattered -- wanted to do.
If someone could tell me a good lie today, as an adult, about death -- if I could somehow revert to the child I was, and believe that lie -- I daresay I'd prefer it.
Music: "Sometimes It Snows in April"
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