James and I were having fancy cheese at Otto on Sunday night when I realized that I'd forgotten a lot of things that happened in college. For one thing, I'd somehow forgotten that James had also been an RA until we started trading ridiculous on-duty stories. Even though both of us have been certified Grown-Up People for some time now (haha - no, really, we have jobs and debt and stuff), it's a little bizarre we manage to find bottomless nostalgia in talking about When We Were In School. You know, back in the day. It feels like another life. A life where I wore messenger bags exclusively and had an unfortunate taste for Smirnoff Ice.
At some point in the last few years, I stopped being on academic time. (I also gave up Smirnoff Ice, but somehow that seems less sad.) For most of my life, this would be the time of year when I would actually start to pine for school. Even for a long time after I graduated, I would still find myself conditioned to think of late summer as time to get ready for...something. Then I realized that after Labor Day I still had to go to the same job, sit at the same desk and order the same chopped liver sandwich for Steve. Oh, and make my student loan payment on the 8th of the month. Fantastic.
I was really good at school. And I mean that in the way that some people are really good at video games - all I cared about was getting the High Score on my transcript, getting to the next level, killing the big boss with my super-combo move. OK, maybe not the last part. But when I think about it now, I wasn't terribly concerned with, you know, learning anything. I'm sure I absorbed a few things here and there - I will spell you under the table, for example, thanks to reading about the exploits of Flavia and company in 11th grade Latin. It was like The Hills of ancient Rome, only with more conjugating of the verbs. ANYWAY. Much like how mastering Gears of War doesn't have much residual benefit to your everyday life, my gift for deftly navigating the hurdles of secondary education didn't actually make me a more knowledgeable person now that my value as a human is more than my cumulative GPA.
By the time I got to college, manipulation of the academic system was almost second nature. I knew exactly the bare minimum of effort I needed to put in and still satisfy my need to overachieve. I seemed to have an eerie ability to churn out term papers in the 11th hour - I would almost go into some sort of trance (no, seriously) and spew words and hope that I was making a rational point somewhere in there. It was a game of chicken to see what I could get away with, how much I could coast on my innate intelligence.
I remember being handed back an essay I had written for my 20th Century American Literature class - an essay I had finished approximately 2 hours before it was due on two books I had not actually read, only skimmed for quotes. Oh, and it was about 3 pages shy of the minimum required length. I got an A. That was the moment at which I realized that I was effectively minoring in Complete Bullshit. As a matter of fact, if bullshit had been a real choice of major (it probably was at Gallatin), it would have prepared me much more effectively for my chosen line of work.
After I got home from dinner with James, I had a text exchange with the tour manager for one of my bands.
"It's good to be off the road," he said. "But I'm not exactly looking forward to going back to school."
Compared to spending weeks in a van with a bunch of hungover, unshowered dudes?
College - it really is much better in retrospect.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Surprise! You've won a raging anxiety disorder!
The basic premise of "Scare Tactics" is a little absurb, at least from the viewer's perspective. Is it really that entertaining to watch people be freaked out by completely fake and often beyond stupid scenarios? I guess there's some smug satisfaction in thinking that YOU wouldn't completely lose your shit if confronted by a "failed genetic experiment" - i.e. a midget in a rat costume.
However leave it to Japan to pervert the entire concept by taking it way above and beyond limits of reasonable restraint. Now there probably isn't anyone among us who probably wouldn't react the same way as this poor woman if two guys ON FIRE came running toward you after carjacking someone and firing weapons in your general direction.
She doesn't seem terribly relieved when she finds out that the whole thing was staged as an exploitation of her emotional response to lack of PERSONAL SAFETY. All in good fun, right? She even gets a t-shirt...and probably agoraphobia for the rest of her life.
However leave it to Japan to pervert the entire concept by taking it way above and beyond limits of reasonable restraint. Now there probably isn't anyone among us who probably wouldn't react the same way as this poor woman if two guys ON FIRE came running toward you after carjacking someone and firing weapons in your general direction.
She doesn't seem terribly relieved when she finds out that the whole thing was staged as an exploitation of her emotional response to lack of PERSONAL SAFETY. All in good fun, right? She even gets a t-shirt...and probably agoraphobia for the rest of her life.
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Just Saying: Choking hazard
On the site where I sometimes shop for bras (because I need a special kind of assistance from the UK), they sell this, which both frightens and perplexes me:
Seriously?
I ask much of my bras, yes, but light bondage isn't usually part of the deal.
Seriously?
I ask much of my bras, yes, but light bondage isn't usually part of the deal.
Monday, August 04, 2008
The rest of me
I had not seen Marta, the woman I prefer to do my waxing, in several months - only because she works the evening shift on weeknights, and I had been making weekend appointments for the sake of convenience. She does an especially...shall we say thorough job, which is much appreciated in the summer months.
"You lose weight," she commented during my session last week. "Leg up now. Good girl."
People have been commenting on my weight loss a lot recently, although always in the same flat, objective way that you state obvious facts. I suppose there's the inherent implication that I look good or better than I did 15 or 20 lbs ago. "Society says it's a good thing anyway," shrugged the guy who had recently dumped me, after mentioning that I definitely looked thinner. He would go on to make the same observation two more times over the course of our attempt to be just-friends one Sunday afternoon. I realized that being thinner did nothing to make me more or less attractive to him, so why did it matter?
That's the disconcerting thing about getting attention for this particular weight loss - I can't really take any credit for it, so I feel somewhat disingenuous in accepting (implied) praise. You know how there's a running excuse among weight-challenged that they have "a thyroid problem"? Well, I really do. As in, I no longer have one. My metabolism had been on the skids for years, but now I take a pill every morning which kick starts it to a normal level my crippled thyroid could never achieve. Oh, and I can't drink anymore - which was a mostly unanticipated side effect of The Cancer. Sort of a blessing in disguise. Possibly as a side effect of the medication or my months of medically imposed abstinence, I currently have the tolerance of a 4th-grader. The last time I tried to have two glasses of wine, I felt like I might need a good old-fashioned coma to shake it off. So between the sobriety and the synthetically-boosted ability to burn calories, I have managed to drop a pants size through no real effort on my part.
I have never been what could be construed as "skinny," nor am I now. I was probably never even what's commonly thought of as "fat," even at my heaviest weight in high school. As a woman, being tall simply puts you squarely in the general category of "large" where your weight doesn't really have as much impact. "Skinny" implies that I could somehow also be "small," and there was no way of doing that. I recently told one of the guys in my office what I weigh, and he looked at me incredulously. "There's no way," he announced. "That's 50lbs more than me." I pointed out that I'm also about 4 inches taller than he is.
When I was 12, we took a class trip to Ellis Island. I chose this particular opportunity to strap one of my mother's belts around my poochy lower stomach so I could tuck my shirt in - something I never did for shame of not having the flat belly my friends did. I remember several people complimenting me during the day that I looked skinny - the highest praise you can bestow on a pre-teen, natch. Even though I got to be desperately uncomfortable over the course of the day, it still never dawned on me what a ridiculous fucking nitwit I was for doing potential damage to all of the cargo one carries in one's mid-section. And let me tell you - crushing your abdomen under the unforgiving restriction of a gingham belt is not without consequences. I had what we charmingly referred to in my family as "the trots" for two days following this little adventure in body sculpting. Sometimes I wonder if I managed to rearrange my organs - Is my spleen warped? Is one of my ovaries stuck in my gall bladder? Certainly people have done more self-destructive things in the name of vanity, but this has always been my pinnacle of lunacy for the sake of appearances.
After college I made a conscious effort to eat better - I kicked my Wendy's habit, embraced portion control and learned that low-fat dairy products are in no way offensive. As a result my weight leveled off, and while I was certainly still Large by virtue of my height, my horizontal size had stablized in the "average" range - or so says my MySpace profile, anyway. I feel no need apologize for being a size 14 in jeans anymore than being a size 11 in shoes. None of the resolutions I've made in the last several years have involved my weight - lately, they're more along the lines of "buy new cookware" or "stop saying 'retarded'."
Except now I have even casual acquantainces mentioning how thin I am, and I can't help but thinking, "How fat did you think I was before?"
The downside of being the thinnest I have in my adult life is feeling a strange paranoia about gaining the weight back. It snuck off when I wasn't paying attention, so what's to prevent it from making a return while I'm less than vigilant? I'm being forced to think about something that I had happily designated a Non-Issue.
I still don't tuck my shirts in, by the way. Some things never change.
"You lose weight," she commented during my session last week. "Leg up now. Good girl."
People have been commenting on my weight loss a lot recently, although always in the same flat, objective way that you state obvious facts. I suppose there's the inherent implication that I look good or better than I did 15 or 20 lbs ago. "Society says it's a good thing anyway," shrugged the guy who had recently dumped me, after mentioning that I definitely looked thinner. He would go on to make the same observation two more times over the course of our attempt to be just-friends one Sunday afternoon. I realized that being thinner did nothing to make me more or less attractive to him, so why did it matter?
That's the disconcerting thing about getting attention for this particular weight loss - I can't really take any credit for it, so I feel somewhat disingenuous in accepting (implied) praise. You know how there's a running excuse among weight-challenged that they have "a thyroid problem"? Well, I really do. As in, I no longer have one. My metabolism had been on the skids for years, but now I take a pill every morning which kick starts it to a normal level my crippled thyroid could never achieve. Oh, and I can't drink anymore - which was a mostly unanticipated side effect of The Cancer. Sort of a blessing in disguise. Possibly as a side effect of the medication or my months of medically imposed abstinence, I currently have the tolerance of a 4th-grader. The last time I tried to have two glasses of wine, I felt like I might need a good old-fashioned coma to shake it off. So between the sobriety and the synthetically-boosted ability to burn calories, I have managed to drop a pants size through no real effort on my part.
I have never been what could be construed as "skinny," nor am I now. I was probably never even what's commonly thought of as "fat," even at my heaviest weight in high school. As a woman, being tall simply puts you squarely in the general category of "large" where your weight doesn't really have as much impact. "Skinny" implies that I could somehow also be "small," and there was no way of doing that. I recently told one of the guys in my office what I weigh, and he looked at me incredulously. "There's no way," he announced. "That's 50lbs more than me." I pointed out that I'm also about 4 inches taller than he is.
When I was 12, we took a class trip to Ellis Island. I chose this particular opportunity to strap one of my mother's belts around my poochy lower stomach so I could tuck my shirt in - something I never did for shame of not having the flat belly my friends did. I remember several people complimenting me during the day that I looked skinny - the highest praise you can bestow on a pre-teen, natch. Even though I got to be desperately uncomfortable over the course of the day, it still never dawned on me what a ridiculous fucking nitwit I was for doing potential damage to all of the cargo one carries in one's mid-section. And let me tell you - crushing your abdomen under the unforgiving restriction of a gingham belt is not without consequences. I had what we charmingly referred to in my family as "the trots" for two days following this little adventure in body sculpting. Sometimes I wonder if I managed to rearrange my organs - Is my spleen warped? Is one of my ovaries stuck in my gall bladder? Certainly people have done more self-destructive things in the name of vanity, but this has always been my pinnacle of lunacy for the sake of appearances.
After college I made a conscious effort to eat better - I kicked my Wendy's habit, embraced portion control and learned that low-fat dairy products are in no way offensive. As a result my weight leveled off, and while I was certainly still Large by virtue of my height, my horizontal size had stablized in the "average" range - or so says my MySpace profile, anyway. I feel no need apologize for being a size 14 in jeans anymore than being a size 11 in shoes. None of the resolutions I've made in the last several years have involved my weight - lately, they're more along the lines of "buy new cookware" or "stop saying 'retarded'."
Except now I have even casual acquantainces mentioning how thin I am, and I can't help but thinking, "How fat did you think I was before?"
The downside of being the thinnest I have in my adult life is feeling a strange paranoia about gaining the weight back. It snuck off when I wasn't paying attention, so what's to prevent it from making a return while I'm less than vigilant? I'm being forced to think about something that I had happily designated a Non-Issue.
I still don't tuck my shirts in, by the way. Some things never change.
Friday, August 01, 2008
29 Dimensions of Evil
I've decided that I'm not comfortable with eHarmony.
My primary reason for this is the obvious – people that require a 40-question survey to find someone suitable for a relationship don’t need to be validated or encouraged to breed. These are the same singles that shake their fist at the sky with one hand while the other clutches a dog-eared copy of The Rules. They just can’t understand why it’s not working out. After all, they know exactly what they want - right down to the percentage of time their ideal partner ought to spend thinking about lawn fertilizer.
Enter Dr. Neil Clark Warren (and do we really believe he's a doctor in any legitimate sense?) acting as the shepherd of lonely hearts everywhere, guiding the lost and lovelorn into satisfying, nurturing, heterosexual relationships (read: marriage - living in sin is not eHarmonious). But live and let live, right? What do I care if a website wants to get some aggressively rigid people hitched? As long as they pair up with each other, fewer of them are left to intermingle with the general population.
On the other hand, more and more I notice how subversive the eHarmony message really is. That’s right - I'm on to you, Dr. Neil, and your propaganda machine. Something about all the shiny, happy, racially matched couples in the commercials is starting to look very Orwellian, is it not? Big Brother wants you to get on with the business of socially-approved mating and populating The Nation. Your life is empty and meaningless - find your pre-screened, genetically suitable mate today! Work is good! Resistance is futile! Soylent green is people! Pretty soon we're all going to be assigned numbers, sent off to gender-specific work camps and living under the rule of androids. So maybe that's a little dramatic, but it's a slippery slope - especially given that we live in a time when our rights to bring shampoo aboard an airplane are under attack.
It's also worth pointing out that the whole foundation of the eHarmony process is false: "We match you based on 29 dimensions of compatibility." Let's face it - most people don't have 29 dimensions. None of the people I know have more than two or three. If you do have 29 dimensions, then it's a probably safe bet you also yell obscenities at strangers and wear your underwear outside your clothes. Stay right there - the bus for the group home will be picking you up shortly. Try this experiment: find someone in your general vicinity and ask him to tell you 29 things about himself. I guarantee that by the time he reaches number 7, he's saying things like "I like beer pong" or "I own the Foreigner box set."
Have we all gotten so jaded as a culture that we no longer trust ourselves to decide whether or not we get along with someone well enough to engage in a relationship? Has the day come when we need to have a computer program determine this for us, based on whether we like “slapstick” or “gentle” humor? There is no option to select “dead baby jokes” which eliminates most of the people that I personally would find compatible.
The other premise of their “matching system” is also laughable. According to Dr. Neil, we can only find The Right Person by showing them "who you really are at the very deepest level." This makes me think of the moment in the V miniseries when the aliens peeled their skin off, revealing who they really were at the very deepest level: EVIL LIZARDS FROM SPACE! Think about the last few people you even remotely considered seeing naked - did you really want to know who they were at the Very. Deepest. Level? Probably not. For that very reason, most of us have enough common sense to keep our crazy to ourselves. Quite frankly, I don't even want to know who I really am at the very deepest level - I'm sure it's a cold, dark pit of dysfunction. Let's not even think about it. For that reason, I'm keeping my reptilian sheen under wraps, thank you very much. Is it really the best idea to wear your damage on your sleeve for the sake of dating efficiency? That’s like being introduced to someone and saying, "Hi, I'm Terry, and I have deep-seated issues with abandonment and an unresolved attachment to my mother. Are you free this weekend?" Trust me when I say that your deepest levels need to be kept away from the masses whenever possible if we’re all expected to deal with each other on a daily basis.
Despite the assertions of the eHarmony ads, there is not “someone who’s been waiting for you since the day you were born.” Besides being more than a little creepy, it promotes the false notion that two people can be snapped together like Legos, assuming that their tic marks in a survey match up. That being the case, I'd even like to start a campaign here and now to champion the superficial relationship. One which might not lead to marriage! One based on only 1 or 2 dimensions of compatibility! There’s something to be said for simply – and this is crazy, so bear with me – getting to know someone in order to ascertain his or her suitability as a mate. Or maybe even just suitability for hanging out and watching the SciFi Channel. Let’s all try to have fewer relationship requirements beyond “Not a convicted felon” and “Makes a genuine effort,” and maybe we have a chance to beat Dr. Neil at his own game.
My primary reason for this is the obvious – people that require a 40-question survey to find someone suitable for a relationship don’t need to be validated or encouraged to breed. These are the same singles that shake their fist at the sky with one hand while the other clutches a dog-eared copy of The Rules. They just can’t understand why it’s not working out. After all, they know exactly what they want - right down to the percentage of time their ideal partner ought to spend thinking about lawn fertilizer.
Enter Dr. Neil Clark Warren (and do we really believe he's a doctor in any legitimate sense?) acting as the shepherd of lonely hearts everywhere, guiding the lost and lovelorn into satisfying, nurturing, heterosexual relationships (read: marriage - living in sin is not eHarmonious). But live and let live, right? What do I care if a website wants to get some aggressively rigid people hitched? As long as they pair up with each other, fewer of them are left to intermingle with the general population.
On the other hand, more and more I notice how subversive the eHarmony message really is. That’s right - I'm on to you, Dr. Neil, and your propaganda machine. Something about all the shiny, happy, racially matched couples in the commercials is starting to look very Orwellian, is it not? Big Brother wants you to get on with the business of socially-approved mating and populating The Nation. Your life is empty and meaningless - find your pre-screened, genetically suitable mate today! Work is good! Resistance is futile! Soylent green is people! Pretty soon we're all going to be assigned numbers, sent off to gender-specific work camps and living under the rule of androids. So maybe that's a little dramatic, but it's a slippery slope - especially given that we live in a time when our rights to bring shampoo aboard an airplane are under attack.
It's also worth pointing out that the whole foundation of the eHarmony process is false: "We match you based on 29 dimensions of compatibility." Let's face it - most people don't have 29 dimensions. None of the people I know have more than two or three. If you do have 29 dimensions, then it's a probably safe bet you also yell obscenities at strangers and wear your underwear outside your clothes. Stay right there - the bus for the group home will be picking you up shortly. Try this experiment: find someone in your general vicinity and ask him to tell you 29 things about himself. I guarantee that by the time he reaches number 7, he's saying things like "I like beer pong" or "I own the Foreigner box set."
Have we all gotten so jaded as a culture that we no longer trust ourselves to decide whether or not we get along with someone well enough to engage in a relationship? Has the day come when we need to have a computer program determine this for us, based on whether we like “slapstick” or “gentle” humor? There is no option to select “dead baby jokes” which eliminates most of the people that I personally would find compatible.
The other premise of their “matching system” is also laughable. According to Dr. Neil, we can only find The Right Person by showing them "who you really are at the very deepest level." This makes me think of the moment in the V miniseries when the aliens peeled their skin off, revealing who they really were at the very deepest level: EVIL LIZARDS FROM SPACE! Think about the last few people you even remotely considered seeing naked - did you really want to know who they were at the Very. Deepest. Level? Probably not. For that very reason, most of us have enough common sense to keep our crazy to ourselves. Quite frankly, I don't even want to know who I really am at the very deepest level - I'm sure it's a cold, dark pit of dysfunction. Let's not even think about it. For that reason, I'm keeping my reptilian sheen under wraps, thank you very much. Is it really the best idea to wear your damage on your sleeve for the sake of dating efficiency? That’s like being introduced to someone and saying, "Hi, I'm Terry, and I have deep-seated issues with abandonment and an unresolved attachment to my mother. Are you free this weekend?" Trust me when I say that your deepest levels need to be kept away from the masses whenever possible if we’re all expected to deal with each other on a daily basis.
Despite the assertions of the eHarmony ads, there is not “someone who’s been waiting for you since the day you were born.” Besides being more than a little creepy, it promotes the false notion that two people can be snapped together like Legos, assuming that their tic marks in a survey match up. That being the case, I'd even like to start a campaign here and now to champion the superficial relationship. One which might not lead to marriage! One based on only 1 or 2 dimensions of compatibility! There’s something to be said for simply – and this is crazy, so bear with me – getting to know someone in order to ascertain his or her suitability as a mate. Or maybe even just suitability for hanging out and watching the SciFi Channel. Let’s all try to have fewer relationship requirements beyond “Not a convicted felon” and “Makes a genuine effort,” and maybe we have a chance to beat Dr. Neil at his own game.
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