Deep thoughts re traveling

I have been traveling for work today.  Here are some related insights: 

 

1.  I know I should boycott Arizona, but I had a layover in Phoenix and my custom of getting a Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pizza (or whatever they're called these days) while killing time in an airport won out.  The moral outrage, she is weak compared to the tummy.  

 

2.  The language that airline employees use when making announcements is really odd:  "We DO ask that you store your smaller personal item underneath the seat in front of you," "We DO appreciate your patience during the boarding process," "We WILL ask that you pay with a major credit card."  Normally you would only use that kind of emphasis if someone had questioned whether you really meant what you were saying:  "You don't really appreciate my patience!" "Yes, I DO!"  So I guess that's apt, then.

 

3.  The hotel I am staying in has Guest Laundry Rooms, for which I am grateful.  I am even more psyched that the washers and dryers are the EXACT SAME ones as we had in the dorms in college.  Speed Queen Commercial Washers and Dryers!  With the coin slots and everything!  It takes me back.  There was some way to rig them so the quarters (or something that substituted for quarters?) stayed in the slots and you didn't have to pay, but I don't remember what it was and probably wouldn't try it even if I did.  

 

4.  There is something nice about having a rental car and your own hotel room and being able to set up your little world however you want, and to watch TV in bed.  I am not going all George Clooney in Up in the Air, though, and I will see if I still agree with this in 13 days, when I am still at the Executive Inn and Suites by the freeway in Oakland.  (In case you want to look me up.) 

 

5.  The time zones got away from me and I forgot to call before it got unreasonably late, Mom and Dad.  Sorry.  Talk to you sometime this week.   

Cubicle/Walt Disney paper dream

I had a really weird, vivid dream last night. I was working on a big paper that I had to finish in order to graduate from law school or college, not sure which. I had rented a hotel room to work on the paper, but the room was actually a cubicle with a fold-out bed in it. There were several other people in adjoining cubicles, also working on papers. At some point in the dream I was telling someone what my paper was going to be about, and I said with excitement that I had decided to write about Walt Disney because I had already written about him before. (I wrote an autobiography about Walt Disney for a Gifted and Talented class assignment in 5th grade.) I said I was going to focus on both art history and math as they related to Disney films. The person I was talking to said that was a bad idea and maybe I should rethink it. I then realized that it was, in fact, a bad idea and went back to my cubicle/hotel. The cubicle was so full of paper that I couldn't fold the bed down.

And I am not even feeling stressed out about work, and my office is pretty clean! What does this mean? I woke up feeling grateful that I don't have to come up with topics to write papers about anymore, so I guess that's a good insight.

No back to school, thank God

Last night I had my only "back-to-school"-type experience of the year,
and holy crizzap did it make me relieved that I don't actually have to
go back to school.

The tutoring program I volunteer at restarted after summer break, and
I got a new student since my last one graduated (sniff). It works
like this: the tutors sit on chairs pushed up against the wall of a
hallway, like we are waiting for a job interview or to get asked to
dance. The students who need tutors are in a room around the corner
with the coordinator. Every 5 minutes or so the coordinator comes out
with a student, calls out a tutor's name, and introduces them.

Last night I sat there for about half an hour until I got my student,
and by the end of this period it dawned on me that I was REALLY
nervous. Would we like each other? Would her parents like me? Would
I be able to help her? Would she have behavioral problems or a
learning disability? Would she get into college? Was there still
time to change my mind and leave?

And it occurred to me that this is only a tiny fraction of the
nervousness that I used to experience before a new school year.
Sometimes I have a hazy nostalgia for how the experience of going back
to school, how everything was new and it was like starting over, but
this was a helpful reminder that in fact many of those experiences
were SHEER TERROR and starting over SUCKED. Looking at the
back-to-school Ikea catalog is plenty of new excitement for me now,
thanks.

Luddite technie FAIL

Last weekend at the fantatic wedding of my friends A and A, someone used my iPhone to take a picture of me wearing a strapless dress and a plastic Viking helmet.  The dress was not visible in the picture, so as far as the picture was concerned, I may well have been wearing nothing but the Viking helmet.  I thought the picture was fab, so I set it as my contact picture for myself in my phone.

 

I am not sure exactly what I thought that setting a contact picture meant, and then I forgot about it.  Today while taking care of bizness in my work email, my cursor passed over my name in the Gchat thingie.  (My work uses a Gmail-based email system.)  To my horror, the Viking helmet picture popped up!  Aghast, I clicked on "Edit picture" and then chose "No picture."  Whew!  

 

But no!  A few hours later at work, I saw that the Viking picture was still there!  Here began an insanely long process of repeatedly removing the picture from my Gchat thing, only to have it reappear immediately.  Eventually I figured out that the picture was not assigned in my Gmail preferences, but on my phone, to my work email address as a "contact."  Whatever.  I finally got it to go away.  But now I am not sure whether it was visible to everyone else at work for the last week.  Shudder. 

Ebooks and independent bookstores

Today on my lunch break I went to Kramerbooks in Dupont Circle to buy a guidebook for an upcoming vacation.  With vacay on the brain, I had been thinking about whether I should buy a Kindle or Nook or whatever those things are called.  Even though I generally dislike the idea of reading a book on a computer-ish device, the idea of being able to fit a zillion books in one small space is appealing, packing-wise. 

 

So I asked the woman working at the checkout counter whether Kramerbooks sells eBooks.  She said (not unkindly) No, that's the antithesis of everything we stand for, and directed me to a cartoon on the subject posted on the wall.  The cartoon made the point that the qualities eBooks are striving to accomplish--indestructability, lendability, ability to read "offline" without recharging--have already been achieved in actual books.  Not untrue!  But they left out "ability to pack 15 of them in my suitcase."

 

So now I feel like if I buy an eBook machine maybe I am screwing over independent booksellers.  But surely they should be able to get in on the act?  Is Kramerbooks' antipathy an ideologial thing, or do Amazon, etc. bar indepent booksellers from participating in the eBook market?  (And does anybody have any recommendations for good vacation books--preferably in paperback?) 

Hot in the Sitcom Kitchen

OK, so I may need to somewhat walk back my statement that that Hot in Cleveland is not "dated."  The other night I watched a double-header of Golden Girls and Hot in Cleveland, and goodness there are some striking parallels. 

 

Such as:  both shows use a kitchen set with a small table in the foreground.  I can't think of a single other TV show that has used this setup.  It seems so unique that it almost must be a shout-out to GG -- or is it just an attempt to be realistic about how an old house in Cleveland would be laid out? 

 

There is also the more obvious Betty-White-and-three-other-women-over-the-age-of-40 parallel.  Mr. TA (joining me in most of the double-header) pointed out that in HiC, Betty White has kind of taken over the Estelle Getty/Sophia role from GG.  This led us to start trying to draw more parallels between the characters.  Arguably:

 

Betty White = Sophia (old, curmudgeonly, cracks one-liners) 

Valerie Bertinelli = Rose (happy/ditzy)

Jane Leeves = Blanche (slutty (arguably?), has an accent)

Wendy Malick = Dorothy (This one doesn't work as well.  Tall?)  

 

But then, you could sort of do the same thing with Sex and the City:  

 

Charlotte = Rose (ditzy)

Samantha = Blanche (slutty)

Carrie = Dorothy (looking for love)

Miranda = Sophia (The practical one, I guess?)

 

Alternately, this might just mean that all these shows are using variations on some pretty old-school stereotypes--the virgin, the whore, the mother (and the other one, I guess).  That's definitely dated. 

  

Hot in my living room

I watched the first episode of Hot in Cleveland, and that was some funny shit.  Not just Betty White, although of course she was fabulous (and I am not just saying this in a recent-bandwagon-jumping SNL fan kind of way--I have loved Golden Girls and the Mary Tyler Moore show since Betty White just barely qualified for AARP membership).  The other characters were funny too--I especially liked the bit where whatshername kept licking her arm because she'd eaten chili fries the night before--and they have a believable rapport with each other.  Do not listen to the reviews that say it's "dated" because it's a sitcom with a laugh track--they really just mean the actresses are old.  Which is the point!  They're old in Hollywood, but in Cleveland they're hot.  It's funny because it's true (and that is Hollywood's loss, not Cleveland's.)

Step away from the email!

In the last couple of weeks I have had occasion to observe two different small email lists, a neigborhood one and a sports team one, devolve into bitchfests of fairly epic proportions.  It is not that surprising when people post rude or cruel comments anonymously on the internet, but I was surprised to see a comparable level of asshattery on small lists (a few dozen people each) of people who actually know each other and/or live very near each other. 

 

People on both lists have suggested that the problem is email itself, and I think that is probably right.  When people talk In Real Life, even if they are really pissed off, most of the time the human conflict-avoidance instinct, combined with the urge to not look like an dickhead, kicks in to keep everybody vaguely civil.  But when it's just you and your computer screen, you don't see anybody's surprised or hurt or bemused expressions when you start to talk like a crazy person.  So it's easy to work yourself into a later of self-righteous anger and to make dramatic pronouncements that you just would not make in person.  Then the problem becomes self-perpetuating, because once somebody has tossed some rude or email thought out there, other people get annoyed that somebody is clogging their inbox with nonsense or has destroyed their beloved email list, and they start to pile on too.

 

Anyway, this is all fairly depressing, especially since I conduct such a large portion of my life on email.  I'm not sure if there's anything to be done other than to throw out the occasional "I think everybody on this list is great and we would all get along fine if we were talking in person!"  But that kind of only goes so far. 

SEQUELS Sequels sequels

(Re blogging:  I have gotten into a bad habit of almost never blogging, and then doing it only when someone comments about my lack of blogging.  So, this one's for you, Sita!) 

 

I saw both Sex & the City 2 and Iron Man 2 a couple of weeks ago and, in a case of seriously low expectations, found both of them a lot less objectionable than the originals.  But I am worried that this is a bad sign. 

 

To review:  Iron Man 1 pissed me off greatly because the message was:  In order to become a superhero who will usher in world peace, all the arms-deaing Robert Downey, Jr. character needs to do is invent a super advanced weapon system that is shiny and red and he can wear and lets him fly, like a man-shaped Corvette with guns and wings. 

 

But in Iron Man 2, when Robert Downey, Jr. tells a Senate committee he is responsible for world peace, it's supposed to be obnoxious and over the top, not, like, totally true.  Refreshing!  And once that issue was addressed, I was able to just enjoy the rest of the huge-metal-things-colliding and Scarlett-Johanssen-as-a-ninja-who-moves-in-inexplicable-slow-motion elements of the movie.  Escapist fun! 

 

And Sex & the City 1 pissed me off in a less political, more personal way because Carrie ended up with Big even after he dumped her at the altar.  (Ahh, but the personal is political!  Like how Carrie marrying Big is relevant to ... well, who knows, but that's probably a separate blog post.) 

 

But by SATC 2, the philandering, commitment-phobic Big had been replaced by a Bigbot homebody who wants to get takeout and watch TV in bed.  Not believable, but I no longer despised him.  And once that was clear, the rest was ... well, not good exactly, but it kept me amused.  Sometimes unintentionally.  And sometimes (as with Samantha's making out in public in Abu Dhabi and then getting arrested for it) in a horrified-giggling kind of way. 

 

So it seems I prefer the sequels because they omit something I object to, even though they don't have anything else much going for them.  That's not great -- it's like eating only chicken fingers and cheese quesadillas, or something.  (And I do like a cheese quesadilla.)  Not sure where I'm going with this.  Should I perhaps watch fewer big-budget movies that are bound to be fairly mediocre?  Or should I just not think too hard about why I like them or don't like them? 

 

OMG CLE you're killing me

I am watching a CLE (continuing legal education) webinar about the legal ethical implications of the interwebs.  I'm sure if I watch more of it I will learn that I should not be blogging about the CLE class.  But OMG, the person talking just said all of the following: 

 

1.  "I actually went on a Twitter page once."

2.  "I don't know if those of you who are watching this on the web..i...sode can see this" (while holding up a newspaper). 

3.  "LinkedIn is for professional networking." 
4.  "Twitter is limited to 140 characters or less." 

5.  "Blogs now allow comments."

 

I feel super tech-savvy. 

 

I care whether Elena Kagan's gay

(Note re blogging: I almost didn't notice that I hadn't written anything for two months, but now I am inspired by Andrea's reinvigorated blogging, and, let's be frank, by her saying my last post was funny. I'll do ANYTHING to be called funny. ANYTHING. Warning: the following post is probably not funny.)

I am really annoyed by all this "Elena Kagan shouldn't have to disclose her sexual orientation" commentary. People who say this do not actually mean "disclosing her sexual orientation," they mean "disclosing that she is gay," and it only makes sense in a world in which people are punished for being gay. For instance, every married nominee brings their family to their confirmation hearings, to sit there behind them as huge blinking signs of heterosexuality, but nobody thinks that is TMI. If there were no homophobia, sexuality wouldn't be something to be "disclosed" or not; it would just be a fact that's out there about a person, like where they went to college.

And it does matter if she's gay. If she were gay and out, that would be excellent because the other Supreme Court justices would be forced to deal with the existence of at least one gay human being in their lives. (Not that "diversity" always makes them see straight--the two Jewish Justices were recently unable successfully to explain to 5 Christians that the cross is a symbol of Christianity.)

But if she were gay and closeted, that would be weird and disturbing. I mean, yes, there is homophobia in the nation at large which explains why many people do not come out, but girlfriend is from a pinko family in Manhattan, has moved exclusively in lefty East Coast circles her whole life, and is 50, not 20. If she had not found the courage to come out by now (or, put another way, she had decided to keep an important part of herself hidden all this time, maybe so as to limit the kinds of ammunition people could use if she were nominated for something someday) it would make me suspicious about her trustworthiness and priorities. Plus, closeted gay public figures tend to be totally delusional.

Of course, I am totally late with this post because this morning a good friend of hers gave an amazingly awkward interview to Politico to prove that Elena's straight. Sooooo very straight!! For instance, "Walzer recalled 'discussion about who she might be interested in – the usual girl talk stuff-- talk about how to get his attention.'" Ack! Maybe I want to modify my opinion here--the fact of your sexuality should not be "private"/hidden, but most of the details past that probably should be.

Sweatpants gratification

My college boyfriend used to say, "If you wear sweatpants, you've given up on life." He said it not just as a general comment about the world, but rather to me when I was wearing sweatpants around the house. I'm pretty sure that at least once, he said it to my mom (when she was wearing sweatpants). This was not the only problem with that relationship, but it ranks up there.

Flash-forward 10+ years to last Friday. I met a friend of a friend at a happy hour, and he was wearing a suit, and green cotton socks. My friend and I were pointing out the folly of this, and I said, "There's nothing wrong with those socks, but you should wear them with sweatpants, not a suit." He said, "If you wear sweatpants, you've given up on life."

OMFG! My entire ill-fated college relationship flashed before my eyes. If more than one person held this view, was it possible my X was RIGHT? I do not currently own any sweatpants--they have been replaced by flannel PJs with Ralph Wiggum on them--but the thought still haunts.

Luckily, my friend J is much smarter than me, and when I told her this story she immediately said that they must both have gotten it from the same source. "It was probably a Seinfeld line or something," were her words. A quick Google showed she was exactly correct: in the pilot of Seinfeld, George wears sweatpants, and Jerry says:

You know the message you're sending out to the world with these sweatpants? You're telling the world, "I give up. I can't compete in normal society. I'm miserable, so I might as well be comfortable."

So not only are my ex and this other dude both just repeating a very old line that they probably don't even know is a line, but the sweatpants thing is referring specifically to wearing sweatpants outside the house. It's totally irrelevant to my life. I feel pretty awesome about this.

I am a highly accomplished individual

In the last 3 days I have accomplished the following uber-impressive feats:

(1) Done the first 3 days of P90X. Yes, it's that ridiculous EXTREME workout system you may have seen advertised on infomercials and this disturbing website! It involves a dude in a man-tank, wearing a lot of bronzer, saying "BRING IT" a lot! The DVDs include lots of plugs for a company called Beach Body and a line of "recovery drinks"! But dude, if I stick to doing even the majority -- even the plurality, really -- of 90 days of vigorously exercising for an hour a day, I will be in about 1000% better shape than I have ever been. I can tell it's working already because it hurts when I stand up from my chair. BRING IT!

(2) I made a tablecloth! Mr. TA got me a sewing machine for Christmas (because I ASKED for it, not because he thinks I should engage in lady activities, of course), but then I got kind of lazy about it, i.e. I didn't even open the box for a few months. But I was re-inspired by Dr. Frankenbaby, my dear friend who has somehow managed to make the adorable Baby E and raise her to the point where she can already sit up, while at the same time starting an awesome mommy blog in which she reprises, among other things, her highly impressive sewing and other DIY projects. I am realistic about my abilities, so while Dr. Frankenbaby takes on turning her Lab Partner's old shirts into adorable baby dresses, I started with the more accessible project of hemming a flat piece of fabric. And I did it! I forgot to take pictures -- maybe I'll do it later -- but it is really big (it's for when we use the leaves to extend the table, such as if we have more than 4 people over to eat), basically rectangular, and has (more or less) mitred corners.

Tune in next week when I fix global warming and get Obama's agenda passed. BRING IT!

Godfather and the Pacino/De Niro switcheroo

I have flipped by The Godfather Part II a couple of times in the last month or so, and it has helped me realized why I am always confusing Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. It's because somewhere along the way, possibly starting during this movie, they started to switch bodies. To wit:

Pacino (now): Frizzy-haired, craggy, gaunt, looks exhausted.
De Niro (now): Kind of pudgy face, looks amused.

But! In the Godfather II days, it was all bass-ackwards:

Pacino (then): Smooth-haired, smooth-faced, looks like he used to have inner peace but now it's under siege.
De Niro (then): Good cheekbones, attractive, looks like a moral man forced by circumstance into a life of crime.

If you were going to pick which young guy would grow up into which old guy, you would totally switch them around. See, I'm not just ignorant about classic actors (or Italian-Americans)--it's just that my understanding of them is deeper than everybody else's.

SNOW!!! BORED!!!

Tomorrow will mark Day #6 that I have not gone in to work because of the Snow that Ate DC. Yes, it's true, DC is wussy about weather, but in its defense, it's only half just straight up warm-climate-dwellers' hysteria; the other half is a lack of plows, which I guess is a reasonable financial decision in a place that rarely gets much snow.

Anyway, I am very happy to report that I am close to achieving the thing I yearned for but did not accomplish during my month off between jobs in December: boredom. When I was little my brother and I got bored all the time and would follow my mom around, asking her what we should dooooooo. I hadn't felt that for about 25 years, so at first I wasn't sure it had returned. But in retrospect, it is clear that the first twinges set in today when Mr. TA and I walked to Target to buy toilet paper even though there are zillions of closer places to get it, just so we'd have a longer walk and more stuff to look at once we got there. It intensified this afternoon when we did our taxes--the first time ever they have gotten done before April. And just now we played a board game (they're not called that for nothing!) Yay, boredom!

The question is, what happens after you get bored? Do you watch dumb TV to prolong the experience, or try to end it quickly by taking on a bigger project (cleaning closets, reading a novel)? Mom, what should I doooooooo?

Pro-what?

Here is what I don't get about the Superbowl ad with the football player and his mother talking about how she decided not to abort her pregnancy even though doctors told her she might die if she didn't: it seems off-message for "pro-lifers." Is their target audience really women whose lives are at risk? And is their goal really to convince those women that it would be immoral, and should be illegal, for them to have an abortion to save their own lives?

If not, then the message of the ad is: she was faced with a CHOICE and she made the CHOICE which others questioned but which was the right CHOICE for her. If that is the message they are cool with, then perhaps I have been misunderstanding things.

Supremely depressing

I have a number of happy things I've been meaning to blog about--my new job is going well (I think), and I agree with Andrea that The Hangover was great even if arguably one should be offended, or whatever.

But the thing that has now gotten me off my butt to actually write something is my anger/disappointment at the Supreme Court's decision to ban cameras from the gay marriage trial in California. The majority opinion (by the 5 usual suspects) reads like this: The sweet people who advocated for Proposition 8 have already gotten picked on big-time by all the mean gays and their nefarious supporters. Now the gays have brought this big mean divisive lawsuit, and the Prop 8 suporters will get picked on way more if people can watch them testify. We don't like cameras in the courts anyway, and particularly not when the public is interested in what's going on in there. Oh, and in case there's any confusion, we think the district court judge is bending the rules for the plaintiffs, and he will probably continue to do so up to and including when he rules that there's a Constitutional right to gay marriage, and we will not hesitate to smack him down then either.

As Slate pointed out, it's totally reminiscent of Bush v. Gore--5/9 of the Court is sticking their hands into an issue they would normally never get involved in because they don't like the political outcome, and then pretending like they don't have any choice but to get involved (certiorari what?) and to call 'em as they see 'em, even if they've never called it this way before and never will again. It's aggravating that, as in that case, the dissent is super polite about it and doesn't just lay it out there that this is what's going on. Not that it would do any good, but it would be more satisfying to read.

Best/Worst of the '00s!

The end of the decade feels much more salient for me right now than the end of the year.  The end of 1999 seems, in that cliched way, like just yesterday--didn't we just fill up the tub with water in A&E's apartment in Inwood so we'd have drinking water when the world ended, then head out in our chunky heels and matte lipstick for Times Square, although we'd get sidetracked by some bar containing pool tables and questionable gentlemen?  Ahh, good times.  So here are some assorted Top 5 lists for the Zeros:

 

Personal Top 5

1.  Meeting Mr. TA (aww)

2.  Regular vacations with friends from college

3.  Formation of cult/urban tribe (whatever you want to call it) in DC

4.  Evolution from boring jobs to stressful jobs

5.  Getting into law school  (for law school itself, see below)

 

Top 5 Moving Pictures on Screen

1.  Buffy the Vampire Slayer

2.  The Wire

3.  The Big Lebowski

4.  Bridget Jones' Diary

5.  DVD commentary tracks (as a genre)

 

Top 5 Things I Hope I'll Never Have to do Again

1.  Having random roommates

2.  any Bush presidency (I'm looking at you, George P. and Jenna)

3.  Moving without paid assistance

4.  Going to Lubbock

5.  Law school

 

See you in the Tens!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Twilight, a very bad movie

I took everybody's advice and did not read the Twilight books, but my curiosity about the phenomenon got the better of me, so yesterday I watched the (first) movie. 

 

Oh.My.God. it was bad.  Luckily, I found it literally laugh-out-loud bad, rather than just annoying bad.  Here is the movie:  Bella, a shy, pretty girl, moves to small town in Washington state.  She speaks only in monosyllables and generally looks surly or nauseous, but everybody immediately loves her, and she acquires a group of nice, funny friends.  All the boys in her group of friends ask her to prom, and she acts irritated and says no.  This does not upset the group dynamic, and instead the boys ask the other girls in the friend group.  Bella goes prom dress shopping with the girls but makes it clear she is uninterested in their whole silly prom thing.  She really only wanted to go so she could buy a book about Native American myths, because ...

 

Edward is a pale, cute boy who acts like he is going to vomit when Bella's in his vicinity.  She stares back, also looking like she's going to throw up.  They do not flirt; instead they act angry at each other.  He does stuff like follow her around all the time, save her life repeatedly from various perils but act pissy about it, and have very cold fingers.  She does some detective work using the aforementioned book, as follows:  she opens it to a random page, reads one caption ("The Cold One"), then Googles that, and discovers--Edward's a vampire!   She confronts him--angrily, nauseously--and he angrily and nauseously admits that he IS a vampire.  Further, for several months he's been sneaking into her bedroom at night to watch her sleep, and he has a very strong urge to kill her because her hair (or her blood? unclear) smells delicious. 

 

Now--ta da!--they're totally in love!   

 

Uh oh, now another vampire wants to follow Bella around and has a strong urge to kill her, but this is not OK because Bella is already Edward's special tasty ladyfriend.  Then more peril for Bella ensues, Edward saves her again, and Bella and Edward go to prom.  Ta da! 

 

I may spend the rest of my leisure period rewatching Buffy, to get Twilight out of my system.

Beaucoup vacation haiku

Toolstein commented on my two-day absence, and flattery will get you everywhere, so here I am. I am on Day 2 of my Lady of Leisure interlude, and so far it's pretty great. Let me tell you about it in haiku, shall I?

Getting up at ten
Is better than getting up
At seven, no doubt

Daytime yoga class
Do these people not have jobs?
Who knows. Must be nice.

DVD player
Died during first Mad Men show
It is a cruel world

Researching Blu-Ray
Is not what I want to do
But I am selfless

Maybe I should clean
Whoa, where'd the afternoon go?
It gets dark early

Tomorrow I will
Make dessert for a party
And watch Gossip Girl

Want to play hooky?
We could drink Bloody Marys
Let me know, I'm free!

Last day of work!

Today is my last day of my current job!  Which I have been at longer than I was in high school!  So far it's like any other day, except with less work to do and more papercuts from packing up boxes.  Cleaning out my office has been a little disconcerting.  I like to think of myself as an organized person--so being faced with incontrovertible evidence that, in actuality, I am a person who leaves an invoice sitting in my in-box unopened for months because I assumed it was just a copy of something I'd gotten by email, and who has dirty socks I dont even remember owning in my filing cabinet, is making me reassess my self-image a bit. 

In other news, if you are in charge of organizing an office holiday party to which you are inviting the new employees who have not yet started, please do not send an email to everyone in the department, including the new people, suggesting that the new people "reply all" with information about their favorite books, movies, etc. so that whoever has them in the "Secret Santa" exchange will know what to get for them.  Holy god.

Bad tipping will out

Many years ago I read someplace that Tiger Woods was a bad tipper.  There is a special place in hell reserved for rich people who tip poorly.  It could be that that place looks something like the inside of a fancy house in a gated community where you watch your reputation slip through your fingers on TV while you wait for the the mysterious scratches on your face heal and hope no more of your girlfriends leak voicemails to the press, and that your wife doesn't decide to use your golf clubs to "rescue" you again anytime soon. 

Math would help you win The Amazing Race

SPOILER ALERT:  In The Amazing Race this week, the only team in which the players are always kind to each other -- Harlem Globetrotters "Flight Time" and "Big Easy" -- got eliminated because Big Easy didn't know math.  Here's why you should pay attention in math class, kids! 

Technically he did not need to know math--he needed to figure out how to unscramble the letters N, A, R, F, Z in a "Kafkaesque" challenge involving a bureaucratic nightmare in Prague (dozens of ringing phones, repeated filling out of forms, etc.)  (So, absent math,  you could have figured it out if you'd recognized that "Franz" is a word, but I could see not noticing that because of the whole it-might-be-in-a-different-language thing.)  The more annoying brother in the Evil Gay Brothers team told Big Easy they'd work together, but when Annoying One figured it out, he would only tell Big that the word started with an F. 

What a douchebag!  But, OK, a word that starts with an F, and has four other unique letters.  Combinatorics, my favorite branch of math from my olden days as a math major, teaches us if there are 4 options for the second letter, then there are 3 for the third letter, 2 for the fourth letter, and only 1 for the last letter, the number of possible words is 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 24.  Twenty-four words!  Even if it took 2 minutes to fill out the rest of the Kafkaesque bureaucratic form, it would only take 48 minutes to go through all the possibilities.  Instead, Big Easy got totally flustered and the Globe Trotters took the 4-hour penalty rather than complete the challenge.  The HUMANITY!  The LACK OF MATH SKILLS!

Now The Amazing Race is left with the aforementioned Evil Gay Brothers, the Whiny Miss America and her Excessively Patient Husband (accompanied by their unofficial sidekick, Their Interracial Relationship), and the Two Boring Blond Ones.  I guess I am rooting for the boring blondes out of a lack of options.  So sad!  Globe Trotters, I hated to see you go. 

Thanksgiving! (and Star Wars)

Looks like my "posting every day in November" thing has fallen apart a bit.  I blame it on the sleepy chemicals in turkey.  And,  the anticipatory laziness that gripped me before actually eating any turkey in the days before Thanksgiving.  In fact, I was so anticipatorially lazy that I did not help AT ALL on Thanksgiving, either with cooking or cleaning up.  Instead I busied myself by "entertaining" my 9- and 11-year-old cousins by watching Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back back-to-back.  Great babysitting, self!   

I was surprised to find that I didn't remember the plot of the Star Wars movies in that much detail, or the amount of cheesy acting and technical nonsense dialogue.  As the Phantom Menace and those other Whiny Anakin movies demonstrated by way of contrast, George Lucas was lucky Harrison Ford et al were so good in the first few.  Also:  the version we were watching was the "remastered" one released 5 or 10 years ago, and the stuff that was changed from the original was HIDEOUS.  In the scene when Han Solo shoots the bounty hunter in the bar, they've changed it so the bounty hunter shoots first.  The whole point is that Han is a badass and not particularly burdened by moral considerations!  Also, why would the bounty hunter miss at nearly point-blank range?  Then in the very next scene, when Han goes to get his ship to take Luke and Obi Wan to Alderan, who shows up but Jabba the Hut, looking shiny, computer-generated, and nonthreatening, to tell him "oh, ok, you can pay me later."  This totally dilutes the threat of the unseen, offscreen Jabba who sends bounty hunters after Han. 

So George Lucas produced awesome movies despite himself.  Good lesson for us all.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Fact-free breast cancer discussion

The kerfluffle over the new mammogram and pap smear guidelines has emphasized for me the remarkable lack of facts in the public discussion about most things.  Before deciding whether to be pissed off about these guidelines, I think there are lots of things you'd have to know:  Is there some kind of standard way for assessing whether a screening test is worthwhile?  Was that used here?  Are there actual health risks to getting a biopsy that turns out to be a false positive?  It seems weird that they would say unnecessary "anxiety" was a reason not to screen people, because in weighing anxiety vs. death, anxiety seems like not a biggie; does "anxiety" always factor into recommendations about health screenings?  How is it weighed?  (1000 anxious people > 1 dead person?)  There was a lot of attention paid to the fact that these new guidelines didn't consider cost; but (while they're at it with considering anxiety) shouldn't they throw in money too? 

 

Admittedly I did not spend all weekend looking for the answers to these questions, but I didn't see the answers to ANY of them in anything I read.  Instead there were hours of Sunday talk shows with people yelling crap at each other about rationing, their family members who got breast cancer, and the general idea of "science," but nothing about what that means. 

 

Of course, when I have to make a decision about something like at what age I will start getting mammograms, I will probably make the decision in a totally impressionistic way, and will actually limit the amount of information I try to find out because the more information, the more confusing it will be.  But I would like to think that somebody would know that information.  Perhaps this is one of those disillusioning things about becoming a grownup.  :( 

Glee problem

I have been watching Glee faithfully, like any lover of musicals, high school dramas, and gayness is obliged to. 

But lately I gotta say my dedication is slipping a bit.  Recent episodes have displayed tell-tale symptoms of both After School Special-itis and Dialogue and Action Inconsistent With Previously Established Character Trait-iosis.  Both were strongly evident two weeks ago in "The One About How You Should Be Understanding Towards People With Disabilities." 

Of course a TV show can convey a message about how society discriminates against people with disabilities and that is wrong, see Friday Night Lights, but I not enjoy being pummeled over the head with that message to the point that humor and consistency suffer.  Like, I absolutely do not buy that Sue, whose character is the best one on the show because she is so hilariously amoral and without human feeling, all of a sudden has a disabled sister who turns her into a soft-focus, patiently reading-aloud person. 

And frequently, the show seems to have the problem of knowing what emotional arc it wanted the characters to go on -- these two should have a touching moment but then have a tiff and break up, etc. -- but not bother to think of a way to get them to that place that is believable within the context of the show.  For instance, just a few weeks ago Curt did the Beyonce Single Ladies dance on the football field in front of the whole school.  But now he's worried that his dad won't be able to handle the homophobic backlash that would result from him singing a girl's part at a glee club competition?  Umm, no. 

Tragically, this problem reminded me of that seemingly promising but now dead-to-me show, Heroes.  At the end of season 1, SPOILER ALERT IF YOU ARE REALLY BEHIND they had the idea that the one brother should sacrifice himself by flying up into outer space, carrying his brother who was about to explode like a nuclear bomb, thereby saving the world.  Good idea!  Except it made NO SENSE because the nuclear-bomb brother could fly all by himself.  God help me, Glee, if you go that way I am going to ... be sad.  Very sad.  :(   

Direct democracy, OMG

Last night Mr. TA and I attended a meeting for residents who live on our block and the few surrounding blocks, to discuss a proposed Mt. Pleasant "day parking pass" pilot program. My feeling on the issue: Sure! Our mini-area of the 'hood is mostly residential and there's lots of parking during the day. Until recently anybody could park on the street at any time on our block, so employees of the nearby elementary school and nursing home used to park there when they were at work.

Six months ago or so some residents circulated a petition to change our street from "anybody can park here" to "you can only park here for two hours unless you have a residential parking pass." I signed it so people on our block would be able to park on nearby blocks without getting ticketed, and also based on the understanding that they were going to start this "day pass" program, so the school and nursing home employees could buy a daily parking pass for $2.50 or so a day (approximately the cost of a round-trip bus trip).

Well, they started the residential parking pass thing but somehow the day parking pass thing went to shit, so now the school and nursing home employees get ticketed if they park on the street. I had vaguely understood that the going-to-shit was due to the employees having shot themselves in the foot by complaining about the fact the passes were going to cost anything at all.

But this community meeting suggested that, in fact, what has bolluxed up the day parking pass plan may be an smallish contingent of people who are going all NIMBY ape-shit about ... nurses and teachers parking in front of their houses during the day? Or, being pissed off at the idea of other people parking for cheapish while they have to pay a lot to park where they work. Or, having a self-righteous environmental reaction of wanting to deter other people from driving (although presumably most of these people wouldn't care about parking at all if they didn't have a car, plus they can afford to live in our lovely, fairly central D.C. neighborhood from where it is easy to get downtown, whereas if you live in a cheaper outlying suburb, getting to Mt. Pleasant on public transportation would be a major PIA.) (I of course did not mention at the meeting that we don't have a car, figuring that might invalidate my opinion.) Or, they were against it for some other reason I could not entirely discern even after they talked about it in a pissed-off-but-not-very-coherent way for several minutes.

The upshot was that the general idea of the day parking pass program was "approved" on a straw poll vote of 8-7. It would have been 7-6 against if Mr. TA and I had not randomly decided to go to the meeting. Direct democracy, dude, I don't know.

Curate this

In general I think pet peeves are not a good thing to have. Sure, lots of shit is annoying, but when you elevate an annoyance into a pet peeve, you really are making it into your pet--it becomes a pampered little possession which you have to nurture and protect from the outside world, i.e., from any attack on your maintaining it as a pet peeve. So I have tried to, as they hippy-dippily say in yoga class, "let go" of various pet peeves I once possessed, including ... look, I let them go so successfully I can't even remember them!*

But there is an annoyance so significant, and on such a horrifyingly dramatic uptick in popularity, that it has entirely taken over the previously depopulated pet peeve center in my brain: the word "curated." On Apartment Therapy, which I generally lurve, "curated" has become this hideous all-purpose word meaning "picked out or decorated, but by people with really good minimalist taste, so, like, on a totally different plane from the tacky type of picking out or decorating done by ordinary people." As in: A Carefully Curated Chelsea Duplex. Or: The Pink Project, curated by Brad Pitt. I don't even think "curated" should really be a verb, except in the narrow meaning of "to act as a curator," where "curator" is somebody in charge of a museum exhibit, not just a person with a nice apartment. Otherwise anybody could take any word that describes a skill or profession they do not possess or practice, and make it into a verb to try to make their own everyday activities sound fancy. As in, I cheffed some dinner. Or, I need to accountant these bills. Annoying!

Maybe I can just keep this one pet peeve. It's such a good one.

*I can probably remember if I try. Oh yes: the incorrect use of "myself" instead of "me," braided leather belts, people who are proud of their ignorance of all things Midwestern, unleashed large dogs.

A TomKat Education

I saw An Education this weekend, and it did the schoolgirl-with-older-man thing in a non-cliched way, which is quite an accomplishment. It even manages to make you at least somewhat sympathize with all the characters, including the very smart 16-year-old who falls in love with a much older man, her normally overprotective parents who let themselves get conned into letting their school-aged daughter go to Paris with a grown man, and even the man himself, who seems to con himself into falling in love with a 16-year-old. Also, Emma Thompson is delicious as a cold, stern school headmistress.

However, that the 16-year-old character, Jenny, looked so much like a young Katie Holmes -- the round face, cute nose, surprisingly intense stare -- that watching her be seduced by a dashing older man I felt I was watching a documentary about TomKat's romance. Viewed in that way, ewwww.

Prejan 2040

Carrie Prejean -- former Miss California, anti-gay marriage hero, and solo sex tape star -- just recently put in a weirdo but, I think, freakishly savvy performance on Larry King. Larry asked her why she decided to settle her religious discrimination lawsuit against the pageant after they fired her for missing appearances.

Carrie responded, in the tone a kindergarten teacher might use with a kid who's eating the fingerpaint again, that Larry was being "inappropriate" and that she couldn't talk about the settlement. She said "inappropriate" about 5 times. Larry backed down and took a phone call. As the caller started to identify himself as a gay man, Carrie took off her microphone and seemed to be talking to someone offstage, but then continued to sit there, giving her beauty-pageant smile to the camera. She didn't answer the caller's question (what would you tell a gay friend who wanted to get married) because, she said, she couldn't hear. (Because she'd taken her microphone off.)


An ability to get affronted by reasonable questions, combined with a plastic perma-smile and homophobia expressed ungrammatically ... just add a persecution complex and you've got the next Sarah Palin! And what do you know, right before the weird outburst, Carrie had been talking about how the liberal media is so unfair to women like Palin (a personal hero of hers) and Michelle Bachman. You heard it here first, she is totally running for office.