Fur Council of Canada

I had a little lapse into the dark side last night, when I briefly considered that I might want to get a fur coat. So I did a google search, to see if I could get some analysis on quality and price. What I found was this group, whose purpose is to promote the fur market, the image and the economy thereof, and by implication, to promote Canada in general.

Especially alarming is #5.

TOP 10 REASONS FOR WEARING FUR:

1. Warmth
Warmth is the number one reason people like to wear fur, according to a recent poll of fur buyers. Fur is nature's most beautiful answer to Winter.

2. Fashion
Modern, casual or elegant, fur is always in style. More than 150 top international designers are now using fur in their collections.

3. Long-Lasting
Fur is a naturally durable fiber that lasts for many, many years.

4. Re-Styleable
As styles change, your fur can be updated and re-styled to reflect the latest fashions time and time again.

5. Environmentally Friendly
A fine natural product, fur is bio-degradable and a renewable resource.
(!!!!)

6. Versatile
Fur can be worn for all occasions. Whether with jeans or an evening gown, wearing fur will make you look and feel terrific! With lighter weight fur and fur accessories, furs are now a three-season fashion.

7. Supporting Livelihoods and Cultures
When you buy fur, you support thousands of people living on the land - people who have a direct interest in protecting vital wildlife habitat. The fur trade is a proud North American heritage.

8. Responsible Conservation
Furs used in the trade are abundant. Strict government controls ensure that NO endangered species are ever used.

9. Comfort
Soft, sensual, cozy and lightweight - nothing equals the feeling of wearing fur.

10 Fur is your choice!
The fur trade is a responsible, well-regulated industry. You can feel proud of your choice to wear natural North American furs.

The Godfather - riddle finally cracked

I've always wondered in what cosmic warp I had first viewed the Godfather, or what weird trick my memory was playing, because how could I possibly remember the sequences as I did? I remember that I watched something from my cousin's pirated video stash, in one LONG (and boring) sitting, several hours long before I got totally bored...and from the looks of it, the story was only half-way towards a conclusion when I quit.

Some years later I watched the Godfather 2 with my friend, SW, who was enchanted by the whole epic. It may be the case that I had seen this movie before then, because it looked as though there was nothing unfamiliar. But my memory of the Godfathers is so scrambled that it's hard to tell - which is ultimately my larger point. Anyhoo, I remembered that it knocked my socks off when it came up in conversation that Brando and De Niro were never in the same Godfather movie. This came to me as a complete surprise, because I thought I'd seen only one continuous sitting of the movie, and I distinctly remembered both actors. WTF?

My mind has finally been put at ease, 4 years later, when I came across something on TV labelled, "The Godfather Saga." I did an imdb search for it, and sure enough, it looks like THIS was the Godfather I had seen first. Score!

So essentially, I'm not being completely fair (though through no fault of my own) when I swear up and down the the Godfathers are boring and overrated. Maybe the cut I had seen made the story and flow of it all especially sucky. And yet, I suspect my first analysis is not too far off from what my feelings will be in the end. I believe I saw Godfather 2 beginning to end, and I was still none too impressed. Then again, one of my favorite movies is There's Something About Mary, so what the hell do I know?

Oh yes, and while we're on the subject of contemptible tastes, I must add that I'm coming into a postumous appreciation for a phenomenon that I missed because I didn't have cable in its heyday. That phenomenon is MTV's Jackass. I can't get enough of it! How could you go wrong with pain humor + groin humor? Individually they're good, but put them together and it's dynamite.

I'm Afraid of Becoming Uninteresting, like permanently

1. I stopped reading the news, because for a while it was 100% Katrina.
2. I've stopped driving my car, because of the stupid gas prices; I've stopped listening to the radio in my car.
3. The radio stations I get are not stellar anyways; thus I'm less inclined to listen at all.
4. My clock radio gets zero signal, so I've started waking up to my buzzer; yet another avenue of news thwarted.

If there's been a decline in the quality and quantity of my blog posts, I attribute it, at least partially, to the fact that I've grown more and more out of touch with the news.

But beyond that, I'm afraid I'm losing all my interest in anything whatsoever. I don't know anyone, so there's nothing to do socially. I have no hobbies, so I can't amuse myself. Dating is in a slump from which there seems to be no discernable exit. And on top of all that is the sheer reality that I just don't have the f-ing time to do anything besides my schoolwork. So I'm degenerating to a point where I can't talk about anything other than some books.

I like to think that I had a decent mastery of the art of the conversation. But I have this fear now that I'm slipping into a geekdom from which I'll never be able to climb out again. When I manage to have social outings, which is rare enough as it is, it's always with my collegues, and so with this crowd we're always talking shop, and when we do manage to talk about something else, it's always gossip - naturally about the people we know in the department: you can say it's an US Magazine-type conversation, except about people who are far more boring and less beautiful. I hope that with time, but not too much time, I'll find some kind of groove to my existence. Right now it's shaping up to be Plato...which is exciting enough, honestly, but I would like to have something more.

Happy Birthday

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday dear one of my most regular readers,
Happy birthday to you!

Rounders

was my first bf's favorite movie. I watched it last night as I was doing my Latin prose composition - and why did it take me so long to realize that this is by far the best way to do that kind of work?! I thought it would be a good movie, or at least a thought-provoking one...but no, it sucked.

I guess it's a lucky thing that he dumped-me-under-the-clever-disguise-that-I-was-dumping him.

Madonna-Whore Complex

I've long maintained that anyone in my family couldn't help but grow up to have a madonna-whore complex. Of course, I applied this mostly to my brother, and other members of my family who aren't me. I don't know why it took me so long to realize this, but I had a random psychological breakthrough the other day, that I MYSELF have a madonna-whore complex. Duh! How could it be otherwise?

I've been aware of this problem for some time, that I can't seem to feel any respect for the men with whom I'm involved; or, another way of putting this would be, I can't respect any man who would involve himself WITH ME. I've always found this vaguely troubling - did I have profound self-esteem problems, if I thought any significant other of mine automatically was a loser? - but I never gave much thought to the matter, as my self-esteem seemed healthy enough, as far as I could tell.

Then it occurred to me that my madonna-whore complex is a two-way street. I can't become involved with a person unless I see him as a whore, just as I myself become a whore in my eyes if I so much as flirt with a boy. Naturally, this does not stop me from flirting; I simply make a little mental adjustment to myself that I'm of a different status ("whore"; though for such a long time I've used the misleading label, "liberated"), and I go along on my merry way. Furthermore, in dating I (surely must) seek out people who could plausibly be considered whores.

It's obvious that I have to change my way of thinking if I'm ever to engage in a normal, healthy relationship. I have to get used to the fact that mutual respect does not automatically mean a platonic relationship, and only then, maybe, will I stop getting dumped for my abstinence. Ironic, isn't it?

Yum!

* I substituted all things "apricot" with "mango," and to expedite the process, I simmered everything on stovetop, instead of making the glaze and then baking the salmon.

INGREDIENTS:
1 1/2 cups apricot nectar
1/3 cup chopped dried apricots
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons reduced sodium soy sauce
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 (3/4 pound) salmon filet without skin

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat your oven's broiler, and grease a broiling pan.
2. In a saucepan over medium heat, mix together the apricot nectar, dried apricots, honey, soy sauce, ginger, garlic, cinnamon and cayenne. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer for about 20 minutes, or until reduced by about half. Stir occasionally to prevent burning. Remove 1/4 cup of the glaze for basting, and set the remaining aside.
3. Place the salmon filet on the greased broiling pan, and brush with glaze. Broil 3 inches from the heat for 8 to 12 minutes, or until salmon flakes easily with a fork. Gently turn over once during cooking, and baste frequently during the last 4 minutes. Serve with remaining glaze.

Roman Holiday

Is it just me, or is that the slowest-moving movie ever? I've always said that actors are not artists, even though a bad actor could wreck a piece of art; the acting (or the directing) in Roman Holiday KILLED the whole thing, because everyone was just kind of mumbling, like it was all supposed to be understood in the gestures...but hey guess what, there wasn't any subtext! The only thing that made the movie worth watching at all was the setting. But that's just the thing about Rome: you don't need a movie to make it beautiful.

The love story was also pretty unconvincing. All they did was stare at each other with "meaningful" eyes. Take away the setting, and the romance actually looks pretty sordid.

* * *

Caught my first episode in this season's OC. It looks promising - not gripping like season 1, but at least interesting, which season 2 was not. I like how Caleb ended up being broke; a natural development for the Jimmy character, who was caddishly using his ex-wife's dead husband for his own benefit, as well as for Julie, who needs to stop freeloading off men. I've decided that Summer is my favorite character; they don't do much with her, but her occassional lines crack me up. Finally they stopped putting that bright red lipcolor on her. Finally Marissa's hair stopped looking so flat and nappy. Unfortunately, Ryan's hair looks foolish.

Gaydar

If you see two really good-looking, fairly well-dressed young men doing their grocery shopping together - and furthermore, debating things like did they need to get trout or halibut for dinner - the natural assumption is that they're gay, right? Well I thought so too, until I saw about five or six such couples at the supermarket in the span of an hour. And this is not a gourmet supermarket either, mind you; it's almost a bulk market. Are mega-markets the new bath houses of the 2000s?

Right Pretty Spell

We had beautiful weather yesterday and today. It made me think of home, and it made me feel homesick - which is counterintuitive to what you'd think a little puncture of happiness would do - because as long as my routine is one continuous fabric of drab boredom, illuminated most by those flashes of Greek and Latin literature - of all things!- I forget that there's anything else out there, and I'm okay.

But today I also happened to wake up late and dress hastily, and I wore my bright red boardshorts to class. The combination of the gear and the sunshine on my walk to class fell on me like an anvil, and I was suddenly floored with a recollection of Santa Cruz - just as I knew would happen the last few times I went surfing there. I remember bobbing there on the salt water in the cold wind, soaking in the sun and watching the cars pass by drowsily on the blooming cliffs, and I remember hurting with contentment. And then there was that one time when, after a day of surfing like this, I stumbled into the Agent Orange concert (discovering a local band that has since become one of my most beloved), and Santa Cruz became a night memory for me as well. There's an apathy, a certain carpe diem, in that place that is simply incomparable; I felt like the people there had no age, no future, no occupation, or if they did it didn't matter because...well, because we didn't care. Brains of only temporary capacity...I know, my fondest dream sounds like another person's worst nightmare. Though Santa Cruz is not my home in the true sense, I felt like that was the kind of place where I belong. I will always be a little expatriated.

Mixed Metaphor

"Why buy the whole cow when you can get the sex for free?"

Gwen Stefani

After watching her video for "Cool," I decided that I'm one in that pathetic set of people who profess to *love* Gwen Stefani. It's a touching song, though I didn't pay attention to the lyrics until I saw the video. Contra New Criticism, the story of "Cool" is highly enriched by our knowledge of the author's biography.

I was never much of a No Doubt fan. The song that went "leave a message and I'll call you back" always irritated me. My feelings about "Don't Speak" were pretty much blah, except for a brief instant when I learned that it was about that short little bassist dude - at which point I joined the world in saying, "HIM?! No, seriously." And as for "I'm Just a Girl," it wasn't until about fall 2003 that I finally got it; I was listening to it on my car radio one day, and was like, "OH MY GOD! It's supposed to be FUNNY!" Budding respect for Gwen.

Though it looks like it's Stefani's husband who plays her love interest in the "Cool" video, I don't think I'm wrong in supposing that the song is really about her relationship with her ex-boyfriend/bassist. After all, Stefani is still with her husband, so it can't be him. This is what makes the story so moving: here's this beautiful, dynamic, totally hip bombshell, and we know that in a way she can't get over a shifty little troll dude with a bad bleach job. Bombshell though she is (ie, biography matters), she remembers what it's like to be hurt, she overcame it, and best of all, she knows how to be a friend. It makes one wonder what the trollish dude must be thinking, and why did he let go of the girl who valued him so much? But then I form a little mental picture of Orange County boys, and everything kind of falls into place: he just didn't feel the same way, for whatever reason. Isn't that how it always is?

My Chemical Romance

Yesterday I witnessed one of the more hilarious concerts I've ever seen. It was a band that had one very obvious hit, and an audience full of teenagers. At the end, they announced that this was their last song, etc etc - except that this last song clearly wasn't their one obvious hit, which they hadn't played it all night.

I've seen many, many teenage audiences before, but this was the first one that didn't know what an encore performance was. Admittedly, the encore performance is a stupid tradition, whose point becomes kind of muted as soon as everyone knows that it's coming. But I guess last night's experience showed me that there's a reason for carrying on this stupid tradition: for somebody somewhere, it brings the fresh joy of a most welcome surprise.

What's amazing is that the auditorium had emptied by more than half in that short interval before the "last song" and the encore. Half the floor was gone, and more than half the other sections, and the entire left lower tier was WIPED OUT (ie, approx. 1/6 total auditorium), and this is no exaggeration. It was also the shortest interval before the "last song" and the encore that I've ever seen, probably because they realized that they'd be playing an encore to no one if they waited a second longer. But this little scene became truly hilarious the moment when the encore song started, and you suddenly saw these RIVERS of frantic teenagers running back in as if they were evacuating from a fire, in reverse.

One quick FYI: taking a place in the back of an auditorium is not as good idea as one might think, because the sound bouncing off the walls is almost as damaging as being right there next to the speaker. This I did not know.

The Earrings

"How pimp am I? I got that girl's number."
"The question is, did you get the guy's number? He was hot."
"He was pretty hot."
"Yeah, but he was one of those toolish-looking hot guys."
"It's true. He had these diamond stud earrings on both ears."
"Ew!"
"Oh, so he was one of those guys who are like, 'Yo, I'm Usher.'"
"Yeah! Haha."
"What? He said, 'I'm Usher'?"
"No...but he didn't have to."
"Right! Why say it when the earrings already scream it?"

Puritanism

"Puritanism is the haunting feeling that someone somewhere is happy."

Sports Fanatics; Feminism

I was having this conversation once with someone, I forget whom, about feminism, and the feminist's need to escape from the house and go to work. "Why is working inherently better?" my interlocutor asked. "Why don't women think it's worthwhile to stay home and raise children?"

Keeping house is an ignoble occupation, I responded, by the very virtue of it's being associated with women. Everything good men have already claimed for themselves, like being independent and career-oriented and smart and 'having balls'...while women are de facto left with the opposite attributes, such as being clingy and unambitious and ornamental and conservative. Is it necessarily a good thing not to be in your children's lives so that you can go out and make money? Of course not. It seems desirable only BECAUSE men do it.

In general, it's natural that women would want to act more like men - cf. the saying 'be a man about it' - because it basically means bettering themselves in every way; whereas it's extremely rare to find a man (except for queens; and sometimes not even them) who would assertively try to be more 'womanly.' This holds true even when 'womanly' connotes something good, like kindness or sensitivity.

I thought of this conversation again last night when I was talking to my brother, and before him to a friend at school on the same subject, about how I don't understand sports fanatics. It seems so weird to take such an active interest in another person's life just because he plays football, say. On Saturday, you organize your whole social life around this one Dude, and on Monday you're taking Sociology 101 with him - he has no idea who you are, and he will never give two craps about all the opinions and advice you have about him. My friend and I concluded that this can only happen because you don't think of the football player as a real person, but you objectify him like a celebrity.

Interestingly, my brother brought up the celebrity analogy again last night during our conversation. Following football stats, he said, is no different from following Tom Cruise's latest shenanigans. Yes, I answered, but everyone acknowledges that the latter is an embarrassing, loser, parasitic pastime. No one is proud to read National Enquirer, but it's more like a guilty pleasure when it happens. WHY IS THERE NO SIMILAR GUILT IN OBSESSING ABOUT FOOTBALL? Nay, people are even proud of it, and if you're a dude, you can't be considered normal/manly unless you engage in it to some degree.*

It occurred to me why these two guilty pleasures are so asymmetrical in their receptions: it's because men are associated with the sports hobby, while women are associated with the celebrities hobby. Had women started liking sports before men did, way back at the dawn of time, we would have all agreed that it's a totally silly thing for grown people to do.

*ps - IMO, celebrity gossip is actually MORE excusable and understandable than sports stats, because at least with celebrities, it's sort of a sexual fantasy. What is the motivation with the sports? I do not know. It just seems weird.

A giant supermarket

can feel a lot like the circles of hell. You can't ever find what you're looking for, you forget where you put your shopping cart, your frozen foods are melting, and your walking walking walking, and it's been two hours of wandering in there and all you want to do is finish your shopping and get the hell out of there!

Kanye West

is a shithead and an ignoramus. I saw an interview with him today on MTV2, in which he deplored the representation of homosexuals in hip hop videos (?) and declared, as if he were saying something really profound and controversial: "That to me is discrimination. It's a form of discrimination."

First of all, I have it on the best authority that "homosexual" is not the PC term. "Gay" is preferred, as it connotes something less of a disease or a psychosis that "homosexual" historically has carried.

Second of all, West has no right to be acting all high-handed about respect toward minorities. In one of his videos (I forget which; Dion from Clueless is in it) he depicts an Asian family acting clumsy and obsequious, constantly bowing, in the stereotypical way. Personally, I immediately despised him right there - I have no right to make black jokes, he has no right to make Asian jokes - but I might have been able to overlook it if his stereotyping was in the South Park kind of spirit: irreverent, funny, and pan-offensive to EVERYONE without exception. Instead, West goes off and starts acting like he's some kind of enlightened messiah for social harmony. What a dick.

I Bought a New Pineapple

On an unrelated note, I was at a garden party yesterday at my super-eccentric chair's house. This person was a cause for some anxiety for me because I discovered, last Tuesday during a department dinner, that I have nothing to say to him. The logical thing would be to talk shop, you'd think, except I realized that I felt pretty foolish saying novice things in front of a world-renowned expert. So after an uncomfortable pause, I gave up on the chair and started talking to the professor on my other side, even though this professor scared me shitless.

(Afterwards, some of the senior students told me that it was a move of absolute foolhardiness to place myself between Professor Eccentric and Professor Scary at the dinner table.)

Anyways, yesterday's garden party was a kicker because I was finally able to have a normal conversation with Professor Eccentric, at the most unexpected of times, and with the most baffling persistence. It actually happened when I was about to leave, and I approached Professor Eccentric to say good bye and thanks. As soon as he saw me pausing beside him, he turned and said, "We were just talking about the earthquake in '89. Do you remember it?" And I had a normal conversation with him about earthquakes! A bit later two other students came by to say goodbye and thanks, and they made it out fine. I was about to piggy-back onto their exit with, "I should probably get going as well..." when Professor Eccentric did a genial: "Have you met Victor?" Then I had another long conversation with Victor about Plato, during the course of which Professor Eccentric wandered off. Finally I said, this is ridiculous, I was supposed to leave 20 minutes ago! I excused myself from Victor and hunted down Professor Eccentric for a third time, this time with determination. Third time was a charm.

Who knew that this professor, who I thought was so weird, a logical system only unto himself, would turn out to be this bubbling fount of sociability and charisma?

Faux Pas

1.
Yesterday I went over to a friend's house to watch Monty Pyton - incidentally, not a fan, as per my prior hunch. I just don't think Brits are as funny as they seem to think they are. Anyhoo, I brought over some pineapple pieces with the intention of sharing them, since a whole pineapple is a bit more than I can finish by myself. My friend, however, interpreted this gesture to mean that he could have the whole thing for himself, and he didn't put any of the pineapple out while we were watching tv. Perhaps he overestimated the thanks due to him for introducing me to Monty Python; because surely I didn't think it was all that special a gift.

2.
Me: Sorry I couldn't make it last night.
(different) Friend: That's okay. There were like ten other people there.

What am I, a number?

Me: Well, ten others can't replace one of me.

First Week of School - Reflections

I haven't posted in a while. It's a combination of me being too depressed/homesick, and too busy. This is a very social department, which is great; I really like a lot of the people I've met. On the other hand, I miss my old friends and my family, and my dog. I used to follow that school of thought that said that one can always make new friends, but as I get older, I'm starting to feel that you won't find as many people who are willing to give you a piece of their heart, nor are you as willing to give them a piece of your heart. Thus, old friends are unique and beautiful snowflakes, and family of course is irreplacable.

Grad work is both too hard and too easy. The first of these was expected, the second is causing some anxiety. Last weekend, during all that schmoozing, I experienced that wave of "I'm too dumb to be here" because I discovered that there's this whole academic underground, where everyone knows everyone else and who is in bed with whom - everyone, that is, but me. Also, I felt that I was actually dumber than everyone else, in the actual sense. It happens every time someone talks about something you haven't read. But then I thought, Hey that's expected, and, Well at least it's better than being the smartest one here, because that would be truly depressing.

Then I went to class and found out that I have ZERO papers to write. Thus, my graver fear was instantly realized, that I'm not being challenged enough. I'm still a little anxious about this, but it does look like the work load will start getting a little heavier, and I might swap or add a harder class, and if none of that works, I'll seek out some kind of project. Maybe I'll start that novel I've always said I'll write.

Meanwhile, this department's social committee is keeping us plenty busy. Tomorrow we have a party at the chair's house.

Booty Call...of a sort

My department's chair is one of those professors who are really out of it - just about as eccentric as they get. He has a sweater for his tea kettle, snow chains for his shoes, a garage full of house plants because he doesn't believe in cars, a v-neck shirt made of terry cloth, and a house whose thermostat he sets to 50 degrees. Once, someone asked him what his hobbies were, and he answered, "reading Greek and Latin."

My school has this policy that it is not forbidden for a teacher to have a relationship with one of his or her students, BUT if he or she does, that teacher must first check in with the department chair to make sure it's okay. Imagine being that teacher and having to make a midnight call to this super-eccentric chair, to ask if you may get some ass tonight! What's even funnier is that I'm told this actually happened once, by a professor (whose name I don't know) who is pretty well-known and distinguished.

Starbucks

Three months after I applied for a job, Starbucks finally got back to me and offered me an interview. Unfortunately, the summer was a little too over for me to start a summer job.

Katrina, finally

Some of the three of you who read this blog might have been wondering why I've been so callous and neglectful on the subject of the New Orleans tragedy. That is, of course, unless you already knew that I'm a callous and neglectful person about most things that don't concern me. I have no loved ones in New Orleans, and besides I figured that most of the smart ones would have evacuated when they issued the storm warnings, so I felt relieved for myself and mine, said a quick prayer, and that was that.

But what's drawing the commentary out of me now is all this criticism against the government for not being adequately prepared. Pick your goddamn battles, man! It was a natural disaster; they happen like on a weekly basis in California, whether it's earthquakes or fires or landslides...or hell, even riots every time the Lakers win, or a Korean shopowner does something that's interpreted as racist. How about the government intervening every now and then for those?

The time and the place to talk about our resources being wasted in Iraq or about our leaders bloating the oil empires for their own personal profit was...um...the elections? Sorry Louisiana, you all voted red, so you can't complain about the big inefficacy that this country has become. This is what happens when you drag down everyone and the common good to suit your own selfish needs. Apparently it wasn't enough of a reason to stop the war because zillions of innocent people were dying and starving and witnessing mind-numbing violence like it was a lifestyle; but now that you have no roof and no electricity, everyone is suddenly starting to realize that it's better to guard the common good, after all. Pick your battles. It was a natural disaster, something that all of us have to suck up if we're unlucky. God forgive my lack of sympathy.

The Big Bounce

This was an Owen Wilson movie from 2004 that I didn't even know existed until I caught it on accident on a hotel tv this summer. There was a bit of a party going on in the room so I couldn't pay attention then, but I figured it was Owen Wilson, therefore comedy, and add some surfing...sold! I rented and watched it again last night.

The heist plot was mediocre, but it was an effective background for the romance, which was enjoyable, as far as romances go. If I had watched any of those 60's teenage beach party movies, it would have reminded me of one of those. (Incidentally, the closest I ever got was a parody of that genre [and other B-list genres], called Psycho Beach Party - great movie.) The romance involves a petty thief and a girl who gets turned on by crime - so they go around beautiful Oahu stealing cars, breaking and entering, and skinny dipping...adrenaline rush to the pounding surf...and no one is sure if they're using crime to get to love or love to get to crime.

That having been said, I will never understand why Hollywood continues to think that we, the audience, have any reason to watch heist movies. For instance, The Score sucked almost as much as Magnolia...and I can't think of other heist movies just now, mostly because I would only watch them on accident.

Finally, the surfing footage brought a tear to my eye.

Is This Dumb?

When I mentioned to my new advisor that I do ballet, she said that she did too and was now a part of a Scottish social dance group, which utilizes many of the positions one learns in ballet. Then she asked me if I would be interested, as the group is always recruiting for new dancers.

I said I'd think about it. Now, was I being a complete dolt? Was that a God-sent opportunity for me to form a real relationship with my advisor without prostrating myself like a hateful lackey? Or, would joining the group only be a dumb suck-up scheme, all the more hateful because it's so transparent?

Maybe she doesn't even care what my ulterior motives are. I know from experience that sometimes you're just plain desperate for members.

It's like a per-city variable

Birds of a feather flock together - in this case, couples who like to hold hands. It shocked me when I went to UC Davis once, and I'm being shocked all over again now in this little pocket of whatever city I'm in. It's so tacky, this PDA. But then I remember that my first boyfriend was a hand-holder, and it was a regional thing for him too, but back then it wasn't gross.

* * *

I've started watching The OC season 1 on DVD. Boy, did that show take a plunge season 2! I'm actually riveted, and the drama is not stupid or forced. Season 2, for me, was always about the one or two fabulous one-liners that would save the whole episode...but I don't need it anymore. Though season 1 certainly isn't lacking in the one-liner department.

SANDY: Since when did you become so cynical?
KIRSTEN: Since when did you become so self-righteous?
SANDY: I've always been self-righteous!

[After the Newport wives give Sandy grief about "the police spend all this time taking felons off the street and Sandy Cohen puts them right in my backyard."]
SANDY: Well, I'm going to work. I'm off to find the next delinquent to vandalize the community. Maybe this time I'll bring home a black kid...or an Asian kid.

Something I've Never Seen Before

A hobo panhandling inside a coffee shop. This guy just came up to me and my friend, complimented my friend on his clothes and his discourse, complimented himself on being clean for a street person, and asked for a coffee mug. I said no, but my friend gave him a dollar.

The Whimsical Charm of Ignorance

Blogging is a great medium for infectious obsessions. Recently, the Bang has been enchanted with VH1's celebrity wives program, delving into that timeless philosophical question, "Why do successful men marry dumb women?"

This thread had some intersection with some thoughts I've been having myself lately, so I thought I'd take the time to pontificate. The fact is, it goes both ways. I myself, as profound and as soulful as I am, have fallen under the spell of the dumb before. And to cite again my book of the year, Swann's Way, so too did Swann. That was the entire basis of his love story: he was brilliant and cultured and charming, and she was a blundering idiot with the most vulgar tastes and the worst pretensions. He adored her to distraction, and she was only using him, in a sense, for his cultural refinement, as if to acquire it herself by osmosis; to become less vulgar, and to back her pretensions with some substance. In short, he was her opportunity for personal growth. Odette's, too, is a side of love I've been on - it's not only the stupid and shallow (quote?) that I'm attracted to! I can understand loving someone because they seem to hold the keys to an intellectual world that is beautiful, mysterious, and forbidden. This is the kind of crush one has for, say, one's teachers.

Interestingly, once you attain a certain intellectual height, the world of ignorance suddenly starts to look beautiful and mysterious, too. The more ignorant (sexism? homophobia?) the better, almost. Like Swann, you don't even bother to try to correct the ignorance, but you sit back and encourage the person as she makes a total ass out of herself. It's not a malice thing; on the contrary, you cherish the blunders as the most delightful charm.

Let me emphasize that this does NOT describe the kind of crush a professor would have for a student (I'm convinced that such professors are just pathetic). Why? Because when loving the ignorant, they have to be HOPELESSLY ignorant. Once they become enlightened through your tutelage, where's your vacation? You're right back where you started from, which is your own exact world, your own sphere of knowledge. So much of the idea of love, I believe, is about an escape from yourself into something new.

Wow

For the first time in my life, I have nothing to do, no people to see. This is going to be a lonely six years.