I H8 My Students

I think they stole my book from me. I have a rather antagonistic relationship with my Wednesday lit class, and so it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't just for spite, stupid brats.

State of Discontent

I feel icky all over. I was still undecided on what to do about New Guy, but then that problem kinda got taken out of my hands because he hasn't returned my call. Oh well, it's for the best, I thought; he probably realized that we were fundamentally incompatible, and perhaps he met some other chick this weekend that facillitated that revelation. Then I tried to explain to my mom what I meant by "incompatible," and how sometimes you can give it your darnedest, but if it isn't right it isn't right. This was a very challenging explanation, involving a history of "machismo," etc. Then my dad came in and started watching TV, and also listening in and saying that he couldn't understand what I was talking about, so I said we'll continue this conversation some other time. I don't think they even noticed that I kinda stormed off. Seriously, if I'm putting this much effort into trying something they want, the least they can do is listen to me.

Then there's last night, which I'm still pissed off about. I did not want to go out, but I made that effort and that drive, only to find two friends who were all partied out from the night before (where they didn't even invite me, bitches), and one of those friends was so crabby that she started making really snide and/or potentially racist remarks. (I know it's not malicious, but if I have to hear one more person talk about how Asian men are undateable...everyone has their preferences, and I respect that; but if I wanted your opinion I would ask for it.)

I can't quite place this feeling I have that I'm hemmed in. Maybe I need alone time. Maybe I should go surfing tomorrow.

Way too tired to go out anymore.

At a certain point, it stops being fun.

The Strawberry Blonde

Starring Olivia de Havilland and Rita Hayworth. It was a very, very wonderful movie, that had everything - dreams and romance and adversity and triumph, plus a barbershop quartet - except maybe a stunning leading man. The leading women, however, were stunning. This was my first Rita Hayworth, and she was everything I expected her to be.

Pros and Cons

Last night I took New Guy out with me and Butterfly to another Epsilons show. This time, unfortunately, the Epsilons were opening, and we, of course running late, missed their set. I still had fun, but I suspect it must have been quite trying for New Guy. I realize the scenario was a veritable death trap, and I do admire his fortitude for keeping his spirit up.

So here are some preliminary analyses on New Guy's potential for a relationship.

Pros:
1. He can definitely try new things and be down with what I'm down with, even if they're not his natural modus operandi.
2. He can handle the crazy/fun part of me. My mom warned me that my party-self might not be the best way to catch a man, but he seemed cool with it.
3. He did all right with the crazy/bitch part of me too. Butterfly and I inadvertently put him through the third degree when we started talking, as we're wont to do, about how much men suck. I'm sure it was rather emasculating, but he withstood it patiently.
4. He can get along with my friends.
5. He treats me like I'm Numero Uno. (He wanted to cancel his Friday plans with his bros so that he could spend time with me, and I had to be the one to remind him of the old adage.)
6. He feeds me a lot of lines, but I'm beginning to think he's sincere. For one thing, he seems completely unaware that they could even be construed as lines.

Cons:
1. Maybe a little naive? I sense quite a strong cultural gap (or SOMETHING), even though you think there wouldn't be one. After all, I dated a bona fide Swede and a Romanian emigre without much clash.
2. Potentially jealous and possessive; a bit of a machismo personality.
3. I'm totally in the driver's seat. While this has it's pluses, I think I'd rather date someone more dynamic than me.
4. We don't have much in common, except that we're both very social and like to party (which I recognize is still a substantial similarity).
5. I can't help but think that there are at least a dozen other guys out there whom I'm more compatible with. But of course, if this were true, you have to think I would have been able to work it out with one of them before now.
6. I don't like the way he kisses.

The Gamut

Soft you day, be velvet soft,
My true love approaches,
Look you bright, you dusty sun,
Array your golden coaches.

Soft you wind, be soft as silk,
My true love is speaking.
Hold you birds, your silver throats,
His golden voice I'm seeking.

Come you death, in haste do come,
My shroud of black be weaving,
Quiet my heart, be deathly quiet,
My true love is leaving.

- Maya Angelou

This post is dedicated to Asshole #1, whom I miss all the more whenever I think I'm going to be happy without him. God, my mind is so sick.

Current Audio

Ima Robot
Creeps Me Out

Playing this Saturday @ 14 Below, Santa Monica.

(7/26) I just found the lyrics to this song, and I realized that it totally should have gone out to ADD Boy.

Fourteen people in the club
Ima robot, what no love
Backstage she came rollin' up
She said "do anything and I love you"
Well there must be a mistake
Girl you're way too hot
You could make a million dollars with the face you got
Don't you know my last album was a flop
She said "do anything and I love you"

Well, I don't do love letters
I'm no good with flowers
If I forget your birthday,
will you still love me

What are the odds of
One true love
You say "high"
But I have my doubts
What are the odds of
Me letting you down
Please don't cry it's just your love
It creeps me out

Now she can't stop from loving me
Making me food, touching me
I told her I aint got money (ney)
She said "do anything and I love you" yeah
I know your mom makes fun of me
And you caught your best friend under me
I guess this means you're done with me
She said "do anything and I love you"
Well, I go out all hours
You get strange phone calls
I'm so A-D-D with you
But, you still love me

What are the odds of
One true love
You say "high"
But I have my doubts
What are the odds of
Me letting you down
Please don't cry it's just your love
It creeps me out

You're creepin' me out
She don't screw my friends
And she cleans up my house
All of this love girl, is creepin' me out
She don't screw my friends
And she cleans up my house
All of this love girl, is creepin' me out

What are the odds of
One true love
You say "high"
But I have my doubts
What are the odds of
Me letting you down
Please don't cry it's just your love
It creeps me out

You're creepin' me out
You're creepin' me out
Girl, you're creepin' me out
Girl, you creep me out

New Pick-Up Line

Do you know where the nearest bakery is? Because I'm looking for a cutie-pie like you.

Dating Experiment, Data Set 1

Remember the experiment I said I would do, in which I try immediately assaulting a potential honey with talk about commitment? Sounds like a bad idea - in fact, the worst idea - in theory, but in practice, it's not that bad. That one friend's friend who advised me on the matter was totally right: some boys, especially lazy ones, could get commitment-phobic if they predict poor returns for their investment (ie if I seem flakey and noncommittal).

If you think about it, it makes sense: while we all may or may not have various issues about our own willingness to commit, none of us, I would think, wants to be the party whom the OTHER person thinks isn't worth committing to.

My latest endeavor offers a tentative confirmation. I told him straight off that I'm tired of being a player, and I'm only looking for something stable now; flakes need not apply. The response was positive. He assured me that he was different from other guys, and he wanted someone stable too. Granted, it could have been just a line; but the important thing to observe is that he didn't run away screaming, as one might think he would.

Current Audio

The Rakes
Strasbourg

My Super Ex-Girlfriend

GOLD! That shit was so funny. And how psychotic is this? I didn't think G-Girl was crazy at all! On the contrary, I couldn't stand the new girlfriend. That means either I'm such a big Uma Thurman fan (which I am) that I can't find fault with her, or I'm so crazy myself that, if anything, I felt validated by the crazy chick finally getting access to some super powers.

Luke Wilson is a far superior comic actor to his brother Owen, although the latter usually gets the credit for being funny. Unfortunately, Luke Wilson has aged drastically; his head has taken on the shape now of a perfect egg.

Now I Feel Bad

At the time I was like, Whatever. But I was reviewing the scene again in my head, and suddenly I realized that I must have been fully responsible for one man's mortification.

[At the pig race. I thought I was whispering; but my voice apparently carries.]
"Hey. That guy just used his pointing at the sky as an excuse to cut in front of me." The man was talking about how it looked like rain.
"Do you think you could say that any louder?"
"Whatever. Maybe it'll make him move."

The man moved off a few seconds later...and for some reason, I didn't connect the two events until now. I'm an asshole.

While we're on the subject of the fair: when I came home I found I had been wearing a chunk of funnel-cake powdered sugar on my face for the last few hours. I guess it serves me right for being an asshole. At any rate, I'm assuming my brother didn't see it, because if he did I hope he would have told me.

Velvet Revolver

and pig races at the OC Fair. I admire Velvet Revolver for their courage: doing that comeback thing is nearly impossible for anyone - only Ozzy Osbourne, the fall-ass-backwards-in-fame-and-fortune par excellence, seems to have done it with assured success - and yes, Velvet Revolver's new songs are pretty disappointing, but still they're putting themselves out there and toughing it through. The result? Most of their fans seem to want to hear them play just covers. Life is hard. You get all the gifts of youth only once, and that when most of us are too dumb to know how to use them.

The Epsilons!!

DAMN good! It was so much fun to see them play.

Should I be offended?

On the one hand, it would be a double-standard if I took offense; plus whatever Butterfly might say (drunk), she did stand loyally by as my wingwoman, even going to an all-Asian club, so that I could get to know my prospect better. On the other hand, there are some things you don't say out loud.

"I hope you had an okay time with Tim?"
"Yeah I had a really good time."
"Really? So, is this someone you'd call again?"
"Mm...I'd probably call him the next time they have one of these mixers, just as a friend. But I definitely wouldn't call him to go out on a date. I mean, you know me and men."
...?
'I'm PICKY. He has to be tall and good-looking and smart and athletic and successful, and black or white and nothing in between..."
[Didn't you say your last boyfriend had love-handles?]
"...and I'm sorry, I'm just not attracted to Asian boys."
"Uh huh."
"You know me and my family -" [actually I didn't] "if I brought home a white guy my family would be perfectly fine. If I brought home a black guy they would think, okay, that's weird, but I guess I understand. If I brought home an Asian guy, they'd say, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?"
"Um, don't you think that's, uh, inconsistent?"
"Well, black and white people understand each other. White people and everyone else have a big cultural gap, but whites and blacks share a common struggle."
"Yeah, but...all the struggling was on the black side, if you excuse my bluntness."
[The conversation then turned into an exigesis on Butterfly's Native American heritage.]

In My Girlish Days

Late hours at night, trying to play my hand
Through my window, out stepped a man
I didn't know no better
Oh boys
In my girlish days

My mama cried, papa did, too
Oh, daughter, look what a shame on you
I didn't know no better
Oh boys
In my girlish days

I flagged a train, didn't have a dime
Trying to run away from that home of mine
I didn't know no better
Oh boys
In my girlish days

I hit the highway, caught me a truck
Nineteen and seventeen, when the winter was tough
I didn't know no better
Oh boys
In my girlish days

(Lord, play it for me now)

All of my playmates is not surprised,
I had to travel 'fore I got wise
I found out better
And I still got my girlish ways

Funny Word

Taking Back Sunday was on Kevin and Bean this morning. They played an acoustic version of their little single, you know the one, and afterwards one of them (Bean?) remarked that whenever they have a band come in and play an acoustic set, every song inevitably sounds like Poison's Every Rose Has Its Thorn. The two Taking Back Sunday guys were crushed. "You know, we've never played that song this early before. Here we are playing our hearts out, and you have to compare us to this boner rock band."

"Oh no, I love Poison. I didn't mean it like it's a bad thing."

"It IS a bad thing!"

Afterwards I reflected that these might be strong words coming from 2006's answer to 1988's Poison. But at the time, I could only think:

"Boner - hee hee! That's not a word you hear often enough."

The Stick

in "stick and carrot." So far the carrot has been the $$$. The stick is that one of the tutors got fired last week. Apparently the students thought he was "too boring." Those snot-nosed brats! Maybe class would be less boring if they actually did the work.

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

I give it a "fair" rating. It has nothing to do with the Odyssey, however, aside from a few names. Interesting how our expectations work: if they hadn't said anything about the Odyssey, who knows, I might have been calling it a rip-off. But as a professed adaptation, I expected far more ripping off. The one (possible?) allusion I thought was clever was the governor as the king of the Phaeacians. There were a lot of other stuff I couldn't identify. What was the character of the blind radio guy, Milton from Office Space? Demodocus? Tommy Johnson, as far as I could tell, was simply Robert Johnson - who was real life, not Homeric. George the bank robber had something to do with the cattle of the sun, but it neither made sense what he would have been in the Odyssey, nor why he's relevant the protagonists in the movie itself.

What I Find Obnoxious

are those people whom you don't know that well, but they think it's okay to make fun of you. I just remembered a particularly bad version of this from last Friday. My friend's friend was jesting at me - and incidentally, not even my actual friends thought that what I was doing was funny enough for commentary (I was trying to get the DJ to change the music) - and I didn't know what I was supposed to say to her. If she were a total stranger, I would say, "Get the fuck out of my face, idiot brain," but obviously I couldn't say that to a friend's friend. If it were my actual friend making fun of me...well, usually there isn't that uncomfortable silence which I'm then expected to fill up and smooth over. Seriously, the last thing I am is a Miss Manners. And yet I repeatedly find myself in that position where I have to compensate for other people's blunders.

The way one does that, usually, is to make a fool out of oneself in order to make the other party feel less foolish. Learn to stop making fools out of yourselves, people. I'm sick of sacrificing myself for the social harmony.

How many gashes make a gimp?

3. Last night I took a cm-wide layer of skin off my ankle from a carpet burn while "breakdancing." Today I went surfing and got nickeed on the foot from a rock. Then my board (new and under-waxed) slipped out under me, and the fin cut me under my knee. This is all on the right leg.

I wouldn't have guessed it, but the carpet burn is giving me the most pain. The fin cut, however, is causing the limp - the cut itself isn't that deep but I think it also bruised or something.

Who's a Happy Camper?

Rex is! I just bought my brand new, beautiful, 7'6" longboard. I can't wait to break it in.

So check it out: a used board costs $400. A new board costs $425 - and if you're my mom, you can negotiate down to $400. Who would be fool enough to buy a used board?

A Place in the Sun

OMG, Montgomery Clift is DAMN BEAUTIFUL. Elizabeth Taylor isn't hard on the eyes either.

Remarkably like Matchpoint, but it sucked more, and in opposite ways. Whereas Matchpoint enraged me because the murderer/asshole got off scot free - which is actually as funny and delightful as it is enraging - A Place in the Sun pissed me off because I was rooting for the murderer to get away, but he doesn't. It makes you think that maybe even an irresponsible asshole has the right to try to be happy. But no...according to the movie, he doesn't have the right.

Hooray!

I finished my stupid Sophocles paper! Now I can, like, start my summer.

Conan's Celebrity Surveys

1. "When all else fails..."
Ben Affleck: "...I start filming All Else 2."

2. "I learned my sportsmanship from..."
Zinedine Zidane: "...an angry mountain goat."

The Despotic Authority of a Teacher

One more episode from today's Streetcar class:

"...so you see, Stella decides that she can't believe Blanche because she has this life with Stanley that she doesn't want to give up. They have a baby now -"
"What happens to the baby?"
"The baby? The baby's fine. He grows up to be Michael Corleone, aka Al Pacino."
"Wait, what?"
"You know, Marlon Brando's son, 30 years later."
"Really? The baby in this play is Al Pacino?"
Sigh.

A Streetcar Named Desire

This may seem like a "duh" moment, but I never realized that this play is about as R-rated as they get, until I tried to teach it to a bunch of 16 year olds. I'm more used to thinking of things in terms of art, so I guess I only saw the more innocent stuff, like civilization vs. animalism, illusion vs. reality, etc. Then I felt my face turn red as I had to spell out more of the backstory.

"What did Blanche do? Right, and why did she get fired? Yes, she was a CHILD MOLESTER."
"So why did she end up at the Tarantula Arms? Well, the implication is she was a PROSTITUTE."
"And do you remember the traumatic event that first made Blanche a nympho? Good, she was married. And what did her husband do? Why did he do it? Caught him doing what? Exactly, having sex with another man."
"Did you get what happens at the end? Good, there's a RAPE."
'I'm sorry guys, this is really racy. But hey, you're old enough to watch R movies, right? No? Oh. Well, if you need to pinpoint the moment you were corrupted, you can point to this."

The Crazy Diamond

is dead! This is very sad for me. I've never heard The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (though its namesake in A Wind in the Willows is a wonderful story), and I admit I haven't been able to listen to the rest of Pink Floyd recently. But I had my own special bond to Syd Barrett. He was by far the coolest of my ________ ____s.

Proud Moment

Today my dog caught a rabbit that was trying to munch on our vegetable garden. He's been running after bunnies for years, but he was always to timid to make the big lunge. Today he succeeded. He tried to give the bunny to my mom, but small rodent-like animals are my mom's pet phobia, so she ran in the house, and the bunny ran away.

I'm glad my dog wasn't feeling ruthless enough to kill the rabbit. I guess he isn't hungry, so he's just kind of curious about them. I hope he stays that way, because the day he starts leaving dead animals on our doorstep is the day my workload gets heavier. Cleaning up his poo is bad enough.

Instead of seeing Agent Orange tonight

I stayed home and watched Saved by the Bell. Why? Because my parents are fucking buttholes. Sometimes I can't even fathom what's going on in their minds, because they say the craziest things. Things like, I can't do anything slightly dangerous because I could be okay the first 999,999 times, but all it takes is that 1 time for me to die. That if I go out and anything happens to me, then I'd sure better die because that's preferable to living after a tragedy (= rape). I swear to God, I going insane!! I can't take this. I really, really can't take this.

Shopping Notes

1. Where the hell is Sunset Beach?

2. Dean Cleary Surfboards
1009 S. Hathaway St., Santa Ana
(714) 954-0499

3. TK's Froghouse
6908 W. Coast Highway, Newport Beach
(949) 642-5690

4. Fusion Surf
212 Technology, Suite S, Irvine
949 679-2051

5. Surf Skate Supply
510 Ave de la Estrella, Suite A, San Clemente
(949) 369-7873

Cartoon Short

I had a new experience today of the evocative power of animation. The thing about cartoons is that they're usually more about what's being told than how it's being told. But today I saw this little intermission short that told a simple story, that became very touching and nice through the expressiveness of the drawing.

The story was told from the point of view of a shop keeper who one day met an elderly couple in her store. She sold them some wallpaper, and as they left, she felt bad for them that they had to paper their walls themselves. Early the next morning, she found the elderly man waiting outside the store. He was there to buy more wallpaper because, as he said, the paper got stuck. When the shop keeper asked what he meant, he told her the story.

That morning, his wife had woken up extra early. She wanted to ease her husband's work by applying the wallpaper paste beforehand, and she spent the whole morning doing this. Unfortunately, the paste dried more quickly than she thought, and the wallpaper got stuck together in the stacks in which she left them. When they tried to pull them apart, the paper ripped. The wife felt very embarassed; the husband comforted her and said he'd buy some more wallpaper. The shop keeper gave him the wallpaper, and reflected how nice it was that this old couple was so caring toward one another

The little touches captured the warmth of moment: the gingerly way the elderly couple carried themselves; the wife's crestfallen face when she realized what she had done; the elegance of gesture as the husband held his wife's hand to comfort her...

I thought, Ha, I must be losing it. Despair must have made me wacky if I'm watching all ten minutes of this cartoon couple and feeling jealous of what they have.

Polar Bears

There's something about polar bears that's so entertaining. I saw an episode of Seinfeld the other day that featured this hilarious old guy from Kramer's Polar Bear Club.

Polar Bear: "The male kangaroo doesn’t have a pouch, only the female has it. So the male has pouch envy. 'Why should she have this huge pouch, and I have nothing? I have things to carry, too. At least give me a pocket!'

I also have a polar bear joke in my regular reperatoire.

Fiinally, I heard a great band the other day called the Bipolar Bears. I heard them on my new favorite radio show, Back and Forth with Nino on Wednesday nights. My old favorite radio show used to be on Wednesday nights, too: Record Roundup with Oscar Cox, which is where I got my fondness for rockabilly. Alias marathons on TNT are also on Wednesday nights. It's a great part of the week.

But anyways, the Bipolar Bears - what a winning name. The band is cross-membered with another band I liked, the Manifolds.

Numb Despair

Wow, my high school seniors are dead inside. Not that I blame them. I'd be dead inside too if I had to spend my summer here instead of the beach.

One More Thing

There's also one more thing that's probably making me feel more compassionate toward the right in general these days: my environment. LA is true diversity. Not only have I had a political debate with a hardcore Republican (here, it's possible to do this with respect and restraint; I was pleasantly surprised), but I've also conversed with left extremists who say that most Americans should get their voting privileges revoked because they're too stupid to vote the "right" way and should leave the big decisions to smart people who won't get swayed by the media. Excuse me? I ventured. Are you trying to tell me that you actually READ the text of all the measure and bill proposals, without listening to any of the ads or debates? No, of course not. I've tried it before, and I've read enough to know that that's impossible.

So if I had to pick between the former and the latter, I think I'd rather live in a society with stupid, simple conservatives than the hyper-intellectual commie liberals. I learned that sometimes you can be smarter, but still not reasonable.

The Bushes on Larry King

The thing about the president is that he appears worse the more he speaks. In the recent weeks, my personal approval rating of him wasn't so low. Sure, gas prices are high, but he's been making concerted efforts to build better diplomatic relations, and I agreed with him basically on the immigration issue, and the administration has been working on an exit strategy in Iraq (one that does NOT look like, "Bye!"), and most of all, Bush has been keeping his mouth shut on a lot of the favorite Republican issues, like gay marriage or abortion or flag burning (compare, say, with his yes-manning to the whole stem cell research party line).

It might also be that I have a more personal stake in Bush's aggressive style of leadership now that North Korea is acting up. Whether or not the South Koreans believe it's likely, I would be totally devastated if NK should blow up Seoul. And I would be even more devastated if they blew up Los Angeles (though apparently their missiles don't have that capability yet).

But my point is, seeing the Bush interview on Larry King reminded me of why I thought he was the devil in the first place. He's both narrow-minded and slick-talking, a noxious combination. I really can't decide if he's stupid of brilliant. For what it's worth, I would advise Bush to spend the rest of his term working hard but not tooting his horn about it. It does more damage than good, I think.

Of course, I could be the statistical outlier, which may account for the low approval ratings from the voters overall. Maybe other people feel reassured when they hear a slick talker - I guess that's the point of slick talking, right?

The Cruel Governess

is what I've become. I learned this week that I have no patience for mediocrity. I thought I'd be more understanding, because I'm a slacker myself, but it's maddening enough when they can't grasp the straightforward concepts that I'm ready to beat someone with a cane if, on top of their natural difficulties, they're not even paying attention. I think that's what pushed me over the edge; before my attitude was, "If they're here and they don't make an effort, that's their loss, their summer gone to shit for nothing. It's not my business."

So what pushed me over the edge? When the kid is reasonably well-behaved and focused, but simply has no fucking clue what I'm talking about. For example, today we read Rappaccini's Daughter by Hawthorne. If you've read the Scarlet Letter, you know that reading Hawthorne's symbolism is like getting beaten over the head repeatedly with a blunt object - so naturally I thought it would be a slam dunk. But when I posed the simplest of questions like, "What is the setting? Why is Giovanni at the University of Padua?" I just got this blank, terrified silence. What am I supposed to do with that? Some of the kids were really trying, so I couldn't really bite off their heads, and instead just tap danced for them til we all fell into numb despair.

But of course: then a student waltzes in late and says, "I couldn't finish the reading, I did about a third but then my printer broke," while her cell phone vibrates every 20 minutes. That's when you think, "You want a piece of this? Let's throw it down right here."

New Theory

I was hanging out with Butterfly and some of her friends at yesterday's BBQ, and naturally the conversation turned to our favorite topic, boys. I got to hear a different perspective this time because Butterfly's three friends were two guys in a relationship, plus the wife of one of those guys.

I was going about my usual rant, why are men such crackheads? Butterfly declared that LA men were the worst. While you could predict the normal sleazy behavior of most other men, there was no telling what the LA man would do; often you have to pull teeth just to get the first date, which is kinda unheard of to the rest of the world.

"That's true," I said. "You usually assume that guys are always just trying to get laid - and so you work with it, adjust your expectations, and get two or three good dates out of him. But LA guys...I don't know, they just want to get high!"

To my surprise, one of the guys agreed with my crackpot theorizing. "But there's a plus to that," he said. "Most other guys just want to get laid, but that means they're trying to get laid by EVERYONE."

"Ahh...! So are you saying that the LA guy ideally gets laid by one girl, and spends the rest of the time getting high?"

"Yes. Well...ideally, he'd get high with the girl."

This was an interesting suggestion, one that challenged my old conviction that men are mostly motivated by a fear of commitment. According to Butterfly's friend's theory, commitment is a highly desired thing, because men are lazy in addition to horny, and they could get the best of both worlds if they had the girlfriend to do all the heavy relationship lifting for them. Makes sense, right? It fits with what we know about the other major drugged-up demographic: teen to early-college years. Folk wisdom says that if you want a guy to fall crazy in love with you and become obsessed and pathetic after a drunken hook-up, you should nab a guy who's 19. Naivete no doubt is partly responsible, but it also has something to do with his being too damn lazy to pursue all the other fish in the sea.

All this was most illuminating. It made me think that I had been deflecting unfair blame on the other party. It's a well-known fact that I'm not ready for commitment, but all this time I've been declaiming about how much men suck for their instability. Maybe it's the case that they didn't want to give me a chance because they could tell I was only going to stick around for a few dates, 2 months max, and they were looking for someone who could take care of all the ass-wiping for them while they get high. So -

Experiment: the next time I meet a potential significant other, right away talk about a long-term life together, instead of politely respecting his personal space. We'll see what happens. It's possible nothing different will happen, which would then confirm my other working theory, that it doesn't matter what the hell I do.

Words To Live By

Last night I found myself repeating advice whose depth I'm still trying to grasp:

"Never trust a man who's never crapped his pants."

Clarification: pant-pissing counts in the general category of "soiling oneself" but sharting (or "broth," as Que-ni would say) doesn't count, on account of being too common.

Anyways, one of my friends was regaling us with horror stories about his study abroad in Mexico, where he had to share a room with a notorious pant-crapper. "Now hold up," I interrupted, "I hear a lot of people do it, so let's not judge." Then our friend told us that this roommate used to eat a breakfast smoothie every morning blended from taco meat, bananas, mangos, and whatever leftovers, so that any incontinence was really self-inflicted. "I still can't judge yet," I said. I'm waiting to collect my own evidence - amazingly, not a lot of people want to discuss crapping their pants - but until then, I have tremendous trust in the people who passed this maxim down to me.

FYI, I've been guilty of pissing myself (and not even drunk! just small bladder), and of the broth, though not of crapping myself...yet. And I think I've very trustworthy. There may be something to this theory.

Prostitution, Paternalism

For a long time I had difficulty justifying why I thought prostitution was wrong. It's a victimless crime. It's an adult doing what she or he thinks best about a commodity that belongs entirely to her or him. Prostitutes often say that they feel empowered, not victimized, by what they do (not that I believe this for a second). To step in and regulate can only be moral policing.

And yet I've always felt that this moral policing was a good thing, mostly on account of my feminism. In the long run, the prostitution of some women ends up being demeaning to all women. Two objections to this viewpoint. The first is: there are male prostitutes too, so how can you explain that not all men are demeaned? I guess my answer would be that certain types of men ARE demeaned (like, say, "femme" gay men), and the only reason the damage isn't more extensive is the hegemony; by definition, the hegemonous group can't be stereotyped. The second objection would come from the prostitutes: "You're just jealous that we got it going ON. We do what we do because we like it." To this I would say: crock of bull. There are some sadistic children out there who enjoy getting beaten, but we can't legalize child abuse for their benefit. Prostitution is an economic deadweight, so if nothing else, that alone makes it demeaning in a capitalistic economy.

So one day Yeah I Can Ride a Horse and I came up with the conclusion that we should regulate prostitution because it's bad for society, even if it does happen to be a victimless crime; much like seat belt laws. Then yesterday I thought of another good parallel: organ trafficking. We generally think organ trafficking is wrong because it allows further exploitation of the poor by the rich; and most of us don't have a problem with its illegalization because the commodity in question is a person's life. But the same principle, I think, can be applied to less extreme areas, including prostitution. It must bring up issues of gray area between what is exploitation and what is fair capitalistic practice, but on the whole I think our laws are consistent in striving to stop exploitation where it can be stopped.

So I mention this whole "good of society" principle because it relates to a conversation I had last night with a Republican friend. His position was that he shouldn't have to pay all the highest taxes (apparently he's in the highest tax bracket) because he works hard for his money, and making some allowances for economic disadvantages etc., the rich work a lot harder than the poor. I said, this isn't even about what's just or what's deserved: do you know what would happen if the rich took everything and the poor got nothing? Not only would the poor have to die, but YOU would suffer from it too, like in the form of crime. Look at Rio de Janeiro.

Then the conversation turned into a debate about the cost of war, since I pointed out that 50% of his precious tax money was going to the military anyway. My friend had conceded that he believes in paying for universal healthcare (!) and social security, and that's when I told him that those are but small dents in the tens of thousands of his tax clams, or bones or whatever, at least at this present date. I believe I won that round.