BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.: May 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Odd Dreams
I don't often remember dreams, so the fact that I remembered 3 from one night (well, morning) makes it worth a blog post. That and the fact that I'm still turning 2 of them over in my head, and that writing about them will help me sort through the oddities.
The main one I remember was about a girl woman. Don't know who; I never saw her face, but she had very white skin and fleshy boobs. In the dream we were naked together in bed, but there wasn't any sex. I never saw my own body or had any awareness of it, and I didn't see her above the neck or below the waist, nor did I touch her there, or she touch me. We were kissing, but without any visibility of her face or lips, and it seemed to be the morning. The only bit of dialogue I recall was her saying something about, "Guys always say they want to just sleep over and won't try anything during the night, but you're the first one who was honest when you said it."
It wasn't clear from the dream fragment I retained upon waking if the action was taking place the morning after that sleep over, or the night before, or some later date upon which she was reminiscing about our first night together, some time in the past. Nor was it clear if the kissing and boob-fondling we were engaging in was going to lead to more, or if it was sort of my reward for not trying to rape her in her sleep.
What this mean is, as ever, unclear. On Monday I had a farewell lunch with the IG, before she left for a two month study abroad program. On Tuesday night I had a farewell movie date (Oldiana Jones 4) with the ex (Malaya) before she left for a month and a half of business/vacation travel overseas. I'm sure that thoughts of being alone for a while, since the two people I most often hang out with are gone until July, were in my head and creeping into my dream, but the woman in the dream was nothing like either Malaya or the IG, nor have my recent activities with Malaya and the IG been anything like those with the woman in the dream (much to my chagrin, in the case of the IG). Nor were the dream activities an expression of what I want to do with some as of yet unknown mystery woman.
They're quite unlike that, actually. When I envision a potential girlfriend I think about her intellect and personality and interests, since I want to have fun and be mentally stimulated and have great conversations and emails, and when I think about her body I envision a pretty face, nice hair, athletic body, perky butt, etc. White skin and boobs are way, way down my list of preferred physical features since I don't care that much about skin color and I really don't care about boob size (so long as they're not mega-implant sized monstrosities). Yet that's all I saw of the girl in my dream, and I didn't get much of her personality either, other than a vague sense that she was very passive and trusting, neither of which are qualities I especially desire in a woman.
So if she was my fantasy girlfriend, she sure was an odd choice. But why else did my subconscious conjure her into disembodied dream form?
In other odd dream news, I also had a quick one about the cat. I've been thinking about getting a kitten or a younger cat for a while, since Jinxie has so much energy and likes to play, and I think she'd enjoy another cat to do it with. She always wanted to play with Dusty, but he was old and grumpy and lazy, and only played when he wanted to, and didn't let her snuggle or sleep beside him. I don't have any immediate plans to get another cat, but the thought keeps popping into my head, most often when Jinx is tearing around the apt and barking at me and I'm trying to ignore her to get some work done.
This theme worked its way into a dream last night in an unusual way. In the dream I was going to the pound to look at cats and kittens, but when I got to the kitten room there was just one cat in it. And she was Jinx, as a kitten. Not a cat like Jinx, but Jinx herself. I clearly remember her climbing up the bars of her cage and pawing at the mousie they'd hung for her, and that active behavior (and her apparently short fur) winning Malaya and me over. (She kept the activity and gained a ton of fur.)
In the dream I thought about buying Jinx, but then somehow concluded that I didn't need to get a kitten to play with Jinx since she was already a kitten herself, and went on my merry way. The dream didn't go on long enough to see if Jinx was a kitten when I got back home, so I'm not sure what to make of that one either.
The third dream was the shortest and vaguest. In it I was driving a fire truck. I don't think I was a fireman, and I've never wanted to be a fireman or drive a fire truck, so I don't know where that one came from. I just know I was up high in a big wide seat, with a huge steering wheel in my hands, and I was driving really fast through city streets with sirens wailing and no cars in my way. I think I was alone in the truck though, without even any kittens or white torsos with fleshy boobs, and I don't know where I was going in the truck, or what I was going to do when I got there.
The common thread between all of these dreams? No idea. The only thing that rings any bells was a scene in QT's Death Proof, which I just bought (used DVD from Blockbuster) and watched a couple of days ago. In part of the endlessly extended female bonding stuff at the start of the movie, one woman tells the others about her new semi-boyfriend, and how he whines. They were making out at her apt one night, and when she had enough and told him to leave, he tried to wheedle his way into staying overnight. He just wanted to sleep in bed with her, he wasn't going to try anything, etc. And that element apparently popped up in my white girl dream, though in that case she let me stay the night.
As for the rest? I do know that I drank way too much root beer last night and was all full of caffeine when I went to bed, and that I'd spent the hour before sleep reading another 100 pages of Dennett's absolutely fascinating and thought-provoking Consciousness Explained, and that combined with whatever unsettled feelings I'm having after seeing my two best friends leave, for months, apparently stirred up some odd dreams. More likely the caffeine is the reason I remember them, since I didn't sleep soundly. I tend to remember dreams when I wake up during or immediately after them; when I sleep all night I never remember anything in the morning.
Don't expect a repeat of this post tomorrow, since tonight's menu includes a big glass of zinfandel and the rest of a huge pasta stirfry I whipped up yesterday, so I should be sleeping like a proverbial baby. Wine burps aside.
For a special, unrelated "bonus," here's a curious photo of some of the crops on my patio.
They're both healthy examples of trellis-climbing cucumbers, but one is suddenly yellowish, while the other is a very dark green. Here's the weird thing. They were the exact same color/size/consistency until about a week ago. The pots are the same, they were planted at the same time in the same soil, they get the same water, etc. Each holds 3 seedlings out of the same six-pack, which had one label on it, as though all six were the same strain.
They've obviously grown a fair amount since they were thumb-high sprigs in plastic egg cartons; they're now thigh high and climbing, but what prompted the color change? The obvious suggestion is that they are different types of cucumber, but their leaves are identical in shape, the flowers look just the same, and as I said, they came in the same six-pack with nothing to indicate there were 2 strains within. Even if there were 2 different types, I planted the six seedlings at random, so you'd expect me to have wound up with 2 and 1 in the pots, instead of 3 and 0.
The darker green one gets slightly more afternoon sunshine as the roof blocks out the light from the west, but I'm talking slightly more. Like 15 minutes a day. And by the same token the yellow one gets slightly more morning sun, as El Sol moves around from the east. (Or so it would appear, from our earth-bound observation point. But, to digress, how about that famous question? "What would it look like if the earth were stationary and the sun were orbiting it?" Exactly the same, I'd think, as evidenced by the ancients ascribing the same orbital path to the sun and the moon. Therefore, perhaps our natural assumption that the earth is the center of the solar system is based more on an inherent human self-centeredness than on astronomical observation. Can't this sort of psychological tendency can be seen at work in other human affairs, such as the conceit that puts man at the center of the cosmology of every religion and sets us apart from animals and the other natural forces?)
That aside, what's up with the different color cucs? That they were identical a week ago is the oddest part. They're not mature enough to produce fruit yet, just lots of yellow blossoms from which the noms will grow, and I'm now quite curious to see how the pre-pickled pickles turn out. Will the fruits look different? Taste different? More yellowy, or greeny? Like the eternal question of whether or not that's actually your baby in your wife's tummy... only time (or the Maury show) will tell.
Also, the relevant question might not be why one turned yellow. It's possible that it remained much the same, while the other one has suddenly turned dark dark green. Look at the "green" tree and shrub foliage in the background; it's far closer in color to the "yellow" cuc than to the green one, as is the color of my healthy "green" tomato plants.
If I had to guess, I'd say that the yellow one is retaining more water. The green one's pot blocks most of the sideways sun to the yellow one's pot, and I think the black plastic heats up in the sun and evaporates more of the water within. So perhaps by that light I'm over-watering the yellow one, even though I give them the same amount each day? Why the color change didn't start until just recently though, I can't say.
WETA held a fansite chat with Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro about their plans for the upcoming hobbit movies, and I found it a fairly gripping read. I've not paid that much attention to the ongoing legal wrangles about the remaining LotR film, but apparently New Line has resolved their issues with PJ, and he's going to writing and executive producing the Hobbit films, while del Toro, best known for Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth, is going to direct and assist on the script.
They're shooting two movies back to back, but apparently it's not the hobbit turned into two films; it's the Hobbit and a second film that takes place somewhere during the 50 years between the time of the Hobbit and the time when the LotR trilogy begins. I'm not sure how well that will work; I thought the Hobbit had plenty of material for two movies, but it wouldn't work well as two films since there aren't any natural break points halfway through. As I recall, about 80% of book's content takes place leading up to the dragon action, which begins amazingly but ends fairly quickly, leaving the 15-20% of the story feeling like an extended-epilogue as it details the war of the 3 (4?) races.
I guess they can get that all into one long movie, with a four and a half hour extended edition DVD to follow. I have no idea what the second movie is about then, other than being something else they can film at the same time and use as a way to save $ on costs and give us mouth-breathing fans something irrelevant to anticipate. It's not as if talented writers couldn't invent some more cool stuff in the Tolkien world; JRR himself created a great fictional realm, but the actual plot events and characterization and narrative flow of the novels are far from his strong points. That's why the initial trilogy of films is so much more satisfying than the novels, since all the good points in the plot were retained, tons of filler was shaved off, the characters were made stronger and more believable and human, and the narrative structure was tweaked to enhance the drama and suspense. And almost all of the group singalongs around campfires were deleted.
I just wonder if the fans will be as accepting of "Bilbo's further adventures." Probably, since I doubt 10% of the people who paid money to see LotR actually ever read the novels. It's just that that 10% makes up about 93% of the fans who care enough to follow and write about this process online. (This blog post = case in point.) So the lunatic fringe, early adapter, fan boys (and girls) will be out in even more force for the Hobbit films than for your usual scifi/fantasy geekfest.
Anyway, a couple of quotes from the chat, which is as interesting as it is poorly formatted.
PJ on the filming schedule:
At this point in time the plan is to write for the rest of this year and start early conceptual designs. 2009 will be dedicated to pre-production on both movies and 2010 will be the year we shoot both films back to back. Post production follows one film at a time with The Hobbit being released Dec 2011, and F2 release Dec 2012. That is the schedule in about as much detail as we have ourselves at the moment.
GdT on the design of Smaug:
Smaug should not be "the Dragon in the Hobbit movie" as if it was just "another" creature in a Bestiary. Smaug should be "The DRAGON" for all movies past and present. The shadow he cast and the greed he comes to embody- the "need to own" casts its long shadow and creates a thematic / dramatic continuity of sorts that articulates the story throughout-
In that respect, Smaug the CHARACTER is as important, if not more important, than the design. The character will emerge from the writing- and in that the Magnificent arrogance, intelligence, sophistication and greed of Smaug shine through-
...One of the main mistakes with talking dragons is to shape the mouth like a snub Simian one in order to achieve a dubious lip-synch. .. A point which eluded me particularly in Eragon, since their link is a psychic one.
To me, Smaug is the perfect example of a great creature defined by its look and design, yes, but also, very importantly, by his movement and -One little hint- its environment - Think about it... the way he is scaled, moves and is lit, limited or enhanced by his location, weather conditions, light conditions, time of the year, etc. That's all I can say without spoilers but, if you keep this curious little summary you'll realize several years form now that those things I had in my mind ever since doodling the character as a kid had solidified waaay before starting the shoot of the film.
There's some other stuff in the chat about the world setting and the theme, which interested me as a writer and creator. They talk about how the world is much less dark and under the shadow at the time of the Hobbit than it is 50 years later when Sauron has returned. They also talk about how in PJ's trilogy the monsters were made more monstrous. The wargs didn't talk, the troll just grunted and slobbered, the eagles were just noble animals, etc. In Tolkien's version the animals and monsters all had human intelligence, and they talked to each other and to the humans, had their own agendas and priorities, etc.
GdT is planning to return to that style in The Hobbit, which, combined with a generally lighter, more jovial, less doom and gloom mood, could be a rather jarring change from what most of us grew used to in the LotR trilogy. After seeing Pan's Labyrinth I'm confident that there's no danger of GdT turning it into some sort of Disney-fied happy world of singing trees and birdies, but it'll definitely be interesting to see his take on things.
While I loved the LotR trilogy, I'm excited to see how a director of very different sensibilities takes on the Hobbit. And, I must admit that the way PJ's King Kong turned out, overstuffed and overbusy and underwhelming, helps me come to this conclusion. Maybe he was briefly ruined by success and an unlimited budget, and maybe he got the excesses and absurdities out of his system with King Kong, but I'm a little afraid of how PJ might handle the interactions of all those dwarves and hobbits and goblins and elves and wolves and other things, given the "too much is never enough" CGI spectacle he wrought in King Kong.
NY Times finance article points out another of the spiraling kaleidescope of economic woes being wrought by the popping steady leaking of the housing bubble and the wild loan speculation that fueled it. New car sales are plummeting, since way back in 2007, when home prices still "always went up," about 1/9 of new car purchases were made with cash from home loan refinancing. People using their houses as ATMs, taking out new mortgages for $100k or more above the equity, and blowing the cash on fun stuff. Like new cars.
It was a easy game, since after all, housing prices always went up. All the bankers and realtors agreed on that, so it had to be true. And since prices always went up, owing $700k on a house you bought 5 years ago for $350k, (with a down payment of about $25k) was just fine, recommended even, since your house was now worth $800k, and if you wanted to you could sell it and pay off the loans with a profit for your trouble. Now that those houses are more realistically valued at $450k, with a rental-approximate actual value of $350k, owing $600k is kind of a problem. That would be what the financial gurus call "negative equity," and when it's compounded by a person having taken one of those exotic non-fixed rate loans that ballooned to credit card level interest rates after a couple of years, it's driving people to "jingle mail."
Those forces, on top of the softening economy, are putting enormous pressure on the American auto industry as it faces what may be its worst year in more than a decade. About 15 million vehicles are expected to be sold in 2008, down from 16.2 million last year, as sales reach the lowest levels since 1995, according to the marketing firm J. D. Power & Associates.
The impact on the broader American economy could be profound. Not only is the car a consumer’s biggest purchase after the home, but the auto industry remains one of nation’s most important economic engines. With less money available to bolster the industry’s growth, the businesses that support it are also facing the prospect of a sharp slowdown.
"It is a bleak picture, and it all hinges on the availability of financing," said William Ryan, a financial analyst at Portales Partners who has followed the auto business for years. "The whole universe related to the auto industry is touched in some way — parts suppliers, manufacturers, salespeople, trucking people, the paint and metals industries. Even semiconductors."
On a semi-related issue, is anyone else changing their driving habits yet, thanks to increasing gas prices? There are plenty of stories about that in the news; the increased ridership of public transportation, people carpooling, the cratering resale value of SUVs and other gas guzzlers, but is everyone reacting in that fashion? Personally, it's making me drive faster.
When I pay $4.17 for mid-grade, as I did a few days ago (and that's the cheapest gas in the area; Chevron station nearer my apt was at $4.54 for hi-grade yesterday), I goddamn well want to get my money's worth. So I've been enjoying the driving experience more than ever. I'm laughing at 85 in the passing lane, and stomping it to savor my sports car's 0-70 acceleration in on-ramps. This must be how Spitzer felt paying $1000 a ride to high class hookers. If you're going to get fucked for top dollar, you might as well enjoy it, eh? So I floor it and feel the engine press me back into the seat, and as I slide into freeway traffic several seconds later, I smile, puff an imaginary cigarette, and think, "Yeah, that was worth $.50."
Sure, it's kind of like admiring the upholstery on the bar stools on the Titanic while you order a double shot on the rocks, but if you're on the boat (the US economy, in this case) and it's going down no matter what you do, you might as well enjoy the ride as long as you can. Remember last year, when we all thought $3 gas was outrageously expensive? Imagine the line you'd wait in today to pay that much for a fill up? Bet you wish you'd burned a little more rubber back then, when you could still afford it...
Doing my usual daily look at LOL cats HQ, and this one made me laugh, just because it's such a perfect encapsulation of one of the less cute aspects of Jinx's behavior.
Only the location is wrong, since Jinx tends to prefer the bedroom floor, on whichever side of the bed I'm most likely to step in it, in the dark, hours later... when the puddled mixture of foliage and partially-digested Friskies has had time to congeal into a cold ooze.
To buttress my claim, I present exhibits 1 and 2.
I'll spare you exhibit 3, which would be some sort of lumpy orange smear, with a spear of green, from the bedroom carpet. Or possibly my right instep.
Thus was the lesson learned this afternoon, when I dared lie down my head for a few minutes. I'd been up since 8, an unreasonably early hour I was set upon by the need to take my mom out to breakfast before driving her to the Oakland airport for her return flight to San Diego. Not that I didn't enjoy said activities, as much as any passage down the truck-clogged 880 freeway can be enjoyed, but I was a bit tired, after getting less than 6 hours of sleep 6 days running (and less than 3 on a couple of those days), thanks to various visiting-relative/graduation-related activities.
I'm much better at getting up in the morning and functioning on too-little sleep than I am at going to bed at a reasonable hour. I'm even worse at falling promptly to sleep on the rare occasions when I manage to go to bed at a reasonable hour. Pity there's no reverse-alarm yet. I want a device that is capable of using its stridency to force instant sleep. Oh, and while you're at it, whip up reverse-microwave that cools food instantly. I'm forever overheating soup and leftover Chinese, thus forcing myself to waste valuable seconds heating food, and then more seconds pawing at it and blowing ineffectually over it, in hopes that the issuance of my lungs will work a chilling magic upon it.
(On that topic, that's always bothered me about the second Superman movie, when he fought the 3 Krypton criminals, clad in their black plastic trash bags, in Times Square. I can buy Kryptonians possessing laser vision, by somehow not just seeing into the infrared band, but emitting those waves as well, but how did Kal-El blow cold air to freeze the truck's gas tank? Super powerful breath, okay. But how does he make it colder? Can he modify his internal temperature at will? Can he piss icicles or shit Chipwiches, if need be?)
So, Mom and me enjoyed a lovely breakfast, during which I encountered (and devoured) the novelty that was raspberry pancakes, and she got to the airport on time and returned safely home. And since I was way down in the East Bay already, I ran a few errands, then dropped by Malaya's work and took her out to lunch. By the time I returned home it was well into the afternoon, and my energy was flagging. I wanted to get in a bike ride though, and didn't think that would be a problem. It wasn't yet 4pm, its light here until well after 8 this time of year, and Jinx was in a blitz of activity (she got a lot of rest over the weekend, hiding from my various visitors), racing furiously from room to room (which is less impressive when you remember that my apt only has two rooms), leaping up onto the bed, running out onto the back patio, etc. I waited until she was not actually cavorting on the duvet, then took the opening to stretch out. I didn't close the blinds or windows since the wind was keeping the temperature from feeling oppressive, and since I figured the light would keep me from sleeping too long, even if Jinx somehow didn't manage that herself.
Predictably enough, the next thing I knew it was a quarter til 7, the sun was descending in the sky, it was way too late to go for a proper bike ride, and Jinx was curled up on the bed beside me, snurring away.
I've experienced the awesome alarm clock abilities of cats in the past, but 1) not with Jinx, and 2) not during an afternoon nap. Mercifully, the Jingles has never been one of those cats that share a dawn-calibrated chronometer with various forms of barnyard fowl, and cleverly, I've never gotten her into the habit of being fed at any particular hour. She's got unlimited access to crunchies, but she only gets wet food on special occasions, and never at dawn, so daybreak means nothing to her, and wandering around yowling to be fed is equally foreign behavior. She's good at begging for tidbits on the fairly-rare occasions when I'm cooking or eating something flesh-based, but she's best at sleeping for long hours, propped against one of my hips, in bed. And that's a talent she'll get to put to use fairly soon, since even with my long afternoon nap and the first two sodas (and first doses of caffeine) I've "enjoyed" since last week, I'm about ready to return to the scene of her earlier non-crime.
It's been a largely pointless night, with only minimal work accomplished, but it was enjoyable to spend some time alone and on the computer, after several days of nearly constant human interaction. As a friend remarked to me upon being appraised of my situation and hearing my relief that I hadn't forgotten how to use the Internet. "It's like riding a bike." To which I replied, "But with more porn."
Not that I was actually partaking of the flesh-based format that has done so much to shape the Internet we all know and love, but like most humans of my gender, I find it useful to drop in allusions to and jokes about porn whenever possible, especially when speaking about the Internet. No wonder they had female speakers at my graduation ceremony.
Men from modern Western societies are more attracted to heavier women when they're hungry, and to thinner women when they're full. I heard this fascinating tidbit during a lecture by a Terry Sejnowski, a neuroscience researcher, and turned it over in my head for a few days. I asked Malaya and the IG about it, but neither of them had any idea what it might mean, and I couldn't figure it out either. So I typed some notes about it, reminded myself to look into it later, and forgot about it.
This afternoon, while enjoying a brief hour on the computer (with parents in town and graduation events over the weekend, I've had very little time to surf/blog/work), I thought I should blog something, and when I saw this bit on my notes page, I did a quick search, and found some more information on the study. I knew nothing about it other than what Dr. Sejnowski said, and she made just a very brief mention of it during her speech. Details:
Men in rich, Western countries tend to prefer thinner women, whereas men in poorer South Pacific countries tend to prefer bigger women. It’s been argued that this is due to cultural and ethnic differences, but increasingly psychologists now believe it has more to do with socioeconomics, so that men prefer bigger women when resources are scarce because a woman being bigger is an implicit sign that she’s got access to resources.
It's not a cultural thing, and it's not a racial thing. In the past white, Western men preferred heavier women; witness all of those "Reubenesque," thunder-thighed, pear-devouring fleshpots in art from Renaissance Europe. The difference was that in those times, the standard of living was lower, and more people were skinny and/or starving. Being fat, or even plump, was a sign of power and luxury, and it set you apart from the rest. You looked "better" in the eyes of people in that place and time, and you looked different.
Today in most Western cultures, certainly in Britain and the US, being not-fat is the unusual state, and it's what's desired culturally. It's impossible to say how much of that is media-driven and how much is scarcity and how much is genetic preference, but it's easy to see the result. Most men want thin women and most women feel bad about not being thin. A lot ties into this; men are visual creatures, men are genetically attracted to young, healthy women since their fertility is likely to be higher, we all see thin women working as models and movie stars, excessive fatty food is hard to avoid in our culture, etc. It's just how things are now. Or is it?
To test this idea further, Viren Swami and Martin Tovee asked 61 male undergraduates at a British University to rate the attractiveness of 50 differently-sized women as depicted in black and white photos. The women were either emaciated, underweight, normal, overweight or obese, according to their body mass index (the ratio of height to weight). They were dressed in identical grey leotards and their faces were obscured. The male participants were recruited as they were entering or exiting the university dining hall, and they rated whether they were hungry or full on a 7-point scale.
The researchers found that the hungrier participants rated heavier women as more attractive than the full participants did. The hungrier men’s ratings were also less affected by the women’s shape, as measured by their hip to waist ratio.
"Temporary affective states can produce individual variation in mate preferences that mirrors patterns of cultural differences", the researchers concluded.
This is obviously a very tentative result from a small study, but it's fascinating to consider the psychological issues behind this. Just checking into the reverse would be interesting. Anyone know some psych people working in like, a poor area of Vietnam? Or Ethopia? Would those men rate heavier/lighter women in the reverse of their current cultural norm? Prefer skinnier women when they were full?
There's no telling about that until further research is done, and the logic behind what those British men wanted is untested and unproven too. The study in question doesn't even seem to speculate about the "why." That's not going to stop me, of course. First off, I think we can rule out the men making a conscious decision about this issue. I don't think any man tells himself, "I'm hungry, so I want Anna Nicole Smith instead of Mary Kate Olsen." Furthermore, the scientists running the test couldn't have told the subjects what they were testing, or the controls would have been thrown of. I also think we can rule out cannibalism as a contributing factor to the male preferences. So what are we left with?
1) Men when hungry unconsciously associate a fleshy woman with their own desire to be full and not hungry.
2) Men when hungry are not thinking about sex as much as they normally would, so their normal attractions are skewed, and the results are simply randomized (thus leading to heavier preferred, since the women men usually prefer are pretty far down the BMI scale.)
3) Men when hungry think about being full and fat and want a woman who won't judge them for that, and they figure a fat one won't? (It would be interesting to see if the male preferences varied by the weight of the men; did fat guys and skinny guys have the same "when hungry" preferences?)
4) Men when hungry think about food and mom and cooking and there's an ingrained attraction to non-skinniness. "Never trust a skinny chef," as they say...
Most likely the answer is some combination of these reasons, and some other ones I've not yet thought of, but it's an interesting riddle to puzzle over.
Troubling article on Salon about a new book examining the actual financial state of "middle class" Americans. Turns out that quite a few people with college degrees, working in white collar jobs, earning what would seem to be good incomes (up to $70k a year) are actually in fairly dire financial straits. College costs and debts have risen, healthcare costs are skyrocketing and being steadily moved from business to employees, retirement planning is following the same path. This bit caught my eye, given my ongoing dalliance with the idea of grad school.
In the '70s, we were barely taking out student loans. In 1977, collectively students were borrowing about $6 billion. By now, they're borrowing over $85 billion. That's a remarkable number. The number of students enrolled in college grew 44 percent between 1977 and 2003, but student loan volume rose 833 percent in that same time period.
There are fewer grants and scholarships available. If students go through graduate school, they can end up taking out over $100,000 of student loans. And if you go into a field that's not high-paying that can be a real burden on you for 20, 30, 40 years.
We are seeing more people going to college, which is definitely a positive move, but they're getting into a lot of debt to do it. The college degree now is what the high school degree used to be. You really need a basic bachelor's degree in order to be eligible for a lot of jobs.
You can see the math fairly easily there: 4-5 years more time in school = 4-5 years less earning money and 4-5 years more racking up debt. And if the white collar job at the end of that is no better paying (adjusted for inflation) than jobs in industry and manufacturing that were formerly available without college, and that have now been largely moved overseas in the name of higher corporate profits, today's college grad is materially far worse off than his father or grandfather. No wonder people were treating their houses like ATMs during the last few years when "real estate values always went up." At least they're better off then people who bought during that period, and are now sitting on hundreds of thousands of dollars in negative equity.
This issue of being middle class ties into a larger sociological topic I've had sitting on my notes file for a couple of weeks. The nut of the matter is that almost all Americans consider themselves to be "middle class," almost regardless of their actual income or financial situation. I can imagine people who are poor, or are living without much income/expenses (like myself) who tell themselves they're middle class in order to boost their ego or salve their pride. Or who just do it reflexively, without considering actual numbers, or who don't really think about it since their income isn't their priority in life (like me). The interesting thing is that this goes both ways. People who are clearly rich, or at least have an income that puts them well above the median, also claim to be "middle class," even when that's demonstrably false.
Sunday I learned that I am insensitive after I wrote a column arguing that families who earn as much as $200,000 to $250,000 are "rich."
A San Francisco couple earning $205,000 informed me they "shouldn't be considered anything but working middle class." A $215,000 couple told me, "Families making $200,000 a year are not rich. They're not even close to rich." A San Francisco lawyer explained that a $200,000 salary cannot make one rich because a "a 'rich' person does not need to work."
...Clinton promised not to raise "a single tax on middle-class Americans, people making less than $250,000 a year." Obama made a similar pledge for incomes up to between $200,000 and $250,000.
These figures are clearly etched into the national consciousness, as shown by both Democratic contenders adopting them into their tax plans. Americans do not think earning $200k a year makes you anything but middle class. What's the reality? Rather different.
As the cited columnist shows, earning $200k a year puts you into the 93rd percentile in the Bay Area, and the 97th percentile nationally. By what reasonable definition of "middle class" does earning more than 93%, or 97% of people, slot you into it?
I think this goes to the widely (though inconsistently applied) views Americans have of themselves (ourselves?) as "the common man," imbued with a "Protestant work ethic" and all striving to become (or remain) "middle class." They're psychological buzz words, ones that set off a resonance in our national psyche, and how well, if at all, they describe is us irrelevant to the satisfaction we get at their usage. Furthermore, people tend to generalize by their own standards, so most people earning $200k a year think they're middle class, and think that other people live lives somewhat like their own. They're largely ignorant of what sort of life is lived by people who actually are "middle class," and they confuse their "we just vacation in Hawaii, we don't own a second house there" situation for the actual "working a second job on weekends to pay off medical bills" middle class reality.
On the other hand, there is a point to people making $200k who think they're not upper class. And that point comes about from the (almost) historically unprecedented level income inequality in modern day America. If you're earning $200k a year, and the CEO of your company is earning $50m a year, you can't possibly see himself and yourself as of the same class. And you're not. You're earning 3x what an actual middle class family does, "$77,076 -- less if the family does not have to buy its own health care or pay for child care." according to the California Budget, as cited by the afore-linked SF Game columnist. But if your CEO earns 250x what you do, and 750x what a middle class worker does, and he's "upper class," you are indeed nowhere near that class.
Still, I do find it interesting that for most Americans, you need to be Bill Gates, or Tom Cruise, to actually be rich. You need to have several homes, servants, several vehicles you use simply for fun rather than transportation, etc. It's an interesting definition of rich, where a person must have an income not tens or dozens of times your own, but hundreds, or even thousands of times greater, to qualify.
That leads to my second digression, in which I quote part of an email I wrote Malaya on this issue a couple of weeks ago. I'll present it without further comment, and edit it simply to fix some typos:
America, where everyone wants to be rich but no one admits when they are.
This ties into something I was thinking in the shower this morning. How people normalize everything to their own standards, and assume that the rest of the world is moving inexorably towards it. Quite noticeable amongst atheists, who believe everyone else will gradually shed their religion and become secular (Worldwide evidence of this... ?). But capitalists and libertarians and even democracy-ists fall into the same trap. 1) We think our economic/political systems are the best, and 2) that everyone will gradually move into them. (And we're sure there's evidence to back this up.)
The first might be true, but #2 is far less clear. Most of the world is now moving towards capitalism, but Europe has far more central control and economic planning, as does Japan, the Asian tigers, etc. And then you get China with limited capitalism controlled by a semi-tyrannical bureaucracy, India is similar, though more democratic in the selection of the bureaucrats. And the rest of the world is more of a chaotic scramble, with a plutocrat class raking in the pesos/rubles, while most people struggle to survive.
Americans tend to assume that more freedom and democracy is best, but the evidence for this is spotty, and the evidence that it will ever be the majority opinion worldwide is nonexistent. Truth (arguable as that definition is) is largely irrelevant; how well is non-superstition doing in winning the battle amongst competing mental/philosophical memes?
There's a grand unified theory here somewhere, incorporating the fact that people think they're the heroes of their own story, and that their (usually inherited) beliefs about freedom or not, democracy or not, capitalism (to what degree), etc, all factor in. Westerners are full of conceit and hubris and lack objectivity. We're always saying that those poor women born and raised in backwards Islamic/tribal countries would want freedom and want to take off their burkas if they were only given the chance, and that if they don't it's only because they grew up in those societies and are brainwashed by them.
I happen to agree with that, but how is that any different than my inculcated beliefs? Americans only believe what we believe since we grew up believing it. We're just granting our inherited positions higher moral authority since that's a convenient reason for us to perpetuate them for everyone's own good. It's convenient to say freedom and capitalism are better and everyone should aspire to them, but if we only believe that since that's what we grew up believing, how is it any different than arguing that the Bible is the inerrant word of God because the Bible says its the inerrant word of God? (An argument atheists and rationalists rightly find laughable.)
What if it could be "proved" that people live happier, more content lives in largely egalitarian, politically controlling, centrally-planned theocracies? Would that convert Libertarians? Or Communists? Or democracy advocates? Of course not. They'd continue to believe their world view would be better if only everyone would convert to it.
Saw this on Balloon Juice while still groggy from a heat-driven afternoon nap, and watched most of it with my mouth hanging open in amazement. Highly recommend watching when you've got 5 minutes to spare and want to see something amazing.
MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo. It's a cartoon, but one painted on the walls and sometimes sidewalks of a busy city. It's basically graffiti, but while doing it they painted hundreds (thousands?) of images, and took endless still photos, then pasted them all together into this movie. Just the animation would be worth watching, since it's very creative and bizarre, but the way it's presented is what makes it amazing. The images, of stylized humans, weird bug things, and much more, are constantly moving and the camera follows as they crawl around the sides of walls, ducking under windows, tear loose weeds or papers, etc.
If this is the sort of thing people see when they're on real drugs, I'll stick to vodka! Kthx.
My college graduation ceremony is this weekend, and I'm looking forward to it. I actually graduated after the Fall '07 semester, thanks to cramming in 20 units and earning 6 more units of competency exams before Xmas, but I wanted to "walk" in the actual ceremony, and that's what's going down Saturday. Dad and mom/stepdad are coming up to see, and Malaya and the IG will be in attendance as well, so that should be interesting. My parents haven't seen Malaya since we broke up 1.5 years ago, and she and the IG have never met, and my mom and dad have been divorced for nearly 30 years and though they're not fighting, they only see each other about twice a year (during my Xmas visits, usually) despite living just a few miles apart. I might be the only student there with 5 guests sitting in 4 different places?
Adding fuel to the fire (almost literally) is the crazy weather. It hadn't been over 80 here more than a few days all year, despite being a very sunny and dry spring. Suddenly, just in time for graduation and this mini-family reunion, El Sol has erupted directly overhead, and it's supposed to be (fucking) 97 today. The average high for May in San Rafael? 73. The all time record for May is 100, so with some "luck" we might break that this afternoon. I'd be perfectly happy to never feel weather over 70 at any point during the rest of my life, so you can imagine my happiness at this development.
It's supposed to be cooler (as the frying pan is to the fire) over the weekend, with the mercury plummeting to 92 by Saturday. At least I won't be standing around for hours in the sun in a long black robe and hat. Oh wait...
The last time it was this hot was the summer of 2006, when weeks of a humid heat wave eventually drove Malaya and me to spend the best $349 ever. (That $349 has been sitting, unused, on her back patio ever since that summer ended, but I still say it was worth it. I'd bring it over here to replace the puny a/c unit in my apt, but the hole in my apt wall is way too small, and I don't plan on living here so much longer that I'm willing to go home carpentry style and thereby entirely give up my $1200 damage deposit.)
It's far from that miserably-hot now, and it's only supposed to be this hot for a few days, but here's the irony. Around the time it was so super hot in 2006 was just before Malaya's graduation. She was getting her PhD then, so she's still a couple of degrees ahead of me, but my parents were impressed enough to want to come see the festivities. So the last time they were up here was 2 years ago, for a college graduation, and it was hella hot. Now they're returning, for a college graduation... and it's hella hot. That's almost enough to put me off of my thoughts of grad school.
Speaking of grad school, that won't be starting any time soon. If at all. Like about 90% of the applicants, I was not accepted to the writing program I applied to. No idea why not, they don't explain their decisions, but since I never seriously expected to be accepted, I wasn't surprised. I was disappointed, but not terribly, and one benefit of them taking so long to notify me is that I've largely forgotten why I wanted to go. When I applied I was just finished with my 18 month return to college, and thought more of it, in a school that was actually challenging, would be fun. I'd improve my writing craft, I'd make connections in the publishing industry, I'd gain education in areas I'm interested in, and I might even meet some intelligent young women who shared my interest in the written word.
I still think that would be kind of cool, but is it worth delaying the start of my real career another two years? At $22k a year? Not so sure. I could, in theory, manage the graduate writing program course load while also working on my novels and outside writing at the same time, but in reality I think it would lead to brain burn out. There's only so much time I can spend reading, writing, and writing about what I'm reading without needing to spend some time and some brain cycles on non-literary pursuits. I could write novels at night while attending business or law school (I'd probably need to to clear my head of the technical stuff), but I'm not sure the streams wouldn't get hopelessly crossed and snarled if I were trying that while working my way through a "2 novels a week" writing program.
So sure, working on and publishing fantasy novels while doing a writing grad program focused on non-fiction, great books, classics, the publishing industry, etc, is possible, but likely? I've got some time to think it over now, at least, and I'm planning to spend this summer getting really serious about editing my fantasy novel and contacting literary agents while I start working on the sequel. Come the fall, depending on how that's going, I'll decide if I'm still interested in graduate writing programs.
The deadline for applying to most schools is around January 1st. Since I didn't think seriously about grad writing programs until Xmas, I missed the cutoff for several programs that sounded good. If they still appeal to me in 6 months I might try my luck again, but by applying to several this time, instead of just one very selective one in my immediate vicinity. Perhaps I'll have something more impressive to put on my resume by then?
(Though honestly, I have no idea if published mainstream fiction is a good thing on a grad writing program resume. The prestigious grad school writing programs have a reputation as being fiercely and defiantly artsy-fartsy, which is why I never really thought I had a chance. My stated goal was to write high quality work, but high quality commercial fantasy/horror novels -- not nuanced poetry that will never be read by more than fifty people, a dozen of whom might actually understand it. Poetry is a noble goal, but it's not my goal, since 1) I don't get it, and 2) I'd like to do this for a living.)
A friend of the IG's has been rebuffing the advances of one of her exes, and through a complicated chain of events, she imposed upon the IG to create a largely-fictitious persona through an online dating service, expressly for the purpose of checking out the exes' own personal ad. There wasn't much to report from that, and it wouldn't be my place to talk about it if there had been. What was more noteworthy was that the IG hadn't had her profile up for a day before she started getting male attention.
The first one came in while she was on the phone with me, and I received a gasping-for-air, laughing-in-pain play by play of her investigation of her admirer's profile. I shan't link to the poor soul, but the salient details were as follows. He's a 42 y/o white male, who lives with his parents in Oakland, is unemployed, has some college, likes watching sports and playing video games, is of average build and height. He's seeking... an 18-27 y/o female who is pretty, slender, and adventurous. Seems like a likely match there, eh? Better yet, for his luck and the IG's amusement, he had posted some photos. Her narration of that discovery went something like this. "A picture!" *in a high, excited voice* "Oh my god Eric..." *peals of laughter* "He's so fat! His beady little eyes!" *much more semi-breathless laughter*
His profile had more info than that, and I'm writing this from memory of tonight's phone call, but I assure you, it only got worse. More hobbies women aren't interested in, more unrealistic expectations of his future soul mate, etc. He didn't actually talk about his Night Elf rogue, or list the names and classes of his lvl 70 Alts, but possessions of that nature were strongly hinted at.
Mercifully, the IG closed her browser at that point to get back to not studying for her finals, and after our conversation ended I found myself thinking about that guy's ad, and the whole scenario. I guess we've got to give him some credit for being honest about what he wants? Perhaps needless to say, every man wants an slim, beautiful, adventurous 18-27 y/o. It's just that most of us realize such a catch is out of our league, and that such women don't spend time on personal ads since they have negative trouble meeting men in real life. Even if we overlook those two realities, most men have enough sense not to advertise their delusions of glandular quite so openly. For those who do, the imagined worst case scenario is being ignored by women and annoyed by scammers and spammers. That a girl who actually qualifies for his wet dream-esque profile preferences might one day come along, read the ad, and laugh so hard she gets hiccups is not something many guys consider. Luckily for the shriveled, blackened, last-year's-orange of a husk that is their ego.
It takes some nerve to post an honest personal ad. It's putting yourself out there, where you can, and probably will, be rejected. Perhaps painfully. It reminds me of a junior high dance, where the girls cluster together along one side of the gym and the boys have to find the nerve to walk across the desert of the basketball court, the three point line unreeling beneath their shined shoes like road lines leading over a cliff. Boys tend to suspect that the pretty girls only go to dances to tease and laugh at us, and men might think the same thing about posting a personal ad.
Fortunately, we all know that's just paranoia and foolishness, and that women never look over the ads just to laugh at how lame the guys are... oh wait.
In vaguely-related news, I saw a link to this description of the legendary debacle that was Australia's Naughtiest Home Videos, and had to share.
After being informed by friends at a dinner, Kerry Packer, owner of the broadcaster Nine Network tuned in to watch the show on TCN-9 and was so offended by its content that he phoned the studio operators and ordered them to "Get that shit off the air!" The studio operators complied, and the show immediately pulled the plug and went to a black screen saying the network had "technical difficulties" In Melbourne, the show went to a commercial and never came back, with two reruns of Cheers filling the show's remaining air time. The same happened in Brisbane, with the exception that it was succeeded by three episodes of Cheers.
The show ran for just 34 minutes of a 90-minute premiere (minus the advertisements, an effective 24 minutes of the show was aired); Mulray was immediately fired and banned for life from the network.
Some clips from the show can be seen on YouTube, though they're terrible quality, very short, and show nothing but quick snippets of non-explicit interspecies animal porn. Dogs with cats, bunnies with chickens, monkeys with goats, etc. For example:
Finally, when I went to the gym after Kali on Tuesday night, I got there early enough that the place was still slightly crowded, and with women as well as men. (There are very seldom any ladies there after 11pm, when I'm usually working out.) I was forcibly informed of this fact when I entered, had my badge scanned, and walked around the front desk only to come face to face (so to speak) with a young, slim, tall, tights and jog bra-wearing Asian woman who was walking on one of the stepmill machines, placing her most delightful asset directly at my eye level.
For an instant I considered turning around and leaving. After all, there was no possible way any subsequent events at the gym could improve upon that opening. Sure enough, I walked from there into the locker room and was greeted by the usual rogue's gallery of all-too-naked 60 y/o while males, most of whom carried more weight, and fat, in a single thigh than that scrumptious stepmilling woman had in her entire body.
I didn't talk to her there... wonder if she's got a personal ad?
For my "listen while cooking" entertainment of late, I've been going through the various audio and video files news'ed about on Richard Dawkins' website, and I found one tonight I thought worth a blog entry. It's long (2+ hour) debate featuring skeptic and paranormal investigator Sue Blackmore vs. theologian Alister McGrath. I'd never previously heard of Blackmore, but she's quite a good speaker, a clever mind boltered by a strong voice and a precise English accent. Such a vocal accompaniment does go quite a way towards elevating one's discourse.
It's not just a magic accent though; the voice has to be good also. McGrath has quite an accent of his own, but his voice is snively and he sounds smugly nasal to me. Of course I disagree with his arguments and think he's frequently deceptive in his presentation of them (more so in other debates I've heard than in this one), so I'm far from objective about that. Still, I feel secure in stating that he's got an annoying voice, English accent or not. (And yes, I realize that saying "English accent" is an almost pointless description, since accents vary tremendously throughout the country, and besides, McGrath's is Irish, modified by decades living in England. But for most of the world outside of the UK, and especially for most in the US, they all just sound so, so... English. Like the audible version of Worcestershire sauce.)
Anyway, what I thought worth recommending from this debate was Blackmore's opening statement. I don't think she's very good on the audience questions, and her rebuttal to McGrath's opening was particularly flaccid, given that I've heard him give that exact speech in earlier debates, so she should have been able to prepare for it. I also don't think she relates her main speech to the theme of the event very well either; she's talking about how religions form and whey they exist, when the debate was formally about whether religious belief is a good or bad thing in society. (A question directly in McGrath's wheelhouse, since he debates primarily to demonstrate that religion is useful and beneficial, and has little or nothing to say about whether it's true outside of wishful thinking, which is why he's essentially unarmed when he debates Dawkins or Harris or Hitchens.)
Put all that aside, since I'm not recommending you listen to the whole 2 hours. Just check out Blackmore's opening remarks. They run about 20 minutes, starting maybe 3 minutes in, and provide as succinct and informative a rundown of the evolutionary origins of religion as I've ever heard. Why do humans invent faiths? What purposes do they serve? What needs do they fulfill? What do the various religions tell us about the societies that created and nurtured them?
Blackmore doesn't get into many details or specifics, but even her overview is very interesting, since she neatly outlines the concept of anthropological analysis of religion, one I think is fairly revelatory to most people, since they've never thought about the issue in that light. In the debate format Blackmore's coverage is necessarily superficial, but she provides a nutshell description of how human societies create religions (every historical and modern society ever studied has done so, with estimates running past 100,000 such instances) what functions these memes and memeplexes serve, how they evolve and mutate over time, and how and why they persist. Or not.
That last point is my current area of interest, and it's something I've been trying to find some scholarly writing about. How do religions and other comparable philosophies compete in the marketplace of ideas? Which elements from them are the most adaptive, which are the most sticky, and why do some religions persist and grow and adapt, while others get out-competed and vanish into the dustbin of mythology?
Answers, or anything approaching dispassionate analysis is hard to come by, since it's a very complicated subject, and sorting the causes from the overlapping issues is especially tricky. Humans don't grow up with clear minds and objectivity, and then at age 20 make an informed decision as to which (if any) religion they're going to join. Quite the opposite. Most people are indoctrinated from birth into their parents' faith (and stick with or reject it as adults), almost all of us were raised in societies where religion or religions were omnipresent, and religions are actively promoted by individuals, groups, and the world's culture at large. Belief in them is fairly fluid; many people switch sects or even religions entirely when they get married, but once humans have the religious concepts implanted in their minds, they are extremely difficult to eradicate. You think getting a catchy jingle out of your brain is hard? Try it with a major monotheism.
For one example of the overlap between meme strength and other issues, consider the fact that religions were historically spread by the sword. Religious wars have been fought throughout history with the winners usually doing their damndest to evangelize their faith to the defeated tribe/country/culture. Religion has always traveled with explorers, too. Missionaries work side by side with soldiers and keep busy infecting the conquered with the conqueror's religion. Examples of religion being used as a societal control and a moderating force on an oppressed people are legion. As are counter-examples of small groups using their own unique flavor of religion to give themselves a stronger identity which powered their drive for autonomy. Which is, of course, why wise conquerors worked to wipe out native religions and to impose a common faith.
Unfortunately for my purposes, this makes it impossible to compare, for instance, the relevant strengths and weaknesses (in a meme sense) between the Catholicism of the Spanish Conquistadors, and the indigenous religion of the Aztecs they conquered. Catholicism obviously won out, and the Americas south of California is almost entirely Catholic to this day, but why did it win out? Was the religion irresistible since it was part and parcel of the Spanish's (and subsequent European invaders') overall cultural dominance? The South Americans (and Central Americans, and Mexicans, and North Americans they conquered in the following centuries) all had their own religions, but when the technologically superior Spaniards rolled over them it must have seemed ridiculous to continue believing in the local faiths when their principle exponents, the rulers and priests, were crushed by the invaders and forced to convert to their cult of Christos. Catholicism spread rapidly through the new world since it was connected to the all-powerful conquering armies, and belief in it was required for the locals to receive education or metal tools, to work in the missions and forts, to obtain leadership positions in their own society, etc. Was the religion itself more mentally catchy? What about the Christian mythology makes it so easy to learn and so satisfying for those who believe in it? Why is it the most popular religion in the world today? (I'm not entertaining the notion that it's actually the one true faith, and that God is making people accept it now, or that He created humans with some inherent traits that make us suceptible to becoming Christians, though if that's your opinion you are free to cherish it.)
The spread of Christianity throughout the New World is historical fact (if open to debate on the details and nuances); what I'm curious about is why did/does the monotheism of Christianity (in its myriad forms, also including its Old Testament offshoot Islam), work so strongly as a meme? How much is just its (modern day) association with the culturally dominant Western civilization? Coca-Cola, Mickey Mouse, Levi's, and Jesus? How much is centuries-long association with conquering armies? And how much is purely the strength of the religion's memes winning the war in the ideological battleground, with its powerful concepts of afterlife rewards and punishment, various motivations to reproduce and build orderly societies, the concept of one all-powerful god instead of numerous local spirits living beneath fractious elder gods, etc? Which improvements and upgrades has Islam made to the basic Christian model to spread so widely and so quickly, without the cultural/entertainment benefits of Western Christianity? Why is Judaism so (comparatively) tiny and non-evangelical, given that it's the source from which both the expanding monotheisms sprung? How can polytheisms compete with such ambitious monotheisms?
I'm not sure how empirically those questions can be answered, but if anyone's made a scholarly effort to do so, I've not seen evidence of it.
Malaya's well-read on the issue, but she couldn't think of any books addressing that particular issue either. She did recommend this one, which is interesting and informative in some ways, but is not an easy read and isn't quite addressing the issue I'm interested in. Boyer's book is more about how religious concepts form and stick in the human brain, and why we are moved by and attracted to some types of imagery and metaphor, (which are, naturally, found in every successful religion).
At any rate, if you want some good introductory information on the concept of the anthropological and psychological formation and evolution of religion, Sue Blackmore's opening remarks in this debate provide it, and with fewer digressions than this blog post. Listen from about 3-23 minutes, and enjoy.
Update: Interesting book recommendations in the comments. One for Neal Stevenson's Snow Crash, which I read and reviewed several years ago, and the other for Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell, which is the only one of the recent bestsellers by "the four horsemen" I have not yet gotten my hands on. Even though I haven't read it, I've watched or listened to at least a dozen interviews/presentations by Dennett, so I'm pretty familiar with his recent work. In fact, my first post mentioning him does a far better job of summarizing my questions about the formation of religion than this post did.
I came down with a sore throat on Friday. A bit of a dry cough, but mostly a tickling sort of sensation I couldn't seem to scratch. (Thoughts of a bottle brush entered my head, it was so itchy.) In seeming response to this, my nose started dripping down the back of my throat, so I constantly felt like I had to clear it, to no avail. I slept uncomfortably all Friday night; felt like I was drowning, and when I woke up Saturday I had to admit I was actually sick. Hadn't been sick for some time; not since I moved into this apt early last year, at least, but there it was.
Sunday I felt worse, dry cough, head all stuffy, and no energy. Constant napping all weekend, and it was odd to be just so happy to lie in bed. Usually I'm very restless when lying down, and if I'm not asleep, or reading, or making out, I can't remain there. I gotta get up and do something. Yet this weekend, just lying there and doing nothing more than petting the Jinxers was the best thing ever. Jinx certainly agreed; she's happiest when I'm in bed, since she loves to lie there, usually using one of my legs or hips for a backrest. She almost never sleeps in the bed otherwise, but if I'm in there, she's beside me before I know it. Pity that trick doesn't work as well on the IG.
As a result of my illness, Jinx had about the best weekend of her life, since I was in bed for most of it, and was still dragging and napping a lot on Monday. Tuesday I felt a bit better, but still had a cough that felt like a fish bone in my throat, and it wasn't until Wednesday that I felt back to normal. In fact, I had that post-sickness burst of energy and felt great. The best feelings in life are not so much about how good you feel then; they're more about how you were previously. It's easy to feel great after you've been laid low, since you notice the change, even if you just went from "awful" to "non-suicidal." To take your normal state up enough that you really notice it, you generally need a lottery win or a beautiful new boy/girlfriend in your bed, but to feel great after a cold it takes nothing more than the surcease of your hacking. Keep that eventual silver lining in mind next time you're on death's door.
As a result of feeling good (better) and eating too much (I hadn't had much of an appetite since Friday), I had a ton of energy and stayed awake all day Thursday, and then all night too. When I finally got to bed early Thursday morning, I'd been up for nearly a full day, when sleep descended upon me, it wasn't fooling around. I woke up after 6 hours, peed and drank some water, and laid back down to get a bit more sleep. Next thing I knew it was after 5 hours later, I spent a minute in confused, closed-eye calculations, trying to add up the hours and figure out if I'd really slept for 11 straight hours.
Far as I can tell, I did. I've not felt all that rested today despite that head start, but I am not feeling sick, so I guess that was the price I had to pay. It was a bit inconvenient for my work schedule, since last week I was behind on the hours I'm indebted to put in, and planned to catch up on the weekend. Then I got sick and wasn't up to working, so I entered this week about 10 hours in the hole, and got very little done Mon-Wed, what with my busy schedule of coughing, blowing my nose, napping, and informing the purring apostrophe on my bed how like shit I felt. I'd planned to get several hours in Thursday afternoon, reward myself (for working and for remaining alive) with a bike ride, and then getting another 6-8 hours in Thursday evening.
Instead I slept all day, had to run errands since I'd not been shopping in a week, and got distracted catching up on surfing and email when I got home. My reward for that was a nice hour-long chat with the IG, and then dinner, and first thing I knew it was (technically) Friday, and I hadn't done a damn bit of work all day. A state of affairs I quickly set to righting by typing out a typically-overlong and pointless blog post.
In other news, I saw this ad today on one of those ubiquitous funny video sites, and found it funnier than the actual videos I was wasting my life by watching. It's one of those "get laid tonight" ads that are just fronts for porn sites. They have a bunch of photos of hot young girls they found somewhere, random names and ages get applied to them, and by coupling that with a simple ap that customizes them to your area by tracing your IP# to find your location, it's almost like a one click singles site. Except that by clicking them you'll never, ever, meet any of the girls pictured, and greatly lower your odds of meeting any girls at all.
I didn't click it, but I did laugh at the one photo appearing twice, with different ages. You'd think they would put something into their random image/name/age generator to prevent duplicate photos. I doubt anyone actually believes those girls are those ages and available through the service running the ads, but it's a lot easier to pretend if you don't need to believe your date for the evening was cloned. Twice. Or perhaps more times than that, at bi-yearly intervals.
I've long lamented my inability to check off very many literary classics on those "100 books you must read" lists, but rather than simply ignoring the pangs of guilt, I've decided to do something about it. That's what libraries are for, after all. In preparation for this long term wrong reading rectification project, I've been looking at various top 100 classics/modern book lists, and assembling an essential list of books from them. It's all weighty stuff, Brothers Karamazov, War and Piece, In the Name of the Rose, Ulysses, etc. I'll write reviews as I go, so you can either wish me luck or delete this bookmark now, depending on your taste for such literature.
One such list I found worthy of comment was on the Random House site. Their top 100 novels seem a fairly representative selection, though I'd assume they only list ones they publish in their Classics line. Perhaps some authors or titles are exclusively affiliated with other publishers, and are thusly, unjustly, ignored? It matters little, since there are plenty of other lists to compare and contrast with, and I haven't even looked over the RH one that closely.
What I found interesting there was not their official list, but the one compiled from reader votes. It's an odd selection, with quality classics here and there, but the top of the list dominated by trash by Ann Rand and L. Ron Hubbard. Those two have 7 out of the top 10, and I feel fairly confident in saying you will never find a book by either of them in any top 100 list of books ranked by anyone other than acolytes of the religion-esque ideologies those authors created and promulgated.
The very top of the list of the readers' choices for 100 Best Non-Fiction is similarly blighted, and by the same two "authors." In fact, the top of the non-fiction list is pretty revealing of the mindset of the people who voted. It's not a healthy one either, since their book choices reveal them as gun-nut, anarchist, survivalist, libertarian sorts. Makes me wonder how The Turner Diaries didn't make the best 100 novels, and if there's an overlap between the non-fiction voters and Scientologists?
It's also odd how the Hubbard and Rand books are only in the top 10, or not at all. Hubbard wrote dozens of trashy sci-fi novels, but he's got #3, #9, and #10, and no others. If there had been some general swell of Scientologist voters, you'd expect a bunch of Hubbard's books to be scattered all up and down the top 100. Instead it's just those 3, and no others, so the voting had to have been very targeted. Some site popular with the Xenuvians must have promoted vote flooding, and picked just 3 of the master's books to flog. They got the job done, though their efforts pale beside the work of the Randroids. Better keep leaping on those couches, Tommy boy.
Turning my attention back to the task at hand, I'm not sure how I'll present my classic reviews. I read a number of so-called literary classics during my recent, breakneck, degree-finishing dash through a university of higher learning, but I didn't take many English classes, and didn't have much time to reflect on the works I read, since I had so many other classes and so much else to read and write about. I didn't exactly read them for pleasure or completeness either; more like 150 pages of Plato here and an act of Shakespeare there, with a paper due on each Monday evening.
When I read some classic novels though, I'll be reading the whole books, and reviewing them... but by what criteria? It seems silly to review Faulker or Hemingway on the same point scale I've used for oh... Christopher Piolini. And yet... books are books, and it's not fair to hold them to different standards, or to be too forgiving, just because something slow, boring, and overwritten is venerable? I also have some measure of pride in my judgments, and try to limit the idiotic comments in reviews to my abandoned Band Names section, where most of the mistakes are intentional. I'm happy to admit that I can not appreciate or tolerate Anne Rice's floridly cheesy prose and soap opera plots/characters, but will I be able to make the same admission after slogging through 500 pages of something taught in every Great Books seminar course in the Western World? I guess we'll find out.
I'll probably have to do some extra, critical reading along with the books. Classics of world literature aren't known for being easily-digested or discussed. The whole point is that such books are deep and weighty; that's why they've been studied for decades. Reviewing them based on one quick read is almost guaranteed to be a superficial exercise. Furthermore, the anointed classics haven't become classics because they're fun reads, or full of suspenseful twisting plots. Books become classics because they make brilliant societal analysis via metaphor, or express deeper truths about the human condition. That sort of thing is invaluable, and can be uplifting and enlightening, but it doesn't fit neatly into my starkly-delineating review categories.
So yeah, reviewing them will be a challenge. I'm almost more eager to write the reviews than I am to read the books, now.
I have a clock in my bedroom and another in my living room that, when the power goes out, reset to 12:00. They keep time from that point, but they display it blinking, under the theory that you want to know just how long it's been since the power went out, and you want that discovery to induce epilepsy. The odd part is that power must have gone out here around 11:55 today, since when I noticed the clocks later, both were blinking, and 5 minutes fast. If not for the blinking, I could have just left them both like that.
Of course the method to stop the blinking is to reset the time, and since both clocks only go forward on that, I had to either leave them 6-7 minutes fast, or else hold down the button through an entire hour.
I received an overdue envelope full of unwanted news from a major educational institution yesterday, and apparently they slipped a little something extra in for me, since last night around the time I laid down to sleep my throat started to itch and tickle. It felt like my nose was dripping slightly, but it hadn't been running at all during the day. I dozed fitfully, waking up and clearing my throat constantly, and now today I've got very little voice, I feel shitty from non-rest, and my throat is sore. I haven't been sick in memory, at least not since I moved into this apt last January, and I'm not sure I am now, but my throat is definitely troubling me.
I blame the envelope since I didn't engage in any face to face human interactions yesterday. I stayed inside and worked all day, only venturing forth to ride my bike. I did talk to the IG for an hour in the evening, but I'm pretty sure she did not send us up the plague via Verizon's cell phone network. And I was fine the day before, after running various errands and speaking to a cashier or two.
Campaigners on the Greek island of Lesbos are to go to court in an attempt to stop a gay rights organisation from using the term "lesbian". The islanders say that if they are successful they may then start to fight the word lesbian internationally. The issue boils down to who has the right to call themselves Lesbians.
...
The term lesbian originated from the poet Sappho, who was a native of Lesbos. Sappho expressed her love of other women in poetry written during the 7th Century BC. But according to Mr Lambrou, new historical research has discovered that Sappho had a family, and committed suicide for the love of a man.
I'm not even sure how to react to this. I mean, okay, I guess they've got kind of a point, but they can't seriously hope to change the use of a term that originated centuries ago, and has become universal common parlance? On the other hand, the various worldwide Olympics™ committees are copyright Nazis about this issue, and have successfully sued hundreds of small, harmless, vermin-infested, amateur organizations who tried to run any kind of event with the term "Olympics" in it, even though everyone uses that term as a vernacular, non-proper noun to describe any sort of athletic competition. So with that precedent set, who knows if the Lesbos'ians will gain some traction with their efforts?
Like most people, even more NBA fans, even those in Atlanta, I didn't pay any attention to the Atlanta Hawks this season, and didn't give them much chance of winning even one game in their best-of-7 against the #1 seed Boston Celtics. After all, Atlanta only eeked into the playoffs as the 8th seed because the East was so lame this year; at 37-45 they would have been in 12th place in the West, 13 games behind the 8th seeded Denver Nuggets. And it's safe to say Atlanta would have won even fewer games in the West, since they'd have played tougher competition. The experts all agreed; of the 10 cited on the ESPN series page, all 10 picked Atlanta, with just 2 giving the Hawks a chance to win even a single game. The other 8 all picked a Celtics sweep.
The series certainly started out that way; Boston won the first two at home by 23 and 21. And they won game 5 at home by 25. However, to everyone's surprise, Atlanta won games 3 and 4 at home, and they won game 6 at home tonight, to force a game 7 in Boston on Sunday. The Celtics have to be heavily favored; they've won all 3 home games thus far in the series by an average of 23 points, and they won almost twice as many games this year as Atlanta. They'll probably wipe the floor with them in game seven, but those of us without any real rooting interest in the series can always hope the underdogs will come through. Plus it's fun to root against Boston; they've had the best all around football and baseball teams this decade, they don't need a good basketball team too. What's anyone ever won in Atlanta?
However the series turns out, Atlanta's game four win contained the single best play of the entire post season (thus far), when Joe Johnson broke the ankles of some clumsy Celtic defender, paused to watch him flop around on the ground, and then dropped a trey right over his corpse, as part of his team's huge fourth quarter comeback. I've seen this shot at least a dozen times thus far, and given the disparity between the teams, the crucial time of the game, and the frantic roar of the bandwagon-hopping home crowd, I'm enjoying it more every time I see it.
