George Carlin

I took notes on George Carlin's It's Bad For Ya when I watched it on HBO mostly because he talked about kids. Funny, his philosophy on children. I want to know more about it. This is what I got:

George Carlin on the self esteem movement which has failed, doesn't help your grades, doesn't reduce violence
there are no losers in games, kids can't play tag and dodgeball, they can only stand around
no one is told the character building words, you're a loser
everyone gets a trophy
the idea that every child is special, they say it over and over as if to convince themselves
clearly every child isn't special, they're incomplete, they're unfinished work, they're funny looking
parents structure their child's play around their life, you have playdates
they can't stay in the yard with a stick
when do you stop being special, does it mean that all adults are special, then everyone is special and it defeats the purpose
you take the kid to fat camp, violin camp, computer camp, you've got to keep the fucker busy
can't have any unstructured play
kids are too busy studying for kindergarten

he says it's important for children to be taught to question what they read, everything they see, and authority figures
there are a lot of things you're expected to believe and accept in america that you should doubt
Proud to be an american, what the fuck does that mean, i can never understand ethnic or national pride
to me, pride should be achieved by something you do on your own, being irish isn't a skill, it's a fucking genetic accident
what the fuck does god bless america mean

Or this one

Give your Capricorn

black dresses!

taurus in the 3rd house, The Possessed, research papers..

Why am I so plodding? My reasoning plods along when I write, I spend two paragraphs meticulously proving that something isn't the case and withholding details. I usually get stuck writing the introduction over and over again, trying to make the summary shorter or withhold parts and rearrange it and keep coming back to the same thing. I just spent two paragraphs proving that Dostoevsky's The Possessed is not a novel of action where a nihilist plot is planned, perpetrated with a violent denouement. Nor is it a novel that simply maps or allegorizes ideas depriving them of their force. I keep trying to pull this novel apart and it keeps snapping back like toffee! And the funny thing is, I think I'm pulling in the wrong places, but am unwilling to let go something I've been trying to say for a long time. And it's the beginning, the introduction. I haven't even gotten to the meat of the paper yet or used any details from the text because I'm scared to get into it and believe I don't understand it. This novel is really tough, just when I think I've gotten the bigger picture, I'm flummoxed over details. There is much mystification, characters hint at things, but once I think there's hinting throughout the novel, I see a detail and am proved wrong! It's so weird,

here's a picture of a man eating Karamanmaras dondurma. It just makes me happy. Dondurma can be pulled like taffy too. But yeah, here I am, plodding along. And I thought writing research papers was my thing, but the sentences are long and not full of easy, glib insight like those of literary critics. College English teachers forget to tell us that we have to mature beyond the introduction-body theory and be a little more flexible. I'm trying to be flexible like Joe Louis, be able to spar and hustle (I don't speak boxing and I know Joe Louis is a heavyweight). What is the art of criticism? I don't know. Nobody told me. So I'm going to have to teach myself. Just like the art of teaching. God knows. One thing I know, a teacher can't be an idiot. A teacher can't look moony-eyed at such a book like The Possessed, like me. They've got to feel it out with their heart and mind, with truth seeking integrity. How the hell am I going to teach kids to question or ask why? I fetishize history. I've got all kinds of ignorance and fear of what I don't understand or haven't studied. I fear nihilism, I fear deconstruction, I'm beyond reactionary. Plus I feel like I want to influence them and nudge them and push them and talk into them. I want to set my coat over a puddle for them. And give to them. And you can't do that. You can't do that, claim to want to give to someone you don't know, have no connection with yet. My hypothetical students. How am I going to let them float downstream? Students need to be left to think, to breathe, to grow on their own. And there's all these issues, I read on someone's blog, for instance, that "counter-transference" occurs in the teaching setting. So apparently I have to have the techniques of psychotherapy under my belt. It's going to be a long road. I can't picture what its like when my children are invited on a playdate or go play outside. One minute out of my sight and I imagine myself looking out the window, watching them, as George Carlin said, play with a stick. It's selfish to want to give to something whose needs you don't even know yet, whether student or child. Who are you fulfilling? You. And that's not giving. Giving means that I would have to back away when needed, allow the child the gift of self-development and self-reliance. Who the hell knows. I think about this in my spare time, I think about students. And history. I even imagine giving a sex ed talk to young people and what I would say. I want to be good at what I once thought I was good at and what I've now set out to be good at. Writing and setting out to teach.
Suddenly, I'm far from glib. And run off at the mouth like a leaky faucet (complete with awkward English and folk expressions, apparently). Lately, something is happening that I'm both angry and am talking as if it were to save my life (about completely irrelevant things, of course, astrology, myself), sending people links and information that I hope they like and don't know they want because I can't restrain myself. Something to do with Uranus and Mars in Cancer.. I just keep talking and running off at the mouth, telling too much about myself and getting embarrassed. It is as though my mind is out of breath. Simultaneously, expressing myself is no easier. I'm avoiding expressing myself with this paper right now. And I'm afraid the people I'm talking so much at disapprove of me, don't like me, think I'm silly, even though I don't know them (astrology bloggers). What a dork to talk about myself, I can't help it.
But seriously, the mind has to be nimble. And all of my ignorance and stubbornness with regard to learning that I've really been discovering these four years, I've got to break myself of that. It seems the more I learn about astrology in my confused way, the more ignorant, delusional, self-obsessed (Uranus/Jupiter aspects) I appear.

This picture is from an article on Oblomov written by Gary Shteyngart in the New York Times. Oblomov is the Russian slacker novel.

I'm so tired of being alone

I'm so tired up on my own
won't you help me girl
just as soon as you can?

Everyone and their French mother

owns these Zara boots or something like it. I'm clearly retardataire.


But then again, my last attempts at cool shoes were gold Nike Vandals. Which I happen to like. I was called the Sneaker Queen earlier in the year, sigh. I should either shop or run myself through a paper shredder and buy a bottle of MD 20/20 to complete the look. Then I could hang out by St. Mark's Church all the time.

rejoicing in fatshion

I am regressing in my love of fatshion from rejoicing in big butts, to zaftig women, to now just purely fat chicks. I make no excuses, I learned I just think they're beautiful. It's not even about American body image anymore.

"Fat is lipids out of place," Mary Douglas might have said. And this applies to women I consider fat. Basically, fat is the lipid content that changes your shape from a bottle to a football halfback or a potato. Nothing makes me happier than seeing a well dressed fat chick. One that isn't stuffed into a loose fitting sack or an empire waist pregnancy dress. And I've never seen as many well-dressed fat chicks as I have in Sarah Lawrence, fipsters. The secret to dressing well when fat is creating a waist. A lot of women, even with big shoulders, large ribs or a round, Falstaff belly look great with a cardigan, a dress fitted at the waist that flows outward. The cardigan creates the illusion of a smaller torso and the skirt makes the bottom area larger. I've been looking at the Fatshionista flickr pool and sometimes been joyous about the looks created, other times banged my head against the bed or desk (I procrastinate at night) If only she could have used more color contrast, this girl needs to be bolder! And sometimes, what is she thinking, with such a beautiful face, I wish I was there to help her. I have two favorites, a Parisian girl with a beautiful face and a perfect fipster. Observe the cardigan/dress combo:

The white cardigan goes perfectly with the zany green thrift store dress I would kill for and an interesting take on the three button belt that is so hot right now. This girl is a winner at matching bright colors. In this picture, she hits the nail right on the head on how to match clothes to blond hair. The hair is straightened, you can really see the razor layers. Later on she curls it and has black accents which I don't like as much. The girl is also a mean wearer of skirts that do nothing to hide her rectangular shape. The frilly detailing and cardigan on top and the belt achieve the effect of a waist, it's as if she's wearing one of those fitted high waisted skirts I'm so obsessed with.

More marvelous work on part of my favorite fatshionista.

The Parisian girl's style is more understated and, well, Parisian. She can wear an all black ensemble with the perfect belt. The texture and shine of the leather belt and bag is what makes the outfit work and not look monochrome.

As you can see, I love a cocktail length dress with a cinched waist. Here we can see how a jacket or cardigan narrows the frame. This girl's boobs point somewhat outward and her sleeves are also rather large, so she seems a bit top heavy in the shoulder area. Nonetheless, she rocks this. This girl also rocks something I normally would not suggest, a big loose shirt. She wears it with dark skinny jeans that contrast it, big beads that complement it, and a perfect jacket that narrows her torso. The slight color and texture variation just works.

My favorite outfit from her is when she combines the amazing black dress, the perfect belt, the cinching jacket, and a keffiyeh. The result, a pleasing hourglass shape that narrows her shoulders. And the scarf is a perfect accessory.

Of course I have to add this one.

There is a woman who is not particularly attractive, nor does she have a shape that's easy to work with, she comes out with potato sack looking outfits, then I saw this one and it just surprised me. I thought it was slightly edgier, brighter and more H&M inspired when I first saw it, but it makes a wonderful shape.


It's not, I am fat, but lovely. It's I am fat and I am lovely.

pad thai...Christmas trees..friend squabble..

"You need to look into people, not just listen to them."
was something like the platitude on my fortune cookie when I ate pad thai yesterday in one of those Japanese-Chinese restaurants that don't know how to do either but have no entrees under $9 unless it's noodles (which I obviously ordered). They served it in a tiny wok, which was cool though the noodles had little lime flavor and tasted more like a Barilla package than rice. I liked the blue cracked porcelain saucer they brought out with my one kimchi appetizer that kind of looked like this


and one of those clumsy Christmas tree attempts, dried sprigs in a vase with Christmas lights wound in a nest around them, I find those creative alternatives to Christmas trees in Mexican resorts and when I went to Thailand (which is predominantly Theravada Buddhist), tropical countries that try to make tourists feel comfortable in their hotel lobby even when they don't have access to anything like Christmas trees. They usually put up a metal Christmas tree-shaped frame and wind it with Christmas lights and big, unusual ornaments, it kind of looks modern. I couldn't find any good examples.

I couldn't find any of those high, triangular blue ones I've seen, but you can see a good example of how they tack green foliage in the shape of a Christmas tree on buildings. I think that big ornaments, icicle-like Christmas lights, and a lack of emphasis on earthy colors like green and red is the European approach to Christmas decorating. Though there was more use of actual Christmas trees, I've seen similar decorating in Europe. Like these on Dam Plein, Amsterdam. I was in Amsterdam on New Years, the camera phone picture isn't very good.

Anyway, I ate there after a conversation with an Aquarian friend. She and I have undertones in our relationship that frustrate me. I usually tell her she looks good a lot because she typically does to me. Oftentimes I swallow things she says to me that are off mark or irritating and even at times provide white lies. She's short and plump, but has an hourglass figure and significant waist, is very pretty, and a great dresser. Right now she isn't looking as good because she is gaining weight in her waist. In conversation, I told her, "I always tell you that you look good." She said, "Thanks, I don't look good now." I was foolish enough to tell her the truth and said, "You don't look good now, but you will." She struck out at me pretty hard, hung up the phone. I apologized and decided to lie, telling her I said it out of spite because I thought she claimed I was fat (which she didn't overtly). She called me back later and said something along the lines of, "I shouldn't worry, because you belong in a mental institution anyway." Which was a low, spiteful thing to say patterning what I claimed to do. This goes back to various misunderstandings and covert competition in our friendship. She calls me crazy and thinks I have poor social skills. I also think she is out of touch with people she's talking to, what she should say, and has various illusions of being a grand society lady whereas those who talk to her have a very different opinion. While I was angry about her low blow out of left field, I thought about how I shouldn't have said that while it made sense in my mind when I did. It was unnecessary, I didn't need it as a counterpoint to show that I didn't want to lie to her. Her comment didn't allow me to insert the truth, it didn't mean she was any less sensitive. Plus she called me for kicks. And the fortune cookie was very timely, reminding me to try to see it from her perspective right after she told me I belonged in a mental institution. Which I'm still figuring out while grumbling.

my friend

A passage from Anna Karenina. You ever have a long/intimate conversation with an acquaintance? Or maybe even a friend? It happens a lot in Sarah Lawrence. On the first days, freshmen would be camped out on the new dorms stairs or in the triangle at 4:00 am talking to each other. I met a lot of people that way, stopping them to have a conversation. As I got to know more about their family and past when the conversation exceeded 3 hours, I would often feel sorry for them. They are limited. I would feel like their lifestyle is somehow inferior to mine, or that they are less fancy free especially if their family somehow limits their options. Can't hang out in the city/pay for college because you live with your grandma? I'm sorry. In these conversations, you dig away at and replace the first impression, creating the illusion that you know somebody rather well. Oh, you have a fucked up family? Well, that completely changes my opinion of you. Part of me gets bored or imagines that I've reached the end of their personality, which I have to fight since it's obviously not true. The same way I get bored of being a woman if I think about women long enough, I get bored with femininity or attempts at masculinity. Having a friend gives me the opportunity to repeatedly peel away at what I think I know of her. While I partially get bored of something/someone when I imagine that I've thought my way to the end of them, I think that I don't know anybody. Especially not this friend. I merely have a stereotype of her personality and am always ready for her to surprise me. I don't even know my mom, least of all. Describing her to other people, I feel like I'm stereotyping her.

Right now I have a friend who annoys me and vice versa. It seems like when we get together, we irritate each other for no reason. She's into race issues, feminism, gay activism. So I get the sense she's annoyed because she thinks I have conservative attitudes, am a misogynist racist pessimist. Which isn't necessarily true. It doesn't hurt that she gets offended really easily. I am a feminist in my own way, ridiculously pissed off by American body issues and astonished by ridiculous attitudes that remain. I think her brand of feminism is pedestrian, while claiming to build up/have a positive attitude about women (which I do as well, by the way), she likes to take men down a peg, humiliate them. It's obvious and it annoys me. Race issues with her are essentially truckling with terms, I feel like I have to wear a padlock on my mouth. And being able to relax with a friend is really important to me. I'm not sanctioning slips or bawdy jokes that might come out of my mouth, they might be casual, but they call up huge complex race issues. Nonetheless, perhaps I can joke about "breeders" or bitch about men because they are the "oppressors" apparently. She thinks I make a lot of negative comments about myself, about other people. I happen to think that it isn't too healthy to repress negative comments or self talk, you're just shutting yourself up. Being catty with a friend is supposed to be fun, especially when I don't mean any harm by it. Being so offended by general identity issues, she's managed to offend me incredibly. I'm sensitive like a middle schooler when it comes to secrets about boys. I get really weird and creepy talking about it, not even corny pseudonyms, but I rely on hand gestures or terms like "my friend." Even though it's fun to talk about who you have a crush on, it's damn ridiculous and I get mortified. I asked her not to say someone's name out loud, made her promise something and she said, "Why should I follow your rules? You think I should be obedient like a dog?" She doesn't like the word "don't." I thought that was the most ridiculous shit I ever heard. I'm not the man, you don't gain anything by sticking it to me. The issue is, if she does this, she will hurt and betray me a lot. My little rituals might be ridiculous and I'm not offended on behalf of all the world's Russian Jews, but it would really hurt me if she rebelled against me in honor of the Age of Aquarius. There's a sense that she wants to prove me wrong or stick it to me like she does to men for the sake of some ideals, particularly in insisting that I'm all gay. Haha, you really don't want to be, but you're all gay you big dyke. Most of these perceived offenses are personal, plus my value system is different from hers. For instance, I was complaining that nobody danced with me even when I got dressed up and she suggested online dating. Which drove me up the wall. She doesn't think there's anything weird or offensive about it, but it seems to me most of the female population would find the suggestion an insult. Like, you, a college girl among boys your age, can't find anybody around you and have to go online. Commensurate to saying I'm ugly. Or that I should lower my standards. Ouch, I know I should frown on behalf of the dozen Russian Jewish girls shuddering with me.

What pisses me off the most is an idea expressed in the Anna Karenina quote above. Each one of us thinks that some part of the other's lifestyle is pitiable or a joke. She learned that my parents call me every day and decided that I'm dependent on them. That they smother me. Her parents happen to be screwed up in ways I won't elaborate, distant and selfish. Selfishness in parents drives me out of my head. She'll tell me something abysmal about her parents and then pity me when my mom calls. Most American people assume my parents are smothering or making me dependent when they learn how much my mother calls. They think I'm limited or unfree. It's a complicated situation, I want to say, it's not necessarily the case. I bet she wants to tell me the same. To some extent, it's a failure of the imagination on both our parts. A failure on mine to think I'm freer than other people. Tolstoy was so right about what happens when you encounter difference in friends.

It's weird how I can be so ridiculously mad at a friend who hasn't even done anything to me, probably. Someone who told me, "I like you," who I'm supposed to like. When she said, "I like you," it jolted me out of how I stereotype our friendship. This rant usually happens in my head when I think about being friends with her. She told me about how I sometimes read her wrong (which she does to me a lot grr), how do I know that she thinks the same thing about it? They often say that one of the best ways of quieting someone who's talking shit about someone else is to say, "well she thinks so well of you." "Really? Well, she's not so bad." Flattery makes the crow drop the cheese. Or else reflect a little like I should be doing. About how I shouldn't have it out for my friend. But I'm still pissed.

Man, yesterday I was angry at another friend for being different from me. People might say, why are you friends with them if they make you so angry? Venus opposition Mars, apparently I love my love/hate relationships. But seriously, friendship always contains some degree of annoyance that is part of the pleasure of being friends. Getting along completely would be absolutely bland. According to Tolstoy, it has to do with the extent to which they are different from you, or rather the extent to which they're not you. And this is an important factor in friendship. I don't know if I'd want to be friends with myself, although I do have a lot to say, and I do choose people similar to me in certain ways. Willing to talk a lot, with stories or conversation topics that would interest me. Someone who talks with urgency, which I notice just now that I do a lot. Willing to be emotionally sympathetic with me, willing to talk about superficial stuff like boys. Someone who doesn't fuck with my head (Sagittarian conspiracy theorists), lie to me for the sake of their own amusement (apparently Geminis are supposed to enjoy lying or debating, I don't), or elevate some conversation topics above others (I can think of some boys who perceive themselves as being philosophers who are guilty of this). With my friend I feel a kind of stagnant annoyance, though.

Wow, I really do talk with considerable urgency. Like I'm trying to get what I think out and don't care what it will sound like or look like on paper. Especially if it's for me. And now when I'm angry and annoyed. What's important is getting the whole story. Not leaving out a part of it or the memory will be lost. That's why I don't understand people who want to withhold things because they are worried what other people think or their reputation (Capricorn). Restraint in storytelling annoys me. I want to know all of it. The tidbit you left out might be a really juicy one.
God, everything that annoys me about people that I know is coming back to me, or not everything. I'm annoyed by excessive liberalism and attempts to break boundaries, this becomes predictable, angry, pathetically serious and urgent. There is a way to be truly rebellious by taking neither an extreme conservative or liberal stance. To hover above it in some way, to be above any "gender stereotypes" in your mind. You can be both (a stereotypical family woman/a gender activist), you can be anything. Both '50's family life and pitiful dick-cutting feminism scare me in their predictability. There is a poetic, a literary stance. I can be a woman, a boy, anything. I can walk Van Gogh's streets, both the muse and the poet himself. Although I tend to get bored with the super-feminine, idiotic muse. The muse is truly the ultimate woman stereotype. The adored woman who in being an end from the man loses the opportunity of being an endless possibility one can contemplate. I love to love the poet, the person contemplating an unending reality. It's like looking down an endless street with a person blocking your view. You don't know what's ahead, so it's limitless.

I imagine American sexual relations. Americans are profoundly grossed out by various body fluids and products, yet in sex, poets tell of smearing their lover's fluids on their face. They talk about musky Latin women (I mean Fermina Daza). Rodin sculpts big flabby butts. Yet there are douche advertisements on television.

A dialogue from Amelie when she calls a porn video store unawares:

"Palace vidéo, roi du porno." (voix)
"Bonjour. J'appelle pour l'annonce." (Amélie)
"Vous êtes majeure?" (voix)
"Oui." (Amélie)
"Vous êtes épilée?" (voix)
"Euh... pardon?" (Amélie)
"Bin j'vous demande si vous êtes épilée parce que le tablier de sapeur aujourd'hui ça rebute le client." (voix) (Amélie raccroche, écoeurée.)

Vous etes epilee means "Are you shaved?" Men waffle about how much they want women to shave. I don't understand American contradictory attitudes toward sex. I feel like food, sex, and excrement don't go together unless as a taboo. I can't imagine how people go on food dates, how they eat with one another. Food seems to put people off from sex. Hunger and sexual craving are two different feelings. Sex is promoted on tv (Calvin Klein ads with Natalia Vodianova). Virgins are teased (American Pie). Yet women are called sluts when they have too much of it. Marital sex is perceived to be vanilla and pitiful, but porn is thought to be deviant and disgusting. The honor of sisters is still defended in some places. A man keeps a mistress, but tells his wife during a drunken episode that he wants to perceive her as a pure, untouchable vestal virgin and do all the dirty things to his mistress. An anorexic girl is told to eat a sandwich, a girl with an ass is told to throw up. How can Amelie be quirky, cute, and romantic in the midst of all this? Is there a dividing line between sex and romance? The sex she has is so pristine and sweet, she isn't extremely and dully feminine like a porn star. There is a quality about her that separates her from a feminine porn star or the hyper feminine ideal. I identify with her.

angry post 1 (related to Anna Karenina)

I'm angry, I'm angry. I'm annoyed. At everything I've ever been annoyed at, it seems. Waffling body image expectations in America, men, parents that don't give completely, classmates who refuse to be compassionate when you want them to ("Yeah, you're fucked, I did the work," a pretty ridiculous expectation I know, but some fuckers are exacting, "don't accept human frailty" a la the virgin goddess Tracy Lord of The Philadelphia Story, grr stupid librarian Virgos). And there's a commercial to cover "unsightly freckles." Fuck them. I'm annoyed at Marxist ideas that subordinate human individuality, dignity, and connection to community and material things. Claiming that it's impossible to connect with people/escape alienation because you are so bound up in the capitalist time schedule. I would still have plenty of problems if I were united with the means of production. It could just be me and my tomatoes. Excessively communal life (i.e. the medieval village) limits individuals ridiculously, often women in particular. You have a role in your society (like a cog in a machine, eh?) and damned if you can move up out of it. Travel, personal crises, the stuff of actors and brigands who hang out in the forest. God, I prize social mobility and the recognition that I'm an individual, one person and not another. The human might be a social animal, but as Drew says, his "feelings are secret." No way mental activity can be communal, even if you're a behaviorist. With your will, individual personality, and attempts to connect with other people, you escape the capitalist framework that can't completely govern your free mind and thoughts. That would be stretching it, huh? I'm annoyed at dead prez and their ideas of black power, especially the song They Schools that claims teaching dead white men/European history in public education just brainwashes black people and doesn't teach them what they need to know "like getting crack out the ghetto." Go, my son, and get crack out the ghetto. How do they propose to learn that? They forget how complex black identity is. Black means not only African, but American, and dead prez is entangled in European culture just as America is. The history they are living is also the legacy of European history. Would it kill them to understand it? The questions dead prez brings up are so fucking complex. What is pertinent to black people? What divides "their" history from "mine?" There are some books by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. I need to read to look more into this. Among other things. A girl told me I need to read Bell Hooks. I know shit about race studies right now, a thing that needs to be remedied. I need a more adequate defense of European history, of course, too.

Weird, I'm kind of in the middle, I'm not cool with previous attitudes, yet current academic ideas make me itch to no end. I'm annoyed at notions of gender fluidity and "heteronormativity" /homophobia at the same time. Words like performativity (performing identities) and social construction piss me off, maybe because of the fluidity of categories. When academics juggle these terms or employ feminist or whatever criticism, to me it's looking at what you perceive as real and concrete from so many lenses, deconstructing it until it melts away. Doesn't mean this shouldn't be done, but it has to be and is for the purpose of finding the truth as much as the Zen monk/Derrida laughs or plays with language. Seems like these academics and students are angrily fighting with structure, social and otherwise, I don't know what will come of it. Maybe it's useless. They forget that in flying over your house in an airplane and standing in front of your door, the point is ultimately to learn more about the house. I know a pitiful amount about this, but I'm still scared and annoyed. I hear that microwaves don't simply heat your food, but change it on a molecular level, they jiggle the molecules. I feel like that every time I hear these words thrown around. Like I've been jiggled on a molecular level.
I've refused to have my mind changed several times. Often, when your schema about life change too drastically, you react emotionally by drinking the Kool Aid (Nietzsche readers). The reasons behind this are interesting. A guy I knew clung to Wittgenstein. I could be that very easily and I don't want to be, as "no longer having something to compare it to" means that you're not thinking and questioning anymore. Doesn't mean I am now.

God, I'm annoyed with boredom, (I'm talking to you Emma Bovary who I don't want to be, even though the media I ingest is so much trashier than yours) yet when I imagine something to a certain point, I get bored or scared of it by counting my chickens before they hatch. Like with relationships, of course. I think, maybe it would be nice to find somebody. In which case we would have to spend too much time with each other, adapt, suffer, get bored, cheat, better not. It won't last, I prefer to pretend. In intimate conversations with an acquaintance, sometimes I end up feeling sorry for them because their lifestyle is different than mine. They're limited. You live on a farm and can't hang out in the city because your parents won't let you? I'm sorry. People like my friend who aren't able to do what they want to do. "But you could try this." "No I can't," and then she proves to me why. I feel sorry for her for various reasons, yet she thinks that my life sucks compared to hers because I'm failing school.

Nonfiction

I wrote my first nonfiction piece and had fun doing it. It's dry.

I and Squirrel

1. I know about people who walk in aimless longing and look for something outside their subjectivity. The ones that produced creepy paintings of factory workers melding into machines or the pretty, disaffected German poets that descended into the Black Forest to find natural law. If they lived here, they’d tip up a squirrel’s chin and stare hard into its polished black eyes. And like of their any supple, powdered dames, no squirrel gal can resist Lord Byron, not during mating season.

Without Schwarzwald, they would concentrate on what little Nature escapes the tacky tastes of people who disappear at eight and come home at five: green tufts on power lines, round bushes, and pointy, mean trees that loom over all the landscaping. I happen to be an old hand at glorifying suburbia and sing this diorama of weird old ladies and brick buildings electric no less expertly than in my old town. I raise my coat collar, hands tight in my pockets, and walk aimlessly with the best of them.

The difference is that I am a humanist, by which I mean that though trespassing private property to distraction, I could never fall in love with a squirrel. Unlike a tiger who looks like death, sex, and danger (and correspondingly, Lord Byron), a squirrel is like a drop of crap with a ball of lint behind it though some misguided poet once complemented its “beautiful ass.” While suffering a shortage of tigers, this place happens to be flush with gray and black bodies, a human interest touch that the Set Designer (who probably dons a green sweatshirt in the sky) could have omitted.

Okay, I admit that I too stare at one cloudy-tailed specimen sometimes because Romantic desperation told me to. Rigid with its paws up in bonsai position, it stops chewing and boldly directs at least one eye my way, no mean feat because both seem stapled to opposite sides of its head. Every mental muscle is effortlessly taut as it waits to decide whether it can stay or run in the opposite direction. I also look like I have some potential energy, the kind I usually express by chasing pigeons.

As for its look, one could learn as much staring at a suit button in the Garment District. Its eye is convex and intense in the same way shoe polish can be intense. A frustrating natural mystery because the deeper you penetrate past the round surface, the faster the ray of your look ricochets back to you. Even if you squint like Dirty Harry and ask, “What do you know that I don’t?” the squirrel will give you no saucier “Shenaynay says no” than its body language can muster. Unlike a Morpho butterfly that landed on my shoulder and gained admission to the family crest, the squirrel didn’t choose me and has no fealty, but is looking out of less than mere impudence. With a man’s disturbing repulsion at his stringy, red newborn, I can only like a squirrel when it pelts me with chestnuts from the trees. At least it shows human traits, something you can latch onto, like the baby when it sneezes. Besides, everyone knows that you can only have an I-Thou experience with something colorful. Next time I’ll seek out a Nicaraguan mut-mut and be sure to invite Novalis.

St. Mathieu-du-Parc

2. What did they put in my lentil sauce or cucumber yoghurt that brings me here to a bench near the wide pond in its most glinty afternoon hour, staring into the eyes of a frog? Guruji said that we should observe nature with the awe and wonderment of a child, but other than the huge amount of water I drank during these six tormenting, amusing days of silence, I’ve not been slipped any Kool Aid as far as I know. Tracing the path of Christmas lights to the meditation tent, I’ve had every sitcom theme song stuck in my head and after a bout of desperation, rebelliously matched Erlend Oye’s “Sheltered Life” to the poor accompaniment of bongo drums. And damn it all, I began to zone out on patches of sky by the end of the fourth day.

All this time I felt guilty and stupid for heaping guilty and stupid thoughts on my imposed mental silence. Or jealous of the older ladies in Punjabi dresses dancing like idiots at the satsang and spouting “I belong to you.” The Canadian boys my age ride around on tractors filled with daikon radishes as if they bought the ashram’s “this is your home” schtick. The people that work in the garden with me skipped two levels of Enlightenment crushing potato bugs. Jai Guru fucking Dev.

What happened to unite my fellow Advanced Coursers in a silent ring of experience? What did I miss? Was it something like following a woman in our garden group who showed us edible leaves? Or the fun I had silently teaching a girl to canoe? Against all odds, here I sit like someone blathering drunk and aware of it, alternating pond staring shifts with dusky ladies who are recovering from actual ailments. Finally I’m in earnest and don’t shake my fist at spittle bugs, demanding that they wow me like they do the rest of the ashram illuminati. I too am holding a frog’s watery brown eye, close to tears.

Clearly this tentative ring, no, square of light has to end. All epiphanies do. Soon it will be replaced by other moments of connection, less tenuous because they involve humans. I will even get to witness the guru’s pyrotechnics as he lectures in the tent during a thunderstorm. Though the mark is not indelible, at least I won’t leave like my aunt, wanting pizza.

rolls eyes

Other tidbits:

Remember the Arafat scarf?

The keffiyeh which everyone wore, especially if they were British and only parted with their scarf in the shower? The one that Urban Outfitters discontinued because of complaints from Jews? I finally found out what it was called (keffiyeh) and what it meant: "In the 1930s, the keffiyeh became a symbol of Palestinian nationalism and the intifada as a result of its association with rural areas (as opposed to the city-dweller's fez)." And why it initially left Yasser Arafat and Leila Khaled's heads. In Italy among other places it was worn in solidarity with Palestinians. A conservative blogger commented that retailers have been sugarcoating its original meaning:

Urban Outfitters called their version an "anti-war scarf."

UK clothing store ARK was a little more honest; they called it an "Arafat scarf."

When Kirsten Dunst showed up with one in Teen Vogue magazine, they called it a "breezy global-chic scarf ."

Delias.com called it a "peace scarf," but when people protested they changed the name to " Euro scarf."

Now the symbol of Palestinian terrorism and murder, the kaffiyeh, is being marketed at yet another store for young people, Alloy, this time as a "Riviera scarf ."

Another conservative blogger named little green footballs takes it too far when he says that a keffiyeh scarf with a skull on it adds the insignia of the Nazi SS. Then Ed Hardy is a dyed in the wool Fascist. So is the 10 year old girl who came to my dad's birthday party wearing his Ugg-style snowboots. I wonder if I should kvetch that the trend divorces/doesn't divorce the political symbolism from the item of clothing (so I should be offended as a Jew). Or maybe Freja Beha can wear it to her heart's delight. Somebody might whine that bourgeois consumerism coopts ethnic clothing and saps it of cultural symbolism, proving the gross meaninglessness, yada, yada, yada... the commodity bereft of the means of production... fetishism... slippage... can't step in the same river twice.. Yawn. (An admittedly half-assed rendering, but I have an example of this type of criticism below)
But its so preeetty. I mean, I think that scarf looked incredible on the people I've seen wear it. I know for a fact that Urban Outfitters replaced it with sparkly scarves made in India, probably meant to go with a sari or Punjabi dress. I have two, maybe they are too colorful to be worn with muted Euro olive greens and perhaps a messenger bag (I think European kids, because they are used to dressing this way as part of mainstream fashion, wear more streamlined, muted colors than American hipsters, especially those who have adopted the fitted hats, kicks and screen printed hooded sweatshirts of hip hop streetwear). I can vouch for it too, just.. not with photos, exactly.
I still kind of want one of those scarves, though. I'm probably destined to be ridiculously behind trends, which might liberate me from following them, or trying to outrun them. I worry that I just like what is in style and don't have the foresight to call a trend idiotic, maybe I even jumped on the huge hornet sunglasses bandwagon. I wonder how SLC kids stay looking so put together, since even if they don't admit it, they do follow trends. Where did they put their huge beaded necklaces and colorful 60s inspired coats with big buttons? I don't think the coat thing is done yet, but having a colorful one isn't as big a deal anymore. The big sunglasses have pretty much been trashed and I don't see aviators around as much anymore, even the imitation Ray Bans that replaced them. Colorful leggings, gold lame leggings are seen less and less now. I also haven't been in SLC in a month. Maybe flats are disappearing too, in favor of highlighter colored patent pumps? I hope so, I just bought a cobalt blue pair, my first pumps, though they look stupid in the picture and cobalt blue wore out its popularity. Naw man, they are in Shoe Mania on Union Square, so as far as the high fashion public is concerned, they never happened. I like street fashion better than the runway looks its ideas come from because often high couture looks so dull or silly arranged on the modes. Plus, I don't mind being a little, um, fashion backward because of the new trend projected for the future:
High waisted jeans. Even high waisted white jeans. The four high waisted horsemen of the apocalypse, I'm literally shaking in my shoes. How the hell are they going to sell me this? And I wonder if the models will pair them with a crop top or whether women will hide them under long shirts. Though I loved the skinny jean on other people, it took me a while to start wearing it since people told me that it was unflattering. As far as I can tell, the mom jean widens attention to your ass area and makes your hips kind of jut out. I learned that from the Gilda Radner Jewess Jeans skit and the boney-ar$ed chick from Saturday Night Fever, Karen Lynn Gorney. Both embody the 70s physique, specifically the flat, thin ass with jutting hips. I know almost nobody that fits the 70s chick type other than our medieval history professor, Susan Kramer. Seriously, you should see her. What an idiot Scar J looks in them. Partly because she has one. Though I normally think that having the semblance of an ass is the saving grace of jeans, particularly skinny jeans. And as far as the rest of the world's people, we will see. I wonder when SLC girls will roll out with them.

rolls eyes x 2:

This is from the michigoss blog, a post called "Nihil Es Hipsteri" attempting to define hipsters. Note the similarity to the Lukacs discussion above. I hate this stuff. And the blog would probably attack the keffiyeh with gusto, with criticisms considerably more interesting and therefore annoying than a conservative blog can put out:

"Must we give up the hope for an identification of the penumbra of "hipster"? Utilizing some sort of Wittgensteinian game, or a post-modern, anti-structuralist strategy would hardly be enlightening. Obviously I wouldn't write this article if I didn't have some sort of hypothesis. So here it is: the hipster is so hard to identify because what unites this group is nothing. It is a lack of belief, a lack of unity, a pervasive nihilism of the 21st century, and yet a deep and almost nostalgic yearning for some time in which there was still something to believe in, something worth fighting for. Paradoxically, this lack of unity in beliefs and aesthetics leads to overall cohesion.

Since the modern search for cause is empty, it leads to the all-encompassing, non-unifying wear and tastes of the hipster. The power of this movement without meaning is indicative of our current cultural condition. We bourgeois intellectuals can no longer justify violent action, nor can we even justify non-violent action. We are so disillusioned that no cause is without fault and we are imprisoned in a Dostoyevskyesque stagnation. Not only are we rebels without a cause, but we don't even have a rebellion. And so all we can believe in is aesthetic value. We are forced to enter the cult of beauty, with a longing for more morally transparent times.

It is for this reason that hipsters fetishize those icons of American identity: the cowboy "going west," the 50's beatnik rebelling against her oppressive society, the punk throwing off the bonds of 80's yuppiedom. And yet these in essence only share a small number of precepts, stemming from a desire for "something else". This is why one amazingly finds hipsters espousing some aspects of these various movements and even opposing ones as well."

Gayness

My dad and I just watched Bill Maher, which as usual made me feel bad for paying so little attention to current history, aka politics, and brought up the question of what is important. Or my usual question, whether the humanities, particularly the paper on the Magic Mountain I'm working on, are worth pursuing, or relevant for the world's people (just as people keep slogging philosophy as high flown windbag stuff whereas I think that philosophy aims to be wholly applicable and its inquiries underly all "practical" activity on a personal and group level, even something like pouring your cereal in the morning, but that can be stretching it a little bit, it defines the terms under which we live, a complex task). About that, this article by Stanley Fish caught my attention in my New York Times email.. that I pretty much hardly read. It seems that all disciplines, such as economics, (the way we as personal or political entities survive is making money after all) are trumpeting their importance to the daily life of the people, because why study or glory in irrelevance, right? To be a contrarian? Kind of like how art has needed to prove itself through theory or reject proving itself, embracing aestheticism for its own sake and not caring if it's being called extraneous. I've got to put in that what I think is the lingo of postmodernism, namely that past forms are irrelevant in encompassing or communicating with today's world adopts both that of modernism and ultimately that of Enlightenment progress that is considered retardataire. Someone might correct me and say that it doesn't place a value judgment on progress, claiming all value judgments to be false (which would render the words all and false empty of meaning), but I would say that it is claiming itself to be the most useful, or in its opinion, the best language or "discourse" to describe a reality it sees as losing rigid borders. Despite trying to sever time, this idea calls now our "postmodern era" as opposed to maybe "The Gilded Age" and "The Enlightenment?" Should I reserve a chapter of a textbook for "The Postmodern Era?" That made history irrelevant and yet circumscribed itself in terms of time?

Anyway, my dad and I started arguing about homosexuality after the show. My dad, the liberal thinks that gayness is the result of a defective gene and calls my bisexual friends "confused." He blames the fact that a girl I know went gay in Mount Holyoke on her flakiness, the fact that she's in a women's college, and her parent's divorce on her "confusion" despite the fact that she's had two longterm relationships with women with whom she's been in love. I'm in a college with 70% girls, I'm flaky, I'm not exactly falling in love and going out with women for a long period of time. If she is completely straight, why does she have sex with women? Does she love them only intellectually? Or is the divorce to blame for her being attracted to women? I wonder how the defective gene accounts for someone being partially gay, the Kinsey scale, or maybe having a fleeting attraction to the same sex disturbs one's straightness totally and means we're confused? What if we act on it and have sex with the person, oy! The simple classification of attraction as subject to a defective gene ignores the complex emotional underpinnings that psychology burlesqued somewhat (hey, I might be attracted to a woman because I'm attracted to my mother so that doesn't mean I actually like women, right?), though it is often quoted that it was the first to give lip service to irrational, unconscious roots of choices, thoughts, and desires.


The idea behind the defective gene is that gayness is unnatural or out of accord with the "way things are." This has to do with natural law outside of human experience. Applying DNA to homosexuality puts it within the rules of science, which gathers empirical knowledge, or observations of the outside world, in order to register what it feels to be natural patterns that rule over the human, so to speak. I always think of the if a tree falls in the forest analogy, that natural law claims that the very fact that a tree on Earth exists and falls outside of a human's hearing range means that there is a setup or "environment" outside of human experience. It will fall regardless of a human's being able to hear it or not and from there, a scientist can observe whether it does this all the time and think in terms of the tree, a thing untouched by a human.
Scientists observe that overwhelmingly in animal species a male copulates with a female and usually produces an offspring or procreates. The notion of evolution ascribes notions of rational self-interest (survival) to the decision, behavior, and change over time of animals. They draw the conclusion that the primary motive for sexual activity in animals is the perpetuation of the species, which does not occur during sex acts with the same sex. Bonobos are cited as an exception where homosexual activity and oral sex happens presumably for pleasure and purposes related to societal structure. It would seem to people with a rudimentary knowledge of animal science that homosexual activity deviates from the rational self interest of species survival and procreation. Bonobos are one of the few examples of sex possibly for pleasure in nature so "recreation" or connection doesn't seem to hold up as a viable motive. Something that adds credibility to sex practices is the amount of time it's been practiced, i.e. "everyone has been fucking to procreate since day 1" (or in the case of Christians, after day 7). My mom, for example, thinks that there was less homosexuality in Russia because it was repressed. Professors of Queer History have, of course, making it their business to reveal the accounts repressed by hegemonic narratives (I'm not sure of the terminology). In effect, they are contended with the "unnaturalness" verdict or the lack of credibility by pointing out homosexuality as an "age-old" practice.

I used to roll my eyes at Queer History or theory classes (though mining desperately for gay subtext annoys me, you have to really suspend disbelief in some examples). I think that the idea of "incorporating it into 'normal' history" is fallacious because who the hell knows where to limit "normal" history? The textbooks I learned from in high school that taught me about political and social movements? That is one way to interpret and understand viable historical events that is often dubbed political or social history.

Anyway, of course there is the orthodoxy of the Bible as a finished text. In supporting Creation over evolution, Christians are claiming the truth of the text without proving why. There is often a humorous tendency to allegorize and interpret the 7 days as "god time," so it must be like seven thousand years. I might be called thick or even a fundamentalist were I to interpret the Bible so literally, though. I think disagreeing with the very concept of "evolution" is harebrained. Evolution, the processes of change and adaptation are, of course, observable historically and socially, Christians recognize that. Or rather in their belief of linear, apocalyptic history, they know that gradual change does happen. Whether or not they believe in rational, natural adaptation in animals beyond what is god-given is a different story. God created the animals, how many animals? Were there not new animals that surfaced relatively recently? What about the fossil evidence of what appear to be the ancestors of modern fish, for example? What is the explanation for the coelacanth or thylacine? Or the extinct animal?
God's imagination is boundless, of course. It's funny how the Old Testament anthropomorphizes God as speaking, for example, and then denies it in order to attest to his complexity. How much do Christians analyze the behavior of animals? What natural motives do they attribute it to?

My dad's idea of confusion inherent in being bisexual means that there is a strict polarity between gay and not gay and actual sex seems the determinant of your orientation. So at various levels of emotional attraction to another person, the minute they border on the sexual, for whatever reason, some outside factor has got you confused. But the very fact that you are even a little attracted to someone of the same sex means that you are not purely straight! How does one account for the deviation? I don't know what confusing thing in my life is powerful enough to convince me to be sexually attracted to someone I'm not supposed to like. Is it taboo? Sure there is something about having sex with various people I shouldn't want to have sex with like the older, ugly, obese, physically maimed or sick that turns me on not just because of the taboo. People have a somewhat crude, narrow definition of lust. It does not have to be directed at its root to a person, their body parts, or the sex act. Sexual feeling or being turned on can arise out of various emotional, even abstract places. Sometimes I find the reduction of everything to a sex act a turn off and an insult to the emotional experience of sensuality. You can lust for a place or country. Longing is also sensual or sexual. Longing also doesn't have to be wrapped up in typical sex organs. Particularly for the girl this isn't the case, I think. Platonic love is somewhat of a simplified, umbrella term for various kinds of sensuality in this time period that devotes so much attention to sex. Taboo, for example, is connected to lust and outside the gamut of having an object in mind. The emotional dimension of human sexuality encompasses much more than people.

It bothers me that there is such a lack of acceptance in families, still, for gay kids that come out. My mom once told me that she would be disappointed if I ended up gay. I think the scientific notion of procreation as a natural, rational interest in species is viable, though it does not negate other motives for sex acts. I admit I'm still attached to the idea of an opposite sex nuclear family with its simplified solutions for procreation. Also I think that in various American environments, gay families deal with a large amount of hardships and discrimination though this is incredibly trivial if understood as a reason not to start one. I have another prejudice that gay people stay single for long periods of time and it is not taken for granted in the gay community to end up in a stable, nuclear family with children as it is in the straight community partially due to the barriers to legal marriage and societal pressures. In the documentary I watched about Rosie O'Donnell's cruise for gay families, one girl says, "The hardest thing is to have to constantly defend your family." I have a last prejudice, which is mostly against adoption or opting not to have children, I think that particularly for women, raising children is not just a "biological clock" or hormonal thing, but an emotional requirement after a while. It is a choice that can round out and enrich their lives, though definitely a course of action easier to take with a father involved. It makes me sad when girls I know say they won't have children. Seems like after one learns how to take care of oneself and has done it for a while, one feels the need to extend the care outward and unselfishly care for someone else, the bond of unconditional love a mother has for her biological child is the easiest way to achieve that.