Saturday, July 28, 2007

I have a couple of 22 year-olds staying with me, and they are so with
it, it's amazing. They totally know it's a bad idea to do drugs and
everything, but they are still so fun! This is interesting to me
because I'm really still trying to puzzle out what exactly it was
about the melty weird downtown and brooklyn whatever scene that had
such a hold on me post-college. On the one hand, it seems totally
self-evident - of course it had a hold! Going out is fun, and also
everyone you knew did it and also boys and also drinking. But after a
while, you do not know what is the fuel, and what is the flame.

Anyway. It is not like I have reached some higher plane of existence,
really. I have the stable relationship and the yoga and the
not-depressedness (also, I am a lot skinnier, it is remarkable what
cutting gimlets out of your diet will do), but it's still pretty
self-involved; I have only just learned to be decent to the people
closest to me, and am so far from having an idea of how to be decent
to the world; stressing about what one phase of my life or another
offered me is like stressing about whether I am going to wear a red
shirt or a blue.

I am not a natural activist.

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Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Ils sauront bientôt que nos balles sont pour nos propres généraux

This is the most amazing article ever. I should have been on that cruise, I am like insanely good at dealing with nutty old people. (The trick is to not call them nutty old people.) I'd have had them singing L'Internationale as they tossed their jewelry overboard by the end of the second day.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

I live to critique the New York Times on matters of gynecology. If my letter is not published there, it will be here within a few days.

State attenti.

Monday, July 16, 2007

Comeback player of the year

A few quick notes from the just-now and the right-now:

1. I think about food a lot. Just now I had an outstanding crabcake sandwich. Crabcake sandwiches are tricky. If the bread is too hearty (french roll, ciabatta, whatever) the sandwich becomes almost impenetrable; given the nature of the crabcake, most sandwiches feel like bread-on-bread. The remedy, via 42 N Latitude, is to serve it on wheat toast. Also it comes with avocado and bacon, which are both delicious.

2. I finally got around to watching Confessions of a Dangerous Mind yesterday. Yeah, it was great. I'd watch Sam Rockwell in anything. Etc. On the other hand, "hideously miscast" is kind of that thing Julia Roberts does, isn't it?

3. Oh my god please stop making commercials for baseball with Dane Cook. You're ruining MY LIFE.

Friday, July 13, 2007

explode die burn crash explode stab

A thing which i have inherited from my father is the combination of curmudgeonliness and the thirst for justice which makes a zealous filer-of-complaints. Lots of I Am Shocked! Just Shocked! That Company X Which I Thought To Be Reputable! Would Permit An Oversight Like This! (I am very nice to the actual reps, and tell managers about good service. Thirst for justice, y'all.)

Anyway, it actually usually works out pretty well, after an insane amount of bitching. I got 30 dollar Amazon gift certificate this way, among other things. And even when no free stuff is coming, I usually eventually get a satisfying apology from a human once I have cleared their weird passive-agressive-apology hurdle. "We are sorry that your experience of Company X was negative." Oh ho ho, me and my experiences are not the problem here.

Anyway, FedEx may break me. I have been emailing back and forth with what I am pretty sure is an automatic-response generator which keeps on spitting platitudes about the importance of customer service and bringing up points about my shipment that have nothing to do with the problem, as if they are supposed to explain the problem to me. IE, "You understand that you ordered a computer? And also that it will come in a box? So maybe that's why we're unable to correct your address."

AND YOU WONDER WHY YOUNG PEOPLE DON'T CARE ABOUT ANYTHING ANYMORE.

Come sail away with me-eee

There's a book out about why people like me are not activists. Here is the guy who wrote it.

Discussions of this book and previous discussions of the subject of the book address the young-people-need-to-pay-bills and the young-people-are-disillusioned as two streams of discontent which converge to this river of cynicism. I have another idea. I think these tendencies are two manifestations of the the same dynamic (or non-dynamic, really).

Look, I'll Google some studies up, but it is like, a fundamental principle of psychology that liek all stress ever is very, very, very much linked to perceived lack of control (or lack of perceived control, I'd say, but you know, I'm all OHMMMMM these days.) I think that both the desire to cling to anything that looks like it might be a Career Path AND the disinclination to organize/activise/see oneself as an agent of political change are expressions of a loss of control.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Fuck fuck burn death fuck

My STUPID. COMPUTER. DIED. And not like, oh, lalala, your "logic board" has "run out of logic" and it can be fixed - my hard drive was corrupted and had to be ERASED and BURNED on a PYRE. And the fucking Mac store can EAT ME. Do you know why?

The first thing they ask you when you get there are "are you backed up?" No, no, because here is the timeline of my computer's recent shit it did.

January 2007 - WTF, omg, hard drive dead, bring to TekServe (cute boys!) and get it replaced, restore my data from my clever backup system! Hey, look at me be responsible!

April 2007 - Get logic board replaced. Logic board = motherboard. Have not done full backup since January because, I mean, what, why would my computer melt down twice in a couple months, didn't get around to it, etc. etc. Tell them to try and back up data if they need to fuck around with the hard drive but they don't!

Now - Hard drive! Corrupted! Have to replace new, bigger hard drive with Paleozoic 30 gig harddrive like the computer originally came with and blast everything in to space. Just replace it with a pile of twigs you guys! Don't worry about getting me my computer back, just make me a new one out of papier-mache! Same thing!

Anyway, of course they got all snitty and were like "you should really have a backup plan," which I do! I do! I just did not implement it vigourously.

I am just getting a new computer. I almost did not get another Mac because recent experiences have made me want to kick Macs, and also because I resent being marketed to. But then I did, because I don't resent being marketed to so much that I am impervious to it.

Thursday, July 5, 2007

Help Me Help Myself

I just took a test that was supposed to identify my top character strengths. I have observations about this, but here is the foundation for my observations. The strengths identified differed slightly from my own perception of same. Witness - the strengths identified by the test:

1) Capacity to love and be loved
2) Humor and playfulness
3) Appreciation of beauty and excellence
4) Love of learning
5) Kindness and generosity

What I perceive to be my top strengths:

1)Empathy for dogs
2)Looking good in hats
3)Communion with Kelly Ripa
4)Incredible knack for arranging furniture
5)Vegetarian chili-making

The test identified things I was maybenotsogoodat as Self-control/regulation, hope/optimism/future-mindedness, industry/dilligence/perseverance. That sounds about right.

Monday, July 2, 2007

Dear Rusty,

2 things!

1 - I got a fortune cookie that said "Don't forget, you are always on our minds." Kind of weird from an cookie, but not weird from a friend. Rusty, you are always on our minds. Well, mine. And not always - that would not be ok - but a seemly amount. Hope everything's good.

2 - What if our blog were totally epistolic? Like a popular Victorian blog.

-Vi