Planet, old buddy old pal!

Why the hell is it 88 degrees? I was walking around all phew, I sure am not used to this warm spring weather. Can't wait until my blood thins up a bit. I wonder if that's an old wives tale... Hm... Well sweet blazes anyway I sure am warm! And then the radio was all: Current Temperature: Eighty-eight degrees. This is a typical summer day. That's why I'm sweating like indelicate swine.

WTF, weather. W. T. F.

Eighty degrees was the threshold for swimming in our house while I was growing up. Anything over eighty is swimming weather. And eighty-eight is close to ninety. Degrees. And I know this is typical summer weather because there were several days last summer where it grazed 90 but never broke it, and I remember that as being still uncomfortably hot. And not to be presumptive, but I think I speak for the whole town when I say: Gak.

that... sure does match!

We had a hell of a storm a few nights ago, one that woke up everyone, canine and human, and that featured three very close together lightening strikes that produced the most spectacular (auditacular?) thunder I've ever experienced. I actually, while half-asleep, plugged my ears on the last one. I may have smelled the chemicals, because I was convinced that something was burning. And the rain didn't slow down at all when the lightening was striking, which is different from all the other thunderstorms I've ever paid attention to.

The lightening was actually what woke me up - after a week of having the windows open overnight while trains go by - and having their nearly continuous whistle bounce off the parallel buildings and straight into our brains - we could sleep through any number of catastropic but completely dark events. Being woken up by lightening - and trying to figure out why the house was shaking - is not really the way to go.

Some thunderstorms are like rock concerts - a little overwhelming but fun overall. This one felt more like a home invasion.

where o where is my book deal?

Every three weeks or so, I will ask Other when it will be time to apply to programs, because I honestly can't remember. (I can barely remember what month it is off the top of my head -- sometimes I walk outside and marvel at the (perfectly seasonal) weather, because it was so recently different.) Yesterday I was able to piece it together myself, on the basis of the fact that I probably wouldn't be subscribed to the APA grad school listings and doing all this research if it were still a year out, and that means that (eep) the December 1/15/30s being referenced are the ones that are in 2007. (And then I think oh my god it's 2007. Last week I went to write the date down and thought: 4-16-2005 2006 2007- oh my god, it's 2007.) (I remember seeing a 2007 expiration date on batteries and thinking, ha, yeah, 2007. Okay.)

Right, but the point of this is to say that the idea of applying to schools (and interviewing, oh god the interviewing) is making my teeth itch and maybe my lungs itch too. That seems to be a good way of describing the low-grade anxiety that the very idea of applying to schools and then (oh god) going to one of these schools (assuming I even get accepted anywhere) has the effect of sparking in me.

I've noticed in people a tendency to assume that everyone else (fellow applicants, say) have their shit together in mysterious and unimaginable and superior ways, and that succeeding in such a process should involve inflating every little thing that one has done, and I try not to fall into that. It's not like I have "research experience" or a "Master's Degree in this particular field" or whatever*, but I do think that what experience and degrees I do have will transfer, knowledge-wise, and that I could do okay in the program. So, maybe the road I have to hoe is a little more challenging than a having major + Master's degree in Psychology would make it, but shit, it's not like I'm applying to a Theoretical Math program. I don't want to study hypothetical numbers, I want to study people, and literature's all about people.

But maybe it's not even the application process so much as the idea that here is what I finally want to do With My Life. Here is a marbled-glass door to affix the letters of my name to. Here is a town I actually want to live in and a workplace I actually want to be invested in. What is that supposed to feel like?

In my thesis, I wrote a lot about what people imagine, and how this projection of themselves can affect their behavior. (Not nearly in those psychologyish of terms, though.) And so I have this new way to imagine myself and my life, and I'm still so close to the beginning of the road that my hoe still has the price tag on it and I'm trying to figure out how to scratch my lungs.

*which, actually, might kind of be a problem...

o hi

Our apartment has problems with water. Major problems. The roof has leaked extensively, although knock wood this hasn't happened for a while. The vents flood during monsoon season (February, April, November). And now, today, the shower is leaking through a light fixture onto the washing machine. Do you know how many times I've nearly turned on that light fixture today? At least 12. Maybe more. I'm no "expert" on "electricity," but I suspect that bad things would happen if I turned on the light that's bathed in a mixture of water and liquidized plaster.

We made sure the smoke alarm is working. Perhaps I should move the yarn stash to my car...

How Not to Bear Witness

Via the blog report via carpetbagger, John "Self Defense" Derbyshire gives us a sparkling example of how not to bear witness. And a sparkling example of the horrifying, small-minded nastiness that usually shows up under the name "anonymous" on the internets. In the midst of the tiring, repetitive, sometimes fascinating coverage, Derbyshire focuses on the masculinity of the victims (who were actually not all males, but whether the women who ran away from the homicidal maniac are also of questionable masculinity is not addressed). The Carpetbagger Report makes this point with more specific details regarding gun types, but I'd like to make it from a slightly different perspective.

When people are fighting in a war, they've probably thought recently about their own mortality and are aware that their lives are on the line. But when you're a college student sitting in your Monday morning German class, I don't see how you could possibly embrace the knowledge of your impending death as instantaneously as you would need to in order to run at a person who has suddenly appeared and who intends to shoot you.

And the idea that somebody would say publicly, the day after such a tragedy, that these random victims, who have to be both traumatized and grieving, are somehow, with any stretch of the imagination, in any way at fault is disgusting. I'm disgusted. It's fucking sadistic. How completely insane does a person have to be to act in a mean-spirited way towards people whose lives have just been ripped apart?

incidents and accidents

Need I make a statement? What is there to state? What could I possibly add to the breathless Breaking News coverage that has been covering the news that has broken for the last seven hours?

It's weird, isn't it, how public events such as the worst school-shooting type event in American history just kind of pokes itself into things?

We were at a hole in the wall (with a name and a menu), one TV tuned to CNN, one TV tuned to Fox News, both tuned to Breaking News coverage. Two student dudes came in, slid sideways into the big and sticky wooden booths, then looked, naturally, as we do, to the televisions, and they both stopped. A little hitch in their get-along. Their mouths opened and one looked sideways at the other as they processed Breaking News - perhaps for the first time?

I looked over again a few minutes later and they both slumped in the booth, shoulders hunched crookedly, chins on palms, one pulling at his lip as they silently watched Fox News's Breaking News coverage across the room.

Three tragic things have happened in the last two days, each of varying closeness to me, none being too too close, though. And yet it still feels weird to feel normal. You pat yourself up and down, nodding, but proceeding a little bit more cautiously. Every once in a while your thoughts are yanked back to these things - you run your tongue over them, thinking how things might have been different and objects might so easily have not moved in that precise way that they did and everything would have been okay; or how it might have been you there instead, or your child or friend, if things were different enough. And we come to rest on these little platforms, stories of blame, stories that do something to reassure us of our own security ("she must have been drunk," etc.).

So: try not to rest too long. Think about the families. Sign cards, go to funerals, make donations. Bear witness.

fond of y-o-u

We finally got around to watching Brokeback Mountain. It was great. (And hey, apparently it's banned in China and Malaysia. Huh.) When it came out, I heard all the gay cowboy jokes and the discussion of the political importance of such a movie, which I think overshadowed the fact that it is beautifully written, shot, and acted.

As an instructor of college-level English, I made the argument many times that literature - the stories a culture tells itself, in print or film or advertising, even - is powerful and important. Even though it feels anymore like it isn't; even though "content" like TV shows and "product" like movies are just ways to rake in money, these stories do have an impact on the subjects we think about and the opinions we develop of them.

And this movie is an example of what great literature can do, can make people feel and understand. It gets at things that can be argued intellectually (or not so intellectually) in debates and bumper stickers, but that exist on another level of empathy and emotion that can be better touched through dramatization.

It's really a shame that "I wish I could quit you" became such a punchline, when it's actually the emotional core of the movie.

If you haven't seen it, do.

but i can only imagine how dave eggers feels

Having never read it before, I taught Slaughterhouse 5 when I took over someone else's literature class. It is good. It's what novels are supposed to be. The week or two that class spent on it was a joy. I'm terribly glad to have read it, and strongly recommend that you pick it up.

Cheers to Kurt Vonnegut. The world is better for having had him.

merde! scheisse! caca!

My "values" and "principles" dictate (they are bossy like that) that this evening, I go to a fiction reading to be given by an old professor of mine about 100 yards from where I work for 40 hours a week, rather than stay home and watch The Office, which I have been pining for for however many weeks it has been since the conflict that the entire series is based around became imminently resolvable. (By my estimate, about 5. (Weeks.))

It is the right thing to do, supporting the work of fiction writers, especially those fiction writers whom you know personally and who have taught you stuff about fiction writing. Kill yr TV, all that. Oh, but how it chafes.

Here is a list of things that this fiction reading will likely not have that this evening's episode of The Office is statistically speaking much more likely to have:

• 1. Mad Jim-on-Pam action


• 2. Drunken violence


• 3. Mad Pam-on-Jim action


• 4. High social tolerance for eating ice cream straight from the tub while wearing pajama pants

I must also admit that if the Orooni household did not have a functioning VCR, Supporting Fiction might have lost out to those high statistical probabilities. But, like those stupid and contrived ethical quandaries wherein a bus of 40 schoolchildren is about to run over 15 doctors, and you must save either the doctors or the children, this ethical thought experiment will thankfully go unpondered.

everything is happy and okay and fine.

As a long-time reader of Salon, I was disappointed when they added an open comments section to all of their articles. An article a couple of months ago explained the rationale behind that, and detailed their experience with the whole thing. I'd occasionally read the letters to the editor that they published, but rarely do I read the comments about an article. If I do take a look, I choose the "starred letters" option, because I have no desire to see two hundred comments that devolve after about the third one into incoherent, spittle-laced cheap shots and mostly incorrect grammatical nitpicking. There's a serious level-of-discourse problem there. If I wanted to read the insane ravings of random anonymous nutjobs, there are millions of blogs to choose from. I choose to read the blogs of the people I find interesting and well-spoken and funny and thoughtful.

Reading a thoughtful, well-researched article, then opening up the comments to see hateful, vitriolic, and bileful screaming matches is really jarring and unpleasant. It's like there's a continuous barroom brawl going on just under the surface. An article today mentions that they're going to be rolling out some kind of comment control system, which is great, but I'm already a little turned off to the whole thing.

Salon actually published a couple of my letters to the editor, which I was really proud of at the time. Getting a star next to my comment is nice, but it's not really the same experience when it's sandwiched between two people who are bickering about the past subjunctive.

I only make comments - on Salon and on the blogs I read - when I really feel like I'm saying something that adds to the ongoing discussion or debate. I like sending e-mails much better. Except on the blogs of friends, where I know many of the other commenters, directing public conversation to a writer just feels strange.

I stumbled across a knitblog (and am loathe to try to find it again) where a woman mentioned offhand that she can't understand why someone would have a blog without comments, and it started a firestorm of debate (and insults aimed at her) in the comments. Is that enough right there?

The argument that the good, positive feedback outweighs the bad, rabid feedback makes sense to me. I can see why people have that attitude. I can see why people have comments and enjoy comments and read and write comments. I would be seriously uncomfortable, though, with getting a bunch of comments on every post about how nice my knitwork is or how funny or interesting my writing is. I mean, I'm secure enough in these things to post a bunch of it on the internets, so it's not exactly that I automatically think anyone saying anything nice is a filthy liar. It's just that I enjoy much more pretending that the internets and my place in it exist in my closet, where only I can see it. And I feel like I would implicitly be asking the fewer-than-10 friends who know this blog exists to give me positive reinforcement every time I post.

I think Mick Jagger was the one who said it's easier to sing in front of millions of people than 10 people because when it's a million, you can't see any of them. I can really relate to that.

It's a little embarrassing, actually, how much of my social life happens with people whom I've never seen in person and many of whom don't know I exist, but I've really made peace with it. When I was a kid, I'd hang out with a few people, spend a lot of time alone (if I don't get alone time, watch the hell out), and read books by authors who were long dead. Now I hang out with a few people, correspond with others, spend a lot of time alone, and read the blogs of people who are having similar experiences as I am and writing wonderfully about them. If I'm feeling socially brave, I'll write them an e-mail to say how much I like their work and point them back to my writing, but it's okay even if I'm not feeling that way. I just read their blogs every day. (You can get the communication of ideas, feelings of solidarity (solidarity? communiality? ??), and amusement without having to talk to anyone in person. Brilliant.)

Very very occasionally I'll get an e-mail like that, from a friend or a stranger, and it's a great feeling to know that people are enjoying and valuing my work as much as I am theirs. If I weren't such an uptight overly-careful introvert weirdo, I might be able to get that feeling the way most people can, through the comments.

But alas. I cannot.

Tomorrow: tune in to see if sleeping in a nice but too-stiff button down shirt leaves it fashionably sueded and rumpled!