previously
I spent this morning searching for stock photos of people shopping in supermarkets, something to illustrate “consumer behavior” for the Annual Report. Now I have to decide which one to use. There are a lot of pictures of people talking on their cell phones as they walk around with their carts full of food, people groping fruit, cuts of meat, semi-cute kids sitting in shopping carts, that kind of thing. Then there are some random weird ones… a couple making out next to a cooler full of gallons of milk, some nudity in the produce section. A whole mess of photos of Hilary Clinton grocery shopping in 1994.
It’s funny how schizophrenic I am when it comes to work. Friday and yesterday I was very into my job, being super efficient and smart and productive, and thinking to myself the whole time, “Wow, I am really into my job today.” But today I can’t make myself do anything. Still, those two days felt pretty good. I get all these emails from kids doing research projects on the rainforest, and I got one the other day from a girl who basically just sent me the entire list of questions her teacher had obviously handed out, and asked me to answer them. This is the part where I get to sternly say things like “I am sure that this information is available on the Web or in your school library.”
While I’m procrastinating I’m reading Khaela Maricich’s blog, which I haven’t read in awhile, and which you should read if you don’t already. The second photo down on this page looks like exactly where I feel like being right now, on a road on the way to somewhere I haven’t been yet, with open fields out to both sides, in a car with some people that I love. I wouldn’t need to lay on the road like in the picture, but I could if I felt like it. But this particular road is in France, and if I have a choice that’s not where my road would be. I mean, France is okay, but I would rather be somewhere like Vermont. Though that sounds boring when compared to Europe. Maybe somewhere in Canada – Vancouver? – or some really random state like South Dakota. If international, I don’t know. Switzerland was really beautiful. Ann always raved about Sweden. Wait, forget it – Washington state, definitely. Up in the mountains, and we could stop at the coffee stand where they sold everything made with lavendar, including lattes and honey.
I’m behind in updating the blog because, well, I’ve been watching a lot of figure skating on TV and had a lovely busy weekend which included seeing Allie and Lauren and then spending a large part of the next day crying about how much I miss them. I am just really emotional about the whole thing – about Allie being far away, and about the really hard situation she’s in, about time together having to be like an event instead of just a fact. I am just a fucking wreck lately when it comes to thinking about my friends, I am responding like I’m watching Sophie’s Choice or something. And really, that is a stupid comparison, not least because I haven’t even seen that movie. But I also got to go out with Katie, and then today I made plans in the next week with both Alice and Betsy, and there is almost nothing better than seeing good friends who you never get to see. Except for seeing them all the time, I guess. I would definitely give up the novelty factor for routine when it comes to this.
Somewhere in between all the triple lutz combination spins by girls in spangly costumes, I saw a preview for an Amanda Bynes movie called She’s The Man, wherein Bynes disguises herself as a boy and then falls in love with a dude while still passing as one. OMG! It opens next month. I might have to pay to see this one, I’m so intrigued. Even though I, like most other people, cannot stand Amanda Bynes. Maybe she’ll be better as a faux boy. It’s possibly (and surely loooooooosely) based on Twelfth Night, because Bynes’ character is named Viola and there’s the whole gender disguise thing. I can’t imagine it will be anything by sickening, but I still want to see how gender bending is handled for the tween set. You can watch the trailer here.
Someone who I do not know wrote something very nice about my zine on her blog! I feel a little bit fame-ulous.
The Observer has an interesting profile of New York Times Magazine writer Daphne Merkin (who, somewhat irritatingly, wrote about vaginal rejuvenation surgery a couple of weeks ago as if she were the first to notice that it exists), that gets at some of the thorny issues of being a woman writer who wants to write about both Serious Issues and also more personal things:
Ms. Merkin’s productivity is remarkable at a time when many magazines look like all-male reviews, save for the random communiqué from a woman on blowjobs or work-life balance. One could argue that women are unfairly penalized for baring their souls or, on the other hand, hired solely for such soul-baring. But Ms. Merkin manages to write about W.G. Sebald and Henry Roth, all while disclosing her experience of getting plastic surgery and discoursing on her own bad taste in men.
…Once, women who wrote about women and feminine concerns were considered feminists. Now it seems that women writing about women are in danger of bringing down all of womanhood. If the very subject that a woman writes about suggests her level of seriousness—i.e., her feminist chops—sometimes this might not include the subject of self.
Having a daughter makes parents more liberal than having a son.
In Germany, two-thirds of people who switched their political affiliation in the year after having a son moved to the more conservative party. The ratio was flipped for those who had a daughter.
In Britain, the two left of center parties, Labor and the Liberal Democrats, do much better — 11 percentage points — among voters with three girls and no boys than among voters with three boys and no girls.
How is this surprising?
I went out to buy rainboots and one of those brilliant devices that holds a piece of paper upright so you can type it’s contents onto your computer without killing your neck (does anyone know what this is called? I felt like an idiot explaining it to 3 different people at staples, but I know it exists!). I came back with polaroid film and jelly beans.
I’m not going to my class tonight because I’m feeling kind of shitty and so I need to curl up on the couch with some tea and probably the Olympics, which I’ve been strangely obsessed with. I don’t ever care about the summer olympics, but I think the winter games are so cool. Some of these sports are just insane. Bobsledding! Aerial skiiing! Luge! All sorts of crazy skintight costumes and boys wearing glitter. I used to live with a girl who was a former luge athlete from Lake Placid, and all of us in the house were completely in awe of this. Does anyone ever think about people who do luge, aside from a couple weeks every four years? Well I am here to tell you that they exist. We used to make her tell us stories and explain all sorts of things, and of course I don’t really remember any of it except that she once got pulled over when she had her luge sled in the back seat of her car, and the cops were confused.
Also, the Olympics is the best background TV I have ever experienced. You can really watch it, while not really watching it, while cutting up magazines or making some new drawings, or, say, listing the contents of the Times Style sections over the past few months to use in an article you are writing. So I could even say that the Olympics have made me productive, and not be lying. And it doesn’t make you feel nearly as stupid as other stuff on TV, even if the commentators are always saying things like “There must be something in the water in Switzerland that makes you spin well” and “The Chinese are always such strong jumpers” and “the Russians will always dominate this event.” It is so quaintly global, if such a thing is possible. Also, Johnny Weir is seriously entertaining.
Other things beckoning me home tonight are a giant valentine’s day cookie and the very last of the super buttery pasta I made the other day. Things I am less eager to come home to include my very very dirty floor, the mountain of clothes on my desk chair, and the giant hole in my bathroom wall.
Okay. I understand that the people who gave me Starbucks giftcards for the holidays were just trying to be nice. They were looking out for me. They were trying to indulge me. They were being thoughtful. They were not intentionally trying to undermine me.
Starbucks is one giant corporate business that I’ve been able to successfully avoid most of the time, and this is no small feat considering the number of Starbucks in NYC, and particularly, near where I work, dangerously close to the famous twin Starbucks of Astor Place. But I’ve done it. There really are a million indie coffee shops around here too, often in the shadow of a Starbucks, and you usually don’t even have to search for one. And they are so much nicer and happier. And more noble. There’s a Starbucks in the lower level of my office building, and after working here for a year and a half I had set foot inside only once, and it was to use the bathroom.
It’s because of the mere $25 that made up those Starbucks giftcards that I discovered the cinammon dolce latte at all. And now I’m fucked. The gift cards ran out a few weeks ago, and now I’m stuck making excuses about why I need a $5 corporate coffee drink that comes in a cup with too cute philosophical musings printed on the side. I hate hate hate them for making a drink this delicious. I am ashamed. I need to detox (from Starbucks, not from coffee. Please). And I need to do it the serious way. I need to stop buying my morning coffee from the very nice guys at Coffee Master too, buy a new travel mug that isn’t crusty and gross, and start making coffee at home like I used to do before I got lazy beyond words, back when I used to get to work within ten minutes of when I was supposed to.
So thank you, gift givers. Thank you for revealing me to be an unprincipled sucker. Now i’m going to go cry into my bourgie coffee, emblazoned with “The Way I See It” #76. Happy fucking Valentine’s Day.
Dan Savage has another brilliant Op-Ed at the Times:
Evangelical Christians seem sincere in their desire to help build healthy, lasting marriages. Well, if that’s their goal, encouraging gay men to enter into straight marriages is a peculiar strategy. Every straight marriage that includes a gay husband is one Web-browser-history check away from an ugly divorce.
It’s been awhile since I played with Barbie, but I don’t remember ever having a problem thinking up plotlines, so long as Barbie and Ken’s clothes could come off. It didn’t even matter how douchey he looked.
And I didn’t know that Barbie and Ken split up 2 years ago! For an Australian surfer named Blaine? Shit. Apparently, Ken, heartbroken, traveled the world in search of himself, making stops in Europe and the Middle East, dabbling in Buddhism and Catholicism, teaching himself to cook and slowly weaning himself off a beach bum life.
Sounds like too many guys I know.
here i am on the interweb.
Over at Bookslut you can read what I ultimately had to say about Self-Made Man, that mediocre book by Norah Vincent. And here’s my review of The Thin Place, a sparkly magical book by Kathryn Davis.
manohla, i really do love you for your mind.
I’m smiling so hard after reading this Q&A with Manohla Dargis, NY Times film critic and my personal hero. And it’s no secret that I fucking love the stupid Oscars, and the fact that Jon Stewart is hosting them is almost too much for me to handle. Some choice excerpts:
– As to “Mrs. Henderson Presents” – yeah, well, I like British accents, too. But isn’t it time Dame Judi started working for a living?
– Q. Why do you think Bill Murray’s performance in “Broken Flowers” was overlooked this award season?
A. Maybe because the various organizations realized that it wasn’t any good.
– About why Crash was nominated for Best Picture:
What could better soothe the troubled brow of the Academy’s collective white conscious than a movie that says sometimes black men really are muggers (so don’t worry if you engage in racial profiling); your Latina maid really, really loves you (so don’t worry about paying her less than minimum wage); even white racists (even white racist cops) can love their black brothers or at least their hot black sisters; and all answers are basically simple, so don’t even think about politics, policy, the lingering effects of Proposition 13 and Governor Arnold. This is a consummate Hollywood fantasy, no matter how nominally independent the financing and release.
– There is only one possible explanation for why Terrence Malick’s glorious film [The New World], one of the most aesthetically and intellectually ambitious, emotionally devastating and politically resonant works of American art in recent memory, was overlooked by the Academy: with the exception of my few dear friends in that august body, they are idiots.
Daniel Mendelsohn gets it right in the New York Review of Books:
The real achievement of Brokeback Mountain is not that it tells a universal love story that happens to have gay characters in it, but that it tells a distinctively gay story that happens to be so well told that any feeling person can be moved by it. If you insist, as so many have, that the story of Jack and Ennis is OK to watch and sympathize with because they’re not really homosexual—that they’re more like the heart of America than like “gay people”—you’re pushing them back into the closet whose narrow and suffocating confines Ang Lee and his collaborators have so beautifully and harrowingly exposed.