per plexed

I'm wondering about the difference between "per piacere" and "per favore"? I don't speak Italian often (try close to never) but in calling hotels to speak to my fella, I've had to bust it out. In these exchanges and in my recollection of when I did use Italian more (when I was taking it in college), I it seemed I've been about equally likely to say one as the other, although "per piacere" is the one I tend to stick on the end while if I think I say "favore" at the start of a sentence.

I have no idea why I do this. I think it is an arbitrary positional distinction I have made rather than anything having to do with the language itself.

I am wondering though what is the difference between the two phrases. Does one have a different use than the other or are they more or less interchangeable?

Monday monday

Ok it got worse.

I left a little late to go to the nuts and berries doc. Not too bad, but enough to have to hustle. As I passed the place where my car overheated the last time I had an appointment with this person (this today was try three in fact), I felt a wave of relief that my car's temperature gauge was staying in the low to middle end of things.

I got there about 7 minutes before my appointment feeling more relieved. Found the building easily, and found that the door to the office was locked.

The sign posted outside with the hours indicated the office was closed Monday. I could have sworn my appointment was for Monday the 10th though. I called and got the voice mail. On the outgoing message, the doctor announced her office's business hours which were Not Monday. I left a message explaining that I really thought I had this appointment today, etc. and asked them to call me back. They did, just as I was coming out of the campus parking garage. It turns out my appointment was today. So what happened? They were at lunch when I called, the door was locked because someone accidentally locked it, and the office hours are right usually not Monday but not this month because this month the doctor is seeing patients on Mondays.

When I got into the department, I found that the friend who said she'd take me to my ultrasound appointment tomorrow was inexplicably absent from work. She is not answering her phone or email either. These days this can mean anything from she forgot her phone or her phone charger at a friend's house to she's on the lam from the latest round of serious family fuckery and won't be contactable for weeks. Good thing my car's working ok so I don't have to worry about it breaking down if I end up driving myself tomorrow.

This evening I stopped on my way home to mail some stuff from a mailbox about five blocks from my apartment. I spilled a bottle of water - I mean dumped one of those big bottles of water all over the passenger seat getting my letters out of my bag. The seat was soaked. Ok, well I was almost home, I thought. I left the car running, mailed the letters, and got back into the car to find the needle on the temperature gauge teetering on red. I need a new expletive for moments like this. "Fucksticks" is good, but already taken. It's not bad as a temporary linguistic device though.

I do have a new word for something else, and that's some fun at least. It's not super easy on the tongue, but it seems coinage worthy as a concept. It's "manmel toe". At a talk I went to on Friday a man in the audience was sitting in such a way, with legs splayed wide, that he had in fact created a manmel toe with the seam of his pants. I'd imagine this would be quite painful, however he kept at it, even (it seemed) leaning into it.

yeah, it's monday

My alarm didn't go off. I know it is rare that this truly happens, but it did today.

My day is full of running around. I'm hoping my car can stand it. When I got it back from the mechanic this last time, they made me promise I was either getting a new car or would bring it back in if I hadn't replaced it by October. Seems I don't have a lot of brake left in the rear.

Today I have an appointment with a naturopath, at the strong suggestion of my primary care's nurse practitioner. I'm a little less than enthusiastic, but I'll try it. I'm trying to keep an open mind because if it will help me feel better, then that's good.

After the nuts and berries hour, I'm meeting with an Irritator (who, true to name, simply could not meet any day last week), and promptly after that I'll be dashing off to go sit in a room with about 8 other bored to hostile teachingassistants, listening to a fluffy childish woman-girl (whom I've nicknamed "poopapotamus") tell us how to do the job she's only done once - and not well. She was rather recently bragging to me that she failed two students for turning in their final papers 6 hours late. With some context, this might not be as shitty as it sounds. But without is how she presented it, and she was really, truly proud of this. I voiced disapproval, which doesn't matter too much because my guess is that she's more interested in male approval than female.

I'll give some backstory, not lots but some, later. It involves poopapotamus taking two weeks off mid semester to get married but refusing to accommodate me for a conflict between her meeting (it's a weekly thing!) and a medical test which has already been rescheduled three times...long story. I'll tell it later because I have to run to get to the beads and rattles appointment by 1:00.

Shit

Information from the CDC discussed in the excerpt below can be found here.
Does anyone else think this is about the most damning bit of evidence against all that "war on boys" shit?

CDC: Suicide rate among U.S. girls soars
By Greg Bluestein
Associated Press Writer
Sep 6, 2007

ATLANTA - The suicide rate among preteen and young teen girls spiked 76 percent, a disturbing sign that federal health officials say they can't fully explain.

For all young people between ages 10 to 24, the suicide rate rose 8 percent from 2003 to 2004 — the biggest single-year bump in 15 years — in what one official called "a dramatic and huge increase."

The report, based on the latest numbers available, was released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and suggests a troubling reversal in recent trends. Suicide rates had fallen by 28.5 percent since 1990 among young people.

The biggest increase — about 76 percent — was in the suicide rate for 10- to 14-year-old girls. There were 94 suicides in that age group in 2004, compared to 56 in 2003. The rate is still low — fewer than one per 100,000 population.

Suicide rates among older teen girls, those aged 15-19 shot up 32 percent; rates for males in that age group rose 9 percent.

"In surveillance speak, this is a dramatic and huge increase," Dr. Ileana Arias said of the overall picture. She is director of the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

More research is needed to determine whether this is a trend or just a blip, said one child psychiatrist, Dr. Thomas Cummins of Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago. "We all need to keep our eye on this over time to see if this is a continuing trend."
...

kitty scratching

I don't know if this will embed. If it doesn't, here's the link.


Shorty on the Wheels of Steel

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very special ed

I kinda feel bad for these guys. Still, I find myself marveling at the deep trust or massive entitlement which would lead anyone to believe this is an appropriately low key way to peddle pot. And on this note, today is my first lecture of the semester. Here we go.

From The Boston Globe
A pair of freshmen at Northeastern University learned a tough lesson before classes even started this semester, when one of them allegedly leaned out the window of his dormitory and yelled something regrettable in earshot of plainclothes police officers.

"If you're looking for weed, my roommate F_______ has some for sale," (the student) yelled, according to a release issued today by the Suffolk district attorney's office.
...
According to the release from prosecutors, police went to the second floor of the dormitory after hearing Emery yell and found the door open. In plain view was a bottle of Grey Goose vodka, a shot glass, and a plastic baggie of marijuana.

Pot PSA from PFG:
It seems this situation could have been avoided if these fellas had simply followed a couple of simple rules:
1. Don't publicly refer to your reefer as "weed", in fact just avoid any of the generic and well known names. My siblings and I called it after a friend's mother - a woman who was such a massive smoker she (and her name) had become emblematic of the substance.
2. Don't leave "Pattie" out if she's not in use.
3. Keep stash, instruments, and implements tucked away until the door has been closed, locked, and secured. You never know who might walk by and see it. Like a plainclothes police officer. Or that annoying guy who mooches Pattie off anyone and everyone. You know the guy. The kid who begs you into letting him smoke with you and who then acts like a retarded gibbon - long arms flailing and knocking over the milk crates you have carefully stacked on your microwave and mini-fridge, yelling things like "MAN I AM SOOOOO HIGH!" "THIS IS REALLY GOOD WEED!" and "I'M TOTALLY STONED!"

Higher ed

or special ed?

I got an email today from our new associate vice president of campus something or another services (the old one having been driven out of the position after some not very savory issues surfaced regarding recent extremely expensive campus construction projects). The part of his email I have excerpted below perplexed me, not necessarily deeply, but at least moderately.

All other areas are also asked to consider placing air conditioning units on a "low" setting when in use or turning them off, particularly when not occupied.

My reading of this sentence seems to require that air conditioning units be the semantic object of occupied. I think if I tried to diagram it, I'd need a 3d+ chart. Perhaps a sentence mobile.

I don't usually quibble over syntax. I'm not a grammar tyrant, but this sentence is needlessly screwy on account of too many high-falutin' syntactic stylings, and that always annoys the crap out of me. Why do bureaucrats love the passive voice so? And why is it that people who have such piss poor written communication skills get these high paying jobs?

not Monday, again

I want to say at the outset, while someone was apparently injured here, and probably rather seriously, I've been assured by the police that this person will be ok.

I woke up to the cell phone alarm, slapped it into snooze and went back to sleep. About two minute later my house phone rang. I dug my cell out from under the pillow, opened it and grunted a sleepy "hello?" into it. Shit. I dropped the cell and picked up the house phone, glaring at the caller ID. It was my gynecologist's office. I answered it. The receptionist told me they need to change my appointment. Again. Without computer and calendar, I picked a day I hoped was good and set it up. I repeated the day and time to her, then to myself after I got off the phone. I thought about getting up and writing it down. In a minute, I told myself. Next time the alarm goes off....

Even though I technically still had at least 20 minutes of snoozing left before I'd consider myself to have overslept, and even though there was a cozy orange cat on my bed (making it all the more appealing), a warning cramp fairly launched me out of bed to find food to take my drugs with. This is so not how I like to get up.

Cat fed, coffee poured, and drugs swallowed I sat down to update my calendar. I had been repeating the new date and time of the gynecology appointment since rising. I heard a chainsaw in the distance. I didn't think a hell of a lot about it at the time. I thought "oh, a chainsaw" because I don't like chainsaws, and then went about pointedly ignoring the sound. It seems like someone in the neighborhood is always having yard or house work done on any given day. Nothing remarkable there. Just pretend there's no chainsaw. I called to change an appointment which I just then realized I had doublebooked and got some guff from the staff member on the phone.

In general, I'm not a fan of doctors' office staff. Often, I find they piss me off. I think I get more pissed than I would otherwise since I used to be a medical secretary. This means I have done their jobs. While I realize it can be a hard job, I don't think I was ever that shitty to a patient. To doctors and nurses? Yes. To respiratory therapists? Sure. To other secretaries even? Definitely. But not patients.

This staff member wasn't shitty, she was exasperated that this was the second time I had to change this appointment. I held my mouth in check, mostly because I was still waking up and therefore rather verbally unarmed. It is frequently at this point where I get cheeky and from there it's a very rapid descent into shitty. When she finished giving me her exasperated huffy mild shit and making my new appointment, I explained, "You know, that last time I canceled I was calling you from my broken down car. And when we rescheduled that appointment then, when I was calling from my broken down car, I didn't actually have my calendar with me."

It wasn't much but I thought she needed to know it. She had slid back into a more sympathetic tone, complete with gracious "oh"s and "ooh"s while I was reminding her about these circumstances. I'm not fooled. I've seen what's under that mask and I won't forget it.

I got off the phone, updated the calendar again, and was just returning my attention to some serious coffee drinking and email checking when I heard the chainsaw cut out. You remember the chainsaw. The one I pointedly ignoring until I realized it had stopped suddenly and was followed by what sounded like a dog which had been hit by a car.

For a moment, it was just that. This yelping sound and nothing else. It was otherwise quiet. And then every dog for blocks started barking and howling along with the sound, which continued. It was an urgent sound. You cannot ignore a sound like that. I grabbed my cell phone and went outside just in time to hear the yelping turn into a very tortured sounding human voice saying "HELP ME! Somebody please help me!!! HELP!"

What seriously sucked was I had no clear idea where this man was. Consequently, my 911 call was sort of fragmented. "Hi, I'm in (town name). I just heard what sounded like someone working with a chainsaw outside, then a man started screaming and yelling 'help me' and I'm walking toward where it was coming from but I don't know what house he's at yet....I'm on (street name) near (street name) and I can tell he's around here somewhere..."

I'm sure they love this kind of call. I realize as I type it that I have just completely assumed they get this kind of call from other people.

I was coming up on the huge house about a half block down and another half block around the corner from my street. This was where I suspected the man was, mostly on the reasoning that this was the biggest house around and so the inhabitants could probably afford and be inclined to hire someone to come work on the yard, which is most likely who was doing yard work on a weekday morning.

The man had gotten quieter now and less verbal although he was still vocalizing. The 911 dispatcher stayed on the phone with me while I yelled "Where are you? Are you ok?" into various driveways and yards until I got to the long driveway at the big house. I hobbled up to the top of it.

Here's what I saw.

A tree with a huge branch hanging off it. I couldn't see the point where it departed from the tree, just that it was at such an angle that it had to have been nearly detached and just stuck there on the tree or something. I saw a man standing a little away from the tree. He was standing where the side I couldn't see would have been fully visible to him. "Where is he? Is he ok?" I yelled to him. He half turned toward me I saw he was holding a cell phone to his ear.

Two men came running out of the garage toward the tree. They were each carrying several two by fours. One of them had heard me asking if the guy was ok and replied hurriedly "He's stuck in the tree and he's hurt."

"What's the address?" I yelled to anyone who could answer. "For 911" I added. The man with the cell phone snapped the phone shut and said "They're on their way now." Then he approached the tree, where the other two men had started doing something with the boards on the side I couldn't see.

I waited for a moment near the top of the driveway, thinking I should probably go since I was serving no useful purpose and since I had NO inclination to actually see what had happened. I started toward the road. I got out to the street just in time to see the first emergency vehicle slowly driving by. I guess the guy who called 911 had no idea what the address was either (hey, there's a lesson here - make sure your damned house number is visible from the street!) . I waved them down and sent them up the driveway. I started to leave again only to make eye contact with a cop who was very slowly driving by, scanning the sidewalks carefully. "He's up there, in back" I said helpfully pointing back toward the driveway. He pulled into the driveway and stopped. Sirens were starting up somewhere. "Can you stay here and send the others up?" he asked me. Er, ok. So I did, only realizing after I sent up the second cop car how much it sucked that I had no bra on under my t-shirt. Great. You know, you just don't think about this sort of shit when you hear someone screaming like that.

After the fire trucks came and parked out at the driveway entrance, bright obvious lights flashing and all, I decided there was plenty of indication where the emergency was. And my cramps were coming back. I started to think about walking home, which seemed a bit further now than it had about 20 minutes ago. A cop came down the driveway on foot and said "He's going to be ok," and that was all I needed to hear - I was out of there, arms crossed very not casually over my chest, wanting to walk much more quickly than my hip would allow, which is probably good because while I am not huge of chest, without bra there's still a hell of a lot more jiggle than I'd care to be showing as I made my way back up to my apartment.

Now I'm back home, drinking more coffee, feeling sort of sick to my stomach, being thankful that I didn't go around the tree to get a better look, wondering why my period always manages to come at the worst possible time (my first two hour lecture of the semester will be on day two - of course), trying to shake off that knock on wood feeling, and trying to forget the chilling sound of that particular pain call.

Did I mention that I have always hated chain saws? I do. When I hear them I have to consciously tune them out or I'm likely to have nasty images flood my mind. Good lord I am glad I didn't go around that tree.

Perfect

Found this over at Cranky Prof's Cranky Epistles. I edited down the text size because really, who needs 130% font size anyhow?

You're The Sound and the Fury!

by William Faulkner

Strong-willed but deeply confused, you are trying to come to grips with a major crisis in your life. You can see many different perspectives on the issue, but you're mostly overwhelmed with despair at what you've lost. People often have a hard time understanding you, but they have some vague sense that you must be brilliant anyway. Ultimately, you signify nothing.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Irritating Requirements Before...

...You can collect your data.

The acronym doesn't actually mean this, but I_R_B_ does seem to stand for it often. I've been dealing with these folks directly and indirectly for years now and it is with this experience that I say the Irritating Requirements Before undertaking any research too often fail to address or even recognize the real potential areas of trouble in studies like the ones conducted by my peers and me, instead bogging down research with excruciating attention to details like the order of items on a consent form.

I've spent most of today reviewing and rewriting these wee details of a proposal I got back on Friday and yep, I may be bored out of my skull but I am about done with that shit. There's only so long I can try to patiently and ever so carefully phrase a comment that disclosing all the details of the experimental manipulations to the participant before they go through the experiment is not something anyone normally does, and that in all but some specific cases, it probably shouldn't count as "deception". I mean, if I extended the "puffy" sound on certain consonants that my subject will hear by 50% and then play them mixed in with consonants where the "puffy" part isn't extended, and I don't tell them, this is enough to count as a deception. I don't know what brand of crazy these people are smoking but they seriously needto consider cutting down. On the plus side, in my search to assuage the many irritating concerns the Irritators had with my proposal, I did find some neat freeware.

The other perk of having something I had to do but which could be done sitting on my ass at the computer is that I felt like hell today. Without the very structured revisions I had to do, I might have just floated in the murk of feeling like shit. While I feel like hell many days, today's feeling like hell was especially notable since I'm on my own for the next 11 or so days until A____ gets back.

I hate that this is how it is.

When I was a healthy person, I'd miss my partner when we were apart but the big time sucking "what do I do now?" type feelings didn't usually start to set in so quickly. Now that I am not a healthy person and my world is rather a bit more narrow, it set in about 24 hours after A___ left CT.

When I was a healthy person, I'd go through this "kid alone in the house" phase where I'd do all the things I like to do or which my own personal inertia (or is it entropy?) moves me to do but which I believe (rightly or wrongly) will annoy my partner or are not healthy to do around partners (like things which will put me in a mood where I will be unapproachable and odd).

What does healthy me do on a long weekend which is the first three days her partner is out of town and early enough in the semester to mean no grading? I stay up late without regard for what's a decent hour. I let myself get wrapped up in stupid and pointless internet activities like posting rants about local politicians and my university on the local newspaper forums.

I smoke and eat shitty and don't sleep well and let myself get a little strange. I write long rambling poems about ex boyfriends who suck, about ex advisors who suck, and about my parents, who clearly suck the most of all. I write and write and write. I go into school late and stay late, working until well past dark in the lab and enjoying evening cigarette breaks on a quietly busy school year evening. I go out for dinner with people and I drive home alone feeling all independent and grown up and shit.

I read two novels in one day.

I watch crap I wouldn't want to watch with someone else, like three episodes in a row of Ugly Betty, wishing it would get better but not caring too much that it doesn't. I cook. I even invite people over to watch movies with me and to eat the food I cook. They blow me off and I call up a friend and crab about how much grad school people suck, gloatingly eating whatever excellent thing it was I made. I go to a bookstore in another town and wander for hours. Or I buy underwear.

I pull out all my makeup and try different looks. They all end up looking more or less the same, except that I find it is true that only youngsters should wear frosty eyeshadow. I wax and bleach. I do my nails, usually several times.

I abandon half full mugs of coffee on surfaces at home for days and then, at some point when I realize how many of them are out and am totally disgusted with myself, I have a huge cleaning fit where I don't stop until every surface is dust and clutter free and as shiny as it can get. I might rearrange furniture. Today I was struck by an urge to paint the walls in the living room.

Few and little of these activities are options now, and without the outside or truly active activities to mix things up, I find I am less inclined towards sinking into just the ones I can do with little activity in my own apartment and by myself. Also, I simply can no longer stay up late and not eat right for days so as to get into that proper poetry-cleaning-working late then moving furniture around- frame of mind (no really, it's like a potato chip, caffeine, and nicotine induced trance or something). Instead, I partition out my time into little bits of "productive low energy stuff" and "nonproductive low energy stuff". "I could read for a while..." I think, then notice how slender the paperback I just got is. So I decide I'll work some first. "Then I could read after I work and then watch this movie." Except the movie turned out to be one where not one but three dogs die. Jeeesus. (btw, I don't recommend it)

Yesterday I had a day planned of work, local errands, dinner and reading or movie, work, movie or reading, and bed. I got to dinner and movie and then I got sick. When you're sick and alone and you know you'll be alone for the next 11 days without a hell of a lot to take your mind off either being sick or alone or both, you really feel it.

So it was with some sense of gusto that I approached the task of reviewing my proposal today. I was so engaged in it that I only realized just now that I've been doing it for the last 6 hours (with two short breaks to talk to A___ and to my sister). And I am still not done with it. Well, it beats the three dead dogs movie, and that's a start. I think I'm going to go curl up with a stats book now.

thoughts of halloween

This is one holiday where I have long pushed the season. The months long ramp up to Halloween doesn't seem as troubling as the designation of November through January "the christmas season!".

I'm wondering why. Bear with me while I explore it. I think to me Halloween is one of the few organic holidays we have left, although it's certainly been er, whatchacallit, over processed in recent years. I guess some time between the mid 80s and late 90s the liquor companies realized it wasn't just a holiday for kids. Which is a real pity because with the level and type of over processing intensive booze ad campaigning entails comes the over-popularity of what I call the personal fantasy (usually involving sex) costume or possibly just the sexy costume. Sometimes those can be amusing and fun when such a costume is worn by someone whose inner hotty is not too at odds with the rest of the individual's persona and who has explored this facet of his or her personality enough to have a sense of humor about it. However, such a costume or more specifically, the non-introspective individual in such a costume can be creepy and just plain old skanky.

E.g., the brides. They were students from Spain in a department which shall remain nameless. I was having my (then) traditional halloween party in a month or so and had invited these two women along with most of the department - some faculty included. Because I'm that person, the one who if she's going to bring cupcakes for one person makes them for everyone. Yep. Ok, well mostly everyone. I do draw a line at people who plain old suck. Anyhow, these two women were not really what you'd call friends but weren't what you'd call people who suck so they were invited. Let's call them Marta and Lucia.

Lucia had been to a US Halloween party before but Marta had not. Both were very excited. And I should mention both were interested in this german student who I had invited, "Hans". I don't know which of them initiated the bride motif. Possibly both of them were struck with the same type of image when they saw the rack of used wedding dresses when we entered the Salvation Army store. Although I didn't see either Marta and Lucia buy the dresses that night, they had swooped on them. Apparently they returned later and bought a couple.

Marta and Lucia showed up at the party, both in white wedding gowns and both with long black elvira like wigs. Marta had done up her face vampircally, Lucia hadn't. I don't recall what Hans had worn - I may have blanked it out. I think his costume was where Marta got the riding crop she had been brandishing for much of the night until she was overcome by the fruits of her man-dilemma induced binge drinking (her boyfriend from Spain had flown in to visit that week, adding another point in the already unruly Marta, Lucia, Hans love polygon). Pre-puke, Marta had spent quite a bit of the evening running after people, gown hitched up, swinging the riding crop and announcing "I am going to BITE you!" (for the most authentic effect, you have to imagine this said in carefully articulated English with a hint of a Spanish accent). Pre-puke, Marta, Lucia, and Hans had been smarming all over people at my party, including me. Somewhere there are pictures of me and one of the brides taking turns feeding each other grapes. I heard later that they had gone further than such coy flirtations here and there, going so far as to group sex-proposition a friend of mine. Ewwww.

Like I said, creepy.
But I digress. I was talking about the lead up to holidays and whether it is justified by the holiday being truly seasonal.

Halloween is, christmas I'm not so sure about. With christmas, there is little to no apparent connection between the nature of the celebrations/festivities and the reason for them. Let's see - Jesus was born (in a desert) so this fat guy in a red suit comes along and sneaks into your house to give you presents. Yeah. And stockings full of stuff? Where does that come in? Stockings maybe go with the whole winter season thing, but then we go back to Jesus being born, and while we do celebrate "chirst"mas instead of the proper pagan holiday which late December should be (you know, seasonally speaking and all), we're all part of a big fat cultural denial about the real purpose for this holiday in the northern climes. Winter. Cold stuff. White for what's on the ground, green for what we hope will be one the ground, and red for what probably needs to be spilled for that to happen.

I remember I had a christmas song book when I took piano lessons as a kid. I never got to the point where I could readily read music, but I'd open it up to whatever song I was pecking out by ear on the keyboard , "First Noel" was easiest for me. The picture was of a child shepherd with a lamb set against a background of snowy desert with the town of Bethlehem looming in the distance. Snow and Bethlehem? Maybe I'm wrong but I didn't think the middle east saw a whole lot of snow.

Even on a more basic level, there's fuckall that red and green and white have to do with Jesus? Like I said, pagan. But you can't discern that from the festivities. Yes, Santa wears red and white. But aside from Santa also being somewhat removed from the "real" point of CHRISTmas, the color choice in a christian context at least is apparently arbitrary. Santa could just as well have worn orange and purple for all that red and white symbolize now (i.e. not much in a modern context because we are very busy with marketing symbolism - bet you can id a pepsi sign even if the word "PEPSI" is nowhere near it).

Then there's Halloween. The holiday colors are the same colors you see around you in the Fall and they are the colors of death. The celebration entails images of death, dead things, and things which are beyond death (i.e. magical). Hell, there's even candy corn. What do we have at christmas? Candy canes - red and white again, this time in the shape of something which I have a hard time automatically associating with anything santa or jesus-like. I can stretch it to see some relation of canes and winter but usually the broken and twisted limbs which would necessitate the use of a cane come a bit later in the season.

Why candy at halloween? It's not an uncommon notion culturally that special food is served when the dead are celebrated. Then we have lanterns for the dark, gourds because it's a harvest holiday, costumes because we are trying to confuse the dead who might otherwise take us back with them when their time to walk the earth is over. It all makes sense, more or less, symbolically speaking at least. And seasonally speaking. It's a seasonal holiday with symbolism, but that symbolism isn't too far removed from the actual season itself. Unlike christmas.

Have I justified why I get psyched for Halloween starting in mid August? Not really. For me there's something about the light change. There's usually a late afternoon in mid to late August where it's a little cooler and I realize soon it will be Fall, which is very close to Winter. It's not at all a long stretch from watching a riot of reds tumbling out of trees against a sparkling blue sky to watching those same bare trees scratching at a blanket of gray on gray sky which is darkening even now while there is far too much of what we call "day" left in the day...so I'd better enjoy the hell out of this golden safe feeling sun while I have it. And that makes the sunlight, which was already beautiful, seem even better. It makes food taste nicer, people look more attractive, and life feel fuller.

While I don't party much these days, I still very much look forward to Halloween. My yearly traditions still include watching bad old horror movies, handing out candy if not from home then on campus (I call it "reverse trick or treat" when I'm on campus giving candy out to my colleagues), and taking at least one day to dress up even a little - maybe wearing my purple glittery horns or spider boinger-headband and my dracula socks which have a button you can press that makes dracula's LED eyes flash red while a spooky sounding midi plays (although I've learned not to wear the latter when I need to attend a lecture or talk of any sort since one careless leg cross can set it off and once it goes off it's going until it stops, there's no kill switch).

What made me think of this was seeing a hit on my blog from someone looking up killer prom queen on google. Somewhere I have those pictures of me in that get up. I'll scan them if I can find them.

most referred

Up until recently, the highest search based hits on this blog came from the following two types of searches.
1. "hippie", "import store", "hippie room", etc. as a result of posts like this one
2. "shaved gynecologist", "shaving and gynecologist", etc. as a result of this post

Since Senator Craig's recently publicized bathroom follies though, the number of hits from searches on the topic of tearoom trade is definitely picking up.

This amuses me.

breakdown

My car, which already overheated and broke down once this month, went into the shop again yesterday. That alone is enough to make me laugh or cry since it's got 115 thousand rather hard miles on it and needs to be replaced soon. The longer I keep it to try to save money by not buying a more reliable car, the more I spend. And spend and spend.

After the last breakdown I decided I should start looking into getting another car. I won't say "new" because this implies ambitions which are far, far beyond me. I looked, I have some idea of what degrees of "can't afford" I can live with. I sought out a local bank which does auto loans (mine doesn't), and bookmarked a few pages. But I thought I'd have until at least October to start the process in earnest.

Therefore, it came as a bit of a set back to this plan when a week after diagnosing and replacing a bad thermostat which caused my car to catastrophically overheat, the parking brake light started coming on every time I hit the brake pedal. It started Tuesday morning, while I was on my way to a new GI doctor appointment. I had no choice but to get my car back in ASAP and see what was up or risk breaking down again, this time with no fella to come get me after. I'm without a safety net for the next two weeks since A____'s leaving tomorrow for a two week trip to Italy. So no A___ and no car of A____ to fall back on since his car will be in NYC the entire time (and is a standard anyhow).

I just found out that getting my car in immediately was a very good idea because part of my brake line is rotted. The light coming on was on account of my having barely any brake fluid in my lines. Fuck. Good thing I didn't drive it on the highway, huh?

The mechanic gave me the estimate for how much it's going to cost to patch up the brake line (and that's without dealing with the nearly worn out pads). Of course I always have the option of getting my car back without even the minimal $300+ repair to the line, but in that case the car will only be useful as a large paperweight, lawn ornament, or possibly a sled come winter.

When I got off the phone with the mechanic, I started chuckling, then laughing out loud. Within a moment I realized I was not only laughing but also crying. By the time August is out, I will have dumped about 5 months worth of car payments into a car which I will have to trade in for scraps as soon as possible lest I risk dumping more potential car payments into keeping this monster road-worthy.

I am currently ready to consider suggestions, recommendations, related experiences, and empirically sound advice in pretty much any form. If anyone has any experience in auto loan shopping, car shopping, deciding between bank loans and dealer based financing, etc that they'd like to pass on please do so. I've resigned myself to the fact that although I managed to live the last 15 or so years with minimal debt, that era of my life is over. And with acceptance comes some something like peace. With a somewhat frigid sense of resignation if not actual calm, I decided I will deal with these things as they come. This is life. For now, for just right now, I have to get on with my day. Maybe do some work before I go pick up my car later this afternoon. One more cigarette, I thought, then I'll go get dressed.

While smoking, I checked my email and found a cranky message from my cranky advisor who has forgotten everything about what I'm doing right now. I think I will make her a poster to hang on her wall. I'll update it as necessary. Oh then I'd need to make her another poster to remind her to look at it though.

I started to write back but decided speaking would be better - less opportunity for compounding what was charitably a text based misunderstanding. While I was waiting for the phone tree to let me access her extension, I opened another message in my inbox. This one was from my little brother. In it, he reports that his insurance has cut off his mental health benefits (he's HIV positive, an abuse survivor, and trying to kick a substance addiction) and that our mother was admitted at about 1 AM to a hospital for acute cholecystitis. I strongly suspect the gallbladder disease has a point of origin somewhere outside her gallbladder given that my brother tells me she's been complaining of severe fatigue for nearly a month now and that she drank Jack Daniels like it was water for 20+ years of her life. I certainly don't begrudge the universe the karmic balancing it is exacting on my mother these days but I do think her messes are going to be extremely hard on my little brother since he still lives with the 'rents.

Well, as hard as I tried, I think I have no choice but to acknowledge that I am standing on the doorway of the tea room again. Two weeks without my partner in crime to help me feel better about the shit in life, the start of an ambiguous school year, and family and financial fuckery most assuredly equals some down time for the psyche.

squats

7 pointers to lift a bad mood! was the line. It caught my eye since I'm apparently moving into a Saturn trine Uranus in my house of fuckheads transit. Or more precisely, my mood could use a boost or I'll end up in the tea room for sure.

I clicked on it. I wasn't expecting much, but I sure wasn't expecting this, from Tip #4: Research has found that doing squats and leg presses will greatly increase your natural production of the "youth hormone". Increased growth hormone translates to an elevated mood, among other physical benefits.

Since squats and leg presses are pretty much flat out for me on account of the now perpetually fucked up hip, I wonder if I'd get a similar mood boost from watching someone else do squats. Probably. I'll have to find some way to try it. Now I'm thinking...Who that I know can be manipulated into doing a squat for me, and how would this be best accomplished?

Oh and the paperwork was all shuffled successfully by me. The woman whose job it was said "I'll look for it" and then went home, leaving me with an extra cranky advisor and two more frantic emails from the person waiting for the fax.

not monday

Why does my wednesday feel like a monday? It started with bad dreams about my parents in the wee hours of the AM, and realizing that if I have any of these waking myself up screaming nights in the next two weeks, it'll just be me and my cat (my fella's going to Italy for two weeks on Friday). Got up an hour late and found three emails in my inbox. The first was from my up to now recently "MIA" brother describing how he is extremely depressed after having tried and failed to get into rehab and to get housing assistance so he can move out of my parents' house. I want to help him but feel there isn't much I can do.

The next was from a person asking me to fax her some research paperwork stuff for work related shenanigans, work which I had been paid to do last year but which I am not being paid to do this year. And rounding out the set was a message from a woman I completely despise who is now apparently being paid to do the work I was doing - which in my eyes includes dealing with this paperwork.

Foolishly, I explained this to my advisor (boss of me and the woman I so dislike), that I feel if this other person is going to be paid to do this job, she should be the one handling today's last minute and apparently rather urgent paperwork shuffling. I had thought this was a good way to kill two birds with one stone. Bird one is doing someone else's job for her. Bird two is the much more immediate doing something which I didn't really have time to do today anyhow.

My day is chock full of crap involving standing in several long lines to get the rewards of my ever increasing student loan debt and meeting with an overly procedurally minded grad student who is in charge of coordinating for the class I am TAing for this semester. I missed our meeting this week because I had a much needed appointment with my psychologist, and this young lady (the procedural one) is insisting that I meet with her to go over what I missed. What I missed is her telling people how to organize and run the class. I've got a hell of a lot more teaching experience and training than her, even in this particular class. While I don't think this means I get a by on going to the meetings for the TAs, I do think it means it's not a federal case if I happen to miss one now and then. However, we do disagree on this. And so we have wedged a meeting into what was already a busy day for me even without the last minute paperwork I am being hounded to take care of asap.

It was foolish of me to be up front with my advisor though. As much as I tend to think that she is ok with direct communication, there apparently is an effect of academic culture which tinges any interactions. The preferred mode of discourse about such matters is through subtle and what I'd consider passive aggressive behavior. This really doesn't suit me, but my style sometimes doesn't suit her. So what I thought was going to be a simple matter of clearing up some of my schedule has turned into an argument with my advisor. Thus, I need to cancel some of the stuff I was planning to do today to go in and conduct some damage control with her.

If I were a different sort of person, I'd probably be mentally smacking myself on the forehead and saying "me and my big mouth" at this point. But I an arrogant and haughty virgo cusp person. Thus I deeply feel that I am right, that this is unnecessary bullshit which affirms my belief that these people and this career path sucks in the suckiest of ways.

I'm going to have to work to find reasons to not hate people today. I don't revel in despising. It is energy consuming and I have learned to be very stingy about my energy.

Oh, I have one. Finding comments from Bubblewench and D on my blog. That was nice. And D's contribution of supercallafragalisticexpialladouchebag was indeed pretty damned awesome.

golden throats

Some years ago, a friend played William Shatner singing "Mr. Tambourine Man" for me. Amazing. The album also featured Shatner reprising his role as Captain Kirk on alien mind control except here he is not falling in love with his communications officer or scheming against his friends but shouting his way through "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" (if you haven't heard it you really should at least sample it at iTunes or somesuch place). Lastly, there was Spock - I mean Leonard Nimoy - singing "If I Had a Hammer".

I recently decided I must have some of these gems. My quest brought me to Actors Who Try to Sing, by Kevin Murphy (yes, that Kevin Murphy). A nice review of a selection of albums by celebrities who sort of sing.

a word is born

I recently found myself in need for a word for ass cleavage. You know, other than "ass cleavage".
I ran a few contenders past my fella. He chuckled, then said "décolletush".

Indeed, witticism is the way to my heart.

Where we're headed?

I saw this headline and had two nearly simultaneous reactions:
- Moved on from beating up on just women I see
- In some of what are now considered to be mainstream US political circles, this wouldn't be all that far out as public policy

Nigeria: 18 Arrested For Sodomy - Face Death Penalty
Daily Champion (Lagos)
10 August 2007
Bauchi

EIGHTEEN suspected homosexuals have been arrested by the police in Bauchi for alleged sodomy.

The accused may be sentenced to death if convicted under Bauchi State's Islamic Shariah law.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported that the suspects were arrested Sunday in a hotel in Bauchi and arraigned Wednesday before Justice Taminu Abubakar of the Bauchi High Court.

Prosecuting police officer, Thadius Boboi told the court that the men, who were wearing female clothing, had come to the city from five neighbouring states to celebrate a gay "marriage".

He said the men's actions had contravened the shari'ah penal code adopted in Bauchi and other states in muslim northern Nigeria eight years ago following the end of military rule.

best hit

"why is my father a douchebag?"
I take some pride in the knowledge that typing this question into google brings someone to my blog.

"There's a war on, you know"

Ammunition shortage squeezes police

Troops training for and fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are firing more than 1 billion bullets a year, contributing to ammunition shortages hitting police departments nationwide and preventing some officers from training with the weapons they carry on patrol.

An Associated Press review of dozens of police and sheriff's departments found that many are struggling with delays of as long as a year for both handgun and rifle ammunition. And the shortages are resulting in prices as much as double what departments were paying just a year ago.

I guess the notion of rationing ammunition is too unAmerican to even consider as it could potentially limit someone's god given right to shoot cans off a fence post.

I guess Chris Rock's proposal might not be too far off.

what's my tarot card?

What's your personal Tarot Card?

Justice! The card of virtue, fainess and compensation
Take this quiz!

CT, we're expensive

I was up early today to see my fella A_____ off. He's got a talk today, one I should go to but during which I managed to schedule an appointment. I couldn't have timed it worse if I tried. It's not like the talk is new info. As of last night, I'll have heard his talk 4, maybe 5 times. But I still would have gone if I could because as I've said, it's bad not to be seen in grad school and the occasion of this talk is one of those places to be seen. Plus, if I have to attend a talk that is not entirely my cup of tea, I'd rather go to one where I have some good reason for being there other than what more often than not boils down to faculty mollification (i.e. at least pretending to drink the cool-aid).

So I'm up, under-caffeinated, a little cranky about my day's schedule, and reading the news while I wake up. And what do I find? More reason to dislike the state I live in.

Despite a slowdown in the housing market, the median sales price of a single-family house in Connecticut has climbed above $300,000 for the first time.

The Warren Group report shows that sales of single-family houses were down by 9.5 percent in June compared with the same month last year.

The overall point is clear: The median price of a house in the state has outpaced the price of consumer goods and services. In June 1997, for example, the median price of a single-family house was $149,900. If it had risen in step with the consumer price index, that figure would be $195,000 in 2007, not $307,250.

Why? The article goes on to offer some shallow commentary from unbiased sources like a Century 21 agent and unsubstantiated speculation. (Thank you Fox news for lowering the standard everywhere.) Personally, I'd put my money on this:
The reason [for the local spike in home prices] even as sales decline, could come, in part, from a higher portion of sales occurring in Fairfield County, where houses cost more, said Steven P. Lanza, executive editor of The Connecticut Economy [published by a local university].

Fairfield county? The article has a table which lists the median price of a single family home in Fairfield county as $629,500. The county where I once owned a home has a median price of $243,750. Fairfield county is also the richest county in CT, and a nice example of how screwy the distribution of wealth is in this surrogate state o'mine.


The part of today's article which hits the point for me comes from this quote.
"It's still a very expensive housing market in the state, even in the midst of the housing recession we are going through," said Todd Martin, economic adviser for Bridgeport-based People's United Bank. "The state is still not very affordable."

Safety first

An email just went out in my department. It starts with this rather disturbing line:
The old fire alarm system is finally being replaced with one more capable and less likely to catch fire itself.

another word

I'm filling out this health intake survey thing for a doctor, well sort of a doctor, and I came upon this: "Please list adjectives that best describe you"
There are five numbered spaces under this item. Thus I am asked to sum up my personality in five adjectives.

I'm still stumped trying to think of a better word than "demanding". Words I sometimes have self-applied for this general aspect include "cantankerous" and "caustic" but I am (other word for demanding) even when I am in a pleasant mood and positively inclined towards the people around me. At issue is that I expect the best of people, in general. At some point in my 20s, I realized that the cantakerousness (the cantanker?) comes in when people fail, for no good reason, repeatedly, and under a variety of circumstances, to live up to what I see as a (person appropriate) minimum standard.

Any suggestions? Here's what I get in thesaurus.com (not all of which are entirely the correct part of speech but could, presumably, be modified).

ambitious, backbreaker, ball-breaker, bothersome, clamorous, critical, dictatorial, difficult, exacting, exhausting, exigent, fussy, grievous, hard, imperious, importunate, insistent, nagging, onerous, oppressive, pressing, querulous, strict, stringent, taxing, tough, troublesome, trying, urgent, wearing, weighty

Fussy? Hell, maybe I should just write virgo.

Movies I'll love?

I put a rss feed up for the recommendations Netflix has for me. I do so with a caveat for those who have not experienced the flawed logic which drives the Netflix recommendations algorithm. Here's a relevant article on the Netflix recommendations, their usefulness, and (readily apparent) limitations.

I've got to agree with most of the assessment in that article. I've generally found their recommendations not terribly useful. When the recommendation isn't just 100% wrong (because I like some old Hitchcock, I'll apparently love anything staring John Wayne), it's more often than not something I've already seen (or own, or have seen enough times that I should own it).

my own personal douchebag

"Do me a favor," my father said to me after the funeral mass. "Say hello to your mother."
"I'll say hello if I see her" I said, meaning "no I won't seek her out just to make you feel better or some such shit, and if I can avoid her I will. I'm only talking to you because your poor sister who is standing right there saw us run into each other and I couldn't take the look of fear that crossed her face - only for a moment before she forced her features back into the careful mask she's been fighting to keep up all damned day, hell probably all week" I didn't say this because my aunt was right there and I am not a douchebag.

My dad replied "Bury it". He said it in his pissy voice. As a child, I would have described it as his growly voice, the one which was a yell without the volume. As an adult, I see it as an attempt to intimidate from someone who is in no position to do so. Someone who in fact should be groveling and averting his eyes when I pass, hoping I take no notice of him lest I choose to repay even one small sliver of what he dished out when we were kids.

I answered him in a low and sarcastic tone "Hey, maybe I'll kick a little dirt over it."
He half turned away from me then said loudly"No, I mean it." He hefted up the tote bag he'd been holding. "Literally bury it. I've got your uncle right here," he said, swinging the bag for emphasis.

His birthday's coming up in a couple of weeks - he'll be sixty six. Now I forget. Is sixty six Massengill or Summer's Eve?

funeral, take 2

Another funeral this weekend. Certainly not close enough to the last one this April to readily count as a member of a group however prior to April I think the last funeral I went to was in the early 90s.

All of the grandparents died off when I was still relatively young. The last was my mother's adopted mother who died while I was in my mid twenties and living in MI. My mother's mom, otherwise known as "Nanna", always struck me as incredibly frail. She was quite skinny, had pure white hair which she had set and styled at least once a week so it constantly fluffed out around her head, creating a brilliant, glowing poof. Her hands were exceptionally thin. They looked like bone with the thinnest layer of skin spread unevenly onto it, slipping off the more peaked parts into the wells between knuckles and ropey blue veins.

She had looked like this for as long as I remember her.

Still, she lived past cancer and even into several levels of heart failure. She had the first heart attack while out on her daily walk - far more than I manage to do these days even so go Nanna. I didn't hear the news that she had died until many days and many subsequent heart attacks and resuscitations later. My mother told me she hadn't wanted to disrupt my studies with the news. This was, like so many other things out of my mother's mouth, a load of crap. My mother had issues with her mother, to the point where she took her mother's death just one of the many inconveniences she felt the woman had thrust upon her.

The family mythology was that either my mother reported her father's was sexual abuse to Nanna or that Nanna had caught him in the act. In either version, according to my mother, Nanna had told the bastard (in front of our mother) if she ever caught him doing that again, she'd send the children back to the orphanage.

Being a sophisticated enough audience, it only took the one time for her to explicitly point out to my sister, brother, and me that this had meant Nanna had essentially sealed my mother's fate. Keep silent if it happened again or get sent back to the orphanage.

Bad Nanna!

Many years later I heard a different version of this story. This version is not nearly as cut and dry and involves my grandmother moving with the children out into the chicken coop rather than let them continue to be around the monster she had married. Mind you this was like early 1950s rural New England. There were no fucking shelters.

Nanna's funeral was the last in the family before this week's but due to my mother's machinations I didn't go to it. This week's was my uncle, my godfather in fact. We weren't close but his wife (my father's sister) and he had no children. In fact, none of the women on that side of the family had kids. I don't know for sure since I'm not at the stage of my life where my age group peers are dying off but I suspect that knowing you have family, and specifically knowing there is another generation coming up after you may be in some ways comforting or at least a little reassuring.

I may be wrong. I'm basing it on implicit impressions of older relatives speaking of death and on numerous pop-cultural reference. The aunties do like to talk about their nieces and nephew (just the one...my dear brother) .

So A____ and I went up Boston-way for a smoldering hot Saturday morning funeral mass in the "Immaculate Contraption" church (as my brother is fond of calling it). A_____ had never seen a catholic mass before - this was the real deal complete with drunk clergy.

My aunt seemed genuinely happy to see that all of us "kids" were there. We first saw her on our way into the mass. I hugged her, possibly for the first time in my life. She felt small and full of an uncomfortable energy. In our phone calls over the week between when her husband died and the funeral, I noticed she moved with little transition between speaking casually of life and its minor details to choking up on a sob when the topic touched too close to certain aspects of the notion of her very recently deceased husband. The energy I felt when I held her was both the strain of holding this in and some seepage of the very stuff which was being held in.

She had arranged for coffee and refreshments to be served after the mass at the church school, which was behind the church. I walked out after the mass was over to the front entrance of the massive, circular church (yeah J, it's like one of those conan churches!) and I realized I was on exactly the opposite side from the school. There was no shade en route. I had already been feeling unwell soon after arriving over an hour earlier. The had been church was cooler than a late morning August parking lot, but not quite cool enough to refresh me after walking to and from the car to the church entrance twice - one trip there had turned into two after we realized Hey you probably can't walk into a church with a huge cup of dunkin donuts iced coffee and they had no trash cans about. I'm sure my feeling a bit, well, swoony for lack of a better word, during the service was not helped by the usual up down up down up down of a catholic mass. After the mass concluded, my sister helped me get to a bathroom where I threw water on my face, arms, and neck. (Oh fyi, apparently the Boston area catholics save all that christlike asceticism for the restrooms.)

The water helped but I still felt drained. Seeking to avoid the rather lengthy shadeless walk to the school hall, I made my way over by walking through the outer church corridor which ran the circumference of the big round building. Every now and then there was a break in the corridor. We'd go through a door to the outside, and then a few steps later go through a door back into the indoors corridor. Hot as it was in the church, it felt positively cool compared to the oven of the nearly afternoon parking lot.

I say "we" because my aunt made this whole strange trip with me. See, just before embarking on this procession, I had taken my aunt's hand. She had started crying when saying how happy she was that we could all come up, so I held her hand and said how wonderful it was to see her. Someone mentioned we should get over to the reception, and so my aunt and I began walking. She had continued to hold onto my hand although I had somewhat loosened my grip when I realized I was planning on making such an oddly interrupted and circuitous path out of the building. She fussed about my staying indoors, commenting that this path (i.e. not so much through but around the inner part of the church) would be best. Saying "I'll walk with you dear..." and holding my hand up in hers.

So we walked together, in and out, blinding and blazing then cool and dim. Others from my family - people I know mostly by face and not name, and my sister and A___ walked behind us, A____ coming up ahead sometimes to open a stuck door for us. At some point I noticed that this promenade was like some kind of closing ritual. A counterclockwise circle made slowly and deliberately by the mourners. Not fully closed until A____ and my sister and I piled back into the hot car and drove the rest of the way around the church and out onto the street.

blog like a girl?

You throw like a girl.
Your hair looks like a girl's.
You run like a girl.
Your bike looks like a girl's.
Your ride your bike like a girl.
You dance like a girl.
You kick like a girl.
You play like a girl.
You cry like a girl.
You scream like a girl.
You dress like a girl.
You drive like a girl.
You swing like a girl.
You fight like a girl.
You sing like a girl.
You sneeze like a girl.
You laugh like a girl.
You talk like a girl.

Note that "girl" and "fag" are interchangeable in the above.

Here's what I think.

The insult in its common use has little to do with a direct comparison to any particular individual - which would explain why the authors of such insults rarely feel their words are sexist or in any way bigoted. The insult calls on a definition of "girl" or "fag" which means not so much "juvenile female" or "gay guy" but more specifically things inappropriately unmasculine.

That these labels are used for this purpose does kind of make me wonder if this is an indication that all things are supposed to be masculine. Sort of subverts the whole binary gender role thing though.

And I think ultimately it's just an analogy. That is, while there is no individual or perhaps no specific people (whole real people) who are being referenced in the "like a _____" frame, there is a semantic collection, a prototype which has an unfortunate negatively tinged essence. This property of the abstract group can and will be applied to (even real) members of the group, current or subsequent.

It's hard to know how the negative "unmasculine" property (or set of properties) came to be applied to the group and the group members even in the apparent absence of experience with individuals from the group or with contrary experience with individuals from the group. My guess is that it occurs through a top-down, category to member spreading of the negatively charged property after this property has been applied to all categories which could be defined as definitionally non-masculine.

This contrasts with a bottom-up property affiliation, where icky, weak, whiney individual "girls" one after the other built up and reinforced the properties of the category.

My main reason for thinking it's more the former because honestly, how many gay guys could your average 10 year old boy have met? I know full grown straight men who, when asked "are you friends with anyone who is gay?" have to honestly answer that to their knowledge, they don't even know anyone who is gay. How fucked up is that?

I find it personally insulting and I think it's socially damaging that "girl" is used as such a negative label. I sometimes wonder if I am making too much of it. I wonder this when men who I thought were not dipshits go and say stuff like this ("crying like a girl") as a joking insult to one another, or even as a self deprecating comment. When I inquire, I am invariably told by such men that they have (a) engaged in a fair amount of self reflection and (b) they do not believe that the term implies a stereotypical set of beliefs about gender and subsequently (c) that the use of the term in this way (as opposed to _____ way?) is not sexist, does not transmit sexism, does not perpetuate sexism, is not derogatory to women and girls, does not reinforce the equation of NOT MASCULINE = BAD = FEMALE/GAY which can effectively serve to limit what roles real individual "not masculine" individuals are allowed while living in a world dominated by the NOT NOT MASCULINE.

Which brings me to today's news blurb.

Bad Thai cops to endure Kitty shame
Thai police officers who break rules will be forced to wear hot pink armbands featuring "Hello Kitty," the Japanese icon of cute, as a mark of shame, a senior officer said Monday.
...
The striking armband features Hello Kitty sitting atop two hearts.

"Simple warnings no longer work. This new twist is expected to make them feel guilt and shame and prevent them from repeating the offense, no matter how minor," said Pongpat, acting chief of the Crime Suppression Division in Bangkok.

I bleed

Below is an excerpt from an eMedicine article about a somewhat controversial condition called "premenstrual dysphoric disorder". For a not terribly well done overview of the controversy, see this APA Monitor piece.

(gotta love the feminist argument in that link, btw. By the argument as it is alluded to there, no one should be diagnosed with or treated for conditions like endometriosis because such a condition reaffirms stereotypes about women, i.e. that female anatomy and physiology are pathological as is evidenced by the monthly disability they cause.)

In the eMedicine article, the cognitive and social learning theory and the sociocultural theory are both pretty swell. But the one below, the psychosocial theory, is my absolute favorite. It's not just favorite PMDD causal theory, but my favorite example of misogyny and outdated shrunken gender roles being applied to clinical practice. I copied it and hung it up on my wall in my office.

The psychosocial theory hypothesizes that PMDD or PMS is a conscious manifestation of a woman's unconscious conflict about femininity and motherhood. Psychoanalysts proposed that premenstrual physical changes reminded the woman that she was not pregnant and, therefore, was not fulfilling her traditional feminine role. Obviously, proving this theory through scientific evidence is quite difficult.

Yeah, obviously.

no no show

My advice if you are considering going into a PhD program is "don't".

However, if you simply must anyhow and you now find yourself in grad school wondering which of the many guidelines, advice sets, and plans you need to follow and which are more meant as suggestions, here's a bit of concrete must follow advice for you.

Whatever you do, whatever happens to you, you cannot disappear.

Disappearing acts - a series of little ones or even in some cases a single poorly timed one - will cause faculty to lose faith in you faster than pretty much anything else (short of plagiarism) you can do.

This especially applies if there's been anything shaky or spotty about your graduate career thus far but you are lucky enough to have an advisor or other faculty member who is willing to advocate for you. If you fail to show up and fail to call up, you will lose that support quite quickly.

Even for the non-troubled grad, face time is key. Contact is important. For the student to whom fate has conspired to add multiple life crises on as an extra-curricular activity, the importance of these things becomes even stronger.

Say your mother was just hospitalized, your cat is having seizures, you wrecked your car, and you yourself just broke up with your partner of 10 years leaving you needing to go out and find a new place to live lest you sleep in your wrecked car starting next week, at least call and/or email your advisor to give them even a cursory overview of what's up. During this conversation, tell them when you anticipate being done with what's up. If it's going to take some unspecifiable period of time which is more than a few days, promise to follow up with them at some agreed upon time and then DO SO.

What prompts this warning is that I'm watching a student disappear her way out of my program right now. Genuine crises abound, but the disappearance is making it hard for her advisor to continue to advocate for her. It is truly a terrible thing to witness. To borrow a phrase from a friend, it's like watching a train wreck every day.

Privacy

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts had an idiopathic seizure this week. During the seizure, he fell and sustained a mild head injury. News reports indicate this is not the first such episodes he has had.

The article I read goes on to quote Dr. Marc Schlosberg, a neurologist at Washington Hospital Center, who says that by definition, someone who has had more than one seizure without any other cause is determined to have epilepsy.

The article closes with attributing the following conclusion to Dr. Schlosberg.
Whether Roberts will need anti-seizure medications to prevent another incident is something he and his doctor will have to decide.

Good thing he's got that right, you know the one where he and his doctor privately decide what medical treatment is best for him without interference by anyone else (i.e., anyone like the parent or guardian of a minor or the state...). Couldn't one make at least a superficially compelling case that the treatment of such high governmental officials are a matter of genuine public concern and interest? Shouldn't we consider that potential impairments, whether immediate or long term, of the official's physical or mental acuity as a result of this condition or of the treatment of the condition could quite directly affect the official's ability to function at a level and manner necessary for the successful execution of the office?

Rhetorical questions largely. Here's another.

Why should the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court have MORE rights and BETTER rights than any old Jane Roe?

For some informative and creepy reading about current and recent US Supreme Courts' interpretations of the scope and expectation of women's rights to privacy in medical decisions, see Gonzales v. Carhart

no more good days

In the first (GOP) presidential debate held on May 3, 2007, the candidates were asked "Would the day Roe V Wade is repealed be a good day for America?" Here's what the candidates said[1, 2].

Former New York City Mayor Giuliani - it would be "OK" to repeal Roe v. Wade

Senator McCain - "Yes"

Former Wisconsin Gov. Thompson - "Yes"

Former Virginia Gov. Gilmore - "Yes, it was wrongly decided"

Former Massachusetts Gov. Romney - "absolutely"

Former Arkansas Gov. Huckabee - "most certainly"

Sen. Brownback - "(It) will be a glorious day of human liberty and freedom."

Rep. Tancredo - "After 40 million dead because we have aborted them in this country, I say that that would be the greatest day in this country's history."

I can't help wondering if the kind of "good days" these men had in mind take into account acts like the one alleged here? Or like those alleged in this case? (warning: rough story in that first link)



[1] On The Issues: Abortion
May 21, 2007
[2] video of candidates' responses
May 3, 2007

"target of sexual harassment"

Here's some nice newspeak for ya.

Sex suit could be problem for Bloomberg
By SARA KUGLER, Associated Press writer
Sunday, July 29, 2007

NEW YORK - Mayor Michael Bloomberg speaks his mind and that is a big part of his cachet in anything-goes New York. But a sexual harassment lawsuit he settled in 2000 and other racy comments over the years show how his blunt style could prove a liability if he runs for president as an independent.

Before his election as mayor in 2001, Bloomberg was the target of a sexual harassment suit by a female executive who accused him of making repeated raunchy sexual comments while he was chief executive of his financial company, Bloomberg LP.

(emphases mine)

The story mentions that the details of the suit and full accusation are not available. Thus there is no way to confirm the assumptions inherent in this article. It bears mentioning that the details were not available to the story's author either, and yet she treats us to her apparent implicit assumption that the charge was unwarranted. And to the (presumably shared) conclusion that having had cause to settle a sexual harassment suit is evidence of being a person who tends to "speak his mind".

I tend to speak my mind too. But so far, no one's accused me of sexual harassment.

better than other people

Holier than thou. This is how academics see themselves and their profession.

Indeed I am generalizing, but not all generalizations are invalid. This particular one is not formed out of prejudice. This is a statement based on years of empirical evidence, gained from years of insider observation. There are some academics for whom this doesn't hold, or doesn't hold entirely, but these folks are the exceptions. And being such an exception tends to result in much head scratching (all around) if not outright discomfort. I'm not thinking so much of me here, my reaction and people's reactions to me are not so subtle. I'm thinking more of the people I've known who were driven out or nearly out of academia despite being what could be considered "successful". People like the professor from my former department who, a semester after getting tenure, ran away to Europe on "sabbatical" to never return. She just left. No notice, just gone. It might have had something to do with one of our esteemed tenured full professors having called her a nazi...

Because holier than thou academics live under the strong (and unexamined) belief that they and "people like them" are somehow not subject to the same very human traits the rest of the general population exhibit, when workplace issues like incivility, discrimination, and sexual harassment come up, community responses reflect this attitude. Whether the individual response supports or negates the attitude, the "it can't happen here" air is part of a context which is an inseparable aspect of the response.

I came back to this post to add a little something here. I'm not talking about the casual ego-centrist behavior which is sort of common across any walk of life, nor am I saying any given academic IS like this (or that any given non academic isn't). There may be other fields where this sort of behavior and attitude is as pervasive as it is in academia too.

For a nice, fresh personal example of this attitude in action, consider the following. Academics in social and life sciences often collect research using data from human subjects. Their careers and reputations depend on them publishing (you know "publish or perish") and those publications are often dependent on if not the quality then the amount of data they can collect in a given period of time. Needless to say, such pressures as well as a few notable, notorious research examples mean such data collection is overseen by review boards. These boards like all things institutional, are far from perfect in implementation. However, they serve a good purpose.

And yet there is though a disturbing trend in some departments for faculty and grad students (monkey see, monkey do) to repeatedly, publicly, and apparently unashamedly mock and deride not just the board but it's purpose. It's a petulant and deeply disturbing backlash, seemingly in response to what is seen (by the researchers) as meddling and a threat to academic freedom.

Academic freedom is certainly a legitimate concern, however there are MUCH better, more appropriate domains to fight for it in. Rather than (or possibly in addition to) taking up the legitimate threats to academic freedom, or even addressing the elements of the review board behaviors which may in fact go "too far" and have nothing to do with protecting the rights of research participants, the elements of academic culture I've seen promote an increasingly malicious attitude towards the research participants. "Ah hahah! This one girl was like crying during our experiment!" a student recently boasted to a table full of grad students. "Oh my god, are you serious?" I asked him, clearly concerned. "Well no, but she was pretty upset," he said, brushing it off. This is the same person who earlier this year claimed he was going to "make" all the students in his class participate in his experiments. (I later found out from a faculty member that he was "just joking" to get at a female grad student who had been hoping his class would be part of a larger participant pool. I was horrified and told the faculty member that her students had a fucked up sense of humor. She genuinely didn't seem to understand my reaction).

So this is a group of people where I've seen some pretty shitty behavior. It's not isolated to my department. Sexist comments, lewd unprofessional remarks in a professional setting, abusive behavior, exploitative treatment of minority grad students, preferential behavior based on personal relationships, racist slurs, and deeds and stated beliefs which skirt the line of ethical - I've seen several examples of each of these. But stop and question one of the perpetrators of such a thing (which I have) and they will find your questioning preposterous. I remember the faculty member who was shocked that I told him his behavior in a seminar was sexist. Why? Because, as he said "I've always considered myself a feminist!" Plus, everyone knows liberal faculty members can't be sexist. They can say these things and act this way with impunity because apparently those social codes, institutional rules, and laws apply to someone else.

For some disturbing reading and insight into the sort of thing I'm talking about, go here. It's the Chronicle of Higher Education forum, a thread started by an untenured junior faculty member asking for advice on how to respond to the inappropriate and unprofessional behavior a senior faculty member has directed at her. Some of the assertions made by folks who seem to be more than a little ignorant about sexual harassment law and specific institutional policies are perhaps shocking if you don't know academics - i.e., if you don't know that they are so smart and know so much they can reason out what is and isn't true, what is an isn't valid, and what is and isn't a policy even without ever having read up on it. The information and knowledge about any topic simply seeps into them by their choosing to focus their massive intellect on the issue from the comfort of various armchairs and loungers.

My god, do I sound bitter?
Jaded?
Jaundiced?

How about informed, aware, and disgusted? My preference is for that last description because it more accurately avoids the connotation that I have no valid claim to this set of thoughts and feelings on the matter. I've done my research. I've made my conclusions. I am open to adjusting them should new evidence come to light - and I very much want new evidence to come to light because at heart I am a polly-anna and want to believe that people will be as excellent as they can be. In the meantime, I watch, listen, and read.

tax free shopping

Woohoo. CT is having it's annual tax free shopping days in about a month. Which is good because thanks to the progesterone and the elavil, I've put back on some weight. Enough that the skinny clothes I've accumulated over the last two years either don't fit or don't fit well anymore. I hate shopping, but I hate not having anything to wear that is comfortable and doesn't make me look like I'm busting out all over. (I'm not happy about the extra cost to the wardrobe, but I am definitely looking forward to not freezing my ass off this winter if I can keep the weight on.)

While I'm on the topic of clothing, why the hell are all the summer pants fucking capris? It's gotten as bad as the open toe shoe thing. I dare you to find summer shoes (shoes, not sneakers or boots) that don't show at least some toe. Similarly, if you don't want jeans or dress pants, you're stuck with capris. I remember them the last time around. At that point, I was about 14 and capris were cute. Now that I'm 35, I'm not really in the mood for "cute" all the time. I want pants dammit.

ring my bell

My fella just upgraded his cell phone. With it came the ability to download your own ring tones. For the last day or so, he's been fascinated by this feature, searching out how to make your own tones. Since we have tons of recording and editing software, the capture part was not hard.

So I now have Monty Python and Mel Brooks clips on my phone. Excellent. I just need to get the "I am a pizza song" on my sister's phone and we'll be all set....

omg, "je suis une pizza"! I hadn't heard the full pizza song before - complete with French lyrics. Up to now, I thought it was unique to The Money Pit.

not ok

At my apartment building, there are two parking spaces per unit. Unfortunately my two are next to the parking spaces belonging to guy who lives across the hall. This is unfortunate because the guy who lives across the hall is an idiot. Let's call him Bumble.

Earlier this afternoon, I had been coding data at home. From just outside my open window came the sound of a horn being leaned on. I looked out to see activity in Bumble's parking spaces. Two cars with hoods up, wires running between them. And each sitting in his own car was Bumble and some guy, buddy of Bumble. As the horn continued to blare, Bumble and buddy got out of the cars and stood near the front ends, both looking perplexed and a little embarrassed.

"How long do you think it'll take him to figure out he can stop it by disconnecting the horn?" I asked A____. We debated, given the degree of intelligence and capacity for creative, abstract thought Bumble has shown in the past, we predicted the horn might continue to go off for hours.

Since the "getting some research work done this afternoon" plan was shot until Bumble managed to kill the horn, A____ and I decided to run some errands, get iced coffees, go for a walk around the park downtown. We were out for a few hours. When we got home, the horn was silent. Bumble's car was still sitting there, unmoved, hood open and waiting for more idiocy. Bumble's other parking space was empty. Buddy of Bumble had been traded out for an old geezer with a capped pickup. The pickup's hood was open and now the pickup was wired to the Bumble-mobile. I didn't think to ponder what this meant at the time since I was mostly annoyed about finding a pickup in my parking space.

(Now that I think of it though, what was Bumble trying to accomplish? Did he think that the buddy-wagon wasn't the right TYPE for the Bumble-mobile? Was the electricity coming out of Geezer's car somehow more compatible, or higher grade or something?)

I came into the apartment building looking for Bumble.
"Oh yeah, they parked in your spot," he said in a low and strangely conspiratorial voice. Drawn out vowels, falsely high pitch with falling phrasal tones. It's hard to describe the tone - if you can't get it from this I suspect you'd just have to hear it to understand. It's a tone I associate with teenage girls who are trying to appear (sincerely or not) contrite to one another. I've noticed Bumble uses this voice a lot when he's being a douchebag.

However, I tend to listen to WHAT people say nearly as closely as how they say it.
In response to my repeatedly saying various versions of "I need you to not park in my space/tell your guests not to park in my space" he said:
"I didn't think you'd be home so soon."
"I wasn't outside when they parked."
"They aren't my 'friends'" (this in reply to my having said "Look, I just want you to be sure to tell your friends it's not ok to park in my spot in the future.")
"They're not, like, kids." (said after I restated above, this time amending 'friends' to 'associates')
"I didn't know they parked there."

And finally, "It won't happen again."

He could have saved me the irritation of having to insist on the point by just going straight to "It won't happen again." I didn't even need an apology. Just an assurance that he understood my parking space is not his spill over space. Instead, he kept up with his strangely whiney blather. The overdone reaction-tone but with a pile of nonstop and sometimes contradictory excuses are his hallmark response in this kind of situation. Did I mention the clicking noises? Those "tsk" type sounds. It's very primatey. Overall, the entire effect is one of utter insincerity when you match up the apparently conciliatory purpose this extra-lexical information conveys with the communicative intent provided by the words themselves.

When I encounter this sort of - oh what to call it, disembled argument? Obfuscated negation? - I find myself quite irritated. Practically speaking, it is a discourse practice which seems meant to elicit an acquiescence. Which I refuse to give. I refuse to respond with a femmy "Oh it's OK!" because I think this is ultimately something which can (and does) get interpreted as "Oh go ahead and ignore my boundaries!"

It is not ok. It's ok that someone made a mistake. Sure. But it's not ok for someone to park in my space.

Interactions like this are why some people consider me a mega-huge bitch. I suppose I could work on being less aggro in tone myself. I don't know. Should I make the extra effort of removing the sincere emotion from my voice when I am dealing with a person who is heaping on what is a totally duplicitous affect in an attempt to sugar coat the line of crap they are feeding me?

Connecticut's for...

fucking, it seems. At least so say Jesus H Christ and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (think sort of a musical Upright Citizen's Brigade).

You can hear a sample of "Connecticut's for Fucking" here.