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November 30, 2005
It's 10 pm: Do You Know Where Your FSH Levels Are?
The new Samsung E530 pink mobile phone is a girl's best friend, equipped with calorie counter, megapixel camera, shopping list . . . oh and it even tells the ladies when they're ovulating!
Ladies, did you hear? Samsung has designed a phone-thingie just for us gals! I know, I know-- that press release is sooo long-- but you can look here to see some hott pix of the phone.
I tell you this, girlfriends, even at the risk of your snatching the last one from my hands with a catfight in the cell phone store ensuing, because I truly care you. Just like Samsung! Samsung really cares about us. That's why "the opening angle and all other small things were created for women and the ergonomics is interesting to them, naturally. . . the device lies to their checks well and the keypad gladdens even long-nailed ones." It's created just for us! And it's pink!
But the best part is the "Woman's Life" applications. My favorite, Fragrence Type, "is unique and was not applied in any phone before." Both those things! Wow! Fragrence Type gives you a mini-questionnaire to fill out and when you're done, "you get a small piece of text with a picture describing the most appropriate smell for you." Amazing! And, "according to the girls, that used the application, it helps choosing the smell correctly in 70 percent of cases." Wow, that sure is one smart little phone!
Also in "Woman's Life" is a Calorie Counter that not only, well, counts calories, but also tells you your height/ weight ratio and BMI. You can check "Your Fatness" (in percentage) every single day! Or more!!!! Plus, you can make up to five seperate shopping lists at one time and check your "Pink Schedule" to see when (ahem) your "Aunt Flo" is due to pay a visit. Very convenient! You can also "calculate biorhythms for a day or a month. . . and send it as a usual SMS. The function is very useful for friend's parties, attracts attention." I'll just bet!
Oh, and did I mention it's PINK?!!
I used to think technology was, you know, "boy stuff," but the Samsung E530 is made just for girls like me. I feel so empowered! And PINK! PINK POWER! ROCK! Thanks again, Samsung, for another amazing example of girl technology.
Posted by hissycat at 08:30 PM | Comments (32)
The Absolute Gayest Thing I Have Ever Seen
This is it.
Posted by hissycat at 04:07 AM | Comments (15)
November 29, 2005
I Want One
Can we please bonsai this panda to make it adorable and apartment-seized forever?
Posted by hissycat at 08:11 PM | Comments (12)
For Weeks Now
I could not sleep at all last night. I was so anxious and punchy, it was painful to keep trying, so at 6:37 am, stir-crazy and too jittery to sit still and read, I decided to go for a walk. It was raining, and I had my eyes to the pavement to aid the brim of my hat in keeping water off my glasses and out of my eyes. On 16th and Dolores, just outside the Mission Dolores church, this was stenciled in white paint twice on the pavement. It is hard to make out in the crappy cell phone picture, but the words read:
EVERY TIME
THE PHONE
RINGS I HOPE
IT IS HER . . . .
FOR WEEKS
NOW
In both places, the letters had been covered over with grayish red spray paint in what I assume was a failed effort to make them blend with the pavement. It was pretty, seeing that there, on the pavement, outside the church, at an empty early hour with sky lightening into day, and the night rain quieting into a warm hush of fog.
Posted by hissycat at 08:12 AM | Comments (0)
November 28, 2005
That's Gotta Sting
From the Observer:
Our interview with American literary sensation Benjamin Kunkel (Review, last week) was accompanied by a panel of quotes from US reviews, supplied by his publisher. One, from Entertainment Weekly, read: 'Kunkel has succeeded in crafting a voice of singular originality' and omitted the next line ' - one you want to punch in the mouth.'
Ha ha ha ha ha!
Happy birthday, Tao Lin!
(via Bookslut)
Posted by hissycat at 08:40 PM | Comments (13)
November 27, 2005
Finally, I'm A Missed Connection
I knew sooner or later, someone would post on craigslist about about a missed connection with me.
Posted by hissycat at 04:53 PM | Comments (15)
Something I Don't Understand
The Vatican's decision to ban gay men from the clergy puzzles me because it seems to undermine the Catholic Church's own stance on homosexuality.
According to the Catholic Church, engaging in a homosexual act is commiting a sin. If homosexuality is a sin, then the idea that anyone could have a 'sexual orientation or identity' that is divorced from specific thoughts and acts doesn't make sense. If sodomy is an immoral act, then a sodomite, like any other kind of sinner, is capable of salvation if he chooses to repent. In order for homosexuality to be a sin, there has to be an element of moral choice involved.
If homosexuality is a sin, it can be renounced . If homosexuality can't be renounced-- if it is so integral to the core of who someone is that one can still be a homosexual even if he does not engage in homosexual acts nor entertain homosexual lust-- than it can't be a sin, seems to me.
Men who choose priesthood vow to be be celibate and resist or overcome lust of every kind. If homosexuality is a sin people commit actively, then the notion of 'gay priests' does not makes sense. It seems, then, that a ban on 'gay priests,' which assumes that there can be such a thing as a 'gay priest,' would undermine the Church's belief that homosexuality is a sin.
Is there something I'm missing?
Posted by hissycat at 03:49 PM | Comments (4)
November 26, 2005
Paperback Of The Week
Posted by hissycat at 10:52 PM | Comments (5)
November 25, 2005
A Well-Spent Thanksgiving
Zuzka came by with coffee yesterday morning around 9:30 to wake me and take me back to her apartment for turkey-making, which, given the hellish night I'd just had (two Xanax and still no sleep), I was very grateful for.
I was a little Bree Van De Campy yesterday, but I had to keep busy-- keep chopping, keep mashing, keep basting, keep checking-- in order to keep my head above water. I took another Xanax and let Desperate Housewives play in the background while I scurried around the kitchen. When Alex woke up, around noon, drinking began. It went on until 4am, when Alex, Zuzka, and I finally went to bed.
It was a successful Thanksgiving, I think. The turkey turned out well, we ate like pigs, and Meg brought over two delicious homemade pies and Tess-- the only person I know who has Cuisinart-type appliances in her kitchen-- provided the whipped cream. We ate and drank ourselves into diabetic comas and passed out in front of more Desperate Housewives. Once, I had to excuse myself to go into the pantry by myself and feel sad for a while, but later I drank more and Zuzka and Alex started making me laugh, and I had a very fun night.
I don't feel competatent right now. I'll try to write something better later.
Posted by hissycat at 07:22 PM | Comments (8)
November 24, 2005
Carniverous
All that Xanax-- I mean, tryptophan-- sure has made me sleepy. My fingers don't want to type. Here are some photos instead.
Yeah, I cooked that turkey. Most successful thing I've done in months.
Posted by hissycat at 10:29 PM | Comments (10)
November 23, 2005
Just When I Think Things Can't Possibly Get Any Worse, They Do
I'm at fault for the accident, and I'm going to lose my car. I just can't afford to keep it anymore. Anyway, it might be totalled. I'll find out next week. My mother is giving me hell and has said she will not help me financially in any way in the future. I had an awful conversation with her on the phone today. My good cheer is gone. I'm having sadness relapse in major ways.
I want to die. I'd kill myself if it weren't Thanksgiving and so totally cliche.
Posted by hissycat at 09:49 PM | Comments (4)
New Yorker, New Yorker
Charming the way 79% of New Yorker articles are written by men, isn't it?
Posted by hissycat at 03:05 AM | Comments (2)
November 22, 2005
"Stuffing"
from The Joy of Cooking, p. 482:
The terms stuffing and dressing are used interchangeably despite the occaisional argument that anything cooked in the bird is stuffing and anything baked seperately must be called dressing. Stuffing is actually the original name, and the term dressing came from Victorian England when stuffing was thought to be a bit unseemly.
Posted by hissycat at 06:39 PM | Comments (5)
November 21, 2005
Toilet Plunging
My toilet clogged this weekend, as it is prone to do. Plunge as I might, it would not unclogg, and for two minutes, I really wished I had a boyfriend again.
Did you catch that? Two minutes. That was it. And then I went out and bought some Liquid Plumber and unclogged it myself and felt competant and proud.
The weeks after Brett dumped me were so gloomy and dangerous; I felt I couldn't get out of bed without cutting myself on some memory. I'd drift into the kitchen for a Diet Coke and suddenly see Brett there scrubbing the new apartment, dusty and furniture-free, on the weekend after I'd signed the lease. The cat would meow and I'd hear the howls she made the whole ride home on the evening Brett and I brought her home. The entire oevre of Stephen Merrit was off-limits for listening because there wasn't a song I hadn't, at one time, heard Brett hum or sing.
In the last two weeks, though, I have been feeling worlds better-- positively cheerful, at times. I am progressing in both Leaps and Bounds. I'm not calling him anymore. I have nothing to say to him. I can bop along to Neutral Milk Hotel again and not let myself get pulled back to the summer we exchanged love letters and favorite songs from New York and Berlin.
What has changed? I have discovered the key to good cheer, and it is Hate. You see, I have moved past the stage of Grief and Pining and onto the stage of Anger and Hate. This Hate has grown from the tiniest pinprick of light to a glorious flame. Like a miracle, a fire that devours up the wet leaves and rotted wood. It burns so cleanly and makes the world sharper and clearer. It makes me feel better.
So I guard it against any kindness that could dampen it; I keep it to myself and I nurture it. It, in turn, rips through vestigial longing, repels tender memories, and gets me through the day. Whistling, even.
Posted by hissycat at 03:14 PM | Comments (5)
I'm Cooking A Turkey This Year
It's the first time I'll be having Thanksgiving away from home. Well, there was that one Thanksgiving I spent in the fetal position on the rank carpeted floor of my dorm room trying to figure out if it was possible to kill myself with actually having to, like, get up.
But this is the first time I'm playing hostess-- not at my apartment, of course; it'll be at a friend's much larger one. I'm pretty excited. I've never cooked a bird before, but how hard can it possibly be?
Posted by hissycat at 01:56 PM | Comments (35)
November 20, 2005
Neologisms
urbanal | 'er'be'nål |
adj.
so lacking in originality as to be obvious and boring in the context, geography, or characteristic of a city: yet another urbanal 'street art' show in a small gallery space.
DERIVATIVES
urbanality noun (pl. -ties)
urbanally adverb
ORIGIN some bar in the Lower Haight on a Saturday night, early 21st cent. (first used by famed drunkards Joanna and Katie to describe the recurring and predictable dilemma of not being able to discern sexual orientation from the dress or manners of the 'hipsters' at certain 'cool' bars, all too often leading to predictably awkward scenarios): from English, from the combination of urban and banal; ultimately of Alcoholic origin and containing sniggering associations with urbane.
procrasturbate | pre'kraste'er'båt |
verb [intrans.]
stimulate one's own genitals in order to delay or postpone action; put off doing something by looking at pornography and/ or playing with one's own genitals: I wasted half the day procrasturbating when I should have been finishing up those book reviews.
DERIVATIVES
procrasturbation noun
procrasturbator noun
procrasturbatory adjective
ORIGIN Lindsay's dorm room, early 21st century.: from English masturbate in combination with procrastinate; ultimately of Marijuana and Red Bull-addled origin.
Posted by hissycat at 06:17 PM | Comments (8597)
November 19, 2005
Paperback Of The Week
Posted by hissycat at 05:00 PM | Comments (8)
November 18, 2005
Repro Depot
Nerve's reproductive rights issue is out. Jill at Feministe gives a comprehensive round-up of the juicier pieces and provides a meaty, insightful critique. She does an especially good job dealing with this article about a "pro-choice" woman who thinks second-term abortion is a "sin" and feels "revulsion" for women have second-term abotions. Jill articulated my reaction to the piece more eloquently than I could have done. Whereas I probably would have written "the author is a self-righteous ninny who uses one hand to pat herself on the back for having gone to pro-choice rallies while using the other hand to shake a finger at women who actually have abortions," Jill puts it thusly:
Personal, private discomfort is one thing. Talking about it is fine. But that isn't what she's talking about here -- what she's actually saying is, "I do not trust you to be your own moral decision-maker. I believe that my moral misgivings are more valuable and valid than the decisions you make about what goes on in your own body. I believe there is a right way and a wrong way to have an abortion, and you're doing it the wrong way."
That's why you should read Jill. Also highly recommended is BitchPhd's (old) post about the misogyny of the pro-choice with stipulations position.
The other article that caught my attention-- and Jill's, too-- was Baumgardarner's article about the stigma of second or third (or forth or fifth or sixth) abortions amongst the pro-choice set.
There were a couple of moments in Baumgardner's article where I had to go 'huh?' What the hell is a "mentsrual extraction," for instance? And then there's this:
Pauline Bart . . . suggested at a screening of "Speak Out" that younger women learn to do abortions themselves just as the collective of women known as "Jane" did pre-Roe v. Wade. "It's just like taking a melon-baller and scooping out a melon," she said, referring to performing an abortion in ones' own apartment. I nodded earnestly but thought, "No, it isn't." Or, at least, it isn't to me. I don't doubt that some women experience abortion as devoid of angst as Pauline Bart depicts, and for them each abortion is created equal.
Does Baumgardner harbor reservations about D.I.Y. uterus mellon-balling because of abortion angst? That seems to be what she is suggesting, but that is so puzzling that I can't even make sense of it. D.I.Y. abortions = not good. I agree with her there. But their not-goodness has nothing to do with the emotional weight of having an abortion. I don't have any moral angst about having my tonsils removed, but I'm not about to grab pliers and some barbeque tongs to pull 'em out because removing tonsils, like removing the products of conception, is a medical procedure with a certain amount of risk involved and it would fucking stupid to try to do on my own. First-term abortions are, as far as invasive medical procedures go, straightforward and not very risky. But it ain't mellon-balling. Without sonograph equipment, products of coneption (especially if it is very early in the pregnancy) can be left behind. Scraping the uterus can leave scarring if done incorrectly and complicate a woman's future fertility. Hemorraghing can happen. That's why it is imperative that abortion be legal and available in safe situations, hospitals or clinics, by medical professionals who know what they are doing and are prepared to handle all possibilities. I understand that in certain situations people have to do the best they can-- whether that means inducing abortion at home because abortion is illegal or treating cancer with folk remedies and prayer because medical treatment is unavailable or unaffordable or whatever. But that's not what we should be aiming for.
Anyway, something in Baumgardner's article did strike a nerve. I mentioned once on this blog, just in passing, while yammering on about my health-insurance woes, that I had an abortion. Yes, I had an abortion. About two months ago, I was out for drinks with then-boyfriend Brett and a bunch of our friends. The topic of med school came up-- one of the friends is thinking of applying-- and I guess we were talking about rotations, and Brett mentioned that his sister, a med student, said that the rotation she liked the least was her gynecology rotation, when she worked in an abortion clinic, and that she found that experience upsetting. Something about him saying this kind of burned my fur. What was his point? That abortions are sad and upsetting? I bit my tongue at the time-- after all, if that's what she said, that's what she said, there's nothing to argue with there-- but later asked Brett what he meant by that and why his sister found it so upsetting. Part of it had to do with her personal 'ick' factor, fine. But part of it was that she found it upsetting that a lot of the women who were there had already had multiple abortions. "Why is that upsetting?" I asked. I don't remember what his answer was. I do remember that it ticked me off. Part of it had to do with women who didn't use birth control and who were irresponsible-- more or less the same old 'abortion as birth control' panic as usual.
I pointed out that, as I had already had an abortion, if I ever got pregnant again, I would be one of those women who'd had more than one abortion. "No, not like you," he said, "you're resposible. You're on the pill. I don't mean women like you at all." Of course, I was responsible and on the pill when I got pregnant (by him) and had abortion numero uno. I don't remember how the argument ended, but I went to sleep feeling insulted as well as pissed. Pissed because who was he to judge the women whose circumstances he did not know, insulted because I felt at that moment that I was one of them-- one of those women.
I think Brett had a harder time with the abortion, in some ways, than I did. While he did not have to deal with the physical discomforts of pregnancy and abortion, he had a kind of guilt about it that I never did. Both my parents are doctors and my aunt is a doctor who performs abortions. The attitude on sexual matters in my home was a practical, straightforward realism. People who have sex sometimes get pregnant. Even people who use contraception get pregnant. The pill has a small failure rate even with perfect use. I just happened to get (un)lucky.
Brett, though, felt bad, like we'd done something wrong. Since I was on the pill, we didn't use condoms, and he felt responsible for getting me knocked up. A few weeks after the abortion, when we started having sex again, we used condoms because I'd changed pills and was adviced by the doctor to use a secondary method for a few weeks while my hormones settled down. When those weeks were up, I wanted to stop using condoms, but Brett was wary. What, he asked, if in another eight or nine or ten months you get pregnant again, is that just how it is going to be, every so often you get pregnant and have an abortion?
Well, the short answer is yes. I'm not with Brett anymore, but I'm twenty-two years old, I plan on having sex and hope I have lots of it. I'm also, as it turns out, ridiculoulsly fertile. The odds are that before my eggs are up, I will get pregnant again. I don't plan on it, don't look forward to it, and certainly don't want it to happen. Realistically, though, it will, and if and when I do, I will have another abortion. Which is why I still feel like I'm one of those women.
Posted by hissycat at 07:36 PM | Comments (6)
November 17, 2005
All Hail Evolution
Behold: The Vagina!
& coming soon: abortion jokes and a brief history of my uterus
Posted by hissycat at 09:45 PM | Comments (3)
November 16, 2005
Not Acceptable
I should be working at La Onda, not this frat turd who's at the counter now. Damn, I should have applied. I didn't, only because last week, when the 'Help Wanted' sign was up I happened to be in the pits of depression and the same stinking clothes for seven days straight, which made me self-conscious and incapable of action. Maria must have been desperate to hire this blondie. I mean, I hope that was it. Because when she's here the music is fantastic: Buena Vista Social Club, the Clash, Cat Power, Mazzy Star, Neutral Milk Hotel, Bob Dylan (but not too much), Pavement, good things, you get the point. And what is playing now? The radio. John Couger Melloncamp, Kenny Rollins, Neil Diamond, and disco shit. And every ten minutes: commercials. For acne cream.
Not acceptable. Plus, I'm in a moral dilemma now. I feel I have an obligation to tell Maria about this shitty-ass music, as it's, like, hipster-repellant, and hipsters are, after all, her main customer base. On the other hand, so not my place to say anything. We're chummy, Maria and I. But it's not my store. I don't even work here. I just buy a lot of coffee and about 40% of my meals, pocketbook permitting.
Oh dear god. "Mr. Bojangles" is playing. Fuck the carrot cake. I am outta here.
Posted by hissycat at 08:40 PM | Comments (1)
Must Be The Pills
At two in the morning I weathered a small but surprizzing blizzard of domesticity. I made creme anglaise. Out of nowhere! I was compelled by this totally uncalled for urge to make pudding. . . or custard. . . or charlotte russe. Of course, I did not have the necessary ingredients. I made the "creme" using the rice milk I dug out of the back of the cupboard. The egg and sugar mixture, when added to the hot rice milk, did not behave. The stuff smelled ok, but looked like a pot full of curdled vomit. It may even have tasted ok, but I couldn't tell you, as I don't eat things that look like curdled vomit.
The domestic urge was predictably brief. I did not clean up. The stuff is still on the stove, looking, now, like curdled vomit that was left out and congealed.
I wrote a story about a chef who cooks pudding in lieu of leaving her husband. I don't know if this happens to anyone else, other writers maybe, or if it's just my special brand of insanity, but sometimes I'll be doing some random thing-- cooking creme anglaise in the middle of the night, for example-- and it will occur to me that I am acting like one of my characters. Not that I'm leaving (or not leaving) my husband. Not that I have a husband. But the fictitous personage in question compulsively cooks yolky foods for the numb and comfort of stirring something and the milky smell. She even makes creme anglaise specifically, in the very first paragraph of the story. I creep myself out. I must be out of my skull to think of things like this.
But, aside from the back pain, which I think is getting worse, I felt some amount of better today. Like my heart pain was finally abating some. I picked up that package I've been meaning to pick up forever, then walked over to the Embarcadero and sat around looking at water and bridges and listening to Martha Wainwright (hitting repeat on "Bloody Motherfucking Asshole" more than once) and smoking. It was the golden hour, with sunlight that could break your heart. Smog obscured everything on the other side of the Bay Bridge, like someone had spilled water on a page and blurred out all the lines.
I walked home, and when I got in the gate there was mail-- the good kind; not bills!-- waiting for me. The new New Yorker had arrived, and it contains a wonderful poem I love ("Impersonater of Blank Walls" by Charles Simic). And even better, I recieved a packet containing two new books for me to review. And if there's anything I like more than books, it's free books.
And my new friend (!) invited me to a cool art cool thing on Saturday, so there's that to look forward to. That and the Peckinpah film fest in Berkeley.
New reasons to live. Which I deperately needed, as I've watched all the Desperate Housewives I've been able to download.
P.S. I haven't been able to download many. If anyone has any Desperate Housewives and would be so kind as to share, I'd be eternally grateful. I'd bake you cookies and mail them to you and everything. (Pudding doesn't ship well.) Seriously. I'm getting fiendish and I need another hit.
Posted by hissycat at 07:39 PM | Comments (7)
So Much Fun
I meant to go to the post office this morning to pick up a package but was waylaid by a Whole Foods. My groceries were sufficiently heavy to be immedeately brought home, meaning I failed at my original mission. However, I had the brilliant idea to apply for a job at Whole Foods. I love produce! And stuff. I'm kind of serious. What can I say, I have a weakness for yuppy grocery stores.
It doesn't seem that there are any appropriate positions open at the time (boy, would I love to handle meat and do butchery things), but I filled out the online application anyway. The application is the funnest thing ever. With seventy pages of personality test-like questions to respond to on the fly (don't think too hard, says the instructions, answer quickly), it's a lot like an online personality test or one of those survey thingies that Psych. students bribe housemates with donuts to fill out. Those things were such fantastic procrastination activities. The Whole Foods application is a lot like that. Only without the donuts.
Posted by hissycat at 02:13 PM | Comments (6)
Oh, See!
Seems I'm not the only one that was ticked off when Teresa didn't abort on the O.C.
Posted by hissycat at 12:10 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
November 15, 2005
Crazy!
It must be a sign that my life is returning to normal: I'm sitting in La Onda being annoyed/ horrified by the conversations going on around me.
Man: Sugar is one of the most intense addictions. He was saying that they noticed that in the community and it actually takes two full weeks of, like, intense sprirtual work to get past that. . . sugar. . . addiction.
Woman: I noticed. I think it's true. And I'm not addicted to anything else. But sugar is such a social addiction. That makes it really hard.
For many reasons, I would like to believe that they were speaking of cocaine. Judging by their loose-fitting linen pants, however, I do not think that they were.
Posted by hissycat at 05:16 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
November 14, 2005
Not Today, Not Yet
I hurt all over. I woke up sore all over-- my neck, my shoulders, back, thighs, knees, arms, hips feel tender and cramped. Today I woke up, ate some Valium, fell back asleep and stayed there till four. I spent the afternoon in bed watching My So-Called Life and smoking.
This is no good. While I am generally of the belief that one cannot milk too much bed rest and self-indulgence from an auto accident, after a month of gainless unemployment, this was supposed to be the week when I snapped back into action: find a job (or a bartending course), get out of bed before noon, do, I don't know, things.
Posted by hissycat at 09:36 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
November 13, 2005
A Smashing Conclusion To The Best Month Ever
My left knee is swollen and tender, and I can feel where on my face I'm due for some bruising, but mostly, I'm ok.
I don't remember what I was doing or thinking before the impact. After colliding with the car ahead of me, my car tipped onto its left side and jumped three lanes left before the wheels on the right side returned to the ground and I could brake it. I came to a stop in the left shoulder. It took me a few minutes to understand what had happened. My glasses were not on my face and I remember thinking how stupid of me to drive without my glasses before I remembered that I had been wearing my glasses. They had flown off my face when the car crashed. I got out of the car to look at the other car. The other car (actually, there seemed to be two, though I don't know how the burgandy one was involved exactly) was on the right side of the highway, about 200 yards behind me. My car was smashed in on the passenger side in the front. No one was hurt, as far as I could tell, though, being on opposite sides of the highway, there was no way I and the other people could talk. I called Zuzka and Caroline and burst into tears.
Then the highway patrol came and the tow truck came and they towed my car and collected my information and the officer drove me to the Bart station and I went home.
I promised a more excited blog post today, but I've spent the rest of the day in bed, nursing myself with cigarettes and Desperate Housewives. I feel shaky and damaged and quiet. I'll write more tomorrow.
Posted by hissycat at 07:18 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
November 12, 2005
Update: Mother Still Here
No time to write, so instead I leave you with a paperback of the week (that's the second in two days! Oboy!):
Also, this:
And promises of a story tomorrow.
Posted by hissycat at 11:36 AM | Comments (8189) | TrackBack
November 11, 2005
Even Though I'm Terrified Of Clowns
For the record, I really, really, really want the Moscow Cat Circus to come to San Francisco.
Posted by hissycat at 09:08 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Too Pooped To Post
So I leave you with this little present instead. . .
Posted by hissycat at 08:56 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
November 10, 2005
Scratch Off My Fork With A Face
My mother is coming for a visit tomorrow. She writes in an email, "me and my aerobed will be arriving at 10:10 in the morning!"
Fantastic.
This little spur-of-the-moment jaunt is, I assume, an attempt to 'check up' on me, since I am obviously failing at life (it's true) and, moreover, not flying home for Thanksgiving (I had been meaning to, but I waited too long and the tickets to New York are now way too expensive). While she is largely correct in her suspicions that I am miserably unhappy and quite possibly a danger to myself, I can't think of anything less helpful to me than a visit from now.
Oh, and, as you may have inferred, she intends to stay in my apartment. My teeny, tiny, filthy, reeks-of-cigarette-smoke studio apartement.
Please just scratch my face off with a fork. I don't want to live.
Posted by hissycat at 08:34 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
November 09, 2005
At Least This
Prop. 73, which would have mandated that doctors notify the parents of a minor seeking an abortion 48 hours before performing the procedure was (narrowly) rejected.
Posted by hissycat at 08:32 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
November 08, 2005
It's Rainy And Gray In San Francisco Today
Posted by hissycat at 05:00 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Mo' MoDo, Mo' Problems
Or, Dowdiana, Part Two, Wherein I Move Beyond My Critique of the Critiques of the Article and Offer My Own Critique of the Article
Actually, this is less of a critique with a particular point than a more general reading or interpretation of the article with special attention to places where my interpretation diverges significanty from those of other feminist bloggers.
A lot of bloggers complained that Maureen was blaming feminism for the bad deeds of the patriarchy, and that she was using the feminist movement as a catch-all scape-goat.
Dowd starts off with a reminiscence about her college years, remembering, "I didn't fit in with the brazen new world of hard-charging feminists. I was more of a fun-loving (if chaste) type who would decades later come to life in Sarah Jessica Parker's Carrie Bradshaw. I hated the grubby, unisex jeans and no-makeup look and drugs that zoned you out, and I couldn't understand the appeal of dances that didn't involve touching your partner. " Ann Bartow at Our Word takes particular offense at this passage, taking it to be insulting. I don't find it insulting. Personally, I thought it was kind of funny, in the same way that I find it funny when Woody Allen or Phillip Roth exaggerate cultural stereotypes with a knowing wink at the reader. Maybe this is the New Yorker in me. I recognize the wink. Maybe Dowd's stroke wasn't PC or feminist, but it sure made me chuckle, as did the bit about how she longed to "live the life of a screwball heroine like Katharine Hepburn, wearing a gold lamé gown cut on the bias, cavorting with Cary Grant, strolling along Fifth Avenue with my pet leopard." Hey, I've entertained those fantasies, too. How could anyone who's seen Bringing Up Baby not?
I realize that it's a fools errand to explain a joke to convince someone uncharmed to find it funny, so I'll give it a rest. I think the more important and much broader reason I give Dowd a pass on the feminist-fashion-is-funny jokes has to do with the overall tone of the article, which is one of ambivalent but nagging regret. Note that Dowd is not saying 'I don't fit in with feminists because they dress funny and I'm too dashing and glam.' Rather, Dowd is recounting the particular way in which she, as a younger woman, imagined herself in relation to feminits and feminism. The image of herself she had was one colored by the grande dames and femme fatales of old films, and however deluded her imagination might have been on that score (and she admits it was deluded; her momma told her so), that was how she saw herself then. How many of us really had realistic notions of ourselves when we were eighteen? Well, I didn't.
Importantly, I think Dowd's ambivalence towards feminism is one that many, many women feel. Dowd, whatever stance she took on issues of women's equality to men, didn't feel she fit with feminists, or at least not with the people she imagined feminists were. I think a lot of women have that experience of feeling apart from or "not like" feminists. We see it in the whole "I'm not a feminist, but--" phenomena; a large number of women feel that, though they are pro-choice, desperately want health care, are pissed off that they get passed over for promotions as their male colleagues advance, cringe when their boyfriends make some asshole, sexist joke, etc. don't feel that they fit with-- or don't want to fit with-- their image of who feminists are.
It's not surprising that someone growing up in mainstream America would be put-off by feminism or that the kind of women she thinks are the feminists are hairy, media-whory, hysterical harpies. If you live way out yonder where Bust is not stacked on the magazine shelves and your parents keep the radio tuned to a Fox station you'd get the impression that feminists are a rather unappealing bunch. Even if our hypothetical hickette doesn't dislike/ fear/ feel threatened by hairy armpits, she might logically believe that since she happens to shave her own pits, she's just not part of the club.
Now, you and I know that's a bunch of hooey and that for every feminist who rocks an au naturel look there is a feminist who shaves and wears make-up, and that for every feminist who is a short-haird single lesbian living a life of delicious hedonism in San Francisco there is a feminist who is a wife and mother sporting a sensible shoulder-length 'do in Midwestern Suburbia. But if your ideas about feminists and feminism come from the mass media or the village elders in a Baptist hamlet, you'd have no idea. Combine that with the pressures girls and women get from all sides to be attractive, to attend to their looks, to evaluate themselves in terms of how boys see them and to form a self-image that is largely about how closely one conforms to a narrowly-defined beauty, and well, no wonder a lass would hesitate to call herself a feminist.
Where this fits in with Dowd is that I think it is this kind of extremely common experience of ambivalence that she is tapping when she writes, " I didn't fit in with the brazen new world of hard-charging feminists," and then follows up with regret that she "took the idealism and passion of the 60's for granted, simply assuming we were sailing toward perfect equality with men, a utopian world at home and at work. I didn't listen to [my mother] when she cautioned me about the chimera of equality." To the extent that this is an essay about Dowd's relationship with feminism-- the concept, the movement, the wardrobe, whatever-- it is not about how feminism has let her down but about her regret about not taking feminism (and her mother's warnings) seriously. If we pull out the core story Dowd uses to structure her observations, arguments and broader points, it is the story of her transformation from a naive young woman who, caught up in dreams of personal glamour, stayed aloof from feminism, assuming her burlier sisters could take care of things without her, to a more mature woman who, faced with a troublingly sexist and increasingly reactionary culture, questions her old view of feminism and comes to see that view as misguided and naive. She was wrong, she says, we do need feminism.
It is the personal transformation that I find most compelling in the piece (that, and I am charmed by her wry humor and predilection for Old Hollywood glamour and Howard Hawkes movies, which I happen to share) and that I think is probably of most value. In a way, I think the audience best served by this piece is not people like me who are already self-identified feminists, people who already read and think and write about feminism and feminist issues. It would be my guess that this article is most relevant to women who, like Dowd, are very ambivalent about feminism. For anyone's who's read Backlash, there is nothing new or surprising about the arguments she puts forth. But when I think of women like my mother, or like the sorority girl in an English seminar who was clearly and vocally bothered by the limited, rather sexist interpretations of the TA but who blushed and looked genuinely shocked when someone accused her of being feminist, I think, you know, maybe an article by a very femmey woman, who is very sexy-looking and has pretty, shiny red hair and wears make-up; who admits to familiar feelings like ambivalence, or wanting to be attractive and who still comes to the conclusion that feminism is in need now more than ever-- maybe that kind of article does have a value.
I'm tempted to shut my trap now, and leave at that, but there are a couple more, whaddayacallem, interpretive issues to address. At this point I'm going to break down by critique by the section headings Dowd uses in her own article for the sake of clarity and specificty, as well as for expediency (as I said, I find her "arguments" much less compelling than her narrative and see them as basically a milder, more class-specific and less clear version of Susan Faludi's arguments in Backlash).
Here we go. Whee!
Courtship
Dowd shows anecdotelly how certain restrictive, sexist notions that feminism once seemed to make passe have come back in fashion. Such notions include: frilly aprons, "landing" a man, playing hard to get, the unbecomingness of women who are sassy, brash-mouthed and sarcastic.
No objections here. Moving on.
Money
Dowd notices a trend in her social circle of men picking up the checks at the end of a date. She notes that many women seem to expect or want the man to pay, that some men like paying to "demonstrate their manhood." We also learn that the term "girl money" is becoming common parlance in some social circles. Also, she says "quid profiterole," which a lot of people thought was very funny and/ or confusing.
Lots of objections were raised to Dowd's argument here on the grounds that (1) no one had ever heard the term "girl money" before and therefore (2) the people that use terms like "girl money" are a rare breed of extremely wealthy and incredeably wacky.
Sure, Dowd could have picked more familiar examples of this trend. For instance, she could have pointed out the tabloid fuss over the size and expense of certain famous young ladies' engagement rings. He point, though, that that the apparent trend of evaluating a woman's worth and desirability in terms of how much dough she can get a man to spend on her still stands.
I don't think she draws this strand out far enough. More troubling than caddish comments about "girl money" is the reality that women still do make seventy-five cents for every dollar a man earns. Dowd's argument is incomplete, not incorrect.
Power Dynamics
This seems to be the section readers found most problematic, and it's not difficult to see why. Instead of sticking to anecdotes, as she has been so far, she pulls in some shoddy statistics and evolutionary theories. To make matters more confusing, it is not clear to what ends this evidence is being employed. Does she endorse it? Does she trot out the experts because she believes the conclusions of evolutionary psychology or because she holds them as another example of the retro sexism so prevalent today? I'm not sure because she never comes out and says so.
I do give Dowd a lot more credit than the readers who take her words at face value. I detect more than a little irony on her part when she writes things like "There it is, right in the DNA: women get penalized by insecure men for being too independent." And sarcasm. And condescension. And wry amusement. I don't think it is with much fondness or respect that she delivers Bill Mahr's charming theory.
Where she slips up is in the paragraph that begins "Women moving up still strive. . ." She is now, I believe, making a point that she does think is true, but there is no clear delineation between Dowd-speaking-in-her-mocking-voice and Dowd-speaking-in-her-serious-voice, and that makes everything confusing.
Moving on.
Ms versus Mrs.
The argument she makes, and the weak spots in it, are very much like the ones above. She notices a new fetishization of marraige and motherhood and apparent trends in some circles for women to stop working after marraige or birth. Yes, unreliable stats, very, very class-specific, and so on.
The most important paragraph in this section is the last one:
To the extent that young women are rejecting the old idea of copying men and reshaping the world around their desires, it's exhilarating progress. But to the extent that a pampered class of females is walking away from the problem and just planning to marry rich enough to cosset themselves in a narrow world of dependence on men, it's an irritating setback. If the new ethos is "a woman needs a career like a fish needs a bicycle," it won't be healthy.
Dowd acknowledges that there should be room for women to make choices like make a choice like quitting a profession to take care of a child. But, she warns, there is a danger. She's mostly right, I think (speaking about a very limited class of women, of course), but she falls a little short of the mark when she frets that females are "walking away from the problem." I would have liked to see her take it further and ask what about the working world makes not working seem the better option (for those wealthy enough to even consider such a thing)? Is it because the gap between a woman's salary and her husband's is so great that her financial contributions seem useless? Is it that the high-powered jobs these women are walking away from make it impossible to be a mother and career woman simultaneously, so that one has to choose one or the other? Do they feel pressured by their husband to give up their jobs and become a trophy/ status symbol for showing just how rich he is?
Movies
I think her observation about the new slate darling little Cinderella-story movies reifying and idealizing the romance of unequals (in which it hardly needs to be stated that the woman is the lesser) is about right.
Next.
Women's Magazines
Easy target-- I should know. I'll fess up to occaisionally purchasing Cosmo (or Star). What can I say? I don't get TV and my whole life is in the shitter; I'll take some cheap pleasure where I can find it. Anyway, not that this has to do with Dowd's essay per se, but I just thought, while we're on the topic of Cosmo's sex advice, I'll take the opportunity to point out, yet again, how-- not just funny, not just weird-- but really, truly bizarre their sex advice columns are. See, they have this formula where they pair one "hot tip" that is so banal, so obvious, so basic it's almost quaint that they print it with another "hot tip" that is so wacky and unexpected you have to go back and read the first one to make sure you read the whole thing. For instance, in one of those "10 secrets to hot sex!" deals, the #1 "secret" was lube. Seriously. Because lube is such a kinky secret. Right. The kind of thing that makes you feel sorry for anyone who actually was surprised to find out about lube.
But wait! Can you guess what the #2 tip was? No, because it's totally wacky! The "#2 secret to hot sex!" was, and I paraphrase here, "wrap your man's scrotum in saran wrap then, breathe heavily onto his shrink-wrapped testicles for a sensation he'll never forget!" (No offense to practitioners in the audience; maybe it's totally common, and in any case it wasn't polite to call some one else's sexual practices wacky, so I'm sorry, please forgive me, and feel free to assume I'm a total snooze in the sack if it makes ya feel better).
But what was I saying? Ah, yes: Maureen Dowd. What struck me, and I could be wrong, as I'm too poor to buy a single damn book, is how similair Dowd's point seems to the one put forth by Ariel Levy in Female Chauvanist Pigs (or at least, how her book is represented in reviews and whatnot). "It took only a few decades to create a brazen new world where the highest ideal is to acknowledge your inner slut. I am woman; see me strip. "
Beauty
Here's my reaction: Yes. Right. Good point. That's a little hyperbolic, but ok, I see what you're saying. Ok.
And the Future. . .
In which Dowd sums up the danger of buying into the "raw deal and old trap" again in the future.
Yeah, I rushed through the end, but I'm tired, and this post is already longer than anyone is going to read. So. In sum. There are points on which I disagree with Dowd and points where I think her arguement is weak. But I don't think it is a trainwreck and I certainly don't think Dowd is a bitter old shrew. At worst I think the article is limited in its focus, a little wobbly and underdeveloped. But, you know, it is the Magazine Section.
Posted by hissycat at 05:36 AM | Comments (8097)
November 07, 2005
Why I Love Susie Bright
Susie Bright's respone to Scooter Libby's dirty novel is, in a word, fabulous:
To start with, Scooter could use a good spanking with a hardcover edition of Strunk & White's Elements of Style. His most grievous challenge lies in composition and command of the English language.
She then takes him to task for his abyssmally unerotic erotica, line by line, like the sassy editrix she is.
I'm piss poor at the moment, but if anyone would like to buy me a copy of Susie Bright's book How To Write a Dirty Story I will promise to put it to good use and take all Ms. Bright's advice to heart.
Oh, Susie Bright! She rox my sox!
Posted by hissycat at 05:21 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
OHNOES! I BROKE THE INTERNETS!!!!
In deleting the vile comment spam last night, a couple comments by actual people got accidentaly deleted. Sorry Katie and whoever else got accidentaly erased! It's nothing personal, I promise.
One more brief interlude and then Part Two of Dowdiana.
Posted by hissycat at 05:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 06, 2005
Dowdiana
Before I write my scathing critique of the NYTimes Magazine feature on the charming (by which I mean revolting and idiotic and, well, silly) notion of "literary Darwinism" I need to pause to say something about last week's lengthily discussed essay by Maureen Dowd on the shortcomings of feminism.
I should start by stating my own reaction to the piece: mild pleasure, which is about what I expect from the NYTimes Sunday Magazine. Nothing earth-shattering, nothing really challenging to the reader's worldview. But something smart enough, entertaining enough, well-written enough to make for a good Sunday read, preferrably in bed, with a lox bagel and a cup of good coffee.
I also read Maureen Dowd's article as a little more in the "small social observations" category than in the "feminist polemics" category some other bloggers seem to have been looking for. So, Dowd offers a critique drawn from her personal life and heavy on the personal anecdotes to make a point about a cultural shift she observes in her particular social world that she finds troubling and troublesome for women. Her point is rather a small one, and one I thought not very controversial: there's been a backlash against the ideals of feminism and whatever gains the feminist movement has made, and as a result we find ourselves in a bizarre cultural moment where women who are more educated and higher-acheiving in their careers than ever before yet being presented with a feminine ideal that is frilly and deferential. And that some women are listening to that message. And this is a little sad and dissapointing. This, to me, seemed like a milder and more limited version of the critique that a number of feminist writers and thinkers have been saying for years.
Whatever issues I may have with the ideas Dowd puts forth in her essay, I find the virulent reactions against Dowd by (surprise!) feminist bloggers far, far more troubling.
The first common criticism of the piece is that it is "classist." My reaction to that complaint isn't that it's wrong. My reaction is just kind of, 'Meh, what did you expect?' This is the NYTimes Magazine section, after all. And if, like me, you read the article as an essay about Dowd's social world then it is hardly surprising that Dowd wrote about, well, her social world. It's a classist decision, I suppose, to allot seven pages to an article about well-paid, college-educated women with prestigous and powerful jobs instead of, say, poor, rural women, but take that up with the NYTimes editors, I say. That's only typical of the editorial classism of the paper, and is not Maureen Dowd's doing.
Whatever. The snipes and swipes I find really disturbing are those like this and this. Feministing's post, in the form of "urgent messages" to Maureen Dowd, cites announcement after bloody wedding announcement from the NYTimes Styles Section of heterosexual pairings that are supposedly ample evidence that men marry women to whome they are age-, IQ-, and power- matched, and then points out the article on writer Mary Gaitskill as further proof that, see, all these smart, older women are getting married most appropriately, so it must be that something's wrong with you, Maureen.
Echidne's post lambasts Dowd for unreliable statistics and lack of data. That's true, but I can't say I see why she should have included stats in her social observances. I think Dowd is pretty fair in not positing her observances as anything other than her observances of a select layer of society. But then it's maybe my own idiosyncracy that I generally distrust the use of statistics in essays about subtle social phenomena-- they are so malleable as to be meaningless while giving an opinion/ observation a scientistic air that is at once deceptive and defensive (See! I have numbers! That makes my opinion more true than yours! See!). The stats Dowd used I found odd, but mostly because I think she misuses them to get to her point. I think her point would have been better served if used less, not more, stats. It was also confusing to what end she meant to use them. I didn't get the sense that she was endorsing Evolutionary Psychology or the notion that career women are romantically doomed so much as laying it out to critique it. But maybe that's just me.
But I'm getting distracted by fine points. There is plenty of room to disagree with Dowd's conclusion or take issue with her methodology, and that's fine, that's great, we should have these debates. My main concern, I guess, is with statements such as Echidne's low blow:
The funniest part of the excerpt has to do with the bit about oh-how-hard it is for successful women to find men. Dowd is very taken by this idea, and I wonder why. I have always had to swat men away like flies and I'm fairly smart and independent. . .
And a quick glance around the comments suggests that it is this sentiment (oh Maureen's just so bitter and desperate) to which most people most strongly responded. There are exceptions, of course (and the comments responding to this post at Feministing are much more civil, much more varied, much better reasoned), but what else to make of reactions like these:
Another thing I can't help but thinking is that this book is Dowd's way of dealing with her own unhappiness. Any regular reader of hers can tell you that she's written numerous columns about her problems with men. . .But I'm smart, strong, and an outspoken feminist who also happens to be (very) happily married. And I know plenty of other strong, feminist women who are likewise happily partnered.
I don't know if this is Maureen's problem with men, but I have known women who are high-achievers yet will only consider men who are even higher-achievers as mates. You can't blame feminism for that.
If she does find a man, she'll quit her job and start writing about babies and marriage.
Ditto the comments on Pandagon, where the "Maureen's just bitter she can't get a date" chorus is nicely complemented by the "I'm a smart, sensitive guy and I date women who are my equals" chant.
The "Maureen just wrote that cause she can't get a date" is far too close to "you're just a feminist because you can't get a date" or "you're just a lesbian because men won't shag you" for my taste. I don't think writing off all Dowd's points as the harpy call of a bitter, desperate women really does much for women or for feminism.
Then there's the condemning chorus of "you're no feminist" "you're not my sister" that reminds me of a high school clique excommunicating a member as soon as she is humiliated out of fear that the aroma of desperation might rub off on the rest of them. Shh, Maureen! You're not supposed to admit that you think about boys and dating! That's so embaressing!
(I did not get the sense, by the way, that Dowd has any particular inclination to marry the chauvanist clods she describes in her article, and I think a lot of the readings really miss the humor in the piece. A man confessing he'd wanted to ask the author on a date "between marraiges" but didn't because he was scared of her? Funny. And I think it's meant to be. I was puzzled by the comments smattered around that said things like, "why doesn't she just realize he's a jerk anyway?" You know, I really think she does. I give her that much credit. Her writing can be very funny, very caustic, very sarcastic-- but that's another post, for another day.)
Well, everyone has her own ideas about feminism, I guess, but then one of my ideas about feminism is that it is relevant to all women-- even Maureen Dowd. We all make value judgements about which battles we find most compelling or important; you can't not prioritize; there's just too much. But my judgement that, say, access to abortion, is of utmost importance does not make other feminist issues-- say, representation of gender, marraige and family in popular movies-- any less "real." You may not care particularly about the politics of who on a date picks up the check when the check is from Nobu, but to assert that there is no issue at all is, I think, wrong-minded and false
Feminism is not a dating service: agreed. But I have to think there is something disingenous in the comments of the "What on earth is Maureen talking about with this 'men preferring docile babes' business? Doesn't she know that things are just peachy: I have a powerful career and I'm married. 'Pressure to conform to a frilly feminine ideal'? I have no idea what she could be talking about!" genre. Please! Feminists have been critiquing for years the cultural idealization of women as domestic, silly, deferntial, unambitious in career but ambitious in marraige sex-bots! For years! Well, at least I have.
Goddamit, this is going to require a second post. And I so wanted to make fun of Literary Darwinism. Harrumph!
Posted by hissycat at 07:42 PM | Comments (83) | TrackBack
Cute Little Lion Cubs
Generally, I try to restrain myself when it comes to posting cute pictures of wee little cute little furry little animals, but dammit, if it's not too silly for BitchPhD to post, it sure as hell is not too silly for me.
More pictures of the baby big cats, born at the Forth Worth zoo this Septamber, here and here.
Posted by hissycat at 03:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 05, 2005
Paperback Of The Week
Posted by hissycat at 03:48 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
November 04, 2005
Editors, Ask Yourselves
Was this article really necessary? Was it? Was the news so important, so urgent you simply could not wait until Sunday to share?
I want you all to go back to your desks and think long and hard about what you did.
Posted by hissycat at 07:36 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Strangest Brunch Spread I Ever Heard Of
There was a young man with a cello ahead of me in line at Katz's this morning who ordered half a dozen bagels. Sure. That seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Bringing some bagels to a meeting or for some musicians he was practicing with. Hey, in my high school, all the cool advisors would bring (or assign someone to bring) bagels and cream cheese to the long advisor group period on Thursdays. Totally normal!
Until you here what kind of bagels he was bringing.
Mind you, it would have been different if he'd come in with a list, or the mind-made-upness of a mental list, having taken people's requests or knowing what their preferences were. But that was not the case! His voice meandered like, oh, I guess I'll take, like he was just deciding on the spot what to grab, trying to figure out which bagels are generally well-received.
This is what he came up with:
"I'll have one jalapeno. . . One, uh, one dill cheddar. A garlic bagel. a rye bagel. And, oh, give me two blueberry bagels."
What was this man thinking? Who are these people that are going to eat a jalapeno bagel, a dill cheddar bagel, a garlic bagel, a rye bagel and two blueberry bagels. The garlic and the rye, I'll grant you, are not altogether heretical. At least the rye, if not the garlic, is, I believe, part of the standard H&H mix when one orders an unspecificied dozen or more. But you're kidding yourself if you think that the rye isn't the absolute last bagel to be eaten, overlooked like a loser kid picked last for teams in gym class. The rye bagel has to be offered to kids from less fortunate advisor groups. The rye bagel is the one that gets offered to the other teachers and then sits in the teachers' lounge next to the coffee machine until it hardens and grows things and finally the biology teacher takes it to show his class on the day he lectures about mold!
What happened to sesame? To poppy? To plain? To everything? To, yes, even, salt? Is nothing sacred anymore?
I'm not even going to get into the "dill cheddar" business.
I'm just going to assume that these were not Jew musicians and that none of them had ever been to New York. For shame!
Posted by hissycat at 06:49 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
November 03, 2005
I Know, I Know, I Know
I've been really lame about posting lately. I wish I could say it is because I've been really busy. It sure feels as if I have been really busy. However, I have no idea what I've been doing. I do know, though, that I have been doing it on an extremely odd schedule, and that's part of the problem. I'm in a really bad cycle of sleeping until four in the afternoon and staying up till seven or eight in the morning. It's a really difficult habit to break, one that requires more Valium than I currently have access to. I just get so anxious at night, then depression comes with the dawn, and floors me all day. This is my life. I don't even fight it.
I'm grossly behind on my correspondances. If you have emailed me in the past month and not heard back, do not doubt my tender affection, dear sweet Hissy Kittens-- I will reply! Eventually.
I am convinced that if only my selfish neighbors would not password-protect their wireless, I would be a model of modern virtue and efficiency. Alas, I am too unemployed to pay for internest myself, and, more to the point, it is exceedingly difficult to get a customer service to talk to me at the only hour I am motivated enough to call one, which is four in the morning.
I've been writing: essays, articles, queries, pitches, and, because it is NaNoWriMo, a crappy, trashy novel. For an instant I considered posting it as I wrote it, but then I came to my senses and decided to spare us both the embaressment. Or, to be more precise, to save myself the embaressment while denying you the pleasure of mocking relentlessly my cheap and inadequate prose.
And last night (well, the day, really) I had the most terrifying dream about zombie clones. That has nothing to do with anything, but, oh my, was it strange. Some other time I'll tell you.
I leave you with a promise to do better and post something for real here tomorrow. I'm going to scurry back to hovel now. I have a Very Important Phone Call to make.
Posted by hissycat at 07:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 02, 2005
No More Excuses
It's officially National Novel Writing Month
Posted by hissycat at 06:13 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack
Dance Of The Seven Veils
I, Salome, regarding with goofy-eyed lust the head of John the Baptist, which has just been presented to me, as per my request, on a silver platter.
Posted by hissycat at 03:30 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack
November 01, 2005
Every Woman's Battle
On a usual Sunday morning on which I wake before noon (which, granted, is already not a usual Sunday morning), I amble on over across the street to Katz's for my lox bagel and New York Times (you can take the girl out of New York, but you can't take New York out of the girl, etc.), which comes as a welcome relief after a long week of getting up and ambling on over across the street to Katz's for my whole-wheat bagel with humus, cucumber and sprouts and New York Times. If Katz's is sold out of the Times, I shrug and return to bed crosswordless but unharmed. The thought of walking to the Castro before the caffiene from my third cup of joe has had time to fully absorb into my blood stream is not what I usually find an appealing notion. Yet, as if pulled along by some unearthly foresight appdo not normally trek out to the Castro in search of the elusive Sunday paper, yet yesterday, as if drawn by some vague foreknowledge, that is exactly what I did.
My premonition was fulfilled. The entire trek was made worthwhile by the pleasure of this littegem of an article.
In case you were distracted by the Maureen Dowd essay on feminism and sexual mores in the Magazine Section or the Iraq war themed Book Review and did not get a chance to fully savor this article, allow me to fill you in.
New Life Ministries, "an evangelical radio ministry," has taken it upon themselves to ship off packages of books "intended to promote Bible-based abstinence from pornography, adultery, nonmarital sex and masturbation" to soldiers in Iraq.
Interestingly enough, there are two different sets of books, one for the boys and one for the girls. For the boys, there is the blue covered Every Man's Battle; Every Woman's Battle comes in pink. Every Day For Every Man is colred in earthy shades of reddish brown and bluish green; Every Woman, Every Day is colored with the turquise and yellow pallette of drugstore eyeshadow. And the girly counterpart to Every Man's Bible (which has on its cover a rugged, South Western landscape) is the Life Recovery Bible, its cover taken up with curly, pastel calligraphy.
Though the article contained no discussion of the differences between the two sets of books, I was struck by the graphic and little summaries of each book included in the inset, which could be a handout for a Language and Gender 101 class.
In "His Battle Kit" the rhetoric emphasizes sexual purity as a battle: "Your malesness looms as your own worst enemy. You got into this mess by being male; you'll get out by being a man."; "It's time to fight. And you realize that your battle for sexual purity will cost you something. It requires sacrifice,, intensity and honor."; "Is it O.K. to have lunch with a female coworker? What about working together on a project past quitting time? Be honest as you evaluate what is going on in your mind and heart. If temptation lurks around the corner. . . run!"
The books in "Her Battle Kit" use the soft, self-hating language of psychology, urging women to reflect and listen to their feelings: "Society has twisted our minds into thinking that if we are drawn to someone, we must want to have sex with them"; "Masturbation is not healthy because it can train a person to 'fly solo,' to operate independently of anyone else"; "'Please love me!' Isn't this the whispered cry of our heart? We may not want to admit it for fear of rejection, but we are all hungry for love."
The man books are about action and practical advice. The woman books are about health and personal relationships. The appeal to abstain from masturbating is part of a noble "battle for sexual purity" that proves masculine and individual virtues like "sacrifice, intensity and honor." Women, on the other hand, are harmed by masturbation. It is not that women need to be strong and fight for sexual purity; to the contrary, women need to be protected and sheilded from the inherent destructiveness and unhealthiness of female independence.
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