questions

I decided to compromise and only attend one FilmFest DC film, thus freeing me to do more freelancing. Yay! Just how I want to spend my Friday night! But I felt like I had little choice, because I’ve got so much work to do and so little time, given that part of Saturday will be spent at Olivia’s baptism (and possibly hanging out with Skevy for a few hours beforehand), and part of Sunday will be spent at that Smithsonian exhibit I’m jonesing to see.

So last night I checked out a Finnish film, Lights in the Dusk. Ever since, like, 2001, when I showed up at a hotly-anticipated Icelandic film at FilmFest and discovered it was sold out, I’ve been careful to buy my tickets in advance each year. This year I just never got around to it, so when I arrived at the cinema I was nervous the show would be sold out. Thankfully that wasn’t the case. I got there nice and early and hunkered down with a big ol’ library book as I waited for the lights to dim. Several other solo nerds were there with books as well, which warmed the cockles of my normally frosty heart.

The film was okay. I must confess that I didn’t enjoy it as much as the director’s last work, The Man without a Past, but I’m still glad I went. One of the the things I love about attending FilmFest and AFI’s EU Film Festival each year is being surrounded by the chatter of foreign languages beforehand. The people behind me were speaking Russian and the people beside me were speaking something I couldn’t quite identify.

Here’s another one of those questionnaire thingies, sent to me recently by my pal Kristen:

1. FIRST NAME? Jennifer

2. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? I don’t think so.

3. WHEN DID YOU LAST CRY? Mmmm…something on TV made me tear up a little bit semi-recently, but I honestly can’t remember what it was.

4. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? Actually, yes! When I’m not being totally sloppy with it.

5. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT? I’m a vegetarian, so I don’t eat lunch meat, but back in the day, I was all about the sweet bologna.

6. KIDS? No. Unless my cats count!

7. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOURSELF? Yes.

8. DO YOU HAVE A JOURNAL? Yes.

9. DO YOU USE SARCASM A LOT? Sometimes, but not as much as you’d expect.

10. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? Yes.

11. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? Hells yeah!!! I’ve been aching to do this for years!

12 WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? Cinnamon Toast Crunch

13. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? Yeah, because otherwise I won’t get them off. But in the past I’ve had shoes that didn’t require it—I managed to pull them off without untying anything (because I’m lazy, y’all).

14. DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG? Physically? Not really. In a pinch I can lift heavy things, but afterwards my muscles quiver and ache. Emotionally? About average, I’d say.

15. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM? A three-way tie between mint chocolate chip, caramel, and chocolate-peanut butter.

16. SHOE SIZE? 10. *cough*beast*cough*

17. RED OR PINK? Red. Especially dark red.

18. WHAT IS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF? My hips, butt, and thighs. And my gut (although Freyja doesn’t seem to mind—she loves kneading that dough).

19. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? My old self—the self who had lots and lots and lots of free time and wasn’t working herself into an early grave.

20. WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES YOU ARE WEARING RIGHT NOW? Khaki pants, brown shoes.

21. LAST THING YOU ATE? Breakfast: a bowl of cereal and a mug of coffee.

22. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? Nothing. But the last song I heard was Miriam Stockley and John Williams’s “Kissing in the Rain”

23 IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? Midnight blue

24. FAVORITE SMELL? None. I’m fucking anosmic.

25. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE? Uh…(*tries to think*)…I don’t even know. I honestly can’t remember.

26. THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE? Clothing, probably. God, that makes me sound so materialistic! Really, I don’t care what they’re wearing—it’s just that I notice what they’re wearing because clothes can say a lot about a person.

27. FAVORITE DRINK? Hot: hot chocolate. Cold: god help my vegetarian-but-not-vegan-soul, it’s milk.

28. FAVORITE SPORT? None. I hate sports! Well, I guess soccer is okay. If I had to support anybody it’d probably be Millwall F.C., as they used to be based in New Cross, where Goldsmiths is located. Go Lions!

29. HAIR COLOR? Dark brown. That’s turning white.

30. EYE COLOR? Blue.

31. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? No, although I did between 1989-1997.

32. FAVORITE FOOD? Probably cereal, since that’s what I eat the most. But I’ve got loads of other favorite foods—everything from vegetarian ham to cheese and onion pasties.

33. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDING? Both! I love scary movies, but sometimes it does my blackened heart good to see a happy ending.

34. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED? Lights in the Dusk (Laitakaupungin valot)—a Finnish film at FilmFest DC

35. WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING? Light blue.

36. SUMMER OR WINTER? Honestly? Winter. It can be such a pain in the ass, and it’s not like I relish being cold or anything, but I hate when it’s hot and humid. At least in winter I get a break from that. I love the landscape in winter, too.

37. HUGS OR KISSES? Neither. I’m dead inside.

38. FAVORITE DESSERT? I don’t really have a favorite, per se, but I do flip my lid over the old-school McDonald’s apple pies still sold in Europe, as well as other apple/cinnamon/caramel-y deserts.

39. WHAT BOOKS ARE YOU READING? We Need to Talk About Kevin, by Lionel Shriver. It’s a school shooting book (and I started it days before the Virginia Tech massacre!)

40. WHAT'S ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? At home it’s Rowlf; at work it’s…just black.

41. WHAT DID YOU WATCH LAST NIGHT ON TV? The Office, Grey’s Anatomy, and October Road.

42. FAVORITE SOUNDS? Silence, my favorite music, my cats’ purrs, the wind, the rain.

43. ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES? Beatles.

44. THE FURTHEST YOU’VE BEEN FROM HOME? Russia.

45. DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT? No, sadly! Besides deceiving myself.

46. WHEN AND WHERE WERE YOU BORN? June 4, 1974, in Lebanon, PA


song heard most recently before posting:
Kissing in the Rain—John Williams (music), Miriam Stockley (vocals)

blame and everything after

“Blame confers an awesome power. And it’s simplifying, not only to onlookers and victims but to culprits most of all. It imposes order on slag. Blame conveys clear lessons in which others may take comfort: if only she hadn’t—, and by implication makes tragedy avoidable.” –Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

The Blame Game, regarding Virginia Tech, has begun. Actually, it began about two minutes after the killing ended. This, I think, is par for the course in most societies. Or maybe just American society—I don’t know. Blame makes people feel better, and blaming someone who can subsequently be punished works best, because it’s hard to blame a dead man. It’s even harder to blame a man who was clearly mentally ill. Severely mentally ill. But somebody needs to be blamed, so where shall the blame be cast?

I’m not a big proponent of flinging blame every which way. Of course it’s easy for me to say that, since I never lost anybody through tragedy or negligence. But I just don’t understand how persecuting someone—say, the Virginia Tech president or Cho’s parents—is going to properly rectify this situation. It can’t be rectified. The damage is done. Nobody is coming back to life. All we can really do is study which mistakes were made and try to prevent them from happening again.

For whatever reason, I feel the need to break down this blame game into its individual compartments:

Blame #1. The Virginia Tech security team and administration are responsible. The campus have been locked down after the first shootings. The school have done more to alert students to what was going on. They waited two hours to send an email to all students and did nothing to lock down the campus.

Well, the cops thought it was an isolated domestic dispute and assumed the shooter left the campus. No, they shouldn’t have made that assumption, and it’s terrible that people died because of it, but here’s the thing: no one could’ve guessed what was going to happen. It’s like how, on 9/11, so many people weren’t told to leave the first tower when it was hit, because everyone thought it was an isolated incident that could be gotten under control. Many lives could’ve been saved if everyone had been ushered out of the building right away—out of both buildings—but really, no one could’ve guessed what was lurking on the horizon: a second plane, two collapses. Hindsight really is 20/20, you know? I told some friends that this reminds me of a Swedish proverb I once heard: “The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.”

Shawn pointed out that no one can lead a normal life if every event leads to a lockdown. Said Melissa: “Of course they should have not just assumed that the first gunman had left the state, but they did and there was something that told them that was the right decision, and I can guarantee that there are few people in the world who wish they could turn back time and lock down that campus more than the VT administration. We’re so quick to judge in this society, I suppose so we can tell ourselves oh, that would never happen to me because I would do x, y and z and absolutely prevent anything bad from ever befalling me. That, and we’ve learned to sue everyone for everything and assign blame improperly.”

Blame #2. America’s gun culture is to blame. Guns are too easy to get in the US.

I don’t like America’s gun culture because I don’t like guns. I’ve never held one; I never want to. I flinch when foreigners think that all Americans are card-carrying members of the NRA and are packing heat at any given moment. No, folks, we’re not all like that. I think I know a grand total of two people who own guns.

The gun issue is a complicated issue; it is gray and dense and can’t neatly be squeezed into the rigid confines of black and white, right and wrong. My personal belief is that rigid gun controls are essential, but there’s little point in trying to completely outlaw guns, because people who want guns will continue to get guns whether they’re illegal or not. Prohibition failed miserably. Drugs are still illegal and there’s no shortage of them in this country. It’s illegal for kids under age 21 to drink in this country but they still do it. All the time. Does that mean drugs should be legal and kids should be allowed to drink? I’m not saying this should or shouldn’t be the case—all I’m saying is that making something illegal doesn’t necessarily make it vanish into the ether.

I think Cho still would’ve gotten his hands on a gun even if they were illegal. It probably would’ve taken more work to obtain one, but it still would’ve happened. And if he hadn’t snagged a gun, then he would’ve achieved his goal through some other means. Strapped a bomb to himself, perhaps. Gone crazy with a machete. I know it seems like I’m being overly nihilistic here (“Whatever will be, will be; what’s the point of even trying”), but I just don’t see what good will come out of us saying that maybe this wouldn’t have happened if guns were illegal.

Blame #3. Blame the victims.

Yes, some people out there are bitching that the students didn’t do enough to subdue Cho. What a steaming stack of bollocks. In their situation I probably would’ve shit my pants and then passed out in terror. Okay, so maybe the number of people slaughtered would’ve been slightly lower if someone had tackled the guy, but how quick would you be to tackle a blank-faced dude with two guns and a belt of ammo wrapped around him? Especially when he catches you by surprise? Nobody can predict how s/he would act in this situation. Heroism is rarely planned; it just happens. And it did happen at Virginia Tech—just not in a huge, climactic way that ended with Cho being subdued.

People are comparing the Virginia Tech students with the passengers on Flight 93 on 9/11, wondering why the students didn’t follow the passengers’ lead and overcome their captor. Comparing these two situations is like comparing proverbial apples and oranges. Passengers on Flight 93 were brave, but they also had a lot more time to come to grips with what was happening. It’s not like they only realized they were being hijacked seconds before the plane plowed into the White House. They had time to realize what was happening and had time to call their loved ones to get the scoop on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. They knew how their predicament was going to end and they were able to convene to discuss how to handle the situation. The Virginia Tech students and professors didn’t have this option. All they had was quick thinking and adrenaline, and neither one is a guarantee when a sudden, shocking cataclysm drops on your head.

Blame #4. Psychiatrists, Cho’s parents, and his professors are responsible—they didn’t do enough to get him locked up when they suspected he was unstable.

By now we’ve learned that more than a year before the massacre, Cho was accused of sending unwanted messages to two women and was taken to a psychiatric hospital for 48 hours—the longest they could hold him without any proof he was a danger to others. He was released with orders to undergo outpatient treatment. Also, his violence-filled writings and odd demeanor disturbed professors and students so much that he was removed from one English class and was repeatedly urged to get counseling.

Despite all this, I don’t see how anybody can be held accountable for failing to get him thrown long-term into a mental hospital. We live in a country where you can’t get somebody institutionalized against their will simply because you suspect he might be dangerous. You need some semblance of proof. And thank god for that!! I, for one, am glad this is the case. Not because I relish the idea of potential killers populating my daily life, but because I don’t want to live in a society where suspicion alone is enough to condemn a man who may be innocent. I don’t want to live in Soviet Russia, North Korea, or Myanmar, mmm’kay?

The operative word here is that people suspected he was unstable. Yes, he did turn out to be unstable in the end, but nobody knew this beyond a shadow of a doubt until he opened fire. It’s possible he lied his ass off when he was in that mental hospital—giving them the answers they wanted to hear. Violent writings do not automatically equal homicidal behavior. I wrote some creepy shit back in the day, too, and I’m no killer. Pestering crushes, being deemed “weird,” showing strange behavior, and having flattened affect can—although not always—indicate the presence of a mental illness, but the presence of a mental illness does not immediately indicate homicidal tendencies. And, biggest of all, being a loner does not automatically mean you’re a killer!

I know I’m being hyper-sensitive here, but I loathe when the media fixate on killers being loners. It just adds fuel to this society’s already rampant suspicion of anyone who likes being alone. Not all loners are one gun away from becoming killers! And not all killers are loners! Let’s recall Ted Bundy and the BTK killer, shall we? As a lifelong loner, this whole attitude is so offensive to me.

I just worry there’s a real risk that anybody who is different, acts unconventionally, writes strange things, or listens to strange music will become suspicious in everyone’s eyes—labeled a potential killer. I’m not saying everyone should turn a blind eye when there’s a person displaying noticeably strange, erratic behavior. But there has to be some sort of middle ground between automatically assuming every weird, introverted person is a killer and automatically assuming s/he’s just shy and harmless.

Moving on to far less significant things...

FilmFest is here, and, as always, there are a slew of films I want to see. Whereas in the past my selections were limited because of cash flow issues, this year it’s a time issue. I've just got too much freelancing on my plate to allow me to see many films. I think I’m going to squeeze in a Finnish film tomorrow and a French film on Friday, even though doing so will put a serious cramp in my freelancing schedule. Also, there’s an exhibit at the Sackler Gallery I really want to see, and because it ends on Sunday, I’ve got no choice but to hit it this weekend, which further impedes my freelancing. This is one of those rare instances when I’m not backed into a corner because of procrastination, but because I only just learned about the exhibit a few days ago. But, you know, regardless of my time crunch, I gotsta make room for art!


song heard most recently before posting:
Ngankarrparni (Sky Blue Reprise)—Peter Gabriel

Rest in Peace

Bernard Patrick Reilly

July 16, 1935 – April 19, 2007

Bernie was a man amongst men; a gentleman and mentor to all who had the privilege of knowing and working with him. His devotion to his career was only ever exceeded by his love for his children and longing for his departed wife...God knows, he spoke about both daily! May God be with his family during this time of sorrow. He was a wonderful friend and mentor to so many.....his mark on the world will never fade!Thank you, Bernie for all that you have done for so many over the years! Thank you so much. –RG

Bernie was a devoted friend who knew the true value of a friendship. He loved his family and was devoted to them without question. He remained in love with his wife long after her death and showed a sense of loyalty that I admired so very much. He was a man who lived his life to the highest ethical and moral standards. He was a man of real courage. He was a man of “true grit.” He was the most well read and intelligent law enforcement officer that I had ever met. He was always well versed on the latest in law enforcement techniques and management even long after he retired. He was the most progressive police chief and true leader that ever served the Lebanon City Police Department. He was my friend, my mentor, my teacher and my guide—I loved Bernie and I will miss him forever. –Greg Holler

I will always remember Bernie as a mentor, colleague, neighbor, leader, and most importantly, a friend and confidante. He provided constant guidance to all who served with him in LPD, and nurtured us as his own children. I fondly recall the many conversations we shared over the back fence and on the front porch on Hanover Street, regarding law enforcement specifically and society generally. Bernie was both intelligent and compassionate, and served the City of Lebanon with unwavering dedication. He served as an inspiration to all of us.Rest in peace, my friend. I will miss and never forget you. –Gary L. Boyer, Sr.

I met Bernie during the sixties when he was both a patrolman and a part time student at Millersville. I knew him as both. And I respected him as both. Whatever he did he did with passion and compassion. Bernie was not so much concerned about doing things right but more with doing the right thing. And that he did consistently and flawlessly. He was a man of enormous skill and character. Lebanon has lost one of their finest. My deepest sympathies to his family. –Mike Bowman

I had the pleasure of getting to know [Bernie] toward the last year of his life. It was evident that this was a man a superior character and integrity. He displayed such grace even in the face of such terrible news. His only concern was for his family. His joy was talking about his children and grandchildren and remembering his wife lovingly with much dedication and devotion. –Jan Valentin

Lebanon City Police Department was fortunate to have Bernie Reilly, but others in law enforcement also benefited by Bernie’s knowledge, leadership, and kindness, As a Derry Township Police Officer I was privileged to know Bernie. It is with great sadness that I acknowledge the passing of a Policeman’s Policeman. –Jim Negley

He was a wonderful, sweet, intelligent, loving, family oriented man who told the best stories ever!! –Roni Bentz

When the body sinks into death, the essence of man is revealed. Man is a knot, a web, a mesh into which relationships are tied. Only those relationships matter. The body is an old crock that nobody will miss. –Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras

We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death. –Nathaniel Hawthorne, Journal, October 25, 1836

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern—why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be? –William Hazlitt, Table Talk

Perhaps passing through the gates of death is like passing quietly through the gate in a pasture fence. On the other side, you keep walking, without the need to look back. No shock, no drama, just the lifting of a plank or two in a simple wooden gate in a clearing. Neither pain, nor floods of light, nor great voices, but just the silent crossing of a meadow. –Mark Helprin, A Soldier of the Great War

song heard most recently before posting:
It’s Good (to be Free)—Oasis

interrupted

It’s one of those times when the world seems anemic and grim, when I shrink in disgust from what we cavalierly call civilization. The horror continues unabated in Iraq; today alone 170 people were killed in Baghdad. It doesn’t seem like anybody can staunch the flow of hemorrhaging violence in that country. Steady and resolute, the genocide continues in Darfur. In the past month the DC area has witnessed a slew of murders in PG County, a hit-and-run road rage incident in Montgomery County that left two people dead, a domestic murder-suicide in Montgomery County that left two little children and their father dead, and a domestic murder-suicide in Frederick County that left four little children and their father dead and their mother missing. On and on it goes.

And then there’s Virginia Tech. There are layers upon layers of tragedy here. Young lives interrupted. A Holocaust and cancer survivor who endured so much, only to be gunned down in his classroom in the mountains while protecting his students. Freshmen just starting out in life. Seniors on the cusp of graduating. Aside from the professors who were killed, all the victims were kids. Just kids. Just over a decade ago I was one of those kids. Not at Virginia Tech...but in the end, a college is a college is a college. When you’re a 20-year-old college student, whether you’re in a community college in Montana or a massive university in Munich, you don’t expect your world to end on a bluebright Monday morning in April. You don’t expect your world to end when you’re sitting in class in your sweatshirt and jeans, backpack at your feet, notebook and pen or laptop in front of you, thinking about Finals and summer break, maybe, or just thinking about when you can grab your next cup of coffee.

There’s nothing I can really say about this tragedy that hasn’t already been said—more astutely and eloquently, I may add—by the media and folks online. There are a few issues I discussed with friends that I’d like to mention here as well, but I will only do so in a few days’ time. Why? Well, over on the BBC News boards, accusations are flying between pro- and anti-gun believers. Between Americans and countries where guns are illegal. The Virginia Tech situation is bound to devolve into a screaming match about America’s gun culture and whether the right to bear arms is really a right at all. This is on top of the blame being heaped upon the university’s administrators and security force for not doing more to stave off the tragedy. I guess that’s inevitable, but here’s the thing: do we really need to talk about this now? Only two days have passed since the massacre. We don’t even know the names of all the victims yet. Not a single victim has been buried yet. Before everyone starts slinging blame, hunting for scapegoats, and lambasting the US’s gun policies, can’t we just have a period of peace when people reflect on what really matters—the victims and the people left behind?

You think it’s a day like any other. What you don’t realize is anything can happen. And then it does. It happens. And there’s so much left unsaid. And it was all just wasted time. –Harriet Sansom Harris, in Six Feet Under


I could have told him that nothing was safe and that no matter how careful you were and how hard you tried, there were still accidents, hidden traps, and snares. You could get killed on an airplane or crossing the street. Your marriage could fall apart when you weren’t looking; your husband could lose his job; your baby could get sick or die. I could have said that nothing is safe, that the surface of the world is pretty and sane, but underneath it’s all fault lines and earthquakes waiting to happen. –Jennifer Weiner, Little Earthquakes


What you were preparing against—that never happened! All the best-laid plans could not prevent the disaster against which no plans had been laid. –George Stewart, Earth Abides


Bottom line is, even if you see them coming, you’re not ready for the big moments. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. So, what are we, helpless? Puppets? Nah. The big moments are gonna come, you can’t help that. It’s what you do afterwards that counts. That’s when you find out who you are. –Max Perlich, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer


You must not let terror overtake you.
It is a bone breaking in the middle of the night.
It is a misspelled word.
It is everything you thought you knew
becoming unknown, the leaves
stripped from the tree,
all the greenness orange and dry,
it is a pain past bearable, you must not.
–Susan Griffin, “Prayer for Continuation”


But everything went wrong for me and upside down, the nature of things was reborn for me. – Vinsentsos Kornaros, Erotokritos


Learn the darkness.
Gather round you all
the things that you love, name
their names, prepare
to lose them. It will be
as if all you know were turned
around within your body.
–Wendell Berry, “Song in a Year of Catastrophe”

song heard most recently before posting:
Thief of Your Heart—Sinead O’Connor

Easter with the Sopranos

Easter, Easter, Easter. I spent it working, reading (a fabulous disaster book), updating my quotes pages, and watching the first disc of Season 2 of The Sopranos. Oh, and listening to my upstairs neighbors gather with their extended clan for the sole purpose of tormenting me with their noise levels. (So, in turn, I jacked up the volume on my TV so their Easter would be peppered with Tony Soprano bellowing “You fucking fat sack of shit!” and the like.) Also, the first thing to fully wake me on Easter morning wasn’t the noisy neighbors getting ready for church, but the sound of Plath vomiting on my bed. Then I realized that my period had started, too. Happy Easter to me!

Well, it’s not a holiday I celebrate anymore, anyway. To me it really only matters if you’re religious or a kid. Or, if neither applies to you, it’s worth celebrating if you have nice family traditions to uphold. We started going to a fancy Easter buffet at the Hershey Lodge and Convention Center when I was in junior high, I think (or maybe 6th grade at the earliest), and this was something I always enjoyed. The meal was great, there were loads of decorations and a big ice sculpture, and a tux-clad pianist played lovely tunes while we ate. Plus the hostess looked like Dionne Warwick, which, back in the ’80s, I thought was kind of cool. This all began before my parents divorced and my grandmother died, so as the years progressed, the tradition felt like a relic from a better era (even though, okay, technically things were much better after my parents split—those are two people who never should’ve married each other). But when we stopped going to Hershey ’round about 2001 or 2002, because they were raising their prices and the food quality was dropping, I took that as my cue to stop celebrating the holiday altogether. There just didn’t seem to be any point to schlepping up to PA for a holiday that didn’t matter to me.

My sister invited me over for dinner, but I wanted to make some headway with my latest freelancing project and also tackle some long-overdue website updates. Plus I just didn’t feel like getting dressed or going anywhere. Getting dressed and going somewhere are so overrated. For Easter dinner I ate some vegetarian salmon and that was the extent of my celebratory fressing.

My plans to check out the cherry blossoms with Mom and Bill on Saturday fell through. We cancelled on Friday night because we thought the weather was going to be worse than it was. The weather was okay in the end (it remained quite cold but we only received a dusting of snow), but by then it was too late to really do anything about it. I added quotes to my website, watched an excellent German film (The Tunnel), read the aforementioned disaster book, and edited two chapters of my freelancing project.

Since I’m moving backwards here, I’ll mention that I cleaned on Friday night for the first time in ages. I even went to Target beforehand to stock up on new cleaning supplies. Although I knew Mom probably wouldn’t visit after all, because the weather forecast wasn’t looking so great, I decided that a clean apartment would be good for me; perhaps it would even disrupt this paralyzing stasis I’ve been in lately. But really, part of what drove me to clean was my embarrassment over Wednesday’s intruder seeing my disgusting apartment. He used or at least looked at my toilet, and it was foul. It seriously looked like a toilet from Trainspotting. I was just so humiliated, it drove me to clean.

Oh…wait. Did I ever mention my intruder? It’s not a huge deal, really. Last Wednesday I got home from work and one of the first things I noticed was that the door to the laundry room was hanging wide open. I figured the cats must’ve pushed it open—it’s happened before, although never that wide. Then I noticed that my thermometer/hydrometer, which is perched on a little shelf outside the kitchen, was facedown on the floor. Then I noticed that the big plastic container of cat food that I keep in the laundry room was sitting in my living room. Then I noticed that my toilet seat was up, like a guy pissed in it. What. The. Fuck. Well, I’m not that stupid—I understood that someone had been in my apartment. And that someone was clearly one of my upstairs neighbors (the laundry room connects my apartment to their side of the house) or a service employee sent in there to examine the house’s phone connection box, or the water valve, or the gas/electricity meter (all of them are in my apartment). But why? That’s what I want to know. Why would they come into my apartment? And not call me beforehand? Or, in an emergency (like if flooding were imminent and the water valve had to be turned off immediately), why didn’t they at least tell me afterward? Nobody said a word to me. I was pissed. And I felt violated to some degree. Plus, let’s not forget that the last time they had a service employee enter my apartment without asking me, he broke the stained glass star I’d just brought home from Iceland. And there was that one time my previous landlord entered my apartment (without first asking me), to fix one thing or another, and ended up breaking one of my San Francisco magnets and the stained glass Chagall piece I bought in Chicago. So, to say that I’m touchy when it comes to upstairs people entering my apartment without my permission would be an understatement. And since then, I have been locking my door every day. Yes, I learned my lesson, thanks.

So…back to Friday. I’m not an unclean person (haw haw haw, well, in some ways I am)—I’ve always prided myself on keeping a clean and tidy apartment. But ever since my landlord and landlady died two years ago, leaving me thinking that I’d have to move, my apartment has been in disarray. Possessions are packed away and boxes are stacked everywhere. I gave up dusting and cleaning except on a sporadic basis because I just didn’t care anymore. All I want is to get the hell out of there, but naturally the housing market exploded when all this began, and I couldn’t afford a home. I could move into another rental, but…ugh. No thanks. I need to avoid that if I can, for a lot of different reasons.

Anyway, so I cleaned on Friday to eliminate the Trainspotting toilet and all the other nastiness plaguing my apartment thanks to my apathetic sloth. Halfway through the cleaning frenzy I ended up getting badly scratched by Freyja, who I tried to put into the living room while I was vacuuming the bedroom. She’d been in the bedroom and got a crazed, wild-eyed look of panic when she thought I was going to corner her with the vacuum. I decided to carefully pick her up and move her into the living room so she wouldn’t feel trapped. Simple, right? It misfired. She became a puffy, yowling ball of knives and within seconds I was spurting blood. Excellent. But I have to say that I’m impressed with her ability to rip a gash in my chest without actually tearing my shirt. That’s quite a skill to have.

Speaking of cats, the disaster book I just finished mentioned that the narrator’s cat was a gray tabby who yelled a lot. I nudged Plath and sneered, “Why does that sound familiar?” Then the cat disappeared for a while and the narrator was afraid that one of her starving neighbors ate him. I scooped up Plath in a death-clinch, buried my face in his stomach, and screeched, “Plathy, I won’t let the neighbors eat you! I WON’T! I’ll smother you and your sister before I allow the neighbors to eat you!! I’ll keep you safe, I promise you! I won’t let you be their dinner!!!” He was just like, Oh, Jesus Christ.



song heard most recently before posting:
Con te partiro—Andrea Bocelli

shakes on a plane

A big YAY! to the FAA, who graciously decided to maintain its rule that cell phones can’t be used on planes. They say it’s because there’s no conclusive proof that phones won’t interfere with a plane’s navigation/communication tools, but I’d like to think a certain amount of common sense—or at least a fear of air rage—also has something to do with it. Because, let’s be honest here, I can’t imagine the general public would honestly be okay with having to spend hours in a confined space listening to a dozen one-sided cell phone conversations flittering about the cabin. Especially when you consider how many people still talk LOUDER THAN NECESSARY when using cell phones. Planes are annoying enough as it is, unless you’re lucky enough to afford First Class, which I’m not. You’ve got the cramped space, the long toilet queues, the stale recirculated air, the crappy in-flight entertainment, the crying babies, the whining toddlers, the seat-kickers, the push-their-seats-so-far-back-they’re-lying- in-your-lappers, the people behind you who gab loudly at 3am when you’re attempting to snag even a few minutes of precious sleep. Imagine throwing cell phones into the mix. Cell phones with egregious ringtones. Surely I wouldn’t be the only person shaking with rage? Granted, not everyone hates cell phones as much as me, but even people who use them and love them would surely find their patience wearing thin after listening to nonstop cell-gabbing on a long flight. A quick puddle-jumping flight might be okay, but a transatlantic, transpacific, or transcontinental flight? Highly unlikely. Air rage already exists; won’t cell phones make it worse? For me it’s bad enough when the plane lands and everyone immediately pulls out their phones to start gabbing while the plane slowly makes its way to the gate. I can’t imagine dealing with that on a long flight to Europe. So kudos to the FAA, and let’s hope they don’t change their minds on this one.

A big BOO! to Mother Nature, who, after giving us a tantalizing glimpse of spring’s balmy, delicious powers, proceeded to smack us over the head with the blunt hammer of winter. I actually like cold weather—I love winter and I much prefer cold weather to hot weather. [PA Dutch accent] Well I do believe I mind the heat something awful now, ain’t? [/PA Dutch accent] But this is the one weekend when I’d like warm, calm weather, because Mom and Bill are planning to visit me tomorrow so we can see the cherry blossoms at the Tidal Basin. Shivering beneath the blossoms won’t be fun, but it’ll be doable. What won’t be doable will be visiting the blossoms if they’re all dead/missing from the subfreezing nighttime temperatures, the flurries, the strong winds. Heck, we even had hail the other night during a thunderstorm. So, basically, at this point I’m not sure if our day will have be cancelled yet. The cherry blossoms outside my office are still holding strong, so presumably the ones at the tidal basin are doing okay as well, but the images shown on the National Parks Service’s online Cherry Blossom Cam aren’t very helpful. It’s hard to tell from those images whether the blossoms are doing okay or not. If they are still around tomorrow and Mom’s visit proceeds as planned, I think I’ll suggest that we eat lunch at the Elephant & Castle, a British pub in DC, mostly because they serve curry chips, and I heart curry chips. Whether our day gets canceled or not, my weekend will also involve working (shocker!) and doing some massive updates to my quotes collection. Yawn.


song heard most recently before posting:
Looks Like We Made It—Barry Manilow

the cat burglar with zit cream smeared on her face

I assumed the mantle of babysitter on Saturday and managed to watch my beloved little niece Olivia overnight without inadvertently killing or maiming her (my childcare experience is minimal, to say the least). Spending time with her is always a treat, even though getting her to eat and potty isn’t so easy. We spent loads of time outdoors blowing bubbles, zooming around the driveway (her on the little horse scooter I bought her for her first Christmas and me on my rollerblades), playing with rocks, and playing hide and seek. I read several books to her, we watched cartoons, and we built snakes with Play-Doh. On Sunday afternoon her parents and I took her to an Easter Egg hunt at a park in Frederick, followed by a stint in the park’s playground. The best part of the hunt is the fact that we totally forgot to bring along one of her 80 million Easter baskets, so she had to use an Henri Bendel shopping bag as her basket, as that’s the only bag that could be found in her parents’ minivan. It awesomely made us look like a bunch of rich twits.

The only downside: when I let the dawgz out on Sunday morning, I accidentally set off the burglar alarm. My sister set it when they got home at 3am and I didn’t realize this, so I didn’t disarm it before opening the door. The next thing I knew, a trooper was ringing the doorbell. Oops. Seeing as how I was in my pajamas and bare feet and had a toddler scampering around my legs, it was pretty clear to him that I wasn’t a burglar, although who’s to say Olivia and I weren’t a cat burglar team in disguise?

The big spenda hunts for eggs.

song heard most recently before posting:
Duden (Talvin Singh remix)—Natacha Atlas

cool Britannia

Yous guys! These are halycon days for connoisseurs of British low culture! First I found out that my favorite Geordies, Ant and Dec, are coming to America to host an American version of the wildly popular German TV show Wetten Das…?, and then I found out that everyone’s favorite chavtastic trainwrecks, Jordan and Peter Andre, have a reality show coming to E! in April! YESSSS! (*pumps fist in air*) Plus! Posh and Becks are getting their own reality show in America, too! Mark my words: I won’t rest until Jade Goody joins this esteemed echelon of British “performers” shoving their celebrity onto bewildered Americans.

How much do I love British pop culture? Well, if the fact that I’m willing to fork out five bucks for a single imported issue of heat magazine doesn’t clue you in, then let me say this: when I was in London last fall, I actually ran back to my hotel so I wouldn’t miss X-Factor and Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway. Folks who know me know this: I don’t run. No sir, not me. I even got a doctor’s note to get out of running the mile in high school. So clearly this was a big deal for me. Sweat pouring off me, my camera bag smacking into my aching thigh, my blistered feet shrieking with every pounding footfall, I was like, “...*pant, pant*...gotta get...*pant*... back...*gasp*...Ant and Dec...*pant, cough*...must...see...Simon...” It’s all about priorities, people.

Me with the height of wonderful British trash: Pick Me Up magazine.

As he mentioned on his blog, Shawn and I recently got into a discussion about wandering uteruses. Because that’s what normal thirtysomethings do. But here’s the thing—the discussion’s languidly meandering path actually makes some semblance of sense when viewed as a whole, and it’s pretty interesting, too, because it leads to darker themes that fill your average feminist with the fury of a thousand suns.

Here’s how it began. I found a cool website that allows you to read transcripts from every trial conducted at the Old Bailey between 1674 to 1834. One of the cases listed concerned a woman who, “to the disgrace of all womankind, did commit Buggery with a certain Mongrel Dog, and wickedly, devilishly, and against nature had venerial and Carnal copulation with him.”

Shawn said to me, “Not that abuse of animals is acceptable, but all I keep thinking of is the witch trials. The neighbors probably didnt’ like her, so they made stuff up. They probably killed the dog too.”

I agreed that the alleged dog buggerer was probably innocent, because women really got the shaft in those days. If they had even a slight inclination to be independent or unconventional, if they refused to adhere to the party line, if they dared to enjoy sex…they were decried as witches or lunatics and were subsequently burned at the stake (or drowned/pressed to death) or thrown in an asylum.

Shawn then mentioned a book he owns which is all about the portrayal of women in Victorian art and culture. It talks about the doctors and scientists who were dead serious when they declared that women have a lower intelligence as men, they have brain damage from losing blood each month through menstruation, and because they’re barely human they are naturally prone to fits of masturbation and hysteria.

I told him that this was very similar to what I learned in my Abnormal Psychology class at Scranton and my Sociology of Psychiatry and Mental Health class at Goldsmiths. We learned about how easily and frequently women were institutionalized for hysteria, which was supposedly caused by “wandering uteruses.” Plato believed that a uterus would wander if it was deprived of sexual activity and Hippocrates thought it wandered around the body looking for love or pining for a child. When it bumped into other organs, diseases developed. Later psychiatrists associated wandering uteruses (and out-of-control sexual desire) with all levels of hysteria. If a woman got upset or cried, it was chalked up to her wandering uterus.

This inspired me to blow the dust off two of my books on the subject. From Women, Madness, and Medicine, by Denise Russell:

As the nineteenth century progressed medical discourse attempted to turn many moral categories into medical ones. What in the past had been wrong came to be seen as diseased or unhealthy. In particular, medicine appropriated the social right to pass judgment about sexuality. … When female sexuality got out of line, psychiatry could be brought in as a corrective force by either incarceration or an asylum, “rest cures” in private mental institutions, or intimidation in private consultations.

… Women who tried to engage in political activity ran the risk of committal to a psychiatric institution, and women who pressed for greater educational opportunities found that doctors were leading the debate against them—claiming that the risk of insanity was too great. At this point it is clear that a link has been made between women and psychiatrists as moral guardians. The latter are needed by the patriarchal culture to keep women within their narrow role boundaries.

Finally, the medical view of women’s health regarded her reproductive functions as pathological: menstruation, pregnancy, and menopause were all looked upon as diseases. Yet it was the reproductive function that defined woman’s nature.

Given my political and religious leanings and my distaste for blind conformity, I suspect I would’ve been burned as a witch or thrown in an asylum back in the day. But then again, I generally keep a low profile and fly beneath the radar screen as an act of preservation, so maybe I could’ve hid my heresy well. However, it’s possible that people would’ve detected it anyway. Last year I wrote a blog entry about how my friends and I were indifferent to the whole idea of fitting in with our peers, but that really only began around 10th grade. Up through 9th grade, although I hosted lofty, and some might say delusional, ambitions for my career, in my day-to-day life I wanted nothing more than to be normal and fit in with everybody else. I never entertained overly grandiose hopes about actually cracking the popular crowd’s inner circle, but I was still hoping to move up socially. At the same time, I wanted to blend into the background. I mean, I didn’t want to be invisible—I just wanted to be so completely normal I wouldn’t stand out. Thus the big bangs, frosty pink lipstick, blue eyeliner, Esprit shoulder bag, the latest faddish sneakers, etc.

But it didn’t work. Kids—those crafty bastards—can smell differentness on you no matter how well you try to camouflage it. It leaks from your pores in sour waves. And they will pounce on you—the runt of the litter—as if their very act of self-preservation depends on it. This alienation, coupled with clinical depression and a hearty splash of regular ol’ teen angst, caused eruptions of tortured journal entries and poorly-written, maudlin poetry to spew forth from my hand. Poems with titles written in Latin and French. Poems about Anastasia Romanov and the war in Belfast. And I’d lock myself in my room, moodily writing in my journal and singing along to Les Misérables (the West End version, natch). I could feel Fantine’s pain. After all, being a poverty-stricken, starving single mother in pre-revolutionary France, and being forced to sell your hair, teeth, and body in order to put food on your kid’s table, totally equates to struggling in algebra class and having a bitchy sister.

Later (last month, specifically) I parlayed that woe into six submissions (three journal entries, three poems) to the Cringe Book. Hopefully my submissions will be accepted so my adolescent angst can be loosed upon an unsuspecting public.

Anyway, I’m drifting off-topic. I’d just like to marvel about how far the psychiatric field has come since those heady days when doctors advocated clitoridectomies to cure hysteria (recommended and performed by Isaac Baker Brown in the 1860s) and removal of the ovaries and cervix to cure hysteria (recommended by James Israel in 1880), and blamed hysteria on wandering uteruses. Psychiatry is still flawed, and some might even say a tad barbaric, but it’s nothing compared to how it used to be. For this I am thankful.

And my uterus? Don’t worry about her wandering too far—she’s too lazy to move off the couch, bless her hysterical little heart.

song heard most recently before posting:
Tercer Verano—Jere Laukkanen’s Finnish Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra

this is my 100th post!

Angela pointed me to an interesting article that talks about how scientists are testing a pill that may erase—or at least blunt—traumatic memories. This could essentially eradicate post-traumatic stress disorder and create a real-life Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Not ever having been a victim of authentic, down-and-dirty, shake-you-to-your-bone-rattling-core trauma, it’s probably not fair for me to say whether this is or isn’t a positive scientific advancement. How should I know if selective amnesia would ultimately be detrimental or beneficial to a trauma survivor?

Some people will point out how suffering makes us stronger, and how every memory, experience, and scar makes us who we are—adding another tile fragment to the mosaic of our selves. I do think we are ultimately the sum of our experiences...or, at the very least, we are profoundly shaped by those experiences. Our personalities are shaped not just by our neurons, synapses, DNA, and brain chemicals but also by the events of our lives. That goes for the good and bad: we are shaped by having loving parents just as much as we are shaped by having monstrous parents. But if I were unfortunate enough to inherit the latter, I think I should have the right to say, “I know I can learn something from this, and I know I can use this to help me avoid making the same mistakes with my own kids, but all I really want is to forget the abuse and neglect I experienced at the hands of the people who were supposed to love me unconditionally.”

Besides, saying that suffering makes a person stronger insinuates that those who are lucky enough to have mellow, positive life experiences are weak, and that’s not always true.

Let’s not forget, either, that trauma survivors aren’t the only people affected by the trauma. It effects everyone around them, too—hence the support groups for spouses of alcoholics and children of Holocaust survivors. Destructive cycles can be deepened and propagated through trauma. A woman who endures a horrific childhood might subsequently subject her own children who an equally horrific childhood, because that’s all she knows, and she’s too fucked up from her childhood traumas to break the cycle of abuse. And those second-generation sufferers can turn around and do the same thing to their own children. Isn’t it possible the PTSD-inhibiting drug could stop those cycles?

People will haul out the old adage: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” But the thing is, while that’s certainly true for some people, it doesn’t account for everyone. Sometimes it’s “What doesn’t kill me breaks me” or “What doesn’t kill me turns me into a haunted shell who wakes up screaming every night and flinches at every sound and barricades himself into his home because he’s too terrified to step outdoors.”

People will point out that positive things can result from trauma: laws get passed, charities get created, awareness gets raised…and none of this would happen if traumatized victims either weren’t traumatized or if they had the traumatic memories stricken from their brains. It’s an interesting angle that has merit. Would Simon Wiesenthal have become as voracious a Nazi hunter as he was if he hadn’t survived the Holocaust? Would John Walsh be as powerful a crusader for missing children as he is if his son hadn’t been abducted and murdered? Would Tori Amos have founded the highly-successful Rape and Incest National Network if she hadn’t been raped at knifepoint? Maybe not. Probably not. Would an incest victim get her offending uncle put behind bars and away from other kids if she can’t remember that he ever molested her? Surely not—most people aren’t in the habit of campaigning to get their relatives thrown in jail for no discernable reason. But is it fair to ask one person to be a sacrificial lamb for the sake of many others? Is it fair to ask a traumatized father to embrace—instead of erasing—the pain that comes from his child being snatched, beheaded, and thrown in a canal, just because embracing the pain may cause him to channel it into ways that will help other victims and bring criminals to justice? Is it fair to tell him he’s not allowed to take this PTSD-inhibiting drug because positive societal strides won’t be made if memories of his son are deleted or dulled?

Ultimately, it’s his choice. That’s what I think this whole scenario boils down to: if the PTSD-inhibiting drug becomes available, every victim of trauma should be given a choice—maybe immediately, maybe after a waiting period—about whether it should be taken or not. The person who says, “I don’t want to take this drug to forget the genocide I endured because I want to use my experiences to help ensure that no other genocide ever happens again” is just as valid as the person who says, “I want to blot out every last visceral, gruesome memory of the genocide that haunts my every waking second.” Neither choice is better than the other.

I guess this argument has existed time and time again in other disguises. You’ve got the deaf rights advocates who disapprove of cochlear implants because getting an implant insinuates that being deaf is a deficiency and disability that must be corrected, and you’ve got the deaf people who are like, “Dude, I just want to be able to hear. It doesn’t mean deaf culture is invalid or I’m deficient—it just means I want to hear that Snow Patrol CD everyone is talking about.” You’ve got depression advocates who are all about embracing wacky serotonin levels and the creativity and insight they sometimes spawn, and you’ve got the depressed people who say, “I just want to get well. I just want to wake up in the morning without crying or lying paralyzed in my bed.” The PTSD-erasing pill seems to fall into this same category of being saluted by some sufferers and decried by others. On and on it goes.



song heard most recently before posting:
New Test Leper—REM

Happy Vernal Equinox!

From The Wicca Book of Days, by Gerina Dunwich:

On the first day of Spring the Spring, or Vernal, Equinox is celebrated by Wiccans and Witches throughout the world. Spring Equinox (which is also known as Festival of the Trees, Alban Eilir, Ostara, and the Rite of Eostre) is a fertility rite celebrating the birth of Spring and the reawakening of life from the Earth. On this sacred day, Witches light new fires at sunrise, rejoice, ring bells, and decorate hard-boiled eggs—an ancient Pagan custom associated with the Goddess of Fertility. The aspects of the Goddess invoked at this Sabbat are Eostre (the Saxon goddess of fertility) and Ostara (the German goddess of fertility); in some Wiccan traditions, the Green Goddess and the Lord of the Greenwood are worshipped on this day. Like most of the Pagan festivals, Spring Equinox was Christianized by the Church into the religious holiday of Easter, which celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Some beauty to kick-start the season:

Wee Planets

incredible paper sculptures from artist Jen Stark



song heard most recently before posting:
The Partisan—Leonard Cohen

ice ice baby

Yesterday morning I plucked a sheet of ice off the birdbath and, seeing that it was clear and brilliantly alive with fissures, I placed it on a sunny patch of sidewalk outside my house and got down on my knees to take some macro photos of it. Then I looked up and saw my neighbor staring curiously at me while he warmed up his SUV. Yeah, yeah, so I like photographing ice! You gotta problem with that, sonny boy? Okay, I do concede that it may’ve looked strange to see a girl in a nice skirt, knee-high boots, and a trench coat squatting on the ground, contorted in an unladylike position, with her camera shoved up against a piece of ice.

The good:

Last night, the fourth anniversary of the mess in Iraq, my friend Debbie and I met up for dinner at an Indonesian restaurant in Wheaton, Sabang, which has an eye-poppingly huge vegetarian menu. They’re not exclusively vegetarian, though, so it was a good opportunity for a carnivore like Debbie and an herbivore like me in dine together in Ebony and Ivory-style harmony. As much as I was jonesing to try the vegetarian lobster, I just couldn’t justify spending $23.95 on it (isn’t that the cost of real lobster?). Besides, what if I hated it? I’ve got to be stingy right now (see below) and can’t warrant spending almost $24 on something I could end up hating. Now, granted, it’s rare for me to meet a mock meat I don’t like, but anything is possible. So I went with the vegetarian cod in sweet and sour sauce with grilled vegetables instead. Mmm-mm! Heaven on a plate. For desert we got banana fritters that were so divine, they almost made me cry.

The bad:

David, my tax-preparing superhero, gave me the preliminary numbers of what I’ll owe the IRS this year. This is the second year in a row my freelancing shot me in the foot, tax-wise, because none of my freelancing checks get taxes taken out of them (not my choice, believe me). After last spring’s horror (I owed nearly $5,000 in federal and Maryland taxes), I decided to start paying quarterly taxes during 2006. This helped knock down how much I owe this year, but the damage still runs deep: I owe $2,671 in federal taxes and $557 in Maryland taxes. My 2007 quarterly federal tax payments will be $1,120—up from the $550 payments I made in 2006—and my quarterly state tax payments will be $410—up from the $250 payments I made in 2006. Methinks I’ll have to start peddling my flesh down on Logan Circle in order to pay these bills (not that anybody wants my flesh, mind you).


song heard most recently before posting:
Into Dust—Mazzy Star

Narcissistic much?

I need to submit a photo to classmates.com and to my employee intranet, so last night I staged a photo shoot and took like 300 photos of myself—much, I’m sure, to the amusement of my neighbors, who now surely think I’m the walking embodiment of narcissism.

I ended up deleting most of the photos because I disliked one aspect or another. In photographs I have an unfortunate tendency to either A) look like I’ve got a gigantic goiter, or B) look unbearably smug (a coworker of mine, on the other hand, looks like a junkie in every photo; she has complained that she can’t even send out photo cards at Christmas because she always ends up looking like a heroin addict propped up in front of a Christmas tree). My driver’s license and National Library of Medicine library card embody both the goiter and smugness traits, whereas my passport photo skips both and instead makes me look like I’m missing teeth. And have tangerine skin. Well, my perseverance finally paid off last night—I managed to snag a slender handful of shots where I look semi-human (I’d look more human if I Photoshopped my malformed forehead, but I just can’t be bothered). I know that being so persnickety about this photo makes me look incredibly vain, but I’m not! Take one look at me on any given day you’ll see what I mean. I’m quite comfortable looking slovenly, thank you very much.

Meanwhile, In discussing one his favorite paintings, Shawn inspired me to think about some of my own favorite works of art. I’ve been lucky enough to hit some amazing museums and galleries in my life, and so I’ve seen more wonderful art than I can even recall. But here are some favorites that stood out over the years.

The Death of Marat - Louis David

I saw this on a postcard in the Louvre giftshop and fell in love. I now have a framed poster version hanging in my apartment and the original postcard is in my cubicle at work. The postcard version has two extra brilliant lines of writing engraved on the wooden box: N’ayant pu me corrompre ils m’ont assassiné (Not having been able to corrupt me they have assassinated me). Later I got this engraved on a cheapo necklace at HersheyPark.

Death of Marat 1 - Edvard Munch

I have a small version of this in my apartment, clipped from an old JAMA cover. I’d love to score a larger version.

The Giants, the Witches, and the Daughter of the Sun - Rudolf Koivu

This was a stamp on a letter I received from a Finnish penpal in 1990. It remains in a small frame in my living room, and until 2005 I never knew the artist’s name. At that point I was in Helsinki and ended up in the Finnish Postal Museum on a whim, and while there, I suddenly thought, “Hey, maybe I can track down that stamp, using 1990 as a starting point!” It worked!

Valium - Damien Hirst

My favorite piece from this Goldsmiths alum (I’m mentioning his alma mater because that’s where I studied in London). Celtic knot-like patterns appear when you move away from the painting.

The Wounded Angel - Hugo Simberg

I plan to buy a copy of this beautiful painting when I move.

Ophelia - John Everett Millais

This is hanging in my bedroom, but it needs a better frame!

Concentric Circles - Wassily Kandinsky

I know: such a cliché. I really like a lot of Kandinsky’s work, but this is the one that reels me in the most.

Last but not least is Marc Chagall. Love him. I can’t even begin to describe how much I love the man. Mmmm, let’s see. I’ve had a few Chagall calendars over the years, I use a Chagall mug at work, I bought a Chagall matryoshka in Russia, I have several of his prints hanging in my apartment and cubicle, I own a Chagall nightlight, in Chicago I bought a piece of stained glass showing one of his paintings (but my idiot landlord [and I know I shouldn’t say that, because he’s now dead] later broke it), and I have Chagall coasters on my coffee table. Plus I have two books about him. Oh yeah, and I named my cat Freyja Bella—the middle name being a nod to Chagall’s first wife. Love him. Among my favorite paintings are:

The Promenade

The Birthday

Pink Lovers

Au Dessus de la Ville

Chryssoie

Lovers in the Red Sky

Les Fiancées de la Tour Eiffel

Couple in the Window

Le Couple

Lovers and Flowers

La Mariée

Couple on a Red Background

Le Champ de Mars

Clearly there’s a theme going on: my favorite Chagall paintings are consistently the ones showing a luminously happy couple (usually Chagall and Bella) clasping each other in ecstasy. See? Proof that I’m not completely dead inside.

song heard most recently before posting:
Darts of Pleasure—Franz Ferdinand

going to church

This morning I had to smear automotive paint on my shoes, because they somehow obtained ugly black scuffs on them that I can’t seem to remove. The shoes in question are shiny silver mary janes, and since my car is silver, too...well, even a dyscalculia-riddled fool like myself can put two and two together.

My sister and her husband have recently rejoined the Catholic church after many years away. He was technically raised Catholic, but it was done in a really half-assed, inconsistent way. Meanwhile Kristen, like me, was put through the whole rigmarole: mass every week and on holy days, CCD every Sunday, Confirmation classes every Wednesday, no meat on Fridays during Lent, etc. But when we turned 18 we were allowed to drop church, if that’s what we wished to do. And drop it we did—like the proverbial hot potato. This means that aside from attending the occasional Catholic wedding, Kristen hasn’t been to mass since 1989...yet now she’s going every week, and she even went to confession. How surreal it must seem! I haven’t been to confession since 1991, several months before I was allowed to stop attending church in 1992, so if I went now, I’d have to say to the priest, “Uh, it’s been 16 years since my last confession, and that includes my college years, sooooo...um…yeah, needless to say, we’re gonna be here for a while.”

Now my niece has to get baptized, but, oddly enough, their church does baptisms during regular mass, instead of during a special ceremony. So in late April I’ll be sitting through a full mass for the first time since Christmas Eve 1994, when I was studying abroad and attended midnight candlelight mass in Germany with my friend Laura and a few of her friends. I think the majority of us did it just for kicks—solely to do something Christmassy while spending our first Christmas away from home. I’ve been to a few Christmas Eve services since then with my grandfather, but they were all at his Protestant church. I haven’t actually done the Catholic thing for over 12 years (aside from being a bridesmaid in a Catholic wedding in 2003). It should be interesting indeed...especially if the priest takes one look at me and screams, “GET OUT, HEATHEN!!!!!!!” Or maybe “Jezebel” or “heretic whore of Babylon” or “sinful stench in the nostrils of the righteous” (™Miss Peel) will get bandied about? One can only hope.



song heard most recently before posting:
Kreuzberg—Bloc Party

hola, Brody!

Welcome to the world,
Brody Hamilton Leavens!
March 5, 2007 · 10:15 am · 6 lbs., 7 oz. · 20 inches

song heard most recently before posting:
I’m the Girl—Heather Nova

dark side of love

Shawn and I decided to compile a list of our favorite anti-love songs, and March is an appropriate time to do it (for reasons I won’t explain here).

So, here is my Dark Side of Love list, which will grow in the future, and which currently covers (in no particular order) different elements of breaking up (sadness, bitterness/hatred, regret, fury), unrequited love, toxic love, dying relationships, obsession, betrayal, the idea that being single is best, etc.

Your Ex-Lover is Dead – Stars
The Moment I Said It – Imogen Heap
Fallen for You – Sheila Nicholls
I Just Don’t Think I’ll Ever Get Over You – Colin Hay
Toxic – The Chapin Sisters
You are the Dark – Joseph Arthur
Fools in Love – Inara George
I Will Survive – Gloria Gaynor
I Who Have Nothing – Shirley Bassey
On My Own – Les Misérables
You’ll See – Madonna
I’ll Never Fall in Love – Mary Chapin Carpenter
You Don’t Bring Me Flowers – Barbara Streisand/Neil Diamond
Love on the Rocks – Neil Diamond
Worn Me Down – Rachael Yamagata
Famous Blue Raincoat – Leonard Cohen
Overs – Simon & Garfunkel
The Dangling Conversation – Simon & Garfunkel
No Man’s Woman – Sinéad O’Connor
Jealous – Sinéad O’Connor
What Doesn’t Belong to Me – Sinéad O’Connor
The Last Day Of Our Acquaintance – Sinéad O’Connor
Troy – Sinéad O’Connor
Autumn Leaves – Eva Cassidy
I Wish I Was a Single Girl Again – Eva Cassidy
It’s Good to be a Single Girl – Varttina
As Heaven is Wide – Garbage
Not My Idea – Garbage
I’m Alive – Heather Nova
Jennifer’s Body – Hole
Ghost – Indigo Girls
Sundrenched World – Joshua Radin
What if You – Joshua Radin
Absolutely Zero – Jason Mraz
Otherwise – Morcheeba
It’s Only Love – Heather Nova
It Doesn’t Matter – Alison Krauss
All Cried Out – Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam
All at Once – Whitney Houston
Always Something There to Remind Me – Naked Eyes
Against All Odds – Phil Collins
Can’t We Try – Dan Hill & Vonda Shepherd
Could’ve Been – Tiffany
Didn’t We Almost Have it All – Whitney Houston
Foolish Beat – Debbie Gibson
Heartbreaker – Pat Benatar
I Hate Myself for Loving You – Joan Jett
Look Away – Chicago
My Heart Can’t Tell You No – Rod Stewart
No More Rhymes – Debbie Gibson
Separate Lives – Phil Collins & Marilyn Martin
Separate Ways – Journey
True Devotion – Samantha Fox
Where Do Broken Hearts Go – Whitney Houston
Harden My Heart – Quarterflash
Another Crack in My Heart – Take That
Crash! Boom! Bang! – Roxette
Foolish Games – Jewel
The Beast – Concrete Blonde
Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad – Def Leppard
I Can’t Make You Love Me – Bonnie Raitt
Love Is – Vanessa Williams & Brian McKnight
The Power of Good-Bye – Madonna
Unbreak My Heart – Toni Braxton
Where the Wild Roses Grow – Nick Cave & Kylie Minogue
You Oughta Know – Alanis Morissette
Every Breath You Take – The Police
Obsession – Animotion
Uninvited – Alanis Morissette
The Wrong Man – Amanda Ghost
And So It Goes – Billy Joel
I’m Gonna Be Strong – Cyndi Lauper
Rootless Tree – Damien Rice
Accidental Babies – Damien Rice
Cheers Darlin’ – Damien Rice
Silent Night – Lisa Hannigan
Hunter – Dido
Don’t Think of Me – Dido
My Lover’s Gone – Dido
Black Horse & the Cherry Tree – KT Tunstall
Gone – Jessica Riddle
Gone – Madonna
Solitaire – Neil Sedaka
I Still Believe – Miss Saigon
Honey – Tori Amos
Ruby through the Looking Glass – Tori Amos
I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself – Nicky Holland
I’ll Be Okay – Amanda Marshall
I Saw Red – Warrant
Love Bites – Def Leppard
Speaking of Happiness – Gloria Lynne
I Can’t Cry Hard Enough – Williams Brothers
Bye Bye Love – Simon & Garfunkel
Blinded – Tara MacLean
Shiver and Shake – The Cure
Apart – The Cure
Last Night I Dreamt that Somebody Loved Me – The Smiths
Blood Roses – Tori Amos
Iieee – Tori Amos
Baker Baker – Tori Amos
Strange – Tori Amos
Your Cloud – Tori Amos
One – U2
So Cruel – U2

Shawn’s songs about lost love, unrequited love, jealousy, and pain:

Never gonna get it – En Vogue
Until the end of the world – U2
He doesn’t see me – Sarah Brightman (because I love this song)
Golddust woman – Fleetwood Mac
Never going back again – Matchbox 20
Why – Annie Lennox
Mouth (stingray mix)- Bush
Precious things – Tori Amos
Stupid Girl – Garbage
Turned blue – Caroline’s Spine
Crucify – Tori Amos
Special – Garbage
the Beast – Concrete Blonde
Watching you without me – Kate Bush
The lady of shallot – Loreena Mckennit
Who’s that girl? – Eurythmics
With you / Crawling / Runaway/ In the end / Pushing me away – Linkin
Park (so many of their songs fit this category.)
I Will Love Again – Laura Fabian
Harden My Heart – Quarter Flash
Send Me an Angel – Real Life
Something going on – Frida
(Kiss You) When it’s Dangerous – 8 Seconds
Poison – Groove Coverage
Wings of a Butterfly – H.I.M.
Stand my Ground – Within Temptation
Chewing Gum – Annie
Love is a Blind Ambition – Concrete Blonde
Jesus Forgive Me (for the things I’m about to say) – Concrete Blonde
You Oughta Know – Alanis Morrissette
Memory – Cats :)
Little Black Heart – A-Ha
Frozen – Madonna
Tainted Love – Soft Cell
Tell Me Lies – Fleetwood Mac
Hold Her Down – Toad the Wet Sprocket
My Last Breath – Evanescance
Haunted – Poe
Don’t Speak – No Doubt
Mother ’93 – Danzig
Toxic – Britney spears
Ave Adore – Smashing Pumpkins



song heard most recently before posting:
Concertino for Flute, Viola, and Bass, ii: Furiant—Ervin Schulhoff