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April 12th, 2009
07:18 pm - Grrr
I would be so mad if I were in one of the 200 families told they would get a school voucher, then told a week later they wouldn't. Especially when the decision is a preemptive one, denying families on the premise that the government *might* axe the program.
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March 20th, 2009
12:30 pm - Print Media
I've been hearing a lot about the death of the print media business recently (possibly because of rumors of the Boston Globe going under, which tends to make people in Boston talk). While I'm somewhat concerned, can we remember that because of the magic of internet I can get links to a Chattanooga paper? That's pretty awesome, no? Plus, it means I get to see one of the best political cartoons I've seen in a while:
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March 19th, 2009
01:40 pm - i heart anthony bourdain
I was reading salon.com today, and somehow clicked through to some old Anthony Bourdain columns, which are always fun (and I almost always agree with). And then, somehow, I got redirected to travel.com and a quiz that confirmed that I like Anthony Bourdain's show (duh) and that I like going to cool places (again, duh).
IHAVETHEBUG.COM
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March 6th, 2009
04:04 pm - This is how much of a geek I am
Saw this comic.
Read it once, thought "Huh?"
Read it twice, "Ah, yes. I see."
Then I shook my head and thought, "But this isn't a correlation/causation problem. It's a post hoc ergo propter hoc problem."
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February 22nd, 2009
10:16 pm - Thoughts from a sickbed -- my misogyny
I got sick earlier this week, and there's nothing like spending two days in bed but unable to sleep, read, or focus on anything on a computer screen to make you think. One of the random lines of thought:
My mother has always given me a bit of a hard time that I have so many guy friends. I think my dad would, too, if he were more comfortable giving me a hard time about things like that. Normally I just roll my eyes when my mother makes some When Harry Met Sally-type comment about these friendships and go along my merry way. But let's be honest: it sometimes worries me that I have more close guy friends than close girl friends.
So why am I more comfortable around men than women? I think there's a degree to which all my relationships are competitive. I constantly self-assess in comparison to those around me, which is actually not that fun, but I do it automatically. Am I as smart as my friends? As funny? As interesting? And with women, the comparisons multiply. For example, it's a pretty well established fact that women dress for each other, not for men. Why? Because we judge each other. And it's a veritable judgment minefield out there. Don't look too sloppy, but don't look too formal, or too slutty, or look like you're trying too hard. And that's just the costuming, folks. I still have to think about whether I'm being smart enough, or too smart. Am I being strong and assertive as they are, as a good modern woman should? On the other hand, am I as kind and sensitive as they are? And when I look at the lives my women friends have, am I making as good choices about family, work, balance in general? And of course there's lurking the physical insecurities that I'm told most women have: am I as pretty as my other women friends?
Just thinking about it makes me exhausted. (or is that lingering sickness?)
With guys, on the other hand, I feel almost none of that pressure. As much as we talk about men and women being equal in this day and age, it's just not true when it comes to expectations within a social group. Which I actually kind of like. It means I can still be my natural competitive self when I want to be, but I no longer have to measure myself on the same scale when I don't want to. The way I dress isn't as scrutinized; I don't feel guilty if I'm either talking a lot or not talking much in the conversation; I don't have to compare my life directly to theirs. And all of this works on the flip side, too -- I don't feel the need to assess/judge my guy friends.
(And then on top of that, when I do go through the excruciating effort of going through all that just to hang out with some of my female friends, we end up talking about things that just do not interest me. Yesterday I was subjected to a conversation about predicting who would be "cute pregnant" versus "bloated pregnant" if and when pregnancy comes. I'm sorry, what? I could not care less, especially as it seems that the cultural imperative is that each woman insist she'll be bloated, and everyone else say no she'll be cute. With men, on the other hand, unless the conversation is car engines or NBA basketball, normally it's something that's nominally interesting to me. Maybe this is because conversation changes in mixed company (the pregnancy discussion doesn't come up if a man is in the group, unless he's incredibly gay and brought the conversation up, which is what happened yesterday), but it still means I'm not subjected to as many stupid conversations when I'm with guys.)
All of this is obviously oversimplified and overly harsh. It's not like these thoughts and competitive streaks completely overwhelm any moment I'm with women. And I have women friends with whom I do not feel this judge-y behavior in either direction, but they are fewer and farther between than I would wish. And of course all this self-conscious assessment still manifests around guys, just in a more tempered way. But there it is: my latent misogyny based in my own competitive insecurities.
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February 14th, 2009
07:00 pm - Christmas Present Update
I've finally found the cord that connects my camera to my computer, so I've uploaded some photos of me using one of my Christmas presents. A couple months ago, my friend Leigh lent me a book called The Hairdo Handbook (1964). Lots of drawings of how to fix your hair in various ways with rollers, in addition to the obvious information about cut and color. Anyway, it fed Leigh and my mutual fascination with old etiquette and culture books, but it started a new interest: hair curlers. I've never done anything to my except wash, brush, and cut it (in descending order of frequency), so this was my first experiment:
I had damp hair at night (took a shower a couple hours before going to bed).
Top view (don't look at the mess on my floor)
Back view:
I was a little worried about it: I had no idea what my hair would look like in the morning, and I had class the next day:
The next morning, this is what I looked like:
Way more curl than I had anticipated, but what can you do? I pinned some of it back, applied some hair spray. Twelve hours later, at the end of my day, they had fallen, but not completely, which surprised me. Normally I can't get my hair to stay any particular way no matter how hard I try.
If I come up with other interesting looks, I'll post some more.
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January 10th, 2009
04:16 pm - New Year's Resolution: Half Hour of Writing
In my life there are many things to apologize for. I'm not good at apologies -- either making or receiving them. I like to drift away, leaving closure for a self-healing process, not a joint project. No, I don't want to be your friend if you hurt me three years ago and now you've decided to make a Facebook account and want to pad your "friends" with people you knew for two months so long ago. And when I did something wrong, I know there's no excuse. Nothing to make up for it, and nothing I can do. Sorry isn't good enough -- I should have been there, I should have called, and I should have let you know it wasn't your fault. But I didn't and trying to make up for it now is like a dying man penciling his name in the wall by his bed to make up for a life of failing to make his mark. Too little, too late, and I am too prideful to make that last desperate attempt. I know that's my own character flaw, but there it is.
So I didn't know whether I should start all over again and drop this website altogether, or whether to leave the connection with a past that only moderately relates to who I am now and the problems I have now. But, getting a new site requires decisionmaking, so here we are. No new decisions to make. Which in the end is even worse than making apologies.
So, apologies for no new updates in a while. If the reasons were more dramatic, I'd say it's because I've been having a mental breakdown, or because I'm having existential crises, or something that sounds like an excuse. But really that's not true. What *has* happened since August? Depressingly little -- I got a job for when I graduate that starts in August. It's a relatively prestigious position with a judge in DC, which rather than letting me sit pretty actually makes more pressure. If I do what's expected of me (apply for clerking at the Supreme Court), it's more work and there's certainly no guarantee I can make the next rung on the proverbial. And if I don't, I constantly have to field questions about why I didn't even try. And I don't have any of the excuses that'll get you off the hook -- that I have a family, or that the job isn't in the part of the country I want to live in, or even that my end goal won't be served by following the expected path.
Other than that, I muddled through a semester, going to class as needed and barely eking out the work I had to do for Law Review without getting in trouble. I did most of the things that I needed to for Christian Fellowship, though I wasn't able to achieve anything special.
Then, I had a great time at home for Christmas, even though the first few days were marked by my bad temper. And my sister and I had important moments -- getting mad at each other and her letting me cry about things to her, and me whisking her away from the extended when she was about to cry and didn't want people to see. I feel bad about many things I didn't do at home. I didn't see one of my best and oldest friends, and haven't called her yet to apologize, either. I haven't
I look back on the fall (and, frankly, this past summer), and I realize I miss having things I love in life. I've been remembering recently all the things I used to do. I used to go to plays, and I used to paint and write, and read novels and pray. I used to sing loudly in the car and during my lunch break took a walk to a nearby park and watched children playing or leaves blowing or whatever caught my fancy. I used to practice karate absent-mindedly, and stretch out in the mornings looking at the bright sun come through my window. But now my life has been in winter for the last year or so. I'm good at keeping up appearances, but I spend more time than I used to watching movies as a fix rather than as a joy. I still bake, but in spurts, and feel guilty on both ends of the process for either not doing it enough or doing it too much and eating everything I bake. I don't have a car to sing in, and it's cold, and if I go to a park, there's a chance someone will see me who knows me and knows I haven't been doing my work. And it's always dark here, and my window points north anyway, so I never get sunlight streaming through.
I hate winter.
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August 2nd, 2008
11:40 pm - Duplicate Post
Duplicate Post from my other blog:
Don't know how long this will be up (it's on the Youtube screening room), but it's worth checking out. Harvie Krumpet on Youtube:
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July 30th, 2008
03:59 pm - Wikipedia told me so
Check out this really interesting post about a court citing Wikipedia for a key part of its decision. Now, I use Wikipedia a lot, and generally what I use it for is not volatile enough for that use to risk problematic editing. But just because it's easy and fast doesn't mean it's always the best, and it just seems so out of place in a profession that makes me spend hours and hours finding a properly authoritative version of an outdated state statute in order to cite to it (not that I'm still bitter about that).
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July 25th, 2008
July 24th, 2008
11:05 am - Switched at birth
Saw this on How Appealing, and just had to link it: People suing over being switched at birth.
It reminded me of Toto le Heros, the French-language film that created my "French films are bizarre" opinion.
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July 21st, 2008
12:13 pm - When cleaning up the internet goes too far
At a website that apparently uses various scripts or programs to edit inappropriate language from the site, I recently read about someone who "graduated magna c*m laude from SUNY Buffalo" . . . Sometimes censorship puts your mind in the gutter, rather than taking it out.
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July 17th, 2008
11:08 pm - obscurity
OK, I know I'm being obscure here, but I have not been writing a personal journal for a while now, and I feel the need to write this somewhere. I feel fourteen again, even though I never felt like fourteen when I was that old. I liked my shell, my oblivion, my obscurity. And now I am being shoved into the teenage pain I always felt that I had blissfully skipped: I never wanted to be popular, to be well-liked even at the expense of being deeply liked. But now, now I am not so sure. When I am at an event and no one introduces me to anyone else, I feel awkward with a forced smile pasted across my face as I scream into the noisy bar pretending to have a good time. When I am invited to have drinks with friends, I don't expect to be insulted and teased -- didn't we get over that sort of social dynamic after middle school??? And when I run into a group of friends somewhere, and I realize I have stumbled upon a group event to which I was not invited, I expect someone other than just me to feel a bit awkward about that fact, and maybe someone even asking if I want to join them. Not that I would have said yes, since I had another dinner planned, but still. Oh, and I also wish I would stop learning about friends' major life events through Facebook and other websites. Please tell me when something important happens to you.
//end angsty post
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June 30th, 2008
05:17 pm - Notes on yesterday
Two comments/stories about yesterday:
1. Yesterday morning I was waiting at a street corner (shut up) for my ride to Sturbridge MA, when I was stopped by a few middle aged black men who told me -- in the most polite way possible for this sort of comment -- that I was a "sight for sore eyes."
I proceeded to wait around the corner, out of the line of sight from the benches they were sitting on.
I simply do not understand why I am the person that gets random people to talk to her. Random people on public transportation, the guy who works at the metro stop where I live who has decided to say "hi" to me whenever I'm coming home late. Yesterday evening even the TSA guy checking bags at the airport said hi to me and said he liked my dress. Do I just exude "Please talk to me" vibes? I don’t mind it at all -- I just don't understand it.
2. Then I went to a wedding. Becca was absolutely beautiful -- completely herself but also exactly what the stereotype of a bride should be. The wedding was beautiful, too. The reception was cool: breakfast and brunch food is clearly always a winner, and while there were some egregious mistakes with dance music selection, there was a nice variety which resulted in Ghanaian dancing, line dancing, and salsa dancing, along with your run of the mill "white people not knowing how to" dancing. It was actually the first wedding I've ever been to that made me think about what I would want a wedding to look like. Well, the reception anyway. It's really all about party planning. When I dream of settling down in life, I think of (not in this order of priority) 1) having a garden; 2) having kids; and 3) having a group of friends and a space for having really good parties. And by "good" I don’t mean the insane apartment parties of college years. I'm thinking parties with silly games and silly dancing and good food and people putting on closet plays and playing pickup Frisbee games. Basically my version of combining parties you might read about/see in a Jane Austen novel, Alice in Wonderland, or My Man Godfrey. Basically, I want to throw parties for Those Who Are Slightly Mad.
Speaking of Those Who Are Slightly Mad, this weekend involves going home and having a big birthday celebration with my extended family. Which will perhaps satiate me for parties for a while.
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June 12th, 2008
05:11 pm - accidental haitus
I know, I know. It's been forever since I posted. I will try to remedy that in the coming weeks, and actually discuss some of my life these days. But in the meantime, I just wanted to post this for all the people who make fun of me for going barefoot as much as possible in the summer:
You Walk Wrong
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April 22nd, 2008
03:58 pm
China: stop screwing up food and drug exports. And then pointing fingers.
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April 17th, 2008
10:28 pm - Harvard is still surreal
It is weird that I know this guy. The non-Jon Stewart guy, that is.
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April 9th, 2008
09:43 am - being busy makes me happy
I am just getting my head above water, I think. I seem to have a regular sleep schedule, and I'm getting my work (mostly) done on time. I do have a lot more work about to come down on me -- finals time is approaching after all, as well as having to wind up all sorts of extracurriculars (this week: lunches every day; meeting that lasted from 7 to midnight last night; party tonight; auction tomorrow as well as a CD release party; formal on Friday; alumni brunch on Saturday morning; formal on Saturday night). Getting work done in there is going to be a bit of a stretch, but it has to be done, and I'm finally in a place where I think I might actually accomplish everything I need to.
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March 31st, 2008
09:53 pm - Summer News
Hey folks! Good news! I just got a summer grant to supplement my job this summer. Very cool. It's not super-competitive, from what I can tell, but still. I get some extra money, another line on my resume, but most importantly, I get some good connections. I just hope I use them.
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10:53 am - Good news
Good news for alcoholic lawyers everywhere: scientists are trying to save your livers.
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reneeag's journal