politics

18% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth.

23% of voters approve of the way Bush is running the country.

where does that extra 5% come from??

Gay Marriage

As of 5:01pm yesterday, gay people in California can get married. Today in the news I'm seeing mostly cute articles about different couples tying the knot, but in the days leading up to this event, people were re-hashing the arguments for and against gay marriage ad nauseam.

When people argue about the issue, inevitably someone liberal but not very invested in the cause comes up with what he's sure is the most novel idea anyone's ever heard. If only everyone would listen to this brilliant piece of insight, we could all stop fighting and put the issue to rest. the argument is: "Abolish government marriage. Let the government perform civil unions for gays AND straights, but leave marriage to the churches. After all, this gives gay people the legal rights of married people without the separate but equal problem, and since we're not using the word marriage, conservatives can't claim we're going against their religious beliefs!"

this argument is bullcrap.

history lesson:
In Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court found that having separate schools for black and white children, even if they were of equal quality, was unconstitutional. In response, at least one rural school system in southern Virginia literally shut down their schools. "Fine, if we have to give black kids the same thing we're giving to whites, we just won't give anything to anyone. problem solved."

If you think this was an unjust action, how can you support taking away marriage rather than give it to gays? Even if you don't find the situations perfectly analogous, you've got to admit there's a resemblance, and that means making the government grant "civil union licenses" instead of marriage licenses is not going to satisfy gay people.

beyond that, right now marriage means more than just "civil union plus religious ceremony." the meaning's kind of amorphous and changing, but don't mistake "hard to define" with "without definition."

for example: My mother is an atheist. But she's married to my dad. They didn't go to a synagogue or church to have some religious ceremony, but she still rather likes being married to him. Despite the fact their union is not consecrated by any religious power, I'm pretty damn sure she'd think calling their relationship a civil union instead of a marriage would be a downgrade.

This solution would please no one who thinks civil marriage is more than hospital visitation rights and the ability to file a joint tax return.

And you know what? Even if some Evangelicals think civil marriage means exactly that, they would not be okay with calling it anything but marriage.
it's not like they're exactly huge separation of church and state proponents. Have you not paid attention to the idiotic crusades against liberals and the evil ACLU who are wiping out G-d from public life. These people boycott big box stores who say "Happy Holidays" in their December ads. They talk endlessly about displaying the 10 commandments in courtrooms and encouraging prayer in public schools. They very firmly believe that "America is a Christian nation," and to them, instituting Civil Unions is going to be taking the God out of marriage.

Basically, this "solution" would satisfy no one at all. Come up with some new ideas.

it's been a while

Once upon a time there was a prince named Hamlet who lived in Denmark.
And every day he moped around the castle because his father was dead and his mother (Gertrude) had married his uncle (Claudius).
Until one day the ghost of his dead father appeared to him and told him that the Claudius had murdered him.
And because of that, Hamlet vowed to avenge his father, and started acting like a lunatic while he worried over a plan.
And because of that, Polonius started spying on him to prove Hamlet was crazy over Ophelia, but he ended up getting himself stabbed.
Until finally, Laertes returned from France to avenge Polonius's death, and he killed Hamlet with a poison-tipped sword, but not before Gertrude had drunk poison, and Hamlet had killed Laertes with the same sword and both stabbed Claudius and made him drink that same poison. (woohoo run-on sentences!)
And ever since then, Fortinbras (a totally ancillary character from Norway who has been mentioned maybe twice in the past 3 hours) became the new king of Denmark.

I saw the free Hamlet in the park a few weeks ago. It was good. Long (my butt fell asleep) but good. That's my goal for this summer: at least 1 free thing a week. That week I did Hamlet plus a Regina Spektor performance on the mall. Yesterday, I went to the Phillips Collection because they were having free admission. Three guesses what the main show up there was... That's right: Jacob Lawrence. Pretty much every time I go to the Phillips Collection, there is a Jacob Lawrence show up. In fact, this time, they had the exact same Jacob Lawrence show I'd gone to in 1993. Admittedly, my average attendance rate at the Phillips is about once every five years. look, in a city full of great free museums, is it a surprise that I never feel like paying the $12? but still. they REALLY like the guy.

next weekend, I'm thinking...Capital Pride? I want to at least make the parade, I think.

Oh, in other news, here's how the rest of my life is going to go:
Friday: give my notice at my job
A month from Friday: stop working
About a week after that: go on an "adventure tour" to costa rica.
10 Days after that: try to find a place to live next year.
Sept 2: start Smith post-bacc program in math
Sometime in January: do a free birthright trip to israel
May, 2009: graduate from the post-bacc program
June, 2009: who the fuck knows?

WHY WON'T IT STOP RAINING?

In improv yesterday, I got to be a zombie and superman and I got to throw up on stage and pretend to lick someone. Improv is fun.

This is maybe just superstitious, but I think before I can be good on stage I have to fail first. I secretly suspect most people are like this. You need to freeze up and have a completely wooden, boring scene, just so next time you get up, you can be like, "fuck it, it can't get any worse than that disaster," and just play without overthinking things.

Hopefully, flights don't get delayed too badly and I make it to class next Sunday. Three hours of getting the fuck ups out of our systems immediately prior to the showcase will help a lot.

finals

As my buddies still in school suffer through finals week, I'm feeling oddly reminiscent about my own stressful final exam/paper experiences.

My senior year, the last night of reading period, I moved my entire life into the computer science lounge. I had a 20 page philosophy paper to write, and I had not even started the research. After I skimmed through about 10 library books, I came up with a sort of thesis, but it was based on a computer science class I'd taken the previous semester, and only one of the books I'd skimmed was actually helpful.

So I went to the previous class's website, pulled up all the online journal articles we'd read, and tried pulling some quotes from that.

Still, I needed more. I thought I could find something useful in the Computer Science class's textbook, but a friend and I had shared one book, since it's not like anyone actually ever did the reading in computer science classes, and I had no idea where it was. At that point, it was around midnight, so I couldn't go knocking on her door to see if it was in her room, but I had vague memories of us leaving it on the grand piano in the living room many months before, so I made the walk back to my house to see if it was still there. It wasn't.

I freaked out for a while, and then pulled myself together and found the paper I'd written for that class. Sure enough, there were quotes from the textbook. I plugged them into google, and figured out that with a little ingenuity, I could use the "look inside" feature on Amazon to get what I needed.

And then, I put on some music (NPR All Songs Considered. Perfect for getting into a trance-like state.), and stared to type. I have no attention span, so every paragraph or so, I'd award myself with a nytimes.com article.

When I was about 3/4 of the way done, my all-nighter compatriot in the lab informed me sunrise was coming (apparently he procrastinated by reading weather.com? it's not like there were windows in the lab), so I went outside to watch it rise. I picked up the newspaper delivered to the science building door and scanned the headlines. I'd already read them all.

I walked to higher ground (near the campus center) to get a better view of the sun. Then, the sprinklers went on and I decided to run through them. Finally, I went back to the lab and pounded out the rest of the paper. What a piece of shit. But I finished the damn thing and somehow managed an A in the class. Possibly because my professor cared even less than I did.

ah, school. why am I seriously considering going back next year?

Ryan Sorba

The republican club at my alma mater brought this dude to campus yesterday to deliver a speech called "the born gay hoax." Apparently his thesis is that people choose to be gay, it isn't natural, and gay people are out recruiting our impressionable youth. Totall bullshit.

So last night when he came, a ton of students showed up (more than could fit in the room he was scheduled to speak in) and started chanting really loudly and banging on pots and pans. He left halfway through his speech and didn't come back. Now there's some controversy over whether protesting him was appropriate.

A couple thoughts:

I'm not sure if it was appropriate, but I'm kind of proud it happened. It probably was immature, but you're supposed to be immature in college. Never again in your life will you be free to act out as much. Take advantage!

Also, the "this isn't how mature adults behave" argument reminds me a lot of the "this isn't how nice girls should act" line that women have been fed forever. Yeah, it's not how mature people act in polite society, but maybe they should! In general, women don't speak up enough because they're too worried about appearing nice. Good for the protestors for stepping outside the constraints of normal social mores for an evening.

Finally, liberalism does not equal absolute moral relativism. It's true that we make a lot of relativistic arguments. Think of: "just because your church says abortion is wrong, doesn't mean the rest of us think so." or "just because you think homosexuality is a sin doesn't mean the rest of us do!" However, that relativism is not complete, and no matter how fervently asshole republicans want to do so, you can't take it to its logical extreme. I think in general, we should err on the side of being more open-minded, not less, but when someone's opinion is basically lies (whether the lie is "gay people choose to be gay" or "intelligent design is a real scientific theory") we don't have to take it seriously. Not all opinions are worthy of respect. Some are just illogical and stupid.

magic beans

once upon a time, there was a cow named bob.
and every day bob ate piles of purple hay.
until one day, a vagabond set the hay on fire.
and because of that, bob started to go hungry and couldn't produce any milk.
and because of that, the farmer decided to sell her for some magic beans.
until finally, the farmer started growing the (magic) soybeans and stopped raising beef.
and ever since then, vasily the newly vegan farmer made enough money to buy bob back and make her a family pet.

I actually had a good weekend--passover, swimming outdoors, reading a good book. Nothing that made a good story, though.

4 ways to tell I am more tired than I feel

1. When I got home last night, I tried to open the front door with my work key. (My work "key" is actually an rfid device.)

2. I then proceeded to pack my bag and go to the pool. For once, I even remembered to pack my bath pouf. What I didn't remember was my swimsuit.

3. This morning, I filled up the kettle to make some tea, put it on the stove, and then tried to turn on the flame by pressing buttons on the microwave.

4. I decided to eat cereal for lunch today. (shut up) I reached in to the fridge to get my carton of soy milk, and ended up taking out the brita pitcher instead.

the show

once upon a time, I started taking classes at WIT.
and every day, I thought, "I should really go see a show put on by the people who are teaching me."
until one day (this Saturday) I finally bought a ticket.
and because of that, I took the metro down to gallery place for the 9:30 show.
and because of that, I got there a little early and ran into a guy from my class.
until finally, the show started and we got to see the final round of FIST, which was awesome, and the troupe Jackie, which was also very good.
and ever since then, I've decided to drag my ass to shows more readily.

seriously, it costs no more than a movie ticket and is incredibly entertaining. hell, if you go to the right show, they will improvise a movie in front of you. too bad the spring run of shows just ended.

the grease fire.

Once upon a time, there was me.
And every day (well, every weekend anyway) I thought, "I should really go visit my friends in Baltimore who just had a baby," but I was too lazy to actually make the trip.
Until one day, I heard from the friends that they were moving to California.
And because of that, their friends hosted a going away brunch for them yesterday in NE DC.
And because of that, I *finally* got to meet the baby. Also, I helped make pancakes.
Until finally, I started a grease fire on the electric stove. Luckily I was not holding the baby at the time.
And ever since then, the baby's parents have wisely decided to take him out of the room whenever I am near dangerous kitchen appliances.

sit com

I just realized the word sitcom is short for situational comedy.
my entire world just shifted.

7 line story

Once upon a time there was an office worker who hated her job.
And every day she drove the 10 miles to work, usually speeding because she couldn't bring herself to leave home on time.
Until one day while she was speeding along, she ran into a trash can someone had left too far from the edge of the road.
And because of that her rearview mirror smacked against her passenger side window, cracking the glass in the mirror.
And because of that she took the car to the dealer who said it would cost $400 to replace the mirror.
Until finally her father thought the dealer was trying to cheat her, so he called his friend at Joe's Auto-Body, who said he'd do the job for $100.
And ever since then the office worker decided never to go to the dealership for car repairs. She still speeds to work, though.

Explanation: We did this in my improv class one day. The idea is you can summarize any story in 7 lines if you stick to the outline above. It's pretty easy to make up a story in that format, but it's surprisingly difficult to shoehorn events from your real life into it. I think it's good practice, though.

"Until one day" is the easiest line. It's where the break in the pattern--the event in your life that was out of the ordinary--occurs. People who can't tell stories well (I include myself) usually jump right to this line and often forget about the other 6. The first 2 give context: Most stories have a few different people in them. "Once upon a time" forces you to figure out who the main character is. "And every day" forces you to define what normal is, so people will know when something abnormal occurs. Lines 4-6 are all about heightening. A story's no good if it's just, "This one weird thing happened this one time." You need a plot twist: how did the one weird thing cause something else? One plot twist isn't enough, though. It's too predictable, so: how did that something else cause a third thing to occur? Having that chain of events gives you forward motion, which you then cap in a climax on line 6. Then, line 7 is the moral or punchline. It's your chance to explain why the story was worth telling in the first place.

So, I think I'm going to try some blog posts in the 7 line story format. It's not like I'm using this thing for anything else, so maybe I can refine my storytelling skills.

Laurie Anderson

On Saturday, I went to see Laurie Anderson, an apparently pretty famous performance artist (I know nothing about art!), give a lecture about Andy Warhol's Electric Chair at the National Portrait Gallery.

It was... I don't really know what it was. I ended up talking about it afterwards with a bunch of different people who ended up at a series of gallery openings on 14th st afterwards. (Including this opening, at which I felt completely awkward and out of place, because Washington is not a fashionable place, but I'm pretty sure every single person in the tiny minority of Washingtonians who *do* pay attention to fashion was in that room. With me and my frayed jeans and t-shirt.)

She'd obviously prepared ahead of time. She had a whole outline worked out, an interesting powerpoint presentation, and even a working audio element (a really cool excerpt from a talk by William S Burroughs). But it seemed like nerves just took her over. As an ex- occasional debater, I sympathized completely. It was like being a novice debater getting up with just a vague outline of a speech to give a rebuttal to the team with the biggest reputation on the circuit. You just blank. On one level, you know you have interesting things to say, but on another, why are you even pretending to be on par with [former Nats finalists OR PhD Art Historians]. So you stumble through, trying to just hit all the points on the outline, and hoping it isn't going as badly as you think it is. But as you look down at that outline, you think "Why did I even write that? What does that word even say?" Your outline was supposed to be a series of guideposts to jog your memory of the larger speeech you had planned in your head, but all of a sudden, the larger speech is gone, and you're trying to madly reconstruct it from scribbled shorthand.

The result was flashes of what could have been a really great speech by a clearly smart, interesting woman. But the tangents never led anywhere, and they'd just sort of fizzle out instead of getting back to the main point. There were a ton of nervous verbal tics (like, um, so...). The whole thing took an incredibly long time--she ended up throwing out the second half of her speech because 45 minutes through her 1 hour time slot, it was clear she wouldn't have time for it. The kiss of death was when, at one point, she apologized for how badly the speech was going. You never do that. I didn't get a lot out of my limited debate experience, but that's one thing I picked up right away. Never do anything to draw attention away from the points you're trying to make. Yeah, your poor speaking skills might be the elephant in the middle of the room, but if you want to have any chance at all of people remembering anything except that elephant, you. cannot. acknowledge. it.

I'm glad I went, and she definitely got me thinking, but I can't say it was good. Not bad, necessarily, just... screw it. I still have no idea.

improv

Last night was my improv class's showcase. I forgot how much of a rush it is to be in front of an audience. In class I often got nervous participating because I felt like I was nowhere near as funny as my classmates (even though they were always super supportive), but when we were all up on stage together, I finally internalized that I wasn't performing *for* them, I was performing *with* them for the big mass of faceless people in the audience. And when you have a group of people up on stage who you're looking out for, and who are looking out for you, it's energizing, not scary.

Anyway, now I need to go see the professional troupes perform. And I think I need to sign up for the next level. I was sort of wavering and thinking maybe I'd just do the 1A class again, or maybe I wouldn't take any class at all, but I like improv, and I want to get better. I think I need to keep getting pushed beyond my comfort level in order to improve, so level 1B makes the most sense.

Other random things from the showcase:

• I ran into a girl I went to high school with. She's apparently in one of the professional troupes. Random.
  


• My class was all going to meet up in a bar afterwards for a celebratory drink. When I lost track of my classmates after the show, I just headed over there, but the bar was closed. (Not really surprising at 10pm on a Sunday night, I guess?) That was a little disappointing.


• On my way back to my car afterwards, I got followed by a homeless guy.


• I *really* don't know my way around DC, and I got pretty lost driving home. Eventually I figured out that I could just drive from Gallery Place (where the showcase was) back to U Street (where the class was), because at least I knew how to get home from U Street. It was a bit of a circuitous route, but it worked.

Students Turn Anger at Faculty Cuts to Action

This is a headline from The Sophian, my college's newspaper. I had to read it at least 5 times before I could parse it into a grammatical sentence. At first I read: "Students turn [anger at faculty cuts to action]". But "Students turn [noun]" didn't make sense, so I decided they must mean "angry" instead of "anger". Like "Students turn angry at [faculty cuts to action]". But then I thought, what the hell is a "cut to action"?

As you read a sentence, you subconsciously predict what its structure will be. You start fitting the words into that structure as you go along, revising your guess if you come across words that don't fit, and usually by the time you reach the end of the sentence, you've figured out its grammar and you know what it means. Except, every once in a while, you haven't and you don't.

In part, this sentence fooled me because The Sophian is really crappy. I expect errors in that paper, so when my sentence structure didn't work, I didn't automatically assume I was wrong; I assumed they'd just made one of their frequent grammar screw ups.

That's not the whole story, though. I think also, the phrase "call to action" is so common that when I saw "cut to action" I tried to fit it into the same pattern.

Also, when you're using the verb "turn" to mean "transform," I think "turn X into Y" is much more common than "turn X to Y." The latter sounds like it's out of a fairy tale or a fable. I'm a dork and love Google book search, so from Hans Christian Andersen:

"Mortals, on the other hand, have a soul, which lives forever after the body has turned to dust."

"I was looking at the deep river and saw how it plunged down from the cliff, turned to spray..."
"The old Phoenix turned to ashes..."

"...nor could he know whose eyes had been closed and whose red lips had turned to dust."

"...all about the murdered young man, whose head had now turned to dust..."

In a Sophian article, which is decidedly different from your average fairy tale, doesn't "Students Turn Anger at Faculty Cuts into Action" make a whole lot more sense?

I think so.

women are stupid?

Really, Charlotte Allen, what were you thinking? hilzoy put it nicely:

Note to Charlotte Allen: if you find yourself having to argue that you are an idiot in order to make your case, you might consider the possibility that an idiot like yourself is unlikely to get much right about women, or for that matter about anything.

Two things really bug me about the fact that this piece of shit got published:

1. You know the Post booked her because they wanted controversy for controversy's sake. When an article can be summed up as, "Women are dumb. No really, they are, myself included!" it pretty much has no redeeming qualities. There will be a huge number of letters to the editor over this piece, and then the Post will congratulate itself on addressing such a hot-button issue. Look at the huge volume of reader response! It's sleazy.
   
   I get that papers make all sorts of questionable decisions to increase circulation. (The creation, a few years ago, of an entire section of the newspaper where no news is allowed to appear jumps to mind.) Generally, I don't care that much. (Hey, I like doing the Kakuro puzzle on Sunday mornings.) But, I think the line should probably be drawn at completely illegitimate, factually unsupported, offensive opinions expressed solely to marginalize an entire section of society. Because the thing is, as illegitimate and ridiculous as what she said was, she said it in the Washington Post. And that lends a veneer of credibility to it.
   


2. Which relates to the other reason I'm so pissed off about this. People will believe the most ridiculous, outlandish, obviously false things if you repeat them enough. Politicians do it all the time (Bush is a master at it); If you say the same lie enough times, it starts to sound familiar, and if something sounds familiar, then surely there's at least a *little bit* of truth to it. This is why, for example, some ridiculous percentage of the US population thinks Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11. It's why a lot of South Carolina voters in 2000 thought that John McCain had an illegitimate black daughter, and a lot of voters in 2008 think that maybe Barack Obama might be Muslim. Even though almost everyone who comments on this article will denounce it as nonsense, it still adds to the background noise, and it makes it incrementally more acceptable the next time someone decides to recycle 19th century notions of how women are the stupider sex.
   
   And what's worse is, there's nothing anyone can do to stop her ideas from seeping into the culture. If you address her idiotic arguments point by point, you legitimize them. You concede that what she had to say is worthy of debate. But if you refuse to address her arguments because they're beneath your contempt, then they just stand there, unchallenged.
   

Way to go, Washington Post!

weekend

So this weekend, I:

• Met up with some extremely lovely people from new york for sushi and a movie.


• Went to an extremely surreal "no pants party" where the host was wearing an adult diaper, and one purportedly straight attendee was wearing a fake plush penis, a bikini, and a blond wig. Which in and of itself would not have led me to question his sexuality. It was more that he kept trying to thrust the fake penis into the ass of every guy he saw. Like I said: surreal. Also? kind of majorly disturbing.


• Went to a 60th birthday party for my mother. (I ended up baking a chocolate cake. It said "Happy Birthday" in pink and purple day glo letters.)


• Went to my Improv class, wherein I:
  
  
  
  • Learned about a pretty funny blog called Stuff White People Like. People were quoting this thing all night long.
  
  
  • Had to scratch my balls at someone as part of "sound and motion circle."
  
  
  • Got assigned the "homework" of going through my daily life, but pretending to redo everything in mime form right afterwards. This got me some weird looks while I made tea in the kitchenette at work this morning.
    
  
  
  
  

butter

I have this habit of baking whenever I'm bored. Especially with something like bread, the whole process from start to finish can take over 4 hours. It's a great way to kill time when you have no plans, the weekend is stretching out in front of you, and there's lots of quality programming to listen to on your local NPR station. Or if it takes you kind of a while to get going on weekends and you don't actually start mixing the ingredients until 5pm at which point the quality programming is mostly over and the ever-boring Prarie Home Companion is about to start, bread rising time is a great opportunity to catch up on DVD box sets of awesome old TV shown.

Wow, my life's sort of pathetic.

anyway, moving on...

The thing about baking is that after you've done it for a while, especially if you're using really good recipes, like the ones in the awesome book that Meghan bought me, you start to understand what makes good baked goods taste so good. And it's gross. Pie Crust? Is basically butter with a tiny bit of flour mixed in. Those amazing blueberry muffins? Called for an entire tub of sour cream. That cinnamon bread? Used a carton of heavy cream.

Put another way, can you imagine eating a quarter stick of butter, just plain? It's repuslive. But if you cut yourself a slice of pie, you could easily be eating that, plus all the sugar and carbs and other crap that's in the filling.

I was thinking about this today because my mother's birthday is this weekend and I've been tasked with baking her a cake. Normally, I make what a cousin affectionately refers to as the chocolate thing (only modification: I use cointreau instead of rum, because I have a bottle of cointreau.) and it tastes fantastic. The only thing is, it doesn't *look* very impressive. Even when it's the tastiest thing on the table, which it often is, it is not the first dessert people go for. And I've been reading all about frosting techniques (I really do read the cookbook for fun in the evenings) and I want to try a cake with frosting. Preferably one with lots of chocolate, and maybe lemon? I dunno, I've felt like making lemon curd lately. But oh my god is there a lot of butter and cream involved. I'm going to make this cake and then be so grossed out by what's actually in it that I won't be able to eat it.

blue screen of death

oh my, I haven't seen one of these in ages.
I think I just destroyed a work computer.
excitement!

exercise

Man, I never know what to write about in this stupid blog.

Today I'm just going to brag:
I swim with a master's swimming class 3 times a week, and last night we had a really tough workout. I kicked ass. Normally, as long as we get in at least 3,000 yards in the 1.5 hours, we call it a good workout. Last night: 4,100. Google calculator informs me this is 2.32954545 miles.
kick. ass.

Also, 400 of that was a 400 IM. As in a 100 fly. I suck at fly. I can't make it more than a length and a half without my breathing getting all fucked up. But I survived, and then went on to swim a 100 of each of the other strokes too! I didn't die!

So pretty much, I'm the queen of the universe.

p.s. In other news, I'm apparently allergic to running. I ran on the treadmill on Tuesday, and it literally gave me hives. I wonder how that works?