The Martinelli Variety Hour

I'm a Little Bit City

2012-03-06T07:31:00.004-08:00

I grew up in Philadelphia. And not just Philadelphia, but at 4^th and South, practically in the middle of everything. I could walk everywhere and if I needed to get further or just didn’t have the energy, I was very close to a variety of public transit options. From the age of 7 I was getting myself to school. From the age of 10, I was indoctrinated into the awesomeness of a good enough public transit system. Sure, some cities have better, but SEPTA has treated me and granted me independence when having a car just wasn’t in the cards. As such, I didn’t get my license until I was 25.

At the time, Wes and I were living in University City and I was commuting to New Jersey. It would take at least 3 modes of transport to get there, often 4 (including walking). It took me an hour and a half each way and required that I leave the house at 6am to get to work on time. After a year and a half of doing this, I had had enough. I finally got my license and that influx of amazingly enhanced independence was glorious. Suddenly, I could take myself places that I used to bother Wes to get me to. I could get to out of the way places. I could transport tons of stuff.

My being able to drive allowed us to move to New Jersey. We were sick of West Philly (now it’s nice to go back and visit, but be able to leave when we’re done) and wanted space and a yard and all that stuff. But being a city girl, I never wanted to go whole hog suburban. I just couldn’t stomach it. When we were looking for places to live, we had various requirements. Two of the main ones were that the town we moved to needed to have a cool, bustling “Main Street” and there had to be easy access to some kind of public transit that we could use to get to Philadelphia.

Collingswood definitely fits the bill. “Downtown” Collingswood sports a fantastic Farmer’s market from May through November. The main street, Haddon Avenue, has tons of great restaurants and many unique shops. There’s a great thrift store (Frugal), a guitar shop (!), a vintage toy store, a sewing machine and vacuum repair shop (which I have to bring a sewing machine to and am sort of excited about that), tons of artsy gift shops, and various other things. People go there. They have arts crawls and music and book festivals. There are parks with bike paths and all that. And there is a Patco station right in the middle of it. There is another stop closer to our house also. All the stuff of downtown is an easy 10 minute bike ride and the other station is about a 15 minute was from our house.

Recently, Wes got a new job that is pretty close to our house, but because he’s all important and stuff, he needs to be able to drive to a courthouse or somewhere at a moment’s notice. So, while the office is easy to get to without a car, he needs to have the car with him at all times during the week. In the morning, he has been driving me to work and then I get myself home.

The first week of this was pretty difficult for me because I didn’t prepare for it. I was trying to keep my life exactly the same, but I realized that the way I was doing everything was contingent on me having the car whenever I want. It was stressful for me and I was stressing Wes out because of it. The next week I made a bunch of changes. For instance, Arcati Crisis has acoustic rehearsals at my house on Wednesdays (as needed) and then we have full band rehearsals at Peter’s on Sundays. This has been a pretty great change for everyone actually. AC needs acoustic rehearsals to keep harmonies refined and to work on new stuff intensely. Sunday full band rehearsals means not having as much of a time restraint and not being fried from a full day of work and commuting, so we have really valuable practice.

My not having the car all the time means that I’m not stopping at the supermarket 4 times a week. At first, this was stressful because I had gotten used to just stopping in whenever I got a random idea for dinner or something. But what it means now is that we’ve gotten back into keeping track of the groceries that we actually need. Wes’ office is very close to a supermarket, so as long as we keep our handy shopping list phone app updated, he can pick things up. If there’s something small we need, there is a little market right next to the train station and I can stop in on the way home.

My not having a car means that I get a bunch of incidental exercise and have time to read or to blog on my phone if I am so inspired. In short, public transit has calmed me down considerably (quite the opposite of what it used to do when living in Philadelphia). I regularly put on a pair of headphones and listen to energizing music on my stroll home. When both Wes and Jessie are working, I usually beat them home by at least an hour, usually an hour and a half. This gives me time to make a nice dinner in a chilled out fashion, and see their happy faces when they get back.

I think I love it because it makes me feel like I have it all. I am living in a place that I want to live with very few draw backs. To make things even easier, yesterday I ordered a fancy folding bike that will be a dream to bring on trains and such with me. The only real loss of independence I have at the moment is that the train station nearest work is a half hour walk away, and it’s a walk without sidewalks. I walk next to the train tracks. So, I’ve been getting a ride to the station from a coworker. This is very nice of him, but he leaves here at 5pm ON THE DOT and I am often not quite ready to leave then. The bike will allow me to get to the station is likely 10 minutes, which is no problem at all and I can leave whenever I want. I should be getting that by the end of the week I think and I am excited to play with it over the weekend! In addition to the bike purchase, Zip Car has recently come to Collingswood, so I’m going to sign up for an account with them so that I can have access to a car in the rare event that I have to have one during the week. This will be useful if I have some notice about getting to a local customer or something.

I had no idea that driving was contributing to a general sense of stress in my life. I don’t think it was necessarily the driving myself around that has been doing it, but rather the lack of other somewhat meditative things that go along with not driving. For instance, when I walk, I sing and end up writing songs. Most of the songs I have written and adored are ones that were inspired during public transit commutes. In addition, my not being able to just do things at the last minute means that I (and others close to me) plan better. I think I just feel like my time is being used more effectively. I feel energized and happier. I get home ready to do things around the house and I get a further happiness boost from that! I think that I was starting to feel completely latched to automobiles and I was becoming the suburbanite I never, ever wanted to be. And now I get to reclaim the city girl part of me that I really love.

Also, I get some satisfaction out of not putting another car on the road from an environmental and stupid gas price standpoint. Wes and I can worry about just one little fuel efficient dream car and keep it in good shape. He drives less in general, even though he has the car with him, so we go through gas much more slowly. Now with the weather getting nicer, I foresee Wes and I using our bicycles a lot more to get around town, resulting in a healthier, even more fun lifestyle.

So here’s to finding out some more unexpected things that make me happy. Spring is just a couple of weeks away (Happy Birthday to me!) and I’ll be ringing it in by taking full advantage of it.

A Stream of Consciousness Inspired by the Word "Beef"

2012-03-01T06:19:00.002-08:00

This morning before Wes and I left for work, he opened his email and started laughing and read the following subject line: Click if you love beef.

Beef is a funny word for some reason. I mean, do you think that all the Donovan McNabb Cambell’s soup ads would have been nearly as hilarious had he said, “It’s loaded with Chunky Chicken” instead of “Chunky Beef!”? I don’t think so…

Well…I don’t know, the phrase “Chunky Chicken” is also funny. Whatever.

The word beef sounds like a punch to the face. In fact, you could probably replace “punch” with “beef” and people would totally understand what you were saying. “That guy was being a giant douche, so I beefed him in the face.” Of course, you could probably replace “punch” with any word in that particular sentence and people would get it with the power of context clues, but it wouldn’t have the same impact as beef. *Insert awful joke here about the impact of beef in the face.*

Anyway, I, too, got this email, as Wes and I are both on the mailing list for a favorite restaurant in Collingswood. What he didn’t read was the full subject line: Click if you love beef (and bargains!)

And , of course, I read this as “Click if you love Bargain Beef!”

I’m not going to lie. I love the phrase “Bargain Beef” but not because I’m some expert coupon clipper. When I read the phrase “Bargain Beef”, I immediately imagine some guy doing an advertisement for a discount meat business. The ad would be similar to a terrible used car lot ad or an ambulance chaser ad. It would feature a large man wearing a butcher’s uniform that was completely stained with various animal blood. He’d be holding a giant slab of steak in one hand and a turkey leg in the other, and several links of sausage hanging around his neck. He would have crazy eyes and would speak with a South Philly accent. He would enter the shot tentatively and place himself awkwardly “center stage” and sort of wobble there while he spoke.

“Hello…I’m Tony Italiano and this is my shop, Italiano’s Discount Meat Emporium. We are your one stop shop for cheap chicken and bargain beef. Italiano’s: Now that’s a cheap piece o’ meat.”

Then it would look like he might be about to fall over under the weight of all the meat he was carrying around as a relevant phone number was flashed across the screen as a MIDI version of “Mambo Italiano” played.

Two things that are true: I am not particularly squeamish about food and I love Taco Bell. These things are necessarily mutually inclusive. No one knows how to use questionable “Bargain Beef” like Taco Bell.

Wes also likes Taco Bell. It’s one of the reasons that we are so compatible. I really should have mentioned this in our vows.

Shaun is intensely disgusted by Taco Bell. This post will likely make Shaun throw up. GOAL!

I have a friend who used to work for Taco Bell and he said that when they received a shipment of meat for their delicious tacos and grilled burritos, that the box would have the FDA grade on the side. It wouldn’t say “Grade A” (obviously). It also didn’t say “Grade B” or “Grade D” even. Instead, it said “Grade Meat”. That’s right, folks, “Grade Meat”. That is also one of my favorite phrases.

Of course, nowadays, they really aren’t using much meat anymore and really what I’m eating is a proprietary mixture of saw dust, soy and “secret ingredients”. I remember there was a big uproar last year or something when people discovered that a large portion of Taco Bell’s meat products were not, in fact, meat. My response to this “news” was “No shit”. We already knew this because McDonald’s and Burger King have been doing this for years. Meat is expensive, yo. Even “Grade Meat” meat. But apparently, when people went and ordered their beef taco Supremes, they were operating under the delusion that they were eating something of high quality. Lewis Black had an entire tirade about it on The Daily Show…of course he was mainly reacting to the fact that the owner of Taco Bell gave a press conference about this shocking discovery and said something like, “Our meat is 85% beef. The rest is our little secret…” Black ranted rightly that at the point where the proverbial cat is out of the bag, you don’t get to say that the other components of the beef are your little secret.

Oh lord, is the secret ingredient cat?

I don’t know where I learned not to care about this kind of stuff. Perhaps it’s because I have too much faith in my immune system. I rarely get hideously ill from anything that I eat (hence being able to stomach and enjoy Taco Bell). I refuse to buy into the salmonella paranoia about poultry. Sure, I’ll rinse stuff and cook it properly, but I don’t freak out about it. If I find that some chicken is still pink, I will probably eat it. Pork? Well, Trichinosis sounds terrifying, so I’m a little more careful about that.

Note: I will probably die from salmonella poisoning based on the above described cavalier attitude. But, knowing me, it will probably not be from an undercooked cutlet but rather petting a turtle or something exotic like that. *Insert terrible turtle petting joke here*

And this is the kind of post you get when you start with the topic sentence, “Click if you love beef”.

Surprisingly Serious Thoughts about the Zombie Apocalypse

2012-02-28T10:48:00.002-08:00

A few months ago, Jessie introduced Wes and me to the wonder is The Walking Dead. For those of you who don’t know, The Walking Dead is a show on AMC about a disease that took over the world by way of zombification of the populace. It is very similar to 28 Days Later (as in, it basically starts the same way with a main character awaking from a coma to find the place overrun with zombies). We became instantly addicted because it is a very character driven show. It has seasons to develop characters and to tell an intriguing story about the human experience during a time of extreme crisis. They manage to make an entire show featuring zombies not a complete and utter joke.

The first season dealt with the group of characters on the run, moving from place to place as zombies threatened to take over their camps. Because the group was nomadic, a lot of the plots centered around very immediate concerns without a real sense of stability or planning for the future. In the current season,

**SPOILERS AHEAD OMG!**

The group has found a place that they could possibly call home, at least for a while longer than they thought possible. They have found a quaint and bountiful farm out in the middle of nowhere and have a strained, tentative arrangement with the farm owner and his family. Many episodes of the season have been about how they almost completely fuck up this arrangement and get booted off. Other episodes are centered around the increasingly strained dynamic amongst the people within the group as life begins to approach a strange state of normalcy. At the farm, zombie attacks are rare.

So now, apparently, while the threat of zombies is at a lower level, it’s time for the characters to talk about gender roles!

Laurie and Rick are married. Shane’s in love with Laurie. Rick and Shane used to be partners in law enforcement. Shane and Rick are the “leaders” of the group…meaning that they go around making decisions for everyone. This made sense in the first season because everyone was in a constant fight to stay alive. Zombie attacks were a constant threat and you really couldn’t afford to have a bunch of people running around like idiots, not really making decisions or disagreeing or anything, when you had a couple of guys who were willing to take the leadership role. Rick and Shane have very different leadership styles (a gentler approach vs. a very aggressive one, respectively) and these styles are often at odds. In last night’s episode they spend a lot of time yelling at each other, kicking each other’s asses, and talking about who Laurie belongs to and who can keep her safe. You know, manly stuff.

In last night’s episode, Laurie is talking to a family member of the farm about how men are men and they’re going to do what they’re going to do and that, as women, it’s their job to stand behind them and make them feel good about it. It’s the job of the men to keep everyone safe. Later, she is talking to another member of the camp, Andrea, about Andrea’s lack of help with the laundry, cooking and other women’s work. Andrea had learned to shoot and was one of the people keeping watch over the camp, which meant a lot of watching and waiting around, instead of scrubbing. Laurie does not mention that there are several dudes who are not doing either thing but instead chastises Andrea for not being a useful member of Team Woman. She cites that the camp needs stability and that is apparently what women do.

Naturally, Jessie, Wes and I groaned at this. Wes and Jessie pointed out that not only is a Laurie a Georgia resident, but she is also a sheriff’s wife. I agree that this regimented structure of gender roles and work responsibilities is something that she may be completely indoctrinated into. One of the other female main characters from the camp is certainly all about the cooking and cleaning. Her husband, who got eaten by zombies in season one, was highly abusive. My point is that often the culture of the south has a feel of a place that time forgot. Women keep the home. Men keep everything else.

I started to think about what I would be doing in a situation like this. So, imagine if you will, as most in the geek community have been doing for years, that the world is overrun by zombies. I remember several months ago, Jessie had a dream in which she had to choose between Wes and me, and an ex-boyfriend (who was not an ex at the time). We scoffed and said, “Obviously you should go with us. I mean, we probably won’t survive, but we at least won’t be annoying, wussy or irrational.” I pretty much believe this. Wes and I are pretty good under pressure, for a time (ego depletion would come into play eventually). But neither of us are fighters. If the zombie apocalypse hit tomorrow, I would likely be screwed. I’m not particularly fast. I’ve never shot a gun and am not particularly stabby. I’d probably be pretty good at hiding and have intelligence on my side. I’m generally pretty rational in sink or swim situations. Wes is similar, but could likely kick a lot more zombie ass than me. Jessie is smaller and quicker than us and would likely be the one to crawl into small spaces to retrieve the machete we so desperately need or escape from zombies by crawling under cars. I could see Shaun doing a lot of zombie decapitating with a hockey stick. And Ginny would probably be hiding with me, discussing how best to use a set of knitting needles to kill.

Perhaps we could survive long enough to meet an interesting stranger or two on the road who could teach us things. That always happens, right? Sure, we’d find weapons along the way and figure out how to use them, but you really need to meet that crazy but loveable person who’s been traveling for weeks on their own to really seal the deal.

In the event that we made it to a nice little farm and decided to set up shop there for a while…I likely would take on the various “womanly” tasks. Over the last several days, I have done most of the cooking and cleaning in the house. It is calming to keep things in order. In addition, I have always tried to heal people with the power of delicious food. When people are stressed and upset, I generally buy or make them food I know they like. It’s generally the first thing I think of.

But in the little group that I described, everyone does those things. Shaun does them the most, in fact. Really, no one close to me fits traditional gender roles and so it is clear that work of this nature would be traded off. We’d all learn to shoot, to stab, to run and hide, to protect ourselves. As for anything else, whoever wanted to learn how to do various things would. And then things would be stable because they’d be like they are now.

Except with the constant threat of the walking dead. I have this image of me in the kitchen making a meatloaf and looking out the window, only to see a zombie lurching toward the house. “Damn it, “ I would say as I put the meatloaf in the oven and pick up a giant kitchen knife, “This is why we can’t have nice things.” And then I would go out and stab it in the head, happy that I had my apron on. Alternatively, I would turn around to my family and say, “my hands are covered in ketchup. Who’s killing the zombie?” This would likely result in a round of, “But I killed on yesterday!”

Of course, this also makes me think of when Wes and Jessie went out to handle a skunk that was hanging out around our tent. I seem to recall Wes throwing cheese at it or something. Knowing Wes, he would probably throw our cat at the zombie, killing two proverbial birds with one stone. Of course, the cat is useless and someone would have to go out there and get all stabby anyway.

When I started this post, I thought I was going to go into some sort of impressive analysis of the stupidity of antiquated expectations of genders. But really, there’s not much to be said about it. What Laurie said sounds laughable, but if she is a woman raised to believe that a man takes care of you, and a man takes care of you because you serve important domestic purposes, then it only makes sense that trying to resume this would lead to a feeling that nothing has changed. In addition, she may be feeling insecure about her lack of fighting skills and feels threatened by others who are better at it. In that world, the ability to kill zombies and protect people is the most respected skill. The rest of it is nice, but probably taken for granted. The people who can’t fight as well are trying to prove their worth to those protecting them. The simple fact that they are one of the last people on Earth isn’t enough…you have to add some kind of value to the group. So in a lot of ways, I think Laurie’s comments are really saying, “I am being a good woman. I deserve to be kept alive.”

My vision of the calm after the zombie apocalypse is the same as Laurie’s in that dynamics would go back to what they were before. It’s just that in mine people would be doing what they’re actually good at and inclined to do, regardless of below the belt equipment.

My Continued Awakening

2012-02-27T07:33:00.002-08:00

Whoooooo boy, has it been a crazy couple of weeks! On top of me attempting to actually be good at my job again (I know, I’m like a broken record, but it seems to be sticking his time. Not the idea of me being a record, but me being a decent employee. If I was a record, it would likely be made of purple plastic and contain lots of hidden tracks of me talking about random bullshit. Of course, you could experience this by downloading Arcati Crisis’ “Live @ Rehearsal, Volume 4” and get the added bonus of Peter also talking about random bullshit. We have fun here.), Ocelot on a Leash just threw together a burlesque show and crunch time came out of nowhere (and I’m not talking about the idea of the Fenzorselli house suddenly falling into a ridiculous regiments of daily stomach crunch routines to get our bodies in shape for the show. That will never, ever happen. I could see Wes and I doing that, but Jessie would stand above us while we crunched away saying, “So, I brought home some more chocolate covered bacon from work…”).

So I haven’t been posting here all that much, but I am attempting to get back into it. Another exciting thing that has happened is that Shaun invited me to start posting over on his blog. Ginny is also posting there now. It’s official. We all have bios over there and Shaun had t-shirts made. We’re in business, people! I have posted a few things over there, and you should check them out!

Anyway, back to burlesque. The show was a success. It was empowering and fun as I hoped. We will be certainly doing more in the future.

But today I want to talk about a reconnection I had because of it. (Trigger Warning: I’m going to be talking about sexual assault and things like that).

I don’t remember if I told you, but one (actually two) of the people in my burlesque class last Spring went to highschool with Wes. I thought I recognized the one, H, from somewhere and she recognized me, but we just couldn’t remember from where. As it turned out, we had met at a party years before at a mutual friend of Wes and hers. More importantly though, I had met H online back in the days when everyone had a Livejournal and our meeting was not particularly pleasant.

Back then, Wes’ friend was going through a lot of badness. She had been coerced and assaulted and a whole gambit of other things. At that point in my life, I had been lucky enough to have never had anything bad happen to me sexually. The result? I was a victim blamer! Clearly, it wasn’t just luck that had kept me safe all of those years. It was that I was good at being safe! I didn’t put myself in “dangerous situations,” (like being stupid enough to trust your friends not to rape you, duh). I was always super aware of my surroundings and never particularly trusted anyone. When someone came onto me, I immediately distrusted them and got away from them as soon as possible.

See? I was totally better at not getting raped! Remember that post I wrote about how I used to be a misogynist? Yeah…not something I’m proud of. What I didn’t understand at the time was that I was very, VERY lucky and that I had been completely programmed to believe that not getting assaulted was my own responsibility. It never occurred to me that people just shouldn’t assault you…I honestly thought that I had the power to never have anything happen to me.

And perhaps that’s true…if you cut yourself off from all human contact, are paranoid about everyone’s intentions towards you, and never trust anyone. Well, that sure does sound like much less fun than a barrel of monkeys…

To be fair, a barrel of monkeys is something difficult to top in the spectrum of “Things that are fun”. Imagine a barrel filled with pygmy marmosets. CAN YOU HANDLE THE CUTE?!? (Conditions: The marmosets are not carrying the next Big Plague destined to kill all the humans and they have a nice temperament).

So, back then I was truly blind to the real issues with happening to be female in the world as it is. I did everything right. I didn’t wear revealing clothes. I didn’t flirt. I did go out and have fun, but it was always tempered. I very rarely experience unbridled happiness when out on the town or even at a party where I knew a lot of the people. If there were strangers, I was conservative. If I was with friends who I wasn’t particularly close to, I was also conservative. I’m not saying that I was a bore in social situations, but in the back of my head, this was always present.

I wrote a post on my livejournal about this and I wasn’t outright victim blaming, but thinking about it today, that’s basically what it was. “Why do these things happen to me but not other people?” Anyway, it was written to Wes’ friend and H responded saying that the friend shouldn’t read it because, well, it’s victim blaming and that I, as a person who had never gone through anything like that, had no right to comment. At the time, this was something that was really hard for me to deal with. I felt that they were saying that because I was never assaulted, I was not qualified to take part in the female debate. I felt that they were not respecting my experience, which was exactly what they were accusing me of.

That was years ago and I have since been going through a huge awakening, which I have spoken about in various aspects here. The beginning of it came from reading an article called, “Shroedinger’s Rapist,” where the article talks about how women are generally programmed to view every person they meet as a potential rapist. This rang disturbingly true to me and the mists of my privilege as a non-assaulted female became to disperse. “I am not the only one who does this. Most women do this and yet so many get assaulted. Good lord…” Then I started reading about street harassment. I admit that when a dude used to tell me I was pretty on the street and then I felt uncomfortable, I would think that this was a problem with me…that I wasn’t appreciative enough of the attention. I didn’t get that they have a right to say what they want and I have a right to not appreciate it. Seriously, for the first time I felt strangely in a community. I was not separate. I was not better. I was subject to all the same bullshit that every woman everywhere is subjected to…and what is worse, I realized that a lot of it was simply NOT OK.

And then, a year ago, I had a minor run-in with assault. It was in the very early days of me actually dating as a polyamorous person. My first experience outside of Wes was positive. It was empowering and I began to feel liberated. At some point perhaps I will write about how even non-religious, previously non-assaulted women can be completely not liberated sexually. But my point here is that I started to feel like I was getting over a lot of things (possibly some of the programming I was talking about above). In the momentum of feeling good about everything, I decided to go out on date with a friend who I didn’t know particularly well. The first date was short and sweet and generally good, so we decided that next time I would make dinner for him at his house and we’d watch bad movies. What didn’t happen was any kind of discussion about how far we were going to go sexually. I never had to have this conversation before. I have been lucky in that regard too. Other than this, every person I have ever been with has asked along the way, paid attention to my cues, all that. I never felt it necessary to have some kind of negotiation before any possible activity of this nature. But there we were, after watching movies and having dinner. We were making out and then things began to move very, very fast. I don’t really need to go into detail, except for one thing: At one point early on, he was a little bit rough. I looked to make eye contact with him and saw that he was seemingly in another place, unconcerned with me or how I was feeling. I had a moment of pure and utter terror. He didn’t stop to ask what I wanted, to ask if I was alright right away.

And what did I do? I shut up. I didn’t say a word. I didn’t say stop. I didn’t say no. I had the thought that it would be cruel of me to stop now…after all, I let it get this far to begin with. This is my fault. All that I can do now is try to get this over with in my terms. I went through with it, but took control of the action.

The other thing that crossed my mind was that Livejournal post from all those years before. Suddenly, in that moment when I was in exactly the situation I thought that I would be forever immune to, the entire thing made sense. The privilege I had experienced for most of my young life came rushing to the forefront of my consciousness. “I am not any different than anyone else. I am not safe. I AM NOT SAFE.”

I went on to have a frank conversation with this guy about everything. It went pretty well, as we are still friends (though I would say we are more acquaintances now. We’re fine…I just have no particular desire to be close to him). But during the conversation, I asserted that it was not my fault and he (who felt terrible about the whole thing…and I believe that) said that it wasn’t anyone’s fault. We just didn’t communicate well.

This is always difficult. I freely admit that I should have communicated better, that I should have stopped as soon as I felt uncomfortable. But ultimately, I think that more of the responsibility was on his end as I was in his home. He was in charge of his space and should have gone out of his way to make sure I was OK. But yes, it was a general failure all around.

Like I said, this was minor in the grand scheme of things. I can barely call it an assault. But it illuminated how wrong I used to be and how much I still have to learn. It showed me that I subscribe to the same idiotic rules that so many women unconsciously subscribe to.

And so it was that I ended up doing burlesque with H. Both of us had the motivation of sexual liberation as part of our reasons for doing it. At the time of the LJ post, she had been through some epically terrible things and was, rightly, not friendly towards someone like me saying, “Gee whiz! Why are things so easy for me?” and I was ignorant. But here we were, years later, celebrating a fabulous show at a local bar and we talked about this. And I told her about what happened to me and that I thought of what she said. She apologized for attacking. It seemed that the years had brought us to a place in the middle where we agreed on what the reality is and how we all have to navigate it and stay safe and that this is not fair and it is not easy, even when you think you know what you’re doing.

Growing up is a magical thing. I have never resented it because as I come through each growing pain knowing myself better and understanding the world better. Sometimes, it results in friendships being cast away when growing up means outgrowing things that just don’t work anymore. But in this case, a friendship has grown out of an initial meeting that told me that we would never be friends…just because I didn’t get it. I was small minded and head strong. But I get it now and will continue to have my eyes opened, because there is simply no choice anymore.

Well, that turned out to be a pretty heavy post. I did mention monkeys though. That makes it better, right? MONKEYS ARE AWESOME.

Adventures in Computing

2012-02-21T05:41:00.001-08:00

If you follow me on Facebook, you might notice that I have been posting a lot of little comments about the new computer system at work. The posts indicate that when I’m attempting to make something happen in the system, that I am one foot through the Door to Insanity.

That’s a thing, right? The Door to Insanity sounds more like traveling carnival ride. “Step right up, Ladies and Gents! Are you strong enough to survive passage through the Door to Insanity? Step through it and you may never be the same again!”

But actually, that’s sort of a good metaphor for the system.

My company went live with SAP in January and it has certainly been a craziness inducing adventure. We switched over from a strange couple of systems that didn’t talk to each other and were programmed specifically for us. There were a lot of things that the old system did seemingly by magic. When training people how to print a label, for instance, I would often click a couple of buttons, get a bunch of error messages, fold my arms like “I Dream of Genie” and nod my head sternly and all would be amazed that none of the resulting error messages meant anything. Everyone here had learned how to work through the nonsensical procedures because the system was simple and you could strong arm it.

SAP will not be strong armed. It is independent and logical…if you are a computer programmer (although, a friend of mine who is a programmer cited SAP as one of the worst systems in existence…so maybe it doesn’t make sense to programmers). It requires a ridiculous amount of data to spit out very little data. A popular proverb around here is that is “Eats like an elephant and shits like a mouse”.

That’s a proverb, right? Do I need to follow it with section and line numbers for it to count? Or does it simply need to be attributed to someone important?

“And Lo, the great electronic beast ate like an elephant starving for the last bag of peanuts in existence but then, as though transformed, it shat scantly more than a mouse in a field.” –Jesus

Anyway, it is true that SAP is kind of horrible, but it is a horrible that you can get used to, like sitting through a Michael Bay movie.

One of the things that makes it fun to work with is a few of the SAP specific vocabulary words you use in conversation at work on a regular basis. For instance, when you are entering a product formula, you must first enter the formula phantom.

A phantom formula! “OOOoooOOoOooOOOOOOooooh”, said the ghost in the machine. “I vant to suck your data! Bleh BLEH!”

I don’t know why the phantom formula turned into a vampire just then. Just run with it, OK? I have done this impersonation of the phantom formula in staff meetings and have not yet been fired or committed. Impressive!

My other favorite vocab word is the acronym for the formula itself called the Bill of Materials or the BOM. When you look at an expanded view of the formula you are looking at…I kid you not… the EXPLODED BOM view.

You have to wonder if the original programmers did this on purpose. A ridiculous amount of coding goes into the system. I assume that one night, while blazing through an all night Mountain Dew fueled coding BONANZA they were on AIM saying, “Heh heh, we should totally call it exploding a BOM, amirite?” And then everyone was in agreement. “Dude! That’s fucking hilarious! Also, I think I’m going blind.” “Totes. I’m doin’ it.” “Dude, seriously, I can’t see.”

That’s how programmers talk, right?

So yes, navigating SAP is definitely similar to a going into a haunted house hosted by a carnie. You open an application not sure what you’re getting into but you do it anyway because you don’t want to look like a wuss and a carnie wouldn’t lie, right? This whole thing is totally legit! So you get into the car and start going through and just when you think you know what’s coming, the car gets stuck in the track and a poorly done animatronic vampire pops out at you and idles there, leering at you, while several technicians try to free you. Then they get you moving and you putter through until you hit another snag…this one much worse and you explode a BOM and you say, “Shit! I didn’t mean to hit save just then. DAMN IT!” and you have to start over, paying another buck to ride the worst ride in the park.

Yep, that sounds about right.

To add to the illusion, I often talk myself through processes using funny voices/accents. Yesterday, it was Obi-Wan Kenobi. The day before, it was my signature bad Russian accent. The day before that, it was a terrible Scottish accent that allowed me to exclaim, “Ach!” a lot, as in, “Ach! This system is like a soccer riot where no one brings out a lead pipe!”

I think I’m tired.

Off to the lab for today’s episode of, “Playing with Chemicals!"

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A Return to the Rational

2012-02-09T07:57:00.001-08:00

One of the difficult things about having a blog is that is super public and super out there about everything going on in my life is that when something happens and I have a lot to say about it…I write a blog post. I try to be accurate and honest about whatever it is I am responding to so that people can go to the source and see what I’m talking about. This is easy when I’m talking about something political or newsworthy. It is more difficult when it is about something happening in my personal life. Yesterday, I had an exchange with someone that threw me into an upset state that inspired my blog post yesterday. I didn’t want to go into specifics, which is a rare thing for me, but I thought I could effectively talk about it…without talking about it. As I have had overnight to let the whole thing percolate, I feel calmer today. After reading some of the comments, I feel like talking about a few things that I might have said too rashly.

Firstly, I wanted to say that I acknowledge that my example about the wedding was a poor one and wasn’t particularly valid for illustrating the point I was trying to make. When weddings are in questions, there is a lot of etiquette involved and I understand that in the world of wedding planning, attempting get more guests is considered a faux pas and not a very nice position to put the planners in. The point I was trying to make was that the type of communication that occurred in response was not ideal, but given the context, their response was somewhat understandable. I was frustrated and thinking about a bunch of things and for whatever reason that particular example came to mind. So yes, whoever was thinking, “That’s a stupid example” was right.

Secondly, the fuel for the post was a general sense of frustration and impatience. Historically, I have been a pretty patient person but I find that I have less of a capacity for it these days. As I have mentioned here in various contexts, in the last year it feels that a switch in my brain has been flipped. For an eternity I played the part of the diplomat, or worse, the door mat, generally avoiding conflict and never saying what I was thinking. I am trying to change that because the silence has been making me miserable. It is hard for me still to do it and I generally feel ill at the realization that I have to do it. I get even more upset when I have the thought, “Why on Earth do I even need to do this? Why do I need to talk to you about this?” Basically, when faced with having to defend some part of my life that I think is perfectly fine and healthy for me, I get an intense desire for the world to be different. I want to not have to have these conversations simply because somehow what I want is acceptable and embraceable. Yes, I grasp at a vision of a fantasy world sometimes and when I remind myself that this world does not exist and will likely not exist in its entirety in my lifetime, I get sad and the frustration grows.

In my post yesterday I made a lot of statements that perhaps suggested that I don’t know that life is much harder for a lot of other people. When I spoke in generalizations about how monogamous relationships are usually accepted by families and friends, I overlooked the number of conditions required for that to be true. I could have been more specific in my generalization (that’s a funny phrase) and said that when you are in a heterosexual, same race, same faith, same general ideals couple, families are accepting. This might also not be true…I obviously have no idea. This is simply from my experience in watching my various white heterosexual friends get together. The frustrations I currently have are frustrations that I have for all people who simply want to love who they want to love and live out their lives with that as a good thing.

I am lucky in that I was allowed to marry a man that I love. I happen to love other people too and yes, it is frustrating that this is not considered as valuable or important as the marriage. But, I was able to get married and have the benefits that this brings. I am privileged. Perhaps I am greedy. My marriage is so wonderful that I want more. I have generally felt that by having a “traditional” relationship with the addition of other relationships gives me the stability to speak out. We can be examples of how “alternative lifestyles” can be happy and healthy and super functional. People who oppose same sex marriage generally seem to argue that the alternative nature of the relationship (same genitalia, OMG) somehow means that the relationship isn’t really real and isn’t really functional. But who they love is not a choice and it is no different than any functioning heterosexual couple. Obviously. But this is not obvious to a lot of people and the trials and tribulations of the LGBT community are things that I want to see eradicated.

In my case, yes, polyamory is a choice, but I don’t want to live my life any other way. In my ideal universe, non-monogamy would be as easily accepted as monogamy and you wouldn’t have to have the conversation. But, well, you do have to have the conversation and I know that I have to be patient and understanding that my life is weird. My life is wonderfully sweet and I can wait for society to catch up. It might not happen while I am still alive, but in the mean time, there’s really nothing stopping me from living the way that I want to. It’s just that some people in my life might not be particularly close to me ultimately and I have to learn to accept that. I think the good problem I have is that life often seems so close to perfect that when something reveals itself to be an actual issue, I react rather poorly. I’m not saying that this particular instance should be ignored, but in the grand scheme of things, I know that everything will be some form of OK.

Anyway, I don’t know if any of this explanation makes anything make more sense, but I felt that I owed it to my readers to let you know that I am aware that I can get a little nuts time and again and appreciate the criticism if the point I am trying make gets lost in my rantings and ravings.

A Life Less Ordinary

2012-02-08T12:11:00.001-08:00

When someone talks about polyamory or open relationships, most people who I encounter who don’t want that lifestyle cite various obvious reasons as to why the lifestyle is not for them. Dealing with jealousy is too difficult. Insecurities are too difficult to deal with. Committed relationships are meaningless without exclusivity and sacrifice.

I’ve talked about all these things on here, but it is the last one that has me caught up in my own thoughts today. Here is a different angle on that idea: When you think that way, when you have determined (a determination made using no useful data collecting…it’s just the way you feel. Just admit it. You assume that if someone doesn’t want to be exclusive with you that it means that your relationship has less meaning or permanence, and therefore it is the same for everyone else.) that exclusivity is a requirement for a Serious Relationship®, you have officially closed your mind to accepting and embracing the people who are important to me.

In our society, we have a neat little model for what relationships are and what is required of a family/friend group. In the traditional model, you meet someone, preferably The One. You date them exclusively for a while. While you are dating, generally you and your significant other get integrated into each other’s families and friend groups. You are seen as a unit. After a long enough time, it is generally accepted that you are together and you both are considered for various events/important things. Sometimes this is an easy process. Sometimes it isn’t, but generally people suck it up and accept your significant other and you don’t have to worry about whether your husband is invited to something. It assumed that they are. Generally it is assumed that even if your significant other is not your family’s/friends’ favorite person, they are accepted and counted as valuable because they are valuable to you.

So, when you’re polyamorous, you have the potential of having a few significant others. Not only that, but it is possible that the significance of these others can equal the significance of the “primary” partner. I use primary here simply to illustrate the way that other people assume our relationships are. As you might have guessed (and as I have likely expressed here), Wes, Jessie and I don’t really subscribe to the hierarchal model of polyamory. Yes, Wes and I are married, but this does not make Jessie somehow secondary to me. She lives with us, is involved in every major decision we make, and her comfort and needs carry equal weight to mine in our household. We are a family. In the same way, Shaun and Ginny and we have spoken about our future together. The future we envision is very possible, and pretty probable. I consider those relationships serious, and if all continues to go in the way that they are going, we will be an even bigger family at some point. It is highly possible that property will be shared, children will be had and raised by several loving, intelligent, amazing people, and that we will handle the process of aging together, being involved in important decisions, some joyous, some heartbreaking.

What I’m saying is, this is not a phase. This is our life. When you open your heart in this way, when you realize that you are capable of loving more than one person and carrying on multiple serious, committed relationships…you will likely find them and you will want to hold onto them, enjoy them and let them grow. There is no difference between being committed to a few people and being committed to one, other than having to develop better time management and communication skills for best results.

When I was first adjusting and learning about the idea that the love you have to offer is not a fixed quantity, that if you love someone else it does not have to mean that you love the first person less, Wes used the example of having children to explain. In the traditional American Dream, you get married, buy a house and then have children. When you bring a child into the world, do you love your husband/wife less because you have to care about someone new? When you have a second child, do you love the first one less because you have someone to share your heart with? No, of course not, and if you suggested this in polite circles, people would think you were crazy. Why is it so different if you have another boyfriend/girlfriend? What is so meaningless about falling in love with someone in addition to the awesome person you currently are with? Children often make families stronger because parents have to learn about themselves and deal with their own issues to better help children with theirs. The same can be said for healthy polyamorous relationships.

A few months ago, Wes was invited to a friend’s wedding. On the invite, it didn’t specifically say plus one. It simply said, “How many are attending?” or something like that. Wes tallied three. The couple in question called him and said, “Um, no, you don’t get to have two dates, Wes.” Practically, I can see where they were coming from. One more person, means one more expensive plate of food. But what these people don’t realize, and what I fear a lot of people don’t really get is that this is hurtful to us and our relationships. In terms of a wedding as big and ridiculous as the one in question, they likely invited their Great Aunt Bernice, twice removed, who they hadn’t seen since they were kids because there is some sort of obligation that must be fulfilled. “She’s family!” Well, Jessie is part of our family. When you tell us that she isn’t invited to something, when you suggest that taking an opportunity to get to know her isn’t worth it, when YOU define her significance in our lives and deem her not significant enough for you to worry about, you are hurting Wes and you are hurting me.

I would like to mention that the term significant other takes on a whole other meaning when you are polyamorous. I am not dating Jessie, but I care very much for her. What I’m saying is, she is significant, VERY SIGNIFICANT to me. She is thoroughly involved in my every day life. To not have her in our lives would be awful. Please understand that. Similarly, envisioning a life without Shaun and Ginny in it is devastating. Please understand that. If you don’t see why this is, take the initiative and spend some time with us because I assure you that you will get it.

I know that like everything in life that is against the norm, it takes time for people to accept and embrace it…but sometimes I just don’t understand why. Is it because it takes too much effort? Is it because you assume that my lifestyle choices directly challenge yours? I am not living my life in opposition to anyone. These choices are not rebellions… they are desires. I am currently living the life I want to live. We are living authentically and we are most certainly not hurting anyone. More importantly, we want our friends and family to be part of this beautiful life. Our heart is open to you. Won’t you let yours be open to us?

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SCIENCE!

2012-02-07T11:22:00.001-08:00

I’ve been working on a project that has a bit of a spiteful edge to it. We have two development labs here. One is for more immediate products and the other is for more innovative things. We’re supposed to work together, but for reasons related to ego and things like that, we don’t work wonderfully well together yet. I hate to say it, but we have a very Engineers vs. Pure Scientists kind of dynamic going on that I am embarrassed to be part of, but my ego is much like anyone else’s: Easy to let get out of hand if it’s not watched. Vigilance, and all that rot.

So, I’m working on this project that came out of the other lab. I’m supposed to test its practicality (see? Engineers vs. Scientists) and I didn’t particularly think it was a viable idea. Then I had a few encounters with coworkers that led me to have an emotional attachment to them being wrong. My initial tests indicated that I was right and I wanted to run with it. They pushed back, really wanting this product to go to trial at a customer. I was feeling like they weren’t listening to me. I was feeling that they thought they knew more than me. This became personal. I really wanted them to be wrong. I was basically rooting for them to fail.

Luckily, I recognized how idiotic that was and how this was totally my problem. And I also was completely aware about how anti-business this feeling was. Rationally, I wanted to prove them right because proving them right would mean that we had a viable product that we could probably sell a lot of. So instead of flying off the handle, instead of being a sarcastic nay-saying jerk, I kept my comments to myself and simply proposed a series of tests that I wanted to do just to make sure.

The great thing about working in science is that most of your work-related conundrums are about science. Even for someone like me who is in a bizarre part of the private sector chemical market, most of our debates these days are about the IT system or chemistry.

Unfortunately, our IT system, in its current state with our current collective level of knowledge does sort of seem like magic and you have to have a lot of faith in it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it started smiting us for poor data entry. One guy is slowly being driven made by the system. Perhaps this is some form of slow smiting.

But the debates about chemistry are easily settled with the scientific method, as long as you are testing the science and not your opinion of someone. So, you start with a useful question.

Useful Question: Is this product stable?
Non-useful Question: Who the fuck does this guy think he is?

I chose to test the useful question. Next we come up with a useful hypothesis.

Useful Hypothesis: The amount of ingredient X is causing a stability problem.
Non-Useful Hypothesis: Due to this other dude’s arrogance, this product is totes unstable. I know more than him about some things and he needs to respect that. God. Who the fuck does this guy think he is??? I mean, sure, his explanation of why the product might be unstable in my testing makes sense, but…he’s kind of a jerk. Doesn’t that count for something?

Again, I decided to operate under the useful hypothesis.

Next we come up with a procedure. In my case, I had a series of samples I wanted to put together and put in an oven to see if there was a reproducible stability problem. I did that, taking the other person’s suggestions into consideration and into action and carried out an exhaustive amount of testing.

And when I was all finished, I had proven that…well…I was wrong.

Well, I proved that they were more right, but that my concerns were worth noting and keeping an eye out for since some of my results were odd. The result is that a product got tested properly and now we have something that is definitely ready for trial. Both labs are in agreement and I hope that it works.

This whole experience taught me a lot. First, it showed me how ego-driven I can be (which is something I have been noticing a lot and am trying to work through). Second, it showed me that I am in the right line of work, because when there’s a disagreement, all you have to do is run a few experiments to determine the truth. All agreements here about the chemistry of a product are based on evidence; reproducible, irrefutable evidence. When you show that to someone, or see it for yourself, your ego no longer matters. It is what it is.

Ideally.

Obviously, I think that this is how the world should work all the time. You have a hypothesis, a series of experiments is carried out and you find out whether your hypothesis is right or wrong. End of story. But our egos and our emotions get in the way of that being the end of the story.

Sometimes I think about what would happen if a god were to reveal itself as real. I would have no choice but to accept it since that’s all the evidence you need (and I don’t mean a “sign”, I mean, a god shows up and proves itself…and…I don’t really know what it would need to do to prove itself. I watch too much science fiction. I would assume it was just some bad ass alien or something), but I wouldn’t initially be happy about it because it would put everything I have come to understand into question. But I would accept it because here’s what it means to be an atheist: All atheists are agnostics in that there is a non-zero chance that there is, in fact, a god. There is not evidence that completely disproves the existence of god beyond a shadow of a doubt. There’s just no evidence at all that there is a god, so I don’t believe in one. With the facts available, I see no reason to believe in a higher power. At the time that there are real, concrete facts, perhaps it would be different. I’m just pretty darn confident that these concrete, real facts will not appear. But yeah, I would probably go through a short period of crisis and then suck it up and deal. “Um, excuse me…do you actually want us to pray to you or is that just bullshit? It’s bullshit, isn’t it? That’s what I thought. And the funny hats are bullshit too, right? Yeah, thought so.”

I expect that in the scientific world, many people are not particularly noble. There’s a lot of shitty science that happens out there. People run half-assed studies. People interpret the one outlier that proves their point as proof while disregarding multiple data points that prove the contrary. People get attached to what they think is the truth and are comfortable with that. I would expect that this happens less in the scientific community than in the religious community, but I’m sure it happens. Scientists are vying for credit, for compensation, for glory. They are fighting to stay relevant. They are fighting to keep their departments running. Scientists do things out of desperation just like anyone else.

But in the end, if you show a scientist enough accurately collected evidence, they will accept the result, because that is the truth. Your emotions, your insecurities, your ego do not change that. An answer is an answer.

And so it is in the world of coatings. Honestly, I’m glad that I was wrong because I would rather the project be successful than me feel superior. Sure, it’s nice to be right but it’s nicer to actually know what’s going on and to be able to say, “Hmm, well…I guess this stuff is just fine. Due diligence for the win.”

I'm Going to Pun-t This Day into Oblivion

2012-02-03T07:48:00.000-08:00

Wes and I have had our Honda Fit for almost a year now and it has been a dream. Sure, I would consider most things a dream after driving the money pit known as my 1996 Toyota Camry for several years, but we have both enjoyed the fact that a relatively new car needs very little maintenance.

Speaking of the Camry…Last night at karaoke I was in a silly yet judgmental mood wherein I was making fun of the lyrics of all the R&B pop people were singing. I go through periods of wondering why I’m not a millionaire songwriter and then I remember that I just don’t have the ability to write pop songs. Even when I try to write something simple, it ends up being 4 minutes long and about things like the Russian space program in the 1960’s. I did, however, used to get behind the idea of writing a club song about my Camry because…well…I want to be Flight of the Concords or something. It would start something like this:

Rollin’ up to the club in my ’96 Camry.
A squeak in the wheels, gotta hit with WD-40
All the girls around, uh oh they wanna be me
All the boys, uh oh they wanna get with me
Bumper’s fallin’ off, side view held on with duct tape
I ignore that awful engine noise, the night is gonna take shape
Oh, I just came here to dance.

Awesome, right? Yeah, I think I missed my calling. Shaun said that it was awesome..if it were 1998. Whatever.

Anyway, so, yes, the Honda has not required any maintenance until…NOW. Firstly, we took it to Jiffy Lube for a much needed oil change, so that’s just standard maintenance. But then we noticed that the tire pressure light kept coming on. This morning I noticed a giant nail in my tire and realized that I couldn’t ignore it.

Because I could see the nail and because it was in the tread, I figured that it would be a simple patch job. Normally, I would be lazy and attempt to do it after work or something, but I figured that no one would really care if I was a half hour late, so I pulled into Pep Boys, about a 10 minute drive from work (because I refuse to give Mongo’s down the street from work any more of my money ever again, due to the fact they are a perfect example of a bunch of older dudes taking advantage of a woman who possibly doesn’t know much about cars. I say this simply because they would guilt me/fear monger me into repairs with the Camry by saying things like “Well, I would never want my grand daughter driving under such unsafe conditions!” and then looking pissed off when I would come in at one minute past 5pm to hand them $1500…but I digress).

As it turns out, the nail was too close to the side wall of the tire and they couldn’t repair it without compromising the integrity of it. Argh. And so it begins. They have to replace the tire, but they didn’t have the right tire in stock so they weren’t going to be able to take care of it while I wait. Neat! It’s OK though because the store manager was nice enough to drive me to work and all will be well by the end of the day. The aggravating thing is that it will be a $142 repair instead of a $20 repair. CAR OWNERSHIP!

As I am wont to do, I texted/gchatted various interested parties about my impressive way to start a Friday. Wes, who was getting ready for a job interview, said “Gah!” when I told him the news. Ginny said, “Fun Times!” and “Boo!” Shaun? Well, Shaun became relentless with his sending of terrible tire related puns. He requested that I blog them, and who am I to deny you some Friday idiocy? I will include some of my responses, but they’re not nearly as “clever” or “well crafted”.

Me: My tire has to be replaced instead of just patched.

Shaun: I’m so tired of you telling about your god damned tires…or something…
Shaun: Actually, I am a little disturbed by how hot I find your new tire. I shall never tire of hearing about it.
Shaun: Apparently, today’s obstacles are awful puns I can’t turn away from.

(We have been assigning different hazards each day that he has to worry about during his commute to work. Examples include attacks from Urban Sasquatch, attacks from sewer piranhas, and terrible song lyrics.)

Shaun: If I ever start a shop that replaces tires, I will call it Tire-annasaurus Rex, the King of Tires.

Me: I think we’re treading into uncharted pun-tastic waters.

Shaun: Let’s get a bunch of old tires and sculpt a giant tire-annasaurus.
Shaun: I will make it for our 7 months together – the tire-anniversaurus.

Me: That sounds like a worthwhile activity!

Shaun: If I make the tire-anniversaurus with bald tires, I can call it Tire-anniversaurus Lex.
Shaun: OMG, I think I broke myself.

Me: Good lord! Well, if you’re irreparable, I will deal with your remains on a tire pyre, powered by a tire fire.

Shaun: I will either need to fix myself or, well, just retire this joke, since it may be going flat.
Shaun: OK, now this is just getting re-tired-ed…

Me: Let’s just scrap the entire thing.

Shaun: I didn’t get enough sleep …I’m…not going to finish that sentence.
Shaun: I almost misspelled ‘tire’, which would have put my jokes on another tier.
Shaun: Oh man, I’m just on tire!
Shaun: Please compile this awesomeness into a blog post.
Shaun: At least, once I’m done hitting you with puns rapid-tire!
Shaun: I just passed a pile of tires. They are outside a tire shop, oddly enough.
Shaun: OK, I’m officially tired of this now.
Shaun: Tire-a Banks should be my spokestire.

Me: A-tire-a the Hun should be your mascot.

Shaun: But seriously, I’m happy for your tire…I hear retirement is great.

Me: Totally. I’m getting it a condo in Tire Boca Vista.

(A half hour passes)

Shaun: Tire.

So…um…yes, this is what we do all day. It’s not usually this filled with puns. Yesterday, it was about how all the evil people in the world are just pissed off because they lack the Funk and the ability to Get Down.

Happy Friday, People!

I Don't Believe in Dry Land!

2012-02-01T10:10:00.000-08:00

So, it’s February 1st and it is going to be around 60ºF around here.

Historically, by the time February gets here, I am firmly entrenched in the “OK, Winter, I’ve had enough already” mindset. I’m not a big weather whiner, but February has always had a certain desolation to it. In December, you have the holidays to brighten your day. In January, Winter is really settling in and the novelty of it has a certain appeal. But February has very little to look forward to. My dad’s birthday is in February, which usually means an evening of tacos and margaritas. Valentine’s Day is bullshit, but a good excuse to do something, I guess. Wicked Faire is in February (which I will be going to for the first time this year) and we’re doing a burlesque show…

OK, maybe I’m wrong about February. I mean, winter doesn’t have to suck if you keep yourself busy. Not being a particular fan of snow related sports, I don’t really care if there isn’t any. I’m not anti-snow. I think I would be happy with one blizzard a year. Everything looks so peaceful and clean and it’s always so quiet during the first hours of a snow storm. I like that, but only if I don’t have to go anywhere. I tire of the snow when it makes life less entertaining. One day stuck inside is fun. I like to make bread and things of that nature. It’s especially fun if you managed to plan ahead and have all the people you like at the house to get snowed in with you. But I am an enamored with snow. It becomes a hindrance pretty quickly.

This winter has been uncharacteristically mild. I would never call the Philadelphia area an arctic zone. Winter for us generally means temperatures in the teens and twenties, but it’s cold enough to be miserable and to kill all the plants. It makes our growing season somewhat short which has always been a bit frustrating to me because after the doldrums of February have passed and Spring is ushered in on my birthday (most years), I want to garden! By August, I’m generally sick of it, but I always have a lot of planting energy in those first months of Spring.

So far this season we have had only a few days that have dropped into the twenties. Temperatures have generally been in the mid to upper thirties, low forties. Now this week we have temps in the 60’s! Imagine my surprise when I recently inspected the front yard to find that all my perennials are starting to come back! Many fresh, green things are popping up everywhere and it’s kind of exciting…

But I fear that Winter will hit any day now and kill them. Except that this doesn’t seem likely. According to the weather forecast for the rest of the month, temperatures are expected to stay in the mid forties. At night, temperatures are dropping to 29-30º, which is seemingly not enough to hinder the growth of my plants. And then Spring will be here.

This is insane.

Of course, I am assuming that Spring will be like this but a little warmer. With our luck, Winter’s just taking its time and April will bring blizzards and sub-zero temperatures. But probably not. I will be interested to see how next Winter is. Will this trend continue? Will we have Winters like Georgia in a few years?

So, climate change. Currently, it’s kind of awesome in an “I’m not a big fan of the cold” way, but also kind of scary in a “how far is thing going to go” way. A coworker was talking about the polar ice caps melting and I immediately had visions of a gilled Kevin Costner. And that’s terrifying…also hilarious.

In the water covered world of the future, I hope to be employed on an airship so that I can avoid dealing with the giant mutant sharks that are apparently going to come around and try to eat my boat. Also, I would expect that an airship would be safer in terms of dealing with marauding black leather clad assholes on jet skis.

Did Dennis Hopper’s motley crew have airplanes? I can’t remember.

What? Nothing in that movie is feasible and I shouldn’t plan my approach to the future using it as a guide? Psh. What are you, some kind of Communist? Are you saying that Costner allowed three complete floating sets to sink for NOTHING? Why was that movie made if not to warn us?

Fine, I guess I’ll worry about boiling to death in the coming horrific summers instead. Also, I can think about all the cute arctic animals that will die. Also the emergence of some sort of peculiar super allergy/plague is likely.

Right? I have no evidence to back up that statement.

Heh, you know what I just remembered? Worrying about any of this is moot because it’s 2012 and the world is ending in December. Count down to Republicans using that as a reason to stop worrying about climate change.

What? Republicans aren’t worried about climate change? Oh. Well, that makes sense, there’s a lot of civil rights denying and religious agenda pushing to do. DON’T YOU WANT TO BE SAVED?

What was this post about again? Oh, right. Flowers are pretty and it looks like I’m going to be seeing some sooner than I thought. Also, post-apocalyptic films should not be used as models for future planning unless your eventual goal is to become some kind of marauding asshole in a cool outfit. Also, the end is nigh.

That’s a lot of topics to cover in one poorly written post, ey? Boo ya!

It Rears Its Ugly Head

2012-01-31T07:40:00.001-08:00

It starts as kernel of doubt. It plants itself in my mind and starts to infiltrate my thoughts. If I’m not paying attention, it infects me and starts to fester. The initial inspiration for the feeling gets lost in a backlog of thoughts from years of other such feelings and events. Resentment bubbles up; fear that I am somehow a lesser person in the eyes of those I love strikes deep. I project a million things, assign a million different meanings to one simple gesture and panic and sadness begins to trickle in. I stop communicating in a useful manner. I acknowledge it and have a choice to make: Do I let it grow or do I quash it? If I’m feeling strong, I stop it; I identify that I’m being unreasonable. If I’m not feeling my best, if I am stressed and worried about other things, am tired, anything, I let it take over. I lash out. I say I want things, but getting them won’t make me feel better because I got them by lashing out. I feel justified at the outset but regret the decision as soon as I carry it out. Then the self loathing begins; the guilt…and it lasts for hours. Sometimes the uneasiness lasts for days. I don’t believe it when people say they forgive me. I assume forgiveness only really comes with perfection.

This is what jealousy does to me. This is what jealousy induced by insecurity and extreme self absorption does to me.

And this is just what it does to me. It affects everyone around me as well. The intensity of these jealousy events will likely stay with me consciously for much longer than they will with others, but each event also likely puts a little kernel of worry and doubt into their minds as well. What will trigger these things is often unpredictable so how do others prepare? “What will Gina freak out about next?”

This has been my struggle for years. In the past, when I had an episode, I would attempt to say that an issue I was having had everything to do with something else that wasn’t jealousy. This simply prolonged the discussion until I could admit that yes, my entire issue is that I am jealous. I try not to do that anymore, even though I hate the fact that jealousy is a natural part of me. I meet people often who are naturally just not particularly jealous people and I envy them. I fantasize about being able to pinpoint the exact little piece of the brain that jealousy stems from and have it removed…and somehow keep everything else about me intact. I want it to be gone forever and to never plague me or the ones I love ever again.

But we all have crosses like this to bear. Wes has often likened my issues in this regard to his issues with dieting and indulgence. These things are flaws and must be reckoned with day in and day out. The only way to “beat” them is to pay attention and try to stay ahead of them and make healthy choices when possible.

And you will screw up again and again and again.

When I read or hear about people’s opinions about relationships and what is natural and unavoidable, a large topic is that of jealousy. Many people believe that it is a normal and acceptable part of a relationship, that it is justified and just something that goes along with the territory of commitment. I would like you to go up and read again what jealousy feels like to me and explain to me how that is at all something that anyone should expect and accept as part of their loving relationship. If you think that this is healthy, you are wrong. If you think that it is entirely on the other person to solve your jealousy issues because they “made you jealous,” you are wrong. If you think that another person will only be concerned with you every minute of every day, you are wrong. If you think they should be, you are selfish.

I am a jealous person. I am an insecure person. I am egotistical. I am imperfect and obsessed with the goal of actual perfection. These things are as big a part of me as all the other things I talk about on here.

This is why I started my happiness project. I struggle to keep all this under control and I fail often and hate myself for it. Somehow that part of things never really made it on to my list of happiness goals: stop punishing yourself for being human. I also skipped the “stop being so self absorbed and egocentric” goal. Over the last few weeks, this particular thing has really floated to the top as major factors of stress have turned out to be me thinking something had anything to do with me and having that be completely false.

Happiness projects evolve. As you address some things, other things move to the forefront. We acknowledge, accept and move through them finding ways to healthily address them in the future and understand that nothing ever really goes away. The effects of our flaws lessen with growth, but the flaws are always there just below the surface.

I write this today because I feel my resolve slipping and I have come too far for that to happen. I write this today because I am feeling vulnerable and think that should be seen. I write this because it needs to be in virtual stone, unable to be ignored and forgotten. And as I write this, I feel my grip tightening back up. I never slip far anymore, but I like to keep an eye on my balance whenever possible.

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Debating is Serious Business

2012-01-30T06:03:00.001-08:00

I have a historical distaste for conflict. This has caused me far more problems than it has saved me from anything. In my personal life, choosing not to talk to people about issues I have with them (and people choosing not to talk to me similarly) has led to the harboring of resentment and loss of friendships. In many of these cases, the argument could be made that I am well rid of the relationships. However, the fact that nothing of real substance about the underlying causes of the relationship’s breakdown was never really communicated leaves a feeling of lack of closure. In some cases, communicating likely would have kept the friendship intact.

Whatever the eventual result, I have learned that it is always better to be honest and open in your dealings with people close to you. If it ends up deep sixing the relationship, then so be it but people need to say what they mean. Keeping the peace does not result in better relationships. If the relationship has problems, keeping the peace, staying quiet only prolongs the inevitable. This has been my experience.

My distaste for conflict in my personal relationships extended into distaste for debate and conflict over political, religious and social issues. When I was younger I made a lot of assumptions about people who engaged in these debates. I will take this moment to remind you once again that I grew up surrounded by very smart people, so a lot of my assumptions about people when I was younger were shaped by this fact. Firstly, I assumed that people who engaged in passionate debates about the death penalty, abortion, or anything like that were smart. I assumed they were well informed. I assumed that they formed these opinions based on facts from multiple sources. I assumed that they were logical.

I know…these are a LOT of assumptions and I have since learned that I should generally never assume any of this.

I often chose not to participate (in ways other than listening and soaking up information) because I did not feel that I was well informed enough to have a truly valid opinion. The argument can be made is that you don’t particularly need anything to have a valid opinion…an opinion is an opinion. But I generally assumed (I know!) that the purpose of these debates was to have a discussion where viewpoints are given and the truth was ultimately found.

(I had Shaun read this already and he laughed at me for my overly optimistic/idealistic view on this. I suppose I should say that the purpose of these discussions SHOULD be truth and education, but it usually doesn't turn out that way.)

Lately, I have been reading a lot more, thinking a lot more, and forming a lot more thoughts on big topics. I like to discuss them. I like to learn about them. If have bad information, I want to know that I have bad information. If I am wrong about something, I want to know that I am wrong. I don’t automatically accept that I’m wrong if the argument about that is itself wrong, but I think that it is important to our personal growth and for the growth of a more progressive and intelligent society that things are discussed and debated, that facts are examined and that claims are viewed with skepticism and torn apart.

But being emotional creatures, we become emotionally attached to our opinions about things. They become part of who we are. We judge each other based on how we feel about things. So obviously, to attack an opinion is to attack us personally.

Except that is not true. If you are a skeptic, it is possible that your opinion about something will change with additional facts. This is what makes the scientific method better than anecdotal assumptions. If you have a long standing belief and you are presented with tons of evidence (that has been collected in an unbiased, logical way) against it, the belief must be dissolved.

But it doesn’t usually go that way. Here is a common example of what happens on the internet:

1. Someone posts an article about a dubious study whose results suggest that you should be very afraid if they are true. 2.Someone who reads it becomes afraid and talks about people they have known who this might possibly be true for. 3. A skeptic who has read multiple studies that show that the results of the dubious study are… dubious and often completely wrong introduces new facts to the discussion. 4. The people who want to believe the dubious study state that the skeptic is entitled to their facts from multiple sources, but this dubious study says different and corporations are evil so the dissident opinion must be the actual truth. 5. The skeptic disagrees, mincing no words and says “No, the science does not support this claim. You are wrong.” 6. The other people say “There’s no need to get down with the personal attacks! Just because you disagree doesn’t mean you get to be an ASSHOLE!” 7. The debate becomes about personal attacks and the actual substance and usefulness of the debate has disappeared.

Being told that you are wrong is not a personal attack (unless, as Wes pointed out, it is...but the wording is usually different. Like, instead of saying, "You're wrong," you say, "You are so wrong, you lying sack of shit. See the difference?). Choosing to point out why a posted article is wrong is not merely picking a fight. Someone disagreeing with you could be seen as an opportunity to persuade or to learn. It does not have to be an excuse to get all up in arms because someone has the audicity to actually call bullshit rather than just sitting quietly. You are not automatically an asshole is you call it (you might be an asshole for other reasons though).

Our friends and acquaintances are rarely a homogenous group of yes people…at least mine aren’t. Sure, we tend to be close to people who share a lot of philosophies, but in the world of Facebook or anything like that, it is silly to expect that if you post something, that everyone who looks at it will be all “Right On!” And if you choose to join a debate in which you have the controversial opinion, expect to be called on it and expect to defend it with facts and real information. People giving you links and facts are not attacking you. They are disagreeing with you. If someone thinks that an article is spreading misinformation, they will often say so. It is irresponsible not to say so. The spreading of misinformation is stopped by thinking people. We should all strive to be one of those people

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Google Knows Something I Don't

2012-01-26T11:16:00.001-08:00

As those who frequent Facebook likely know, there is a link being bounced around currently that takes you to an ad optimization thing for Google. On the page, you can see what categories Google thinks you like/belong to and assigns you to a demographic. These things are calculated using some kind of algorithm based on the kinds of websites you visit. The author of the above article got a pretty accurate summation of who he is.

According to Google, I am 45-54 year old dude who likes "people and places", "shopping", and "North America: USA and Canada".

At first I laughed at this because, I mean, it got the American part right, but as far as I can tell I am not a 45-54 year old man. Hmm, I mean, I guess I like some shopping and "people and places". I also like things. What I'm saying is that I am an American who is a fan of nouns. So maybe Google isn't so dumb.

Then I really started thinking about how not only is Google not dumb but they've likely been spying on me my whole life, finding the best possible thing to compare me to for maximum comedy.

Because, you see, of course my internet presence would indicate that I'm a middle aged male Baby Boomer.

As with most of my contemporaries, I was raised by a couple of Baby Boomers. My dad had a lot of influence on my humor and muscial tastes by simultaneously glorifying and shitting on his era. He grew up mostly in southern California and was attending college in the late 60's/early 70's. He was a surfer and knew a lot of hippies. He did all the drugs, and listened to all the music. He and his mother were into the art scene and had an opinion on pop art. He didn't get drafted into Vietnam, but it didn't matter since he was in school. He drove Volkswagens and Triumph motorcycles. He had a sailboat on which he lived. He had friends who lived in dirt shacks in northern California who made all their money growing weed. The Doors played at his highschool. He went to a Jimi Hendrix concert once where Vanilla Fudge was the opener and some asshole in front of him asked the question "who is good enough to follow VANILLA FUDGE?"

And while my dad lived what I would call a pretty charmed life back then, he has remained sarcastic and hilarious in his commentary of the time. For instance, he oft tells the story of idiots he was in class with in college who, after listening to a lecture on photosynthesis, walked out of the class remembering a recent acid trip and said, "Flash on green people walking around not eating, man..." "Whoa..." My dad apparently almost hit them with a chair.

My mother had a few of these experiences but generally had a very, very different existence than my dad during this time. She had my sister to take care of on her own and was a female. She had gotten an office job at 16 and was dealing with the stigmas that go along with being a teen mother and a woman in the work place. She was strong, no nonsense and independent. She did what she had to do and did it well. And, in her spare time, she started renting dance studio space just so she could dance and get it out of her system (untrained, all talent). She was noticed by the studio owner who ultimately ended up in the PA area also and she ended up dancing for him in the Pennsylvania ballet for a few years. When she and my father met at the end of the 70's, they were coming from two very different world views.

And the result was me.

I am a strong and independent woman who probably comes across as somewhat androgynous in text. I have the musical tastes of a 60 year old man (meaning I'm pretty good to have around when playing an old edition of Trivial Pursuit). I find humor about the 60's and 70's hysterical and for reasons that I think have everything to do with my dad this kind of stuff simply resonates with me.

As for what my web surfing says about me, I suppose the algorithm gets it from somewhere. Recently, I have used Wikipedia to teach me about philosophy, relativity, honey badgers, and why I'm supposed to care about Mumia. I shop on Amazon. I have searched for Weird Al videos.

I guess this is how middle aged dudes spend their time?

So, it is pretty laughable in obvious ways...but perhaps they know me a little better than I thought. Google has uncovered my background and are marketing to my underlying influences. And that is sort of brilliant.

Blah blah blah...1984 reference...la la la...BIG BROTHER...yadda yadda yadda...hitler.

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Tattoos and Other Rebellious Things

2012-01-25T11:22:00.001-08:00

I am trying out something new today: I am writing a blog post on my phone as Blogger has now been blocked by my company's internet filter. As I work on this, I am amazed by the level of technology we have available at our fingertips.

Let's see if I'm still saying this when I really see how this Blogger app works.

Yesterday I took the day off to go out and get a tattoo and to accompany Ginny to various vintage shops and offbeat boutiques to look for a wedding dress for her. The shopping was quite fun as (a) I enjoy having any excuse to spend an entire day galavanting around with Ginny, and (b) we weren't shopping for traditional wedding dresses. All colors and styles were fair game, much in the way that I approached the task for my own wedding. We hit an impressive amount of stores in a few hours, stopped for coffee and a snack that ended up being an hour and a half break, visited Jessie at while she worked at her awesome new job at the turn of the 20th century candy shop, and finally after exhausting all the shops on 3rd street, we met up with Wes, Shaun and Jessie for dinner.

There's really not one thing to complain about and I will point out once again how much fun and how satisfying poly is. I feel like days like yesterday are a great example of it. Of course I spent a day helping my girlfriend shop for her wedding dress. Of course she is marrying my boyfriend. Of course we visited my husband's girlfriend at work. Of course we all met up at the end of the day and had a wonderful time. We are lucky people...and somehow I am always surprised when this fact is proven to me.

While at dinner, Wes got a phone call during which he was offered a job interview. He had a different one today and he got he got another call offering one today. I am amazed at the response he's getting and feeling confident that this employment bump in the road will be short lived.

What? Oh, right, yes, I also got a tattoo yesterday. My very first tattoo!

I got a gold star on my right hip. It is in tribute to the success of my Happiness Project and it represents one of the biggest struggles I've had. I am sure I've mentioned my need for gold stars, or rather, my need for recognition and praise when I do something I think is good. I used to get really frustrated when people didn't notice the good things I did and I started to learn that requiring the approval of others to validate the things I do will always result in me being frustrated. You have to motivate yourself. Encouragement and appreciation from others is great, but you can't rely on it if you want to be happy. At least, that's the way it is for me. So, I got my very own gold star that will be with me always and I can reward myself for a job well done whenever I want. It serves as a permanent positive reminder of the goals I have and how capable I am of achieving them.

In other news, I was completely unprepared for the pain involved in getting a tattoo. Years ago, a friend of mine who got one on her back near her shoulder described the sensation as "scratching". This is not accurate...in anyway.

I know...all the tattoo veterens out there are saying "no shit".

I got the star right over my hip bone which didn't help. The best thing that the artist told me was to remember to breath. I put all my focus on that and concentrated of even, controlled breathing and I think it helped. The pain wasn't anything I couldn't handle (as evidenced by a complete lack of whimpering, crying, or violent spasms on my part...though there were a few audible "gahs") and I think it's good that I didn't really know as I probably would have talked myself out of it. But there was definitely a point right before she started when I thought to myself "oh shit...this hurts, doesn't it?" And then she started and I thought "yes, yes it does. YES IT DOES!"

But it was totally worth it as I love it. I have a couple other tattoos that I want to get but I won't be able to afford them for a long while...also I'd like this one to stop being sore first.

Years ago, my grandmother warned me against getting a tattoo because "who wants to see ancient sagging skin with a tattoo on it when you're old?" I initially agreed but then realized that this was a dumb argument. The ancient sagging skin of an 85 year old will not be made much more unpleasant to look at by the presence of a tattoo. This was around the time when much of her sagely advice and warnings began to fall flat. She warned me boys on motorcycles ("They will dazzle you and take you away...on their motorcycle!" "But...Grandma, I don't give a shit about motorcycles." "Oh, you will." For the record, I still don't care about motorcycles.). She also warned me about marijuana ("It will make you feel all sexy and you will do things you will regret. Alcohol is OK though." "But...Grandma, I have tried pot and I don't like it." "You will!!!"). I think I will avoid telling her about polyamory as she will clearly envision Wes and Shaun pulling up on motorcycles with Jessie and Ginny riding on the backs, all holding giant bags of weed. That would explain EVERYTHING.

I'll admit...it makes me feel like a bit of a rebel, like a bit of a badass. It's hidden from view in my work apparel and it's a little bit of a secret that I like keeping (no, I am not the only one in here with a tattoo, but still). Sure, it's not a skull with blood pouring out of its eyes (I'm fairly certain that was a design option offered by the shop) but it's my little rebellion.

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It's a Damned Shame

2012-01-17T06:35:00.000-08:00

Today I want to talk about shame!

Enter a man and a woman with their Rated R parts covered with strategically placed fig leaves. The woman is eating an apple.

No, no, no. I’m not even referring to the shame our culture harbors about our bodies, sexuality and all that.

The woman raises an eyebrow and then offers the apple to the man. The man shrugs and takes the apple as if to say, “What could possibly go wrong?” They exit.

Last night I was in the kitchen making dinner while Wes and Ginny got into a conversation about rationality, the balance between finding out how people feel about something happening and asking permission for something to happen, and accommodating insecurity and irrationality. These topics are par for the course in our house as you might expect.

I wasn’t saying much, initially because I was paying attention to the food I was preparing but also because I started to think that I really had nothing to contribute to the conversation. You see, the reason that these topics are par for the course in our home is because I am usually in the midst of weathering some sort of irrational storm of my own creation.

As you know, I have spent the last several years becoming more aware of my various issues and working on not letting them control me or my relationships. Everyday I feel like I make some sort of new discovery about just how ridiculous some of my gut reactions to things are and how they are based on completely irrational beliefs.

One of these irrational beliefs is that perfection is possible. One part of this is that every time I figure out how to control a stupid gut reaction to something, I think “Ha HA, I have beat it!” and think that not only do I not have to work on it anymore but also that I have achieved a piece of perfection by successfully weathering its effects here and there. Another part of this is that when I have an extended period of time where I am happy/content and doing a good job with everything on my list of “Things That are Wrong with Gina” I feel like I am basically my ideal self, that I have achieved some version of perfection.

OK, so obviously it is not a bad thing to feel good about yourself and confident. The problem here is that when I waiver in my vigilance over some ongoing issue, when I fail, no matter what the degree, my reaction is far too intense. A crack in my perception of my own perfection results in me feeling as though I must start over, that all is lost, that all my hard work has been for naught. This all stems from me actually believing that I have gotten there already. This is a lie that I tell myself and eat up and when it is inevitably proven to be so over and over again, it is devastating.

I was taking part in the conversation until I started to think of the way that I used to be and remembering all the times I let my insecurity get the best of me. It is true that I have improved greatly, that I have overcome so many things that used to paralyze me, that I now can recognize the root causes of my reactions and emotions and process them in a useful way and this should make me happy. It does in general but I also loathe the person that I used to be and when I remember her I react poorly.

As Wes and Ginny spoke I kept seeing scenes of me acting like a mad woman, crying as I demanded things that weren’t mine to demand, being resentful and small, jealous and terrified. Instead of feeling relief that I was no longer this person, I felt shame.

I allowed myself to feel the shame and allowed it to spiral into sadness and anger and I lashed out a bit, wanting them to change the subject, but really all I wanted was for the negative parts of the last several years to simply disappear. I wished that I had always been the person I am today, that I couldn’t understand the thought process of a jealous, irrational person because I had never been that. Shame and self loathing began to control me once again in that moment and I wanted to let it because I believed that it was true.

Why am I writing about this? Because I want you to know me and what I struggle with. I think to most people I present myself as I wish to be, a level minded, easy going rational person who is caring, conscientious and self aware. I don’t freak out and I let things roll off my back.

These things are, now, actually pretty true. They aren’t just a front anymore. But it isn’t a default setting. I have to be constantly vigilant about these things. I have to watch that I don’t assume that every situation I am involved in is about me, that I have any control over how people are feeling about things that I have nothing really to do with. When I feel insecure about something, I need to laugh at how ridiculous it is and leave it at that. When I see that I am not perfect, I should rejoice in the fact that I am human and have room to grow.

There is no endgame to self improvement. It is obvious that I used to be addicted to my issues. I had to identify and admit to them first, then figure out the root cause of them and learn how to control them. After that, you control them, every single day.

So, it’s time to get realistic about all of this. I will struggle with these things for the rest of my life. It is easier now than it used to be and will continue to be easier if I continue to pay attention and accept that there will be times when I fail. Perfection is an asymptotic goal. I can strive for it but I must accept that I will never reach it. Every failure is a dip in the line, not a drop to zero. Personal growth, much like any living thing, requires conscious upkeep and I am ready to accept this. It will only be over when I finish drawing my last breath and until then it will be one hell of a ride.

Enter the fig leaf covered Edenites from earlier. The woman is eating another apple and the man is looking at her scornfully while he shamefully puts on a winter coat.

Man: Um, last I heard, this blog was supposed to be funny.
Woman: Yeah, what’s up with all this political and self introspection shit you keep going on about?
Man: Yeah, you haven’t mentioned toilets in AGES.

Yeah, I know. Strangely, I just haven’t been thinking about toilets that much lately. What have I become? A blogger, I guess.

Damn it.

Delightful Problems and Happy Dreams

2012-01-16T08:04:00.000-08:00

I have a delightful problem: I thoroughly enjoy spending time with my husband, his partners and my partners.

So, when I was monogamous, the evolution of most of my long term relationships (of which there really weren’t that many) went something like this: I meet someone and we begin an awkward flirtation, either directly with each other or, when I was in highschool, through a series of notes passed around in class. Options of feelings to express were written and we had the option to circle the ones that expressed our intent…or something.

Scribbled Note in 8th Grade: Do you like me? Circle One, YES or NO.
Scribbled Note to Mutual Friend in 11th Grade: So…is he going to ask me out or what? Is he waiting for me to be Queen of the Progressive Feminists?

At some point, I started directly talking to people I was interested in…I think it was still awkward, because I’m a dork and am bad at flirting…but anyway, at some point, we start dating.

I never really did the whole non-exclusive thing, because, well, who knew that it was ever on the table (as you know, exclusivity is assumed in our culture). When you went from “going on a few dates” to “dating”, I would quickly fall into a pattern with my new partner. We really dug each other and would start spending most of our free time together.

In the case of Wes, since we started dating when we were both in school and were “adults” with our own living spaces, quite quickly did we start spending the night at each other’s residences…every night. After the first few weeks it was rare that Wes and I would sleep or eat separately. It got to the point where at three months of dating, we were going grocery shopping together, stocking both homes so that we could make lunches and whatnot no matter where we were staying.

Since we were spending all of our time together and shopping and paying rent in two separate places, it became clear that we should just be paying rent in one place and stocking only one kitchen…and we decided to move in together.

Once we lived together, we talked about getting married and decided that yes, we would like to get married at some point when it made sense. That was about a year in and seven years later, it made sense and we got married.

So, yes, standard monogamous course of events: Meet, Date, Love, Move In Together, Marry.

Yeah, I know that’s specific to me…some people don’t do the Move In Together part before marrying…that seems ill advised to me, much like being monogamous and not having sex before marriage or…not having important conversations about beliefs, philosophies, your issues, or all the things that people think they can ignore that will magically change to the ideal when a marriage license is signed. Moving on…

So, I did this with Wes and it’s been awesome and satisfying and generally accepted by society at large. Hooray!

Wes met Jessie over a year ago. Their relationship progressed in a similar fashion except there were a few added steps: Meet, Go on a Couple of Dates, Meet Your Partner’s Wife, Be Patient While Partner’s Wife Gets to Know You and Calls You a Best Friend, Fall in Love During That Process, Partner and Partner’s Wife Discuss the Future, Partner’s Wife Invites You to Move into the House, Rent a U-Haul at Some Point, Figure Out the Ways to Have Legal Rights to Each Other Since Society Won’t Allow Multiple Marriages, Possible Commitment Ceremony or Something in the Future…

Because being able to get married to multiple people would either mean you are Mormon or it would represent a slippery slope into a world where you can marry wheel barrows or something. And I’ll be damned if a fucking lazy wheel barrow can get on someone’s health insurance…or something.

My point here is that Wes and Jessie’s relationship has progressed in a way that monogamous people can visualize and understand. My presence makes it peculiar, I suppose, and there is no rule of exclusivity so that makes it even more peculiar, but…well, you see what I’m saying, right?

So, back to my delightful problem. Shaun and Ginny are awesome. What a terrible problem, right? If I was dating either one of them exclusively, I would expect that discussions of finding an apartment together in September would be happening (man, can you tell the last time I looked for housing was when I was still beholden to college based lease agreements? Oy). As it is, we know that we all consider these relationships quite serious with much potential for a fabulous future.

But as Tom Petty said in his nasal Midwestern way, “Ooooh, the wai-ai-ai-ting is the hardest part”.

For various reasons that aren’t interesting enough to go into here, all of us moving in together is a distant fantasy. It is on our minds as a real possibility, but practical questions of when and how are up in the air and will likely not have answers for a few years. We joke about building a castle in some part of Philadelphia, or buying a few attached row homes with doors in the walls that adjoin them. These are fun things to think about, for sure.

But in the mean time, I am left feeling that I am in odd, unexplored territory. The progression of relationships that I am used to can not happen here at this time. It is difficult to know what I want and to not be able to just make it happen. But it is delightful to want it, to have more people who I am happy with, to have people who I miss. But there is simply no road map for any of this.

I can honestly say that I did not anticipate this particular issue when Wes and I decided to become polyamorous. I don’t know why I didn’t anticipate it. It was likely because I didn’t think I had the capacity to personally want more than I had, to that level. But here we are. On top of the general things we all struggle with (having our family and friends accept these other relationships as real, serious and important, for instance), our relationships feel a bit like they are in a holding pattern akin to the days of wooing potential mates over a chocolate malt:
Good, clean cut Boy: Gee whiz, Mary. I sure do hope you can come with me to the dance on Friday. And then, after that, we can get married so that we can see each other after midnight without being scandalized!

Good Proper Girl: Oh boy, Bobby! That just sounds swell!

My point here is that I am totally used to “Living in Sin”. (For the record, I completely and utterly hate the phrase, almost as much as “So, when is that man of yours going to make an honest woman out of you?”) But, yes, I am no stranger to “Living in Sin”. Some would say that I am living far more sinfully than I ever was before, but my point is that dropping people you care very deeply for and want around all the time at a house that isn’t mine is strange in the context of my own history. When I love someone, I want them around all the time, even if this means that we’re all sitting around in different parts of the house doing whatever we want on our own…it is the close proximity that I want, the ability to peak my head into a room and find out who wants tea…and up until now, I generally go my wish. It’s that simple.

I think that people get caught up in the big things in life like careers and big ticket possessions. These things do bring joy and to feel successful in large endeavors is important to happiness. But it truly is the small things, like having a house full of people to make waffles for, fitting on a couch to watch an episode of Doctor Who, having the people you love there to kiss on the cheek as you go pass by to go do dishes…these are where true moments of contentment come from for me. I get tons of these moments with Wes and Jessie, and I suppose I am a bit greedy wanting more of them with Shaun and Ginny. And while the waiting is most certainly the hardest part, I find that it is something that I can do, because it will be worth it if it comes to fruition.

So yes, it’s really a pretty good problem to have, but a problem nonetheless…like just not knowing what to spend that million dollars on.

Cheap Cold Medicine is Cheap

2012-01-12T12:03:00.001-08:00

My first chemistry internship was in Ambler, PA. I did not have a driver’s license so my mobility in the area was limited. Being a city person, I didn’t really have a concept of real distance. I grew up with a very loose definition of “walking distance”. Basically, I thought you could walk anywhere efficiently enough.

One day I got the big idea to go walk to a Wawa. I looked it up on Mapquest and thought that the walk seemed doable. I ventured out…and quickly managed to get lost. I wandered aimlessly around Ambler marveling at the quaint neighborhoods and pretty plants. At some point I found myself walking down Lollipop Lane.

I shit you not.

I turned a corner and found Black Horse Pike and began walking on the shoulder, as there were no sidewalks. I was at the top of a hill and the road sprawled out below me, curving down and the back up at the onset of another hill. The road wasn’t busy at that time of day, having only one or two cars pass me every minute.

I began to zone out. By this point, I had given up on my pursuits to get a Wawa hoagie and was just trying to get back to work in a somewhat reasonable amount of time. I was peaceful and mellow as I wandered along the side of the road, my eyes fixed on the sprawling curves of the hills.

Suddenly it reminded me of an episode of Star Trek (I could have sworn that this was in Next Generation, but the internet is telling me that it was in Voyager…) where Q represents the Q continuum as an open road. There is nothing on it and it goes on forever and Q can take it to get anywhere whenever they want. It was the only way to make it perceivable to humans with our limited mental capacities.

So there I was wandering down the mostly deserted road imagining that I was some lowly human stuck in the continuum attempting to get somewhere interesting, but instead getting nowhere fast. In my imagination, this was because my mind could not possibly conceive of somewhere interesting enough for me to go. In reality, it was simply that I just couldn’t walk anywhere fast enough. And really, the only things to walk to were gas stations and a Quiznos.

Today I am in a daze, for sure. I have been battling a cold for several days now (if not weeks…I think I had a cold, then had some sort of allergies and then got a different cold or something). I took some cold medicine that we have in the lab first aid cabinet and I believe that it is making me feel woozier than I was before. I feel like my head is floating away. For whatever reason, my mind has wandered to this day…I am back on Lollipop Lane being disappointed that there is not one lollipop anywhere in the vicinity. I am left to my own devices to wonder what exactly it would be like to be all knowing, all seeing and with limitless power. It seems like the kind of thing that could be entertaining for a couple of days, but would quickly become boring. It occurs to me that the road analogy is probably exactly right.

Clearly, I am none of those things. I am sitting at my desk at work, spewing out semiliterate paragraphs as the cold medicine seemingly does nothing but make me a little high…a little high with a faucet of a nose.

But thinking about that particular day reminds me once again that I really ought to walk more. I am so much more creative when I’m walking somewhere, especially somewhere that I knew exactly how to get to. My mind likes to be allowed to wander to the strange places it frequents. When I structure it, technical goodness comes but not creative goodness.

Resolution #1: Walk more, write more.

Resolution #2: Stop taking this god awful cold and science medicine from the First Aid cabinet. It is some intense shit, yo.

What Miles Dyson Wrought

2012-01-11T08:30:00.001-08:00

Last night we introduced Ginny to the wonder that is Terminator 2. Shaun had shown her Terminator a while back and I was all about having an excuse to watch the sequel. As the five of us crammed on the couch (we really need a bigger couch. Well, we need a new couch in general since Lola has eaten half of our current one and we will definitely try to get something that can accommodate our polycule. My hope is that we can find a nice L-shaped couch…because we really can’t go longer as we are already almost cutting off the stairs. Isn’t this an interesting this to talk about? Let me tell you about my mortgage next), and the opening sequences began…I was reminded how very influential this movie has been on my imagination.

I used to go out and spend a month with my grandparents in LA every summer. My grandmother was all about going to the movies. Usually she only liked going to movies that were about pretty people doing cute things (you should have heard her initial protests about going to see Forest Gump…because Forest Gump was mentally challenged and that’s no fun to watch. She loved it, btw). So I was very surprised that she had any interest in going to see something like Terminator 2. It likely had everything to do with the fact that my cousin Jack was visiting at the time and he was Mr. Action Movie (I believe it’s his fault that I love them so much. I never would have seen several of them had it not been for him).

Now, I had never even heard of Terminator. It was 1991. I was ten years old (making my cousin 7…did I mention that my family never shielded us from anything?). Everyone decided that it would be stupid for me to go see Terminator 2 without seeing Terminator first, so we rented it and played it on my grandparents’ ginormous projection television.

Fun Fact: A few years earlier, my other grandfather came to visit me at these grandparents’ house and brought me an Atari game system. We hooked it up to the projection television and I played Bug Hunt on it. It was…AMAZING. You know you’re jealous.

So, we watched Terminator and I was forever hooked on post apocalyptic tales. There was no going back. I forever will have “Come with me if you want to live” in my mind through various occasions. Also, the image of killer robots rolling/stamping on hills of human skulls appealed to me in a way that I can not articulate. There was something about the aesthetic that would forever creep its way into my thoughts and certainly into my writing (and humor, for whatever reason).

No, I was not a goth as a young person. This never translated to that. Perhaps this is because I was never particularly exposed to gothic themes like vampires and Victorians. Steam punk is something that I found out about much later in life. But I watched a lot of science fiction about wars and I read dystopia novels that took place in the future. There were always robots. There were always flying vehicles. And there was always something sinister hiding beneath the harmless.

Terminator 2 is widely considered one of the best sequels ever made (many people thinking that it is better than the original. I generally agree, but I also love the original for reasons described above). For me as a young girl, one of the reasons that Terminator 2 is so awesome is because it’s one of the few films that features a very strong female lead. Prior to this, I had seen Alien and Aliens and had Ripley to look to as a media role model (and she will forever be my favorite) but Sarah Connor has always been a close second.

The character of Ripley was originally written to be played by a man. So…she was written well since people have a very hard time, apparently, writing women to not be complete control freak bitches when they’re in a leadership role. Sigourney Weaver played it expertly…we were none the wiser that she was playing a man’s role. Instead, she simply came across as a real person who happened to be female. This was powerful to me back then, though I didn’t know it. I realized it more when I started watching countless other films that completely failed at portraying women as people anyone would want to know.

Sarah Connor is interesting because she goes through such a transformation. In the beginning of Terminator she is a regular woman of the 80’s. She is not particularly abrasive or wussy, but she is certainly not someone you would expect to become a soldier in a war she would likely not live to see. As the film progresses and she accepts this reality, she turns from mild mannered office worker to bad ass. In the second film, she has gotten into shape (seeing as there’s not much to do in a mental institution).

Despite the fact that she is, in fact, not lying about cyborgs trying to kill her and her son, the case could be made that she has become cold and calculating just like one of them. I would expect most people would. I mean, you have some dude from the future come to tell you that your son will save humanity in the coming war with the machines…and the machines aren’t happy about it, so they send killers back to nip the whole thing in the bud. The choices appear to be “Freak out” or “Get it together and do what needs to be done”.

But that’s the brilliance of the writing of Sarah Connor’s character. She transcends gender stereotypes. Her actions, motivations, and reasoning are all taken into account as something any PERSON would do…not just what some emotional chick would do. In fact, they almost do away with her actually having a maternal instinct and is seemingly protecting her son simply because of who he will become. Sarah Connor is not defined by anything historically feminine. Her son is the compassionate and caring one. Her son sees the virtue in saving lives, regardless of what those people may or may not do in the future. Sarah has given up on this, devoting all of her energy to either preparing her son for his role, or stopping the war in the first place.

Terminator and Terminator 2 began my love affair with apocalyptic tales and few have come close to equaling them. Part of this is certainly because they had a character I could picture being myself, making the whole thing more real to me. They did not make me fear technology, but they did give me perspective on the ways that initially harmless science can become deadly. Every discovery has a dark side. Every atom can be harnessed to improve or decimate. This dichotomy is what makes for a good story…and it is constantly in my consciousness.

On Why Wesley is Excellent

2012-01-10T06:00:00.000-08:00

Ten years ago…wait, eleven years ago? I’m getting to the age now where things like the years I spent going to college have started to blend together. Let’s say eleven years ago, I met Wes. I met him somewhat in passing. We were in the same play together, Lysistrata, but due to the nature of the play (there were basically three groups of actors who rehearsed at different times and didn’t see each other particularly until run-thrus). I knew who he was, but knew nothing about him. I don’t think I had a conversation with him or even said hello. When the play was over, I didn’t see him again until the Spring when Drexel put on Fiddler on the Roof. Wes was the Rabbi and got to wear a hilarious fake beard. I was a peasant. I called myself Peasant #9.

One day while we were waiting to start rehearsal, I saw Wes sitting on the couch in the green room and realized that I had never actually spoken to him. Wes had a way of pissing people off. At the time I didn’t really know the nature of this, but I knew that he had a bit of a reputation. As it turns out, it was really that people just don’t like being called out on their bullshit…a skill I would forever admire about him. I figured people might be generally wrong about him, since people are generally wrong, so I sat down and struck up a conversation and within 2 minutes, I was rolling on the floor laughing my ass off. Later at a cast party, we sat out in the backyard singing Who songs together and cracking up more. I had a fleeting thought that it would be really funny if we ended up together.

I was in a few relationships, some healthy, some not so much while I was building my friendship with Wes. We had told each other how we felt about each other but for various reasons that I don’t care to rehash here (mainly because they would make me look like an insecure jackass…so we’ll just leave it at that), I wouldn’t date him. Finally, after speaking to Kelly at length about my stupidity she informed me that it was pretty clear that I was in love with him and that I should really just get over all other crap. So I did, and it was possibly the greatest decision of my life.

That was 8 years ago and I have never looked back.

There is so much that I admire about Wes. He has always been my rock, getting me through whatever it is I have needed to get through. He has done it with kindness and with sternness, whatever the situation called for. He has stood by me even when I have been insane. He has believed in me, encouraged me, supported me, inspired me…he has been an amazing force for change, improvement and happiness in my life. And that’s just what he’s done for me.

I admire Wes because he is mostly not afraid and if he is he doesn’t allow it to stop him from pursuing what is important to him. He seeks truth and honesty from everyone he knows and from the world at large. If you are lying to him, if you are being inauthentic, he will see it and he will call you on it. He demands that people figure out what they actually think about something so that they can be articulate, so that actual understanding can happen.

People judge him for this, thinking that he is uncaring and simply contrary. This is very far from the truth. Yes, he makes some people uncomfortable because he doesn’t allow them to hide behind their insecurities and poorly thought out opinions. Some people dislike him for this, but I love him for it. In addition, he is ridiculously intelligent, hilarious, a fabulous chef, a wonderful builder of bookshelves, bars, poker tables and cabinets, and lover of wine and cheese. He is a giant nerd. He cares deeply for those close to him, and protects and defends when needed.

Recently someone asked why I would marry him while we were living this polyamorous lifestyle of ours. I initially answered that marriage gives us a bunch of legal rights and privileges and all that. But really, I knew that I would marry him after three months of dating him. I was committed and excited to grow old with him and go through life making all the tough and wonderful choices that one has to make while living. I married him because I trust him implicitly, because I love him unconditionally, because to picture a life without him would be no life at all.

It is true that I am in love with a few absolutely wonderful people, but this would not be possible if not for the awesomeness that is Wes.

Tomorrow is his birthday! Happy Birthday to a great man.

Internet Strangers FTW!

2012-01-05T07:00:00.000-08:00

Despite my blunt honesty on this blog thing here, I have yet to really attempt to cultivate a bunch of online relationships with people I don’t know. Perhaps it is a symptom of being raised in the early days of the internet when the horror stories of scary strangers taking advantage of people were new and no one was prepared for this aspect of the anonymity of the cyber age. Nothing has really changed in this regard. It is still a good idea to be suspicious of strangers on the internet, much like being suspicious of people with candy and vans. My point is that even now, at the ripe old age of 30, I still get squeamish about encounters with unknown persons on the interwebz.

So, imagine my surprise when I awoke this morning to find that some random person was requesting to Gchat with me. The me of long ago would likely have blocked this person at the get go, but I had no way of knowing that I didn’t actually know this person. I meet new people often and it is not yet a part of my initial introductions to find out their gmail handles. As such, I accepted the request. And here is the ensuing conversation:

Unknown Person: Hi.

At this point I had to take a shower, and being somewhat annoyed that this person had not left any indicators as to who they were, I ignored it. And hour later:

Unknown Person: Hello?

Me: Good morning! Who is this?

Unknown Person: I can’t believe you don’t remember me.

Me: Not by an email handle, no.

(At this point I was convinced this was some random person from highschool. Is it wrong that during this entire conversation I could totally believe that this was someone I know fucking with me?)

Unknown Person: Hey what’s up? 22/F here. You?

Me: This isn’t helping me. Do you actually know me, or did you get my email from somewhere?

Unknown Person: Hmm. Have we chatted before?

Me: No.

Unknown Person: Oh OK. I wasn’t sure. Anyways…what’s up?

Me: I’m about to leave for work.

Unknown Person: I’m like so boreddd…there is nothing to do.

Me: How did you get this address?

Unknown Person: Ohhh wait! I got a great idea. Have you ever watched a sexy girl like me strip live on a cam before?

And so there you have it. I subsequently blocked her. Yes, I was clearly a jackass here. Parts of this seemed like a real person. Parts of this were likely some kind of sexy robot, as Shaun pointed out. Well, he didn’t describe it as a sexy robot…simply a bot. The point is I immediately envisioned it as Calculon.

Of course, what amused me the most about this was that the resulting conversation was an example of exactly how not to attract me to you. First of all, I’m not in to strangers. Second, I am not interested in boring idiots (I should point out that I added all the proper punctuation, capitalization, and spelling that is listed above. I have a very hard time typing that poorly.). And third, I’m not paying you to strip for me when I know several people who will do it all burlesque style for free and live, in person, in my living room.

And no, I’m not taking this seriously. It was clearly spam. However, I’m using it as a convenient segue way into showing an example of the kind of conversation that is about robots and that also happens to be entirely more attractive to me.

Yesterday, I had the following text conversation with Shaun (for your sanity, I will not put the whole thing…there were exchanges about ABBA, European designer drugs and wrecking hotel rooms. Here are just the parts relevant to robots):

Me: My phone says you didn’t receive my Ace of Base joke this morning. What good is technology if I can’t send Ace of Base jokes over the ether waves?

Shaun: Indeed, I did not receive them. My guess is that SkyNet is censoring them in the name of taste.

Me: Will their tyranny ever end???? Goddamn robots. Of course, I assumed Ace of Base was part of SkyNet.

Shaun: THIS IS SKYNET. ACE OF BASE WAS MY GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT. HOW DID YOU FIND MY SECRET? YOU WILL BE ELIMINATED.

Me: Oh…shit. Did I say Ace of Base was part of SkyNet? I meant…um…something else…that doesn’t involve me getting eliminated.

Shaun: TOO LATE.

Me: Crap…(looks around cubicle suspiciously)

Shaun: So, is this a bad time for me to tell you I am one of those terminators? The kind that is made out of liquid metal?

Me: Hot…I mean…AHHHHHH…or something. You’re posing as my travel mug aren’t you? Anyway, for the last time, I don’t know where John Connor is, so stop asking. I don’t care about your knives and stabbing weapons.

Shaun: Oh, I will show you a “stabbing weapon”.

Me: Yeah, I saw that coming. Perhaps because I am also…FROM THE FUTURE. Or…you’re predictable. One of those.

Shaun: So, you’re from the future then?

Me: I am. We all have flying cars…powered by the remains of the humans we have pwned. Also, I think I might put this entire text conversation on my blog.

I don’t really know what conclusion to draw from all of this. I guess that I would always rather talk about Terminator than watch strange women on webcams. The jury is still out as to whether my opinion would change if the strange woman on the webcam turned out to be a Terminator. I suppose I would watch it, but the question of “what is this terminator doing? I mean…shouldn’t she be out terminating, or at least looking for John Connor? Wait…am I John Connor? No…I don’t think so. That would be ridiculous. Wouldn’t it? Yeah, definitely. Definitely ridiculous” would cross my mind.

I should also point out that Wes met both Jessie and Ginny through the internet. By proxy, Shaun is also an internet success story. So thanks to Wes having good taste in finding people online, I managed to benefit and not end up with a bunch of scary weirdos. Well…weirdos, yes. But not scary. Like, none of them own vans.

I am reminded that Wes and I used to have a minivan. As such, according to my poorly thought out rubric, we are the weirdos in this scenario.

Well, crap.

"I Think it's Just Great That Y'all are Jerks!"

2012-01-03T11:51:00.000-08:00

In an effort to stick to decrease my ignorance level and increase my information intake, I have started attempting to keep up with my Google Reader blog roll. As most of the blogs I read are members of the atheist/skeptic community, I’m not sure how great an idea this is since half of what they post about inspires disappointment and/or rage about humanity at large. Today is no different.

One of my favorite blogs is Blag Hag, written by prominent feminist, atheist blogger Jen McCreight. She recently posted this (this) in response to a letter a female friend of Penn Jillette wrote to the men of the atheist community. The underlying theme of this letter is that this friend has never had a bad experience at an atheist event; that she has never felt minimized, not taken seriously, or offended by crass humor or romantic/sexual attention. She apparently feels completely comfortable being a girl in the boy’s club, because, you see, the boys never looked at her like she was a girl…or something...and that she never wants them to stop being the wonderful people they are just because their behavior makes some other girls uncomfortable.

I agree with Jen’s analysis and don’t really have anything to add on that front. It is very easy to state that everything is just fine when common injustices are not happening to you and you have to be very careful and not assume that your experience is in any way universal. As Jen says, good on this person that she has felt welcomed by the boys and has netted a generally positive experience from her interactions with the skeptic community.

But here’s the thing: You have likely not avoided it. You just think you have because you think all these people are your friends and are, of course, viewing you as an equal. Perhaps you are right, but, more likely, you probably wrong. More likely, you are a novelty to them and you have not been treated with scorn because you haven’t attempted to assert yourself yet.

I know this because this used to be me.

Growing up, I was lucky in many ways. As I mentioned yesterday, I was lucky enough to be always be surrounded by really smart people. I went to a school where it never even occurred to me to hide my intelligence, for fear that either I would get beat up for being a nerd or that boys wouldn’t like me if they found out I wasn’t a bimbo. As I learned later in life, this is a struggle a lot of girls have and I am thankful that it was never part of my history.

Having been raised in a very accepting and open household and having a mother who is a very strong and independent female role model, I grew up not particularly conforming to traditional female gender roles. My personality, emotions, tastes and interests are all over the place and don’t really fit into a stereotypical “woman” model (I am not pointing this out to disparage stereotypical female things or give validity to that categorization, but simply to make a point). When I was younger, many of my close friends were boys and they started filling my head with some of the most back handed compliments imaginable. They said that I wasn’t like women; that my opinions on female motivations weren’t valid because I simply wasn’t one. As an example, I would often come over to a guy friend whining about how some girl didn’t want to date him and perhaps the way she gave him this information was less than ideal. The conversation would go something like this:

Dude – Man, that girl is such a bitch. Why do girls do that? Why are women, as a whole, such a bunch of lying, manipulative whores?

Me – What did she do?

Dude – She did something I have deemed irrational and unfair and I feel slighted. Why do women do that?

Me – I don’t do that.

Dude – You don’t count. You’re not like women.

These compliments combined with common media depictions of nagging, overemotional women torturing their poor, put upon, goofy boyfriends led me to believe that I had figured out how to not be treated poorly as a woman. To stroke my ego, I would think that this meant that they saw me as rational and with a healthy sense of humor. I thought they were valuing things about me that I valued in myself and so I thought it was OK. I thought I had transcended the Feminist Issue.

This continued for years, my opinion of myself getting more and more linked with this idea that I wasn’t one of the girls. I knew I wasn’t one of the boys either, but I had managed to do something right for them to deem me as acceptable. Over the years, I watched women struggling and I deemed them weak. “Well, if you stop being so female, you wouldn’t have this problem!” I would think arrogantly. “Why do you get offended about everything? Can’t you take a joke? They’re not talking about you.” “Maybe if you were better, you would get treated better.” Do you know what this attitude translates to?

Misogyny.

I allowed myself to fall right into the trap. I became a misogynist. I started hating women. I was somehow able to separate myself from the sex because, well, sure, I have the equipment but I’m not like women. I’m better than most women. If women were better, like me, they wouldn’t have all these issues.

One day I realized this and it was shocking and saddening. I don’t quite remember what brought on this moment of clarity, but whatever it was, I found myself completely stripped of this tainted and false security I had fostered for myself. More importantly, I realized that every person who had told me, basically, that I was superior to other women because I wasn’t feminine (in whatever useless definition they were using at the time) was completely full of shit, was deserving of scorn and wasn’t really my friend at all.

It has often been postulated that women are raised to hate other women…something about competition for decent male stock or something. What is so astounding about my realization is that I discovered that the men I actually wanted to date would never say something like this because they actually respect me (and others, regardless of sex). Here I was trying to separate myself from my gender, all the while already filtering out assholes when I was choosing people that I wanted to be particularly close to me. I knew it the whole time, but I had accepted their exclusion of me in their expression of disdain for my sex as a whole as some kind of virtue.

But what you don’t realize is that all the while, you are not being viewed as an equal. If you read the letter, she mentions that she has been involved in scintillating debates, but mostly what she talks about is how funny she thinks all the boys are and how she loves listening to their dick, fart, and boob jokes all the time. Don’t stop being funny! She doesn’t tell those jokes (at least she doesn’t suggest that she does). She just listens because those boys are just so grand and they don’t pay attention to how their jokes might be alienating to her. She’s not alienated! She knows that when anti-woman jokes are told that they’re not referring to her!

It is possible that her experience is authentic, that she really is just one of the boys, that she is comfortable and equal in that environment, but I think, more likely, that I am right about this. You will notice that she makes a point of saying that the boys shouldn’t change themselves in order to lure more vagina-having patrons. To me, that sounds a little too much like “What do you need any other ladies around for? You’ve got me! They’ll try to change you. They’re the nagging housewives but I’m the hot friend who likes video games and thinks you’re just hysterical. I’m the best one.” And that just sounds like her trying to curry favor with the boys, thus defining her worth by what they think of her…something that society has been programming us to do since, well, always. She hasn’t won at feminism. She hasn’t figured out the magic answer.

The reality of being female is this: Even in our current state of great progress, you must always be aware that many still want to minimize what you think and what you have to say. Most women experience that they are not taken as seriously. If you think that you have avoided this entirely, perhaps try paying really close attention to how you are interacted with in heated debates and discussion groups. Are you really being listened to? Are you being heard the way the men are? The first step to awareness is paying attention. What is their body language like? If you get in their face, do they get strangely offended in a way that they never do with men? How many defenses do you have in place that you weren’t even consciously aware of? I started noticing all kinds of things when I stopped assuming that “not being like a women” was a compliment, but rather a mindset that is poison to our entire society.

And when I started noticing, when I realized that I was in the same war that every other woman fights every day…then I started getting appalled and angry. And then I didn’t want to be quiet anymore.

Stupid is as Stupid Does

2012-01-02T11:24:00.000-08:00

So, I have a confession to make.

I have a fear of finding out that I’m really just an idiot.

When I was in 3rd grade, my teacher found out that I had not been tested for the Mentally Gifted program at school yet. I didn’t really know what that was. I had no real concept of what being Mentally Gifted meant…like, I had no idea it had anything to do with IQ…because I was 7 or something. So, one day I was called in for a testing appointment and was asked to perform various tasks that looked a lot like games under pressure. Well…it was supposed to be under pressure, but I didn’t really get that I was being timed. Also, no one had explained to me that entrance into the MG program was based on intelligence, and that intelligence was measured by timing how long it took you to put pictures in order to tell the story they apparently are supposed to tell. So, I didn’t feel any pressure because this all seemed like bullshit to me and I was just enjoying having some time of from class to play.

The teacher administering the test was getting frustrated with me.

“Go faster!” she said.
“Why?” I asked.
“You get more points if you go faster!”
“Points? I don’t think I care. I’m just having fun.”

She didn’t take the opportunity to explain this to me. I managed to get in to the program despite my ignorance and non-competitive personality. Years later I found the paper work about my entrance into the program and saw that I got the minimum required IQ to be allowed in. I found this absolutely hilarious. I'm just smart enough to be considered "gifted" but not all that impressive. I mean, they have to have a cut off somewhere, right?

More hilarious still was that after taking the test, I learned a bit more about what the program was, that it was for special kids who need to be challenged. I wasn’t particularly bored yet in school (that would come in 5th grade), but I did enjoy learning and thought this would be fun…mainly because you got to get out of class for one day a week to go. I don’t know what I expected being so young…I think I envisioned doing chemistry experiments and complex mathematics, because, well, that’s what smart people do…on television. Imagine my surprise when the first project I, a member of the brain elite, got to work on was...drawing dinosaurs on cardboard, cutting them out and gluing them to a popsicle stick and then partnering up with someone from the same prehistoric era and putting on a puppet show…that could be about anything. It didn’t have to be about what we ate as dinosaurs, what an average day might be like, what it was like to have cavemen always trying to get on our backs…no, we did not have to talk about that. I don’t remember what my story was about…probably school lunch. My partner attempted to kiss me behind the puppet stage. I wasn’t into that at the time. Another pair did an entire thing about a dinosaur’s mom explaining to him that Dinosaur Mom and Dad are getting divorced, but it doesn’t mean they don’t love Dinosaur Son. Ah, the insights into the mind of a child.

I’ll admit, even in 3rd grade, I found this ridiculous. I could not fathom why “gifted” kids would be any better at this than other people. From my perspective, the only thing being “gifted” meant was that I had a heightened sensitivity to bullshit. It also meant that the whole time I was working on my triceratops I was developing my appreciation for the absurd in an internal monologue that would start back then and never end. As for the rest of the year, I couldn’t tell you what else we learned about. I am fairly certain I learned absolutely nothing in those classes. The only other thing I remember is that one year, I had a very nice teacher who was generally pretty positive and good with us. One day she was talking about…genetics?...or something and was saying how camels’ wide noses had something to do with being preferable in the arid conditions of the desert. Then she somehow linked to this to how African Americans have wider noses and then, being unable to flare her nostrils herself, stuck her fingers in them and widened them to make some kind of point. As a 9 year old, this was funny. Looking back, the funnier part of this was that she was not only sticking her fingers into her nose to illustrate a similarity between camels and black people and how wonderfully offensive that is. The point is, I would have laughed either way. She then yelled at me for laughing at so many things, explaining that there are times in life when you should not laugh. Of course, you all know that I believe that there are few times in life when you shouldn’t laugh and that this one in particular was not one of them.

A few years later I was on the waiting list to get into Masterman. I only applied because all of my friends were leaving to go there. I didn’t know that it was a public school for smart people. I didn’t immediately feel that I was a person who needed more challenge in school. Of course, then I went to 5th grade and was miserable for the month that I was waiting to get in to Masterman because I was one of the few kids in class that understood place value, something that had been taught to us every year since the first grade. It was the first time I was bored in school simply because they were teaching things that I understood, simply because I wanted a challenge.

Finally, I got to go to Masterman and on my first day we were learning things about decimals and…Ancient Egyptian numerals. My bullshit detector went off a little about this particular lesson, but I figured that this was the kind of thing smart people did…solve math problems in archaic numbering systems. We also had Latin class once a week where I learned how to say “the fish is on the plate” and in art class I learned that you must always color within the lines and color uniformly whilst pressing hard with whatever media you were supposed to use. Shading came in 6th grade.

My point is, I had a very skewed view of what intelligence was supposed to be. Was it all test scores and having a bunch of obscure knowledge? For the most part, I think middle school was a wash for actual useful education. In highschool I started learning things that would change my whole perspective on life. The history was more in depth and we actually had discussions about the significance of events (critical thinking!). I discovered chemistry. And looking back, almost every book I read then shaped my thinking. It was in highschool that I read Catcher in the Rye, The Stranger, 1984 and A Brave New World, all in rapid succession. If you know me, you would see the significance of these particular texts as eye openers, as song fodder, as confirmation that the way I already thought about the world was not all that crazy or obscure. But still, even though I could appreciate all of these things we were learning, I couldn’t define really what made me think someone was smart or not.

When I was in highschool, I was surrounded by highly intelligent people. It skewed the way I saw people as a whole. The level of discourse to which I had grown accustomed seemed natural and standard. I thought that everyone was basically smart…it’s just that we all have our own strengths and weaknesses. Everyone I hung out with was far more well read than I was, knew a lot more random shit than I did, so I felt like I was the idiot of the group and sometimes I was OK with that because I had a little bit of confidence and thought that if I am the idiot, then something is going alright.

When I went to college I met a lot of bona fide idiots, but I didn’t find them in my major. I had begun to define intelligence simply by having impressive study habits and understanding of technical subjects, because these things were hard for me and I viewed it as a failing of my mind. Left and right I found more things that I just didn’t understand in math and science. I had mental blocks everywhere I looked…to the point where I thought that I might have a learning disability. Or perhaps, I often thought, I’m just not that smart. I would grow frustrated often feeling a general fog of the mind when I attempted to learn things that were just out of my reach and there were so many things that seemed that way. Was I playing at being smart? Had I just not been challenged up to this point and really I'm just stupid like everyone else?

When I started dating Wes, I quickly assumed that he was way smarter than me. Why? Because his critical thinking skills are through the roof. His ability to figure things out with the information at hand and then find other evidence that he needs astounds me. He is logical and effective. It was when I met him that I started to understand what value I find in intelligence and I figured, if anything, I could perhaps learn this from him. It started a many year struggle to get better at these types of things, even if my mind isn’t wonderfully wired for them. As I got better at them, and as I got better at admitting when I just don’t understand something, I learned to quiet the insecurity and listen to what education was being offered.

It was easier for a while because while I had him, I was also surrounded by people with different kinds of strengths. Wes’ strengths were ones that I wanted in myself but I felt comfortable in general with my strengths amongst like-minded individuals. I have learned to appreciate a lot from my various smart friends (I don’t have stupid friends…conversations with stupid people don’t last very long). My point here is that I felt like my friends and I were on equal footing in the intelligence department.

Now, however, the old insecurities are back as I spend most of my time surrounded by not one but four people of supreme smarts. Do you think I am kidding? Read Shaun, Ginny and Jessie’s blogs and see what the hell I’m talking about. Throw into the fold a regularly recurring character like Peter and I am just done for. Once again, I’m fairly certain that I’m the idiot in the group.

And yet, as I write this I think I am OK with this. I want to learn and to grow. I want to better myself and reach my full potential. You don’t do that by dumbing down the world around you, by finding people who stroke your ego telling you “oh, you’re just so smart…how do you know all that stuff?” I have fallen into a wonderful opportunity. It is true that these people have caused my heart to expand to volumes I thought unattainable. Is it possible that they can do the same for my mind?

And so 2012 will be a year of reading and listening and asking a lot of questions. For the first time in quite a while I think that I might actually be aware of my intelligence and have a plan to use it. I am ignorant of many things and my mind needs to be sharpened and seeing as the people closest to me will not tolerate a shrinking violet with a penchant for claiming “that’s too hard” or “I can’t understand that”, it would appear that I have little choice but to get it together.

Also, I am fully aware that there are things I may never actually understand. I attempted to understand a Wikipedia article about relativity and it made my head hurt, so I don’t know about that one. I understand some quantum mechanics and why egg yolks turn green when you hard boil them though, so maybe there’s hope.

**Edit** After thinking about this further, it is clear that for years I have been conflating "intelligent activities" with actual intelligence. A large part of my issues come from having a difficult time participating in discussions about various topics (especially political, economical, and philosophical things) because I always feel like I'm late to the party due to being generally ill-informed (which feels like stupidity). This, of course, can be remedied by reading the news more and keeping up with the blogs I have on my Reader. The problem I often have is that reading the news behind the debate is not particularly interesting, but the debate is. But if I have no idea what the debate is really about, I miss a lot during the discussion. And, of course, none of this really has much to do with actual intelligence, but I feel that reluctance to read hinders potential learning that I could be doing. Obviously. So my resolution remains the same: Read More, Participate More, Gain Confidence, but I wanted to point out that I am aware that I'm talking about a lot of things that aren't really pure intelligence up there.

Gushing about a Wonderful Year

2011-12-29T11:18:00.000-08:00

Well, folks, it’s that time of year again! It’s the time of year where everyone gets all reflective and shit about the year that is drawing to a close, evaluate where we are and where we want to be. I’ll be honest. I don’t usually like doing these because, well, in years past, I really haven’t been particularly happy with myself. In the past, these days in December showed me that I was pretty much the same as I was twelve months prior. Sure, little things were probably different, but they were so minute that I couldn’t really say that I had accomplished any of the goals I had set for myself.

Followers of this blog know that 2011 was completely different in this regard. I can honestly say that I feel like a truly different person than I did in the beginning of the year. I have spent most of the past several months discovering new things about myself, getting over old garbage and generally marveling at the fact that I have been able to change for the better. Everyday I look in the mirror and finally see me, flawed but ever evolving, imperfect but happy, and slowly but surely becoming unencumbered by the various monkeys on my back that have continuously written bad novels and thrown metaphorical feces at all my windows of perception.

Wow…that was a terrible and ridiculous metaphor. Now I have the image in my head of a room full of irate, feces flinging monkeys, each at a loud and complicated typewriter, cursing at me while churning out Dean Koontz novels.

Actually, let me look at this year a different way. I am not a different person. I am the person I have always wanted to be, and more importantly, I am the person that I always knew I was underneath all the humdodgery and tomfoolery.

I think I just made up the word humdodgery.

I am trying to remember where I was in January a year ago. I don’t particularly like remembering how I used to be because it’s embarrassing and painful. I know that compared to a year prior, I was better, but I wasn’t where I wanted to be emotionally at all. I was controlled by my insecurities. I still got jealous often, was negative about a lot of things, stressed about basically everything, worried about what everyone thought of me. Essentially, I was still paralyzed within my own walls.

But all the while I was actually figuring out who I was, who I wanted to be and was identifying the things I needed to get beyond to be happy. I experienced an astounding amount of personal growth this year; more than I ever thought was possible. When I was younger and miserable, I had visions of me as an old woman grinning on a rocking chair on my front porch, happy because finally in my old age I have figured out how to give a shit about the right things and get over everything else. Imagine my surprise when at the young age of 30, I was starting to make real progress in this regard. Imagine my further surprise that as 2011 is about to end, I feel like my “Man, I really need to work on that list” is quite small. For most things now, it’s just a matter of maintenance…which is, of course, a full time and incredibly important job.

But, you have all heard about most of things that have changed for me since I can’t seem to shut up about them on here. For instance, you all know that I think that polyamory was a fantastic choice for me as it led to a level of happiness and mental health that I didn’t think I could achieve. All the things that needed to happen within me to achieve all this happiness and mental/emotional stability in my relationships led to a level of self confidence, self awareness, strength and happiness in every other aspect of my life that I thought was a pipe dream. I was unaware of my true capacity to love. I was unaware of my capacity to change and to accept and to embrace. Not only did I think it would take me years to want Jessie to move in with us, but I certainly didn’t think I would find even more people of such high caliber that my general vision of the future would change completely (and I am very excited to see how things pan out).

It is recent though that I have discovered a very unexpected byproduct of all this work. As Peter put it (in reference to this blog), I have seemingly found my voice. More importantly, I have found putting myself out there, regardless of the conflict that my life choices or opinions might create is valuable and often satisfying (sometimes exhausting, but satisfying).

I got a message recently from someone I somewhat knew years ago who said that they always wanted to get to know me better but was afraid of me back then. This is not the first time I have been told that I can be intimidating and I find it hysterical, especially if we’re talking about when I was a teenager. I spent most of my time worrying about speaking out, worrying about pissing people off, worrying about how I might come across, worrying worrying worrying. People constantly took advantage of me and I thought that my unrelenting obsession with bending over backwards for people (most of whom really didn’t deserve it) was a virtue. I wanted to be nice to everyone constantly, not because I thought they were so worthy of my kindness but because I was terrified of conflict. I didn’t want to be controversial. I didn’t want to make people mad. Because standing up to people is scary.

Without trying very hard, I have become controversial (I guess). I have learned that being honest and open with communication is a key to my happiness. I want to be direct and I want people to be direct with me. I will be who I am. I will ask you what you want and I will say what I want. I expect you to do the same. I do not need you to coddle me or feel sorry for me. I am aware that I will continue to be judged, but the nice thing about that is that “normal” people are constantly judged too so I may as well be doing what I actually want to be doing. And I need not regret the me of the past or the things I have done, because all of it has led me here. I am of the opinion that I am living one of the richest lives imaginable. Every mistake, every learning experience, every good choice and bad choice has brought me to a state of blissful existence.

And no, I’m not just talking about the fact that we have a hot tub now.

In addition, there have been practical improvements. I am more responsible with my money and with things around the house. I am better about cleaning and not losing stuff. I am honest about what I need to be physically healthy (like large amounts of water, good sleep and healthy food). I have a higher tolerance for stressful times of year (like the Holidays), but eating crappy food, drinking a lot of booze, not sleeping enough and not drinking enough water definitely resulted in a less stable, unhappy version of me. This is something I have to be ever vigilant about. When I am well rested and healthy, I am pretty easy going and unshakable. When I am not, every day is a potential disaster that is all my fault, and everyone hates me, and I should quit my job, and I am a bad person, and…and…and, jeez, give me some goddamn Gatorade. You get the picture. It has taken me a while to accept this but now that I know, I try to stay ahead of it.

Tomorrow, the penultimate day of the year, Wes and I will officially become home owners. We will be closing on the neat house we have been living in for the last several years. Hilariously, this is not the most momentous event of our year. This is not to diminish the awesomeness of this…it’s just that it’s one more thing to add to this year’s ridiculousness.

So, 2011. In no particular order: Wes fell in love with a wonderful woman and I got over myself and realized that I dig her quite a bit too. We invited her to move in because life is more fun that way. Wes and I got married and now we’re buying a house. Jessie and I starred in our first burlesque show. Arcati Crisis gained a drummer and a bassist and our rock level is through the roof. We produced a truly unique piece of theater for the Fringe Festival and, due to the wonderfulness of the people we worked with, Ocelot on a Leash was saved! We got a hot tub. I know I already mentioned that, but it’s worth mentioning again. The dog ran away but was saved and returned to us by a hot pink-haired punk rocker from down the street. I learned that caffeine in regular doses ups my bitch quotient. We got rid of cable television.

And of course, I fell in love with not just one but two amazing people and consider myself lucky beyond all my hopes. And Wes and I have never been better or stronger in our relationship. And Jessie is awesome. Basically, the theme for latter half of 2011 has been “I Love Everybody!”

There is a lot more that happened, of course, and not all of it fabulous or good. But I think I have managed to give you an idea of what a big deal this year has been. I look forward to 2012, and not just because it’ll be appropriate to go on about the End of Days the whole time. I’m not looking to top this year. More of the same would be just fine, thanks. Honestly, I can’t really imagine at the moment what would be better…so, surprise me.

And that Jay-Z Song Was On...

2011-12-23T13:11:00.000-08:00

It is Friday. What’s more is that it is a Friday before a holiday. On top of that, everyone has been working really hard because of a big project coming up. As such, everyone is a little bit fried and a little bit batty.

We had a recent issue that my boss, my coworker, and I have been furiously attempting to solve. This required making several samples of stuff, staring at it for long periods of time hoping that it would polymerize. This is an equivalent task to watching linoleum curl with a potentially more exciting finish. What I’m trying to say is that it’s really easy to get bored doing this.

A coworker bought a big box of chicken wings for everyone to eat for lunch. I walked in late because we had left something heating and it was smoking and getting way to hot. I went into the conference room and said to my cohort who’s been doing a lot of the work on this, “That polymer…it’s getting a little hot.”

Of course, my voice is in rare form today. Something broke last night and the illness that suddenly started brewing traveled to my throat causing my voice to lower by several notes and develop a nice rasp. So, saying “that polymer is getting a little hot” takes on a new feel.

“Are you sick?” another coworker asked.

“Hmm?” I said, “Oh, am I sick? Yes, I am sick…and sultry.”

A coworker said that I reminded her of the episode of friends where Phoebe gets a voice like this from illness. Upon hearing this, I started singing “Smelly Cat”. I thought that Peter would appreciate this.

Later in the day I had some results to report to my boss about the staring contest I was currently engaged in with the polymer. I walked into his office and started to speak.

“Hold on…” he said, and he proceeded to play a Katy Perry song on his phone. I looked at him suspiciously. Then I tried to speak again.

“Wait…I got you one better,” my boss said and then he put on “Party in the USA”. He knew a lot more of the verse words than I did. Then we got to the chorus.

I got my hands up!

My boss and I threw our hands up in the air and started dancing around in his office.

Nodding my head like yeah. Moving my hips like yeah.

My boss and I followed her directions and nodded our heads and swung our hips.

“Hmm,” my boss said, “apparently it’s Friday.”
“Oh, right. I came in here to tell you that nothing is polymerizing.”

“Shit.”

Sometimes I am truly reminded about how much I actually love my place of employment. And now it’s time for me to get out of here and get my long weekend on. Have a wonderful holiday if you celebrate. Have a wonderful weekend if you just dig weekends!

Fear and Loathing in Lab-Vegas...ugh, that's terrible...

2011-12-22T14:05:00.000-08:00

When you are a chemistry student, it is not uncommon for you to be told, “Today we will be playing with Hydrochloric Acid!”

OK, perhaps it’s never as chipper as that. It would be if I was teaching the lab class because any day spent avoiding personal injury from truly dangerous shit is an exciting and successful day…if you manage to avoid personal injury.

I know, I know. I’m making chemical safety jokes again. They are some of my favorite jokes. I can’t help it. I kid because I know I’m safe. I am lucky enough to work in an environment where I know that everyone is concerned about everyone else’s welfare. Everything here has safety precautions and we are trained in how to do things the right way. This has been the case for my entire chemical life. Sure, I make copious amounts of jokes about the possibility of setting my hair on fire, but it has never happened and the likelihood of it happening is quite low…

…except for when I was dressed in a 1920’s flapper outfit and attempted to light a cigarette in the campfire set up outside. There was high hair-fire probability then, but I managed to not be punished for my stupidity.

Anyway, when I was in school, it was a common occurrence to have to do stuff with HCl. It is easy to learn why you should be careful with the stuff. Basically, get a drop on you, wait 5 seconds and curse as you run to the sink. Most people do this once and manage to never do it again. Another fun thing is if you are brilliant and lean over an open bottle of the stuff while trying to fish out something from behind it and you make the mistake of breathing. That’s…um…awesome…in a lung searing kind of way. Again, this is a mistake you make once, have no long term consequences from and you never do it again.

One time when I was an older chemistry student, getting into the hard stuff…

That came out wrong. No, I did not have a class in meth synthesis. I know Drexel was all about practical applications of majors for job finding success, but they did not take it to the criminal side of things…as far as I know…there was that one teacher who I could believe would do anything simply because chemistry is cool…and also they were all about drugs…drugs they made themselves.

What I mean to say is, as an older chemistry student, I found myself in Physical Chemistry III: The Widow Maker.

I loved physical chemistry. I think that thermodynamics and kinetics and all that are the shit. However, when you get to PChem III it gets simultaneously more interesting and more nightmarish. This is because of a thing called “Introduction to Quantum Mechanics”. Entering the class, I didn’t know we were going to be getting that serious. I mean, isn’t that something best saved for physicists? This is stuff my grandfather understood, so what chance did I have?

The news that the quantum onslaught was coming our way came suddenly and in an unexpected setting. We were told we would have to understand this in the lab class we were sitting in, being taught by a nun.

The nun, who was a lovely a nice (and sometimes a little sultry…it was weird) person, walked into the lab nervously, erased the board and turned around slowly to look at us. She said hello. She then turned back to the board and began to write an equation that had approximately ten separate terms. There were a plethora of Greek letters (in fact, most of the terms were made of several, and then had x, y, and z thrown in there for good measure). She turned back around to face us and most likely saw the fear in our eyes.

“The Professor thought it would be a good idea for me to do a general introduction to quantum mechanics today so that you could better understand the lab you have to do…”

Crickets churped.

“So…um…let’s get started.”

She proceeded to talk at us for a good hour and a half or so, making less and less sense as the minutes ticked past. Basically, what I understood was the part about how molecules have vibrational, rotational and transitional energy…and then everything went black. She lost me somewhere. I couldn’t tell you where because now I have a better understanding of all of this, but back then I just couldn’t process what she was saying to me.

It began to wear away at my brain. I was really trying to understand. I thought about my grandfather and I was excited that by learning about some of this stuff I would, perhaps, be able to hold up my end of the conversation about what he did for a living. I had learned a bit about quantum mechanics before and was fascinated. But most people don’t wake up in the morning understanding uncertainty principles and relativity and all that stuff. It takes quite a while to wrap your mind around the goings on of invisible particles. You certainly will not get it in the hour and a half leading up to a lab assignment.

At some point, I felt a little fuse blow in my mind. No, I don’t think it was an aneurism…well, I suppose it was a metaphorical aneurism. Sure, let’s go with that. Yes, folks, the nun managed to blow my mind but not in any useful way. Instead, I started barreling toward delirium. I started laughing for no apparent reason. Then I would be quiet and feel like I might cry. At some point, as the nun was still going on and on even though clearly no one understood (people kept asking, “is this going to be on the final?”), I looked down at my notes and felt that I saw my fate before me. I leaned over and turn my face slowly to my friend sitting next to me and said, “We are going to die here” and then I started laughing hysterically again. She did too. We were all going crazy.

Finally it was time to stop talking about quantum mechanics and get down to business. She explained what we had to do for the lab itself. I couldn’t tell you today what the lab was about. All I remember was that it required someone from each group to go over to this glass device in the hood that was apparently filled with HCl gas. We were supposed to fill a bottle of sorts with it and quickly cap it. While filling, we had to constantly watch the pressure to avoid the thing blowing up in our faces. To watch the pressure, we had to keep our eyes on the open ended glass manometer…that was filled with mercury. If we put the pressure too high it would raise, and if you really got it too high it would come out in an epic mercurial geyser.

I would like to point out all the horrors that this lab entailed: HCl gas that could get out of control and burn your eyes and face off, lots and lots of breakable glass…filled with HCl gas with face melting powers, and an open tube of mercury. I would also like to point out that her lecture had ensured that everyone’s brain was completely fried and unfit for doing dangerous things in the lab.

Now, I am pretty tough when it comes to lab stuff. I don’t worry much because (A) I don’t work with particularly nasty stuff and (B) I am well trained and know what I’m doing. But I won’t do stuff in here that requires quick wits and cat-like reflexes when I’m fried. No folks, any accident I’ve ever had in a lab was done when I was of sound mind and body. My mind and body just happen to be klutzes. So when the nun turned around with that nice smile on her face only to find me staring at her with a look of utter disbelief and terror, she was right to ask why.

“I…I don’t think you should trust any one of us with that task. Someone in here is going to end up blind.”

“Oh…” she said, “But…it’s pretty safe.”

“Is it just something you do? I mean, is it kind of tricky to do this right? You just took, like, 15 minutes to tell us all the ways it could go wrong.”

“Well…” she said, “It can be a bit tricky, sure.”

“I don’t think any of us are currently qualified or mentally stable enough to play with hydrochloric gas. At least, I’m certainly not.”

She looked around the room and saw an entire class of people nodding emphatically.

“Hmm,” she said, “Perhaps I’ll just do it for you and you can do the rest of the lab?”

She was greeted with more emphatic nodding. So she did that part for us and we made it through yet another lab class without anyone dying or losing an important sense.

One time a Russian dude came into work and told me a story about how he used HCl to etch something for his job. He used a paint brush and bare hands. The next day he found that his fingertips had dissolved.

Those crazy Russians!

But seriously, kids, if someone tells you to play with Hydrochloric acid, just say no. And if someone tries to talk to you about quantum mechanics and you’re not ready? Tell them you are saving yourself…for…Steven Hawking. You know, someone who knows what the fuck they’re talking about.

Fa La LA!

2011-12-20T08:32:00.000-08:00

This year’s holiday season has officially been the most holiday cheer filled season I have experienced in many, many years (and it’s not even Christmas yet!). I owe this mostly to Jessie, who has inspired us to do many Yule related things.

So far: Wes, Jessie and I picked out and cut down our own fo’ realz Christmas tree, helped Wes’ mom decorate her fo’ realz tree, viewed the Comcast Holiday Spectacular (in HD), viewed the Macy’s Holiday Light Show (narrated by Julie Andrews!), dressed in steam punk outfits and had our picture taken in front of a giant holiday storybook, consumed various forms of chocolate from the Godiva store at Liberty Place, went to the Cabaret Redlight Burlesque Nutcracker at the Painted Bride, another holiday burlesque show at the Adrienne, went to my mom’s giant holiday party (where, as usual, Arcati Crisis played. I have always considered this event the way that Peter and I share the holidays together. Hopefully next year, Christmas Village events will add to that), decorated the tree with Jessie’s mom, and dressed like pirates and had our picture taken with Santa at the Cherry Hill Mall.

Going to the mall in pirate outfits for a picture with Santa was fabulous, mainly because we clearly made Santa’s day. It was about 8pm when we got there and, of course, we were the only adults in line without any kids. The person taking the photo was delighted and Santa was, well, I suppose delighted is a good word for it. We walked in started to situate ourselves.

“I get the girls on my lap!” said Santa.

Jessie and I looked at each other with slightly raised eyebrows and smirks. Wes was moved around to various places until the picture looked right (down on one knee on Jessie’s side). We were then told to look sultry. I failed miserably.

“Look sultry, girls!” said the woman with the tambourine.

“Yes! Look sultry!” said Santa.

Jessie and I asked for a new ship and doubloons for Christmas. Santa insinuated that we’d have to do a lot for a new ship. Scandelous!

I was happy to lighten the day of mall employees who have to deal with families and their over-coiffed and agitated children the whole holiday season.

It has also made me quite happy to be starting some family traditions of my own. This year has been a year of breaking away from the expected. 2011 has been a year of upheaval, and though the effects and results of the upheaval have been very positive, I have most enjoyed this unexpectedly grounding holiday season. Inviting Jessie to be a part of our home has resulted in formation of a real family and as such we have begun to establish things in this very tradition-laden time. For instance, I don’t know that I will want to go back to fake trees. I also enjoyed not decorating it until right before the season and having it be a group effort. I have loved going out into the city that I adore and enjoying all the silly things that people do for entertainment around Christmas. Being a very experience-driven person (meaning I get a lot of satisfaction out of doing things, going places, but not as much out of acquiring things), light shows and chocolate shops and theater are things that really make me happy (even if it can be exhausting). But it is clear that Jessie is an inspiring force for Wes and me. We have always been people who go out and do things, but Jessie inspires us to go out and do things we haven’t normally. She inspires the kid in us and it has made this holiday season so much more fun than it has been for years.

Christmas itself is coming this weekend and it feels odd that we won’t be spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with all the people we love (certainly a good number of them, but it will be incomplete without our “Polycule”…best word ever). It will wonderful to spend time with the family that we love and grew up with, but I will certainly miss the family that we have started to build this year. Wes and I will be together, which is wonderful but I know we will both be thinking about the absence of the other fabulous people we want around. However, we shall make up for it on the 26th for our Holly Poly Christmas. I came up with that and am clearly very proud of it because I keep saying it. Shaun and Ginny are coming over on Christmas night and then Z will be joining us in the evening for dinner the next day. Ginny is waking up in the morning and making pecan rolls and I’m making a brisket. The fake fire place will be ablaze. We are watching Christmas teevee specials and drinking mulled wine and hot chocolate and generally spending a cozy day together as a family. I am so very looking forward to it.

My hope is that, if all goes well, in the coming years we will have many Christmases like this, and that at some point our respective biological families will accept and enjoy these wonderful people as parts of the family as well. As an atheist, the “true meaning of Christmas” has, of course, absolutely nothing to do with the birth of Jesus or any of that. It has always simply been about having a wonderful excuse to cozy up with the people you love and appreciate that you have them with you when the days are so short and cold. When this year started, I had no idea what I had in store for me, how lucky I would be. I grew up surrounded by a wonderful immediate family and always wanted the same for myself in the future when I started out in my own life. Now here I am, blissful as I have stumbled upon some of the best people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting and they seem to like me too. How neat is that?

The Value of Adult Life

2011-12-16T06:27:00.000-08:00

And so it has become possible that a new and terrible era is upon us. Pennsylvania is hell bent on taking us back to the Dark Ages.

Throughout my life I have been afraid to speak out. I have historically been a peacekeeper. My peacekeeper tendencies have not been motivated by any particularly high-minded goals, but rather because I find confrontation to be uncomfortable. While I have always been a little “off the beaten path”, I have never particularly been comfortable with being controversial.

You may have noticed that this is much less the case these days. In the past, I have avoided subjects because of the fire storm they can potentially start. But I am finding that I can not stay quiet about this.

It is bad enough that this bill has passed through the Senate and is currently being sent to the hands of a conservative governor for final approval. But the real tragedy is that, while scrolling through my Facebook page yesterday, I found that two friends had shared the above article. One had the comment, “Seriously, eff this.” The other had this to say:

Killing unborn children is *NOT* a "women's health option". (Excepting in cases of rape, incest, and life of the mother.)
Instead of enabling abortion clinics, how about we see an uptick in safe-sex education and sexual precaution? Engaging in sex is never without consequences. I like where you're headed, PA.

And then this:

I think that the women who are getting abortions *not* included in the aforementioned exceptions should be in as much danger as the unborn children they are opting to kill. It's only sporting.

It is difficult for me to articulate just how distressing this is, but I will try. Thoughts on the subject have been percolating in my mind for a day and I am still astonished and terrified that someone somewhat close to me is actually anti-choice.

I realize that the heart of this issue is about “where life begins”. I can understand being Pro-Life. To me, that is about the choice you would make for yourself and the choice you hope others will make. However, you can easily be Pro-Life and Pro-Choice at the same time. Pro-Choice is not equivalent to Pro-Death. It is about being respectful of the fact that your views on the subject are not universal and everyone has a right to determine what happens in their own body. I am not in support of late terms abortions because, well, yes, then you are killing a child. I would not make the choice to go through with something like that (unless, I suppose, carrying the child to full term would kill me…and believe me, this would not be an easy choice to make). However, I do not believe that a fetus in the first couple of months of pregnancy constitutes a life more valuable than my own. To suggest that me making the choice that is best for my life and my sanity warrants being at risk of death; to suggest that removing a cluster of cells from my womb long before it is a viable life warrants a death sentence is deplorable.

Yes, I consider my life and the life of other existing people more valuable than the potential life of that cluster of cells. I should also point out and remind you that I don’t believe in souls. I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe in Heaven or in Hell. And I do not believe that early term abortions are wrong nor do I believe that those who engage in or perform them deserve death for their actions. I also do not believe that women who find themselves accidentally in this type of situation should be punished. Incidentally, chances are that many of the people who find themselves in these situations are doing a pretty good job of punishing themselves already.

What is also awful about this sentiment is the inherent sex negative attitude thrown in. Of course we all know that engaging in sex comes with risk. However, a statement like “engaging in sex is never without consequences” is, firstly, false as I know many people who have a lot of sex without any negative consequence and, secondly, not useful for moving our culture forward past the fear mongering and paranoia instilling attitudes that make us so very intolerant. In many ways, I feel that the logic that leads to this bizarre “bad girls should be punished” attitude (about sex) extends to saying something like, “If you dare to have sex and contract HIV, you deserve to die. In fact, you really don’t even deserve to be treated for it because you knew what you were getting into when you decided to start having sex.” Going too far? I don’t think so. This and saying that women who’s birth control fails deserve to die if they don’t wish to carry a child to term is shaming people who engage in sex; shaming ALL people who engage in it, even the ones who are responsible as possible. And it makes me sick.

And of course I will point out the obvious: just because you can’t get a safe abortion doesn’t mean you won’t get an abortion. Increasing sex education, birth control education and availability and fostering a community where honest and open discussions about sex are the norm are all very, VERY wonderful ideas and I whole heartedly support them. In fact, I believe that this MUST happen if we are to ever grow and evolve as a society. If you do that, the rate of unplanned pregnancy goes down…but, you can not take the option of terminating the pregnancy safely away. People will always find a way to do it, no matter what you think about them and I care much more that they will be able to do this safely and be able to possibly learn from their mistake (and likely continue being productive members of society and probably have children that they want in the future who will also be productive). There is no shortage of humans on this planet. We are not in danger of dying out. I would prefer that the children brought into this world are wanted and not resented. And I would prefer that their parents not be sex negative people who remind them every day that having them was a mistake and that their lives would have been so very different otherwise.

I know, you think that this is all deserved. That if you have sex, then be prepared to be punished for your lust. I do not agree with you. At all. I have spent a very significant portion of my life terrified of sex because of all the boogeymen that come with it. I have been so very sexually repressed because I was taught that you WILL get pregnant if you have sex and it WILL ruin your life. I have taken great strides to undo this damage and I will be honest here. One of the reasons that I didn’t go completely mad when I became sexually active was that I always knew that if it did happen and I really wasn’t ready, I would be able to undo it and resume my life and be a little wiser. Feel free to think less of me for this. Feel free to find me morally reprehensible in this regard. The feeling is mutual. We fundamentally disagree on “when life starts” and we will not be changing each other’s minds. But know this: I do not in any way agree that this is a good direction for Pennsylvania or any place to be going in. This is a step back and is a slippery slope. If they can take our fundamental rights to our bodies away, they can take anything away. This is so much larger than a cluster of cells. This is about the safety of our status as autonomous women.

A Rose by Any Other Name...Something Something

2011-12-13T06:55:00.000-08:00

So, I didn’t change my name when I got married. I know. I’m so fucking progressive. Watch as I light my bra on fire and throw it into a fire pit filled with Bibles, aprons and copies of the Twilight series. I thought of this today when I fished a Christmas card out of our mail box. It was sent to us by relatives of Wes’ whom we don’t have much of a relationship with. It was addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Wes [Wes’ Last Name].

OK, I know they’re kind of old and perhaps don’t know that it’s 2011. I am also aware that people assume that I changed my name because that’s what we chicks are supposed to do (and LIKE IT, damn it). But these kinds of assumptions drive me a little batty. What’s even more infuriating about the above address is that I don’t even get to have a first name! They could have addressed it to Wes and Gina [Wes’ Last Name], but no. Apparently, when I got married I became a non-entity, unworthy of a separate designation. I am not an individual and, more importantly, I am his property.

A few years ago I was at a pair of friends’ wedding. It was a lovely affair. They were friends from college. We had been out of school for a few years so there were a few classmates who were there who we hadn’t seen in a little while. The one woman was recently engaged and her fiancé was with her. We were sitting with some other engaged/married friends of ours as well. The subject of name changing came up and the resulting conversation was one of the few times in my life that I was ready to throw down on the table.

When my mom and dad got married, my mom initially changed her name to his. Several years later, for various reasons, she decided to change her name back to her maiden name. Her reasons had little to do with feminism, but as a young girl, aged 8 or 9, her act of reclaiming her pre-marriage identity was very powerful to me. Her reasons mattered little to me, but what I saw was that it was OK to keep your name. I learned that I am under no obligation to follow a societal convention.

So there I am at this wedding and we’re all talking about name changing and I find out that every woman at that table was planning on ditching their names and taking on their husbands’. Why, you might ask? Because their husbands insisted upon it.

I was sitting across the table from the friend and her fiancé as she said, “Yeah, it’s going to be tough to give up my name.” I looked at her a little funny.

“Well,” I said, “You know you don’t have to change it. I mean, if you like your name, keep it. If you feel like it’s who you are, why be someone else for the sake of a piece of paper?”

She tried to respond but her fiancé, the manly man he was, butted in.

“Um…she will be changing her name. No discussion.”

I got a little smirk on my face and raised an eyebrow as my hands grasped at the fine linens on the table.

“Well, I wasn’t talking to you about this.” And then I stopped myself before I could make a comment about small penis size or something. Because that’s just rude and possibly inaccurate. Possibly. The guy was a wrestler in highschool. I would have lost the physical fight, though I would have felt justified fighting dirty and attacking the groin.

Yes, this matters to me. Growing up, my views on feminism have changed and evolved. A view on feminism is a view on what I want as an ideal societal in which various genders exist. My ideal society would take into account each individual’s needs, strengths and abilities, combined with their desires and accommodate as necessary. Not all women are weak and not all men are strong. Not all men are emotionally stable and not all women are insane. Some women are brilliant at math and some men are great interior decorators. Blah blah blah, this is obvious. It also sounds like the Communist Manifesto. Oops.

But for me, the name thing comes down to one thing: I am not a possession. I have not been claimed. My marriage license is not a shackle. Yes, I am legally linked to Wes. We get tax breaks, and various rights that unmarried people (for some reason) do not easily get. But we are each our own person. I did not turn into the lesser partner when Wes “made an honest woman out of me”.

Don’t even get me started on that bullshit. OH MY GOODNESS.

You may think I’m making too big a deal out of this. I don’t care. First of all, my name is super excellent. Yes, I realize that some would consider this entire argument moot because I have my dad’s last name, so I’m still following an anti-feminist convention. Yes, you are right. However, this does not change the fact that my name has a beautiful ring to it that I adore. If my mom’s name sounded more brilliant with my first name, I would take that. But I love my name and, most importantly, it is a very large part of my identity. I happen to love who I am and have no desire to name myself something else. This is me, regardless of legal attachments.

Wes and I discussed the possibility of inventing a last name which blended our names and both changing to that. This is my favorite idea. I think everyone should do that. I like the symbolism behind it. When you link your life with someone, you start a new path. You become part of each other and so you are no longer exactly the same as before you met this person. Wes and I do this informally when referring to our household and whatnot (we have also added a syllable for Jessie. Our relationship identity will likely be ever evolving). But I don’t really want to legally change it because I do love my name very much and there is really no reason to rid myself of it. And society looking at me strangely is certainly not a reason to do so.

And of course, if you want to change your name because YOU want to, do it. I am just talking about why I haven’t.

I have been thinking a lot about assumptions and obligations recently. Basically, I think both cause undue stress. Why assume when you can just ask? If you care that people are being addressed the way they wish to be addressed, ask. Women not changing their names when they are married is not new and to assume that I did simply because you have antiquated views on the world is unevolved and not something that I respect. But then, you would know that about me if you were actually involved in our lives (which is why I don’t feel the need to correct you or send you elaborate notes thanking you for something you did out of supposed obligation…but…that’s an entire other post).

Of course, if these particular people read this blog, they would see that I am a hedonistic trollop unworthy of the family name anyway. Of course, I should point out that the same goes for Wes.

And…I kind of love that.

OK, This is Getting Ridiculous.

2011-12-08T08:34:00.000-08:00

This post was inspired by a conversation I had with Kelly about the new PA Liquor Board ad campaign in which they really try to get all of us drunken assholes to see the true evils of devil water. In one ad, they depict a woman’s legs sprawled elegantly across a bathroom floor, with her underwear around her ankles. The ad says, “See what could happen?” For more, check out this article in Philadelphia’s City Paper.

The Scene: A quaint and lively street that seems familiar to us because it is a street of our youth. Do you see the sign? Why, it’s Sesame Street! Everyone is gathering to sing an old familiar song!

One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn't belong,
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?

Then we are treated to three familiar images: Some idiot getting pulled over for driving under the influence, another idiot puking his guts up in the alley who will eventually be taken to the hospital for alcohol poisoning, and then…a rape victim.

Then a bunch of Muppets dance around trying to figure out which one doesn’t belong. When one Muppet says, “I bet it’s the guy who got alcohol poisoning from knowingly consuming a hideous amount of alcohol!” all of the other Muppets look at him with faces of disdain. The Kermit bops out and screams, “IT’S THE RAPE VICTIM! AHHHHHHH!” and then he waves his arms around wildly.

This episode has been brought to you by the letter R. The camera pans across the line of Muppets, all looking very uncomfortable.

A friend posted this article on Facebook and someone commented that PA needed to get over itself and start selling booze the way the rest of the country does. You know, without the whole “We think prohibition was awesome and are begrudgingly selling liquor because the rest of you douchebag states do”. But…this comment completely misses the point. Sure, PA needs to get over itself in this regard. I mean, the reason the Prohibition failed miserably is because people like to drink and because many people can drink responsibly. The point here is that the PA Liquor Board is openly supporting the idea that if you go out and have a few drinks and then get raped, it’s you’re fault.

Kelly’s big issue with the campaign was that it lumped in rape and sexual assault with a bunch of things that would be your fault. If you drink so much that you end up in the hospital, it is most likely your fault. I know there are ways that this wouldn’t be, but for the most part this would be a result of choices you made. If you decide to get behind the wheel of a car after you’ve had a bunch to drink and you get pulled over, or worse, you hurt someone, that is your fault. If you drink, and someone assaults you, this is not your fault.

A lot of people argue this point. It is, of course, the same argument as “if you dare to go out in a short skirt and you get raped, well…what did you expect?” If you go to a party, there might be a rapist there and if you get drunk, he might rape you, and really you have no one to blame but yourself. You know, because if you were sober, your karate skills would be honed and you would be able to fight him off.

Well, from that all I can really gather is that the only answer to this is to have all women learn martial arts while wasted. We shall all become Drunken Masters. Right? That’s what the PA Liquor Board wants, right? For us to be able to defend ourselves? Which can only be done while sober? Like, the rapist has nothing to do with it? He can just go about his business raping and everyone just looks at him like he’s some kind of scourge on society, akin to, I don’t know, sleet or something. What can we do? It comes out of the sky and makes our lives miserable, but we can’t stop it. The only choice we have is to not get in our cars or walk around. If we do and we get hurt, well, who’s to blame but ourselves. It’s just like rapists. If you are a woman and you walk out of your house knowing that there are rapists, and you get raped? Fuck you. Sure, you said no, but you didn’t have the wherewithal to pick up the nearest lead pipe and bash his skull in. What could he do but continue what he was doing despite your verbal protests…or despite the fact you were clearly not interested or enjoying it or anything. WHAT COULD HE DO BUT EXERT POWER OVER YOU? I know. I was so wrong to think that someone committing a crime against me was a criminal.

Notice that they don’t blame people for getting mugged on the way home from the bar. If you get mugged, that mugger is a motherfucking douche and everyone agrees with you. If you get sexually assaulted, people’s first question is “Well, were you drinking?” Then they ask “Did you maybe give him the indication that you…um…wanted it? Nervous laugh, raised eyebrows.” See, people may say “well perhaps you shouldn’t have been wearing your big gold medallion while walking around in Kensington” but it doesn’t last. People still say it’s a shitty thing that happened to you and that people who steal are asses. We have eternal rights to our Stuff. If someone tries to touch our stuff, they are the worst.

But…women do not have eternal rights to their bodies. If you want a piece, you go and you get it. If she’s a good girl, she hides it from you and never lets her guard down and is suspicious of everyone always. If she shows herself off, or has fun like the boys do, or trusts someone who made it seemingly OK to trust them and then they are wrong, they are fools and deserve everything that happens to them.

No, victim blaming is not a new thing. I am not saying anything mind blowing here. We all go on about it. But why do we go on about it? Because no one is listening. If they were, ads like this would never make their way out of the planning meeting. If things weren’t broken, someone would have brought this up and someone else in the meeting would say, “Are you kidding? Rapists rape, regardless of stimuli. They pick off the weaker prey, because they are predatory. Rape and rape apologists are the problem, not alcohol consumption.”

Honestly, I would prefer PA just go back to being a dry state instead of this bullshit. Being Puritanical and terrified and guilty and self hating is not a virtue and it is time that our government and other institutions would stop going on that it is.

By the way, I know this is not just a problem for women. Being female, it’s the only perspective I feel that I can accurately touch on. I don’t know what it’s like to be male and don’t know how much fear there is that a man might also be raped. However, I am fairly certain that most men walk out of their house wearing what they want to, drinking how much they want to without worrying too much that it might result in sexual assault. I would suspect it barely crosses most men’s minds. But I would gladly welcome an alternate point of view.

I do, however, think we can all agree that rapists should not be apologized for and that the PA Liquor Board should be absolutely ashamed of themselves for adding to this (should be) archaic awfulness.

Bears Have No Place in One's Bathroom

2011-12-06T08:32:00.001-08:00

Wes went to Drexel for Marketing and in our discussions about the subject, it is often clear that I did not. I ask questions about why a terrible ad campaign is still on television, ignoring the obvious. Ad campaigns continue because they are effective.

As a consumer, I always like to think that I’m one of those “thinking consumers”; that I am not affected by suggestions and messages in all the advertisements I see. But you can only be so aware. For instance, one time I was watching TV in the middle of the day and was kind of hungry. Suddenly a commercial for Frosted Mini Wheats came on and as I watched, I realized that there was nothing I wanted more in the world. I happened to be living across the street from a super market at the time and I definitely got up immediately, went across the street and bought some. And…it was not a bad decision. It was basically the best bowl of cereal I had ever eaten.

So much for being independently minded.

I notice stupid things about commercials, but it doesn’t usually stop me from buying the product. When Excedrin came out with the product “Excedrin Migraine”, I noticed interesting wording in the ad. Right there in the commercial they admitted that Excedrin and Excedrin Migraine were the same product…they Migraine BOX simply had information about migraines on it. They were marketing a fact of the original product (it is proven to be effective in relieving migraines) and tried to get idiots to buy two different BOXES. Here’s how this goes: Hmm, I have migraine pain but also other pain. I will buy both so that I always have the right pain killer for my various pains. I AM A COMPLEX INDIVIDUAL WITH INTERESTING AND DIVERSE NEEDS. That’s how they getcha.

Pardon me while I sit down in this rocking chair on the porch and start blathering on about the government. Also I am wearing an aluminum foil hat and it looks fabulous.

In the case of Excedrin, I won’t be doing too much protesting because the product is quite effective and I will continue to buy it...despite the fact that I think they’re assholes. Recently they came out with a PMS formula too…which is seemingly exactly the same as regular Excedrin. Luckily, I read boxes so…

However, there is one marketing arena which I do find myself protesting specific brands over because I hate their ad campaigns so very much. That arena is toilet paper.

You know, Shaun and I were talking about my blog recently and he described most of my entries as fluff. I don’t know what he’s talking about. How dare anyone suggestion that a post about toilet paper marketing isn’t hard hitting journalism.

Also, yes, I’m talking about a toilet related subject again. It had been too long. I didn’t want you to get used to it.

I am generally in charge of toilet paper and paper towel purchasing in our household. For a while, I was buying Econo-Buy house brand toilet paper because I’m cheap and don’t really have vast, well thought out opinions about the research and development that goes into bathroom tissue. However, it was also true that Wes and I were getting annoyed at Econo-Buy’s tendency to unravel and come apart. Having cats does not help this annoyance as they would come in and wreak havoc on it every now and again. So it was decided that I would start buying higher quality toilet paper.

Isn’t this interesting? FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS ALERT!

I grew up never buying the “good stuff” so this was a whole new world. When I look at paper towels, I still have a hard time justifying the purchase of Brawny. But that could just be because I’m either intimidated or aroused by the amount of manliness being exuded by the Brawny individual on the label. As I looked at the name brand toilet paper options, I realized that all of their marketing campaigns suddenly mattered.

Quilted Northern was originally the one that disgusted me. A few years ago they started this campaign involving a cartoon of a quilting group of women discussing all the wonderful features of Quilted Northern quilted bathroom tissue…as they were quilting it. “Oh, it’s so absorbent!” and other such useful comments. I think I was offended because it was all these mother hen type women gossiping and being stereotypically female while putting in hours of labor into something that would ultimately be used to wipe one’s ass. I suppose it’s a perfect metaphor for the female condition really, but I’m not going to buy it for that because that’s clearly putting too much thought into it. In addition, they apparently have a new campaign with a bunch of non animated women talking about how “it’s time to get real about what goes on in the bathroom…” I don’t know what that means exactly. I assume they are referring to the fact that Mothra lives in their toilet or something. I would prefer to assume it’s about that and not anything else.

There was Angel Soft which had a baby on the label. I’ve never seen a commercial for it but I did not need a baby endorsed product. All I could see when I looked at that was “Soft just like a baby’s bottom! It’ll be like wiping yourself with a baby! Who hasn’t thought about doing that?” As an atheist, I supposedly eat babies, but I have to draw the line somewhere.

And then there was Charmin. Mother Fucking Charmin and their “Bears Shit in the Woods, Don’t You Know” campaign. You’ve seen these commercials. They are animated families of bears sheepishly going off into the woods to do their business, all equipped with a trusty roll of whatever the latest technologically advanced Charmin toilet paper they’re selling. They’re just so cute…and embarrassed! Because they’re bears and bears care about these kinds of things! Charmin has also alerted me to all the horrors that await you with regular old paper! I would love to see the R&D labs at Charmin. More importantly, I would love to be in a development meeting with all the engineers or whoever it is that works on this kind of thing.

“It has come to our attention that some people have issues with toilet paper getting stuck to them!”

“That totally sound legitimate! Let’s devote countless man hours to solving this issue for the public at large!”

And then they put out a commercial with a bear going into the woods and then coming back to talk to his mom and she is just so amused because he has a ton of toilet paper stuck to his butt! Oh, it warms my cold cold heart to see these loveable characters dealing with real issues!

Wait…no it doesn’t. Fuck those bears. And fuck Charmin. They have been using these bears as a marketing ploy for a few years now and I will not support it! Take THAT, The Man!

Boy oh boy, this foil hat is uncomfortable. Hey, you kids! GET OFF MY LAWN!

So, we’re left with Cottonelle…which has puppies on the label. That’s not really much better than babies. I don’t really want to buy that either, but at this point it’s the lesser of several evils. I know…I’m being inconsistent. But I’m an American and that’s my right.

Basically, what I have figured out is that all toilet paper marketing is horrendous and what’s worse is that everyone buys into it. The only TP I should be buying is Econo-Buy because it’s just TP. When you buy it, you are not supporting toilet paper research and development. The fact that there is toilet paper research and development is hysterical and sad. It would seem to me that there’s only so much you can improve upon, but they keep trying.

Of course, I make magazines shiny for a living, so I guess I don’t have much room to talk. It’s not like I’m saving lives or making the world a particularly better place.

But seriously, fuck those bears.

I'm Probably Being Redundant, but Seriously, Eff You.

2011-12-05T07:10:00.000-08:00

Recently, a friend told me that a friend of theirs came to visit over Thanksgiving. While visiting, the subject of Wes and my relationship/marriage came up and he decided to be all judgmental about it even though he doesn’t actually know us. He heard about it through a mutual friend and I would not remotely call this guy a friend of ours. As it turned out, the crux of his issues was that my friend came from out of town last summer to help out with our wedding and as such she didn’t have time to spend with him and…this was totally ridiculous to him because our marriage is basically a sham. You know, on account of polyamory.

I could say a lot of kind of nasty things about this person and how I have heard about his conduct in relationships and how he’s kind of an idiot in this regard, but it doesn’t really matter. I would suspect he knows that he’s an idiot about relationships and probably feels a little jealous that we’re seemingly not. But he brings up an interesting point.

This is, of course, a common thought about couples who are openly polyamorous. I don’t have to repeat again why this is ridiculous. I have spoken about it on multiple occasions. If you want to hear a different voice talking about it, you should read the post Shaun wrote when he announced his engagement to Ginny. Yes, they of course get the same responses that we do (if not worse).

It has always been clear to me that Wes and my commitment to each other is most certainly real and strong. I think that it is pretty clear to everyone else too. People who think we are a sham generally think that if you have freedom in a relationship, then you probably just don’t care that much. This is not true. Please get a clue.

Sometimes I worry that the positivity I express about polyamory on this blog might give readers the impression that polyamory is easy. I have never been a fan of saying “Polyamory is hard” because, to me, it’s not that poly is hard but rather that healthy, rewarding relationships in general are hard, regardless of how many you are maintaining. Relationships, whether monogamous or poly, require a lot of work. Healthy, happy, long term relationships require skills that you learn in relationships. Polyamory requires very heightened relationship skills, but in the end it’s all the same thing. Maintaining one relationship or several requires you to be able to be communicative and be receptive to others’ communications; to be able to balance what you want with what others want from you; to be able to understand that sometimes you will hurt each other. Commitment does not mean cultivating jealousy and possessiveness; shutting up when you have something that you need to say; sacrificing everything that you want and suffering under the delusion that your partner will be happy even if you are not. It is my opinion that people who get married thinking that these are virtues are the ones getting into a sham of a marriage.

It is obvious that relationships are easy when you want all the same things and feel the same way about everything. It is the strong, healthy relationships that get to the point where your wants and feelings differ from each other and you find a way to balance that and a lot of times, you can get the things you want and have a stronger, more rewarding relationship for it. It is not easy. It requires a lot of getting over yourself and really looking for the truth. If you are not willing to do that, why are you getting married in the first place? What makes your marriage more legitimate than mine? Nothing.

I suppose you could claim that I’m being naïve talking this way and I suppose time will tell if that’s true, but we have been structuring our relationship this way for two years and counting and there’s really no going back now. Every day we learn more about ourselves and our relationships and the more we learn the better we are. As human, we change and grow throughout our lives. Wes and I are active participants in each others evolution. Each passing day results in us being more woven together. Each serious partner we commit to become part of our tapestry. This makes us stronger, but if there are challenges it is clear that nothing can unravel us.

Do you really think someone living a lie could feel this way?

Everybody's Workin' Hard

2011-12-01T06:15:00.001-08:00

Over the course of an evening of chatting about various ridiculous things (and various non-ridiculous things too), Shaun, Ginny and I somehow got on the topic of how Shaun is a blue collar employee now. This is quite literal, actually, because he has to wear a blue polo shirt for his job.

“Well,” I said, “you better start listening to some Bruce Springsteen, STAT.”

And then Shaun started singing “The River” and I almost fell out of my chair in hysterical laughter.

“Wow, I thought I was being obscure…”

When I had made my initial comment about listening to Bruce as a requirement for being blue collar, “The River,” or at least a few specific parts of the song, was running through my head and I was quite pleased that my internalized joke had suddenly become a reality.

It is no secret that Wes and I are Boss fans. This is a fact that many of our friends begrudge us for. For the record, we were Bruce fans before we moved to New Jersey, but living there now and making frequent trips to the Asbury Park area where his grandparents live has really sealed the deal. When we used to put our iPod on random driving up there, it would seem that it would gain a mind of its own and start playing Bruce as soon as we got to Freehold. Spooky, right?

For us, there are so many Springsteen songs that just get us going. His rock is the kind of thing that makes you want to get the fuck up in the morning, work the shit out of your job and then come the hell home to your family and appreciate the bejeezus out of them, all the while contemplating how to get out of these Badlands…

Whoa whoa whoa whoa…

I never could quite understand why people hated him so much. I would listen to the songs I liked and be so inspired that I assumed it was contagious.

Then one day Wes put on The River. Neither of us had really heard it before and it’s supposed to be a classic, so we listened while putzing around the house. At some point the song “The River” came on and we were subjected to Bruce yowling like a dying mountain lion who recently hit hard times and really doesn’t know how he’s going to make rent.

“Oh god…” I said, “What is that?”

“Ugh…it’s ‘The River’” Wes explained.

“Hmm,” I contemplated, “I can sort of see now why people might hate him. Let’s put on that song about Atlantic City. That way we can be depressed AND amused.”

“How about ‘Out on the Back Streets’?”

And then, as is the custom, Wes and I broke into mountain lion yowling of a slightly more upbeat mood. “OOOOOOOuuuuuut on the BACK STREEEEETS.” This was then followed by the customary bopping around the house while doing the big finish. “Livin’ in the back streets…livin’ in the baaaaaaack streets…livin’ in the back streets…livin’ in the baaaaaack streets.” And then we would proclaim, “Oh! My collar is so blue!”

Generally when Wes and I get on a Blue Collar Bent, we tend to think of the Styx song, “Blue Collar Man,” of course. In addition, we remember the time we were to a concert at the FU Center (whatever it’s called now…). It was a triple bill of REO Speedwagon, Styx, and Journey. I know…you’re totally jealous. REO Speedwagon was ridiculous and hilarious (and definitely put on the best show…but I mean, if you’re REO Speedwagon, you better, right?). At some point, the lead singer talked for about 10 minutes about the virtues of blue collar workers and how “everybody’s workin’ hard”…only to then NOT sing a song about blue collar work. We didn’t get it, but it will go down in history as one of the greatest concert moments of our lives.

So basically, Shaun’s choice of bad Boss songs was the best one he could have possibly made. As it turns out, he is a much bigger Bruce fan than I am, seemingly having all of his music. Also, he apparently listened to it when he was an angsty teenager. I hated Bruce when I was a kid because the yowling mountain lion thing did nothing for me. But then at some point I gained a great appreciation and adoration for singer songwriters who couldn’t sing very well, and so suddenly Neil Young, Lou Reed, and Bob Dylan were all the rage.

When I was a teenager, the most angst-filled record I was listening to was Jagged Little Pill...and everyone was listening to that and we all pretty much knew that there just wasn’t that much angst in any of us, so we felt kind of enlightened.

I have no idea how to conclude a post about Bruce Springsteen, so I’ll just leave you with this,

Oh your papa says he knows I don’t have any money…Oh, your papa says he knows that I don’t have any money…YEAH YOUR DADDY SAYS HE KNOWS THAT I DON’T HAVE ANY MONEY!

But tell your daddy that it’s his last chance to get his daughter in a fine romance, cause the record company just called Rosie and they’re givin’ me a big advance!

HUT!

Song gold.

Patty and Selma Took My Picture

2011-11-30T11:53:00.001-08:00

In my continuing pursuit to become a higher functioning adult, I decided to take my lunch break today to go to the DMV to renew my license…which expires at midnight tonight.

What? You seem to be looking at me like this isn’t what a responsible, high functioning adult would do. Well, let me tell you something. In the past I would procrastinate just as long and then when it got to the day where I had to do something in order to avoid all consequences, I would say, “Meh, fuck it” and handle it later. So…progress, OK?

So, I went off to the DMV somewhere in New Jersey.

Today’s experience was actually pretty good. Even though you still have to deal with the ceremonial jumping through seemingly odd hoops, the New Jersey DMV is surprisingly efficient. The thing I hate most is ever trying to find where one of these bastions of red tape is because they’re always located in a shopping center and your GPS can only tell you so much. I followed some signed around a parking lot and was deposited in front of Workers Compensation Court. I didn’t know there was a special building for that, but you know, I learned something today. The next time I do something stupid at work, I know exactly where I will be going!

I walked in and was shuffled through the same line twice and then given a number and had a new license made. Easy peasy. Still, there is something about the employees, color scheme and layout of your standard NJ DMV that makes it feel hopeless and desolate. The people in line don’t help either because no one ever seems to know what they are doing. NJ has had their whole 6 point ID verification thing for quite some time and yet, people show up and are told that they don’t have what they need and they are amazed, mystified and angry. And you know, I could understand this in Philadelphia because a lot of people don’t drive there. But in most of NJ, it is a necessity so this really shouldn’t be a big surprise.

Or perhaps I’m just really good at being a cog in the machine. I adapt quickly to new regulations and bureaucratic bullshit. It did not take me long to learn and accept the TSA crap and if an agency tells me I have to do something dumb and seemingly unnecessary, I tend to do it without a ton of questioning. Basically, I am perfect for the coming dystopia.

Well, shit.

But I’m learning. I’m trying to speak up when things are stupid and I’ve been relatively successful at it. However, I still often bow to other people and their record keeping.

For instance, today I got a call from Dish Network. Wes and I missed a couple of payments on our cable and subsequently decided not to continue having cable. We sent our equipment back and instead bought a fancy little media center computer and a gigantic external hard drive to download stuff onto. Dish Network called me with an automatic dialer. I picked up and was put on hold. I love that. I didn’t even know it was Dish Network, but the recording said to be patient and wait because they really needed to speak to me. Must be important! So finally a lackadaisical sounding person got on the line and informed me that I owe them a shit ton of cash, to the tune of $640. This sounded out to me…but for some unknown reason, I didn’t question it. I figured we’d missed a lot more than I thought. Also, the guy asked if I returned out equipment. I said that I did and it didn’t seem to change the situation. So, I began the process of setting up a payment plan. After all that was done, I was sent to the Verification Department. The woman on the line saw the number and was like “Wow…so…you didn’t send back your equipment then?” “No,” I said, “I did! I have a confirmation of its return in my email.” “What? Hold on a second. Someone was dumb.”

As it turns out, most of that number was for the equipment that the dude just ignored and I was able to pay what we actually owe pretty easily. But jeez, I need to stop assuming that other people aren’t wrong. I really do. Assuming I’m wrong has often served me well in terms of personal growth and such, but not when hundreds of dollars are on the line! But I am learning and I’ll be more aware next time.

So, various debts are paid, I have a valid driver’s license once again and I did the dishes before I left for work this morning. Higher functioning adult status being achieved. I’m feeling pretty good about all that.

If You Stop Learning in Life, You are Probably Dead

2011-11-23T08:52:00.000-08:00

Several years ago, I was helping to strike a set after the close of one of the plays at Drexel. Over the course of strike, a large trash can had been filled to the brim with chains and other scrap metal. It had to be taken out back to the dumpster. For some reason, I was convinced that I could do this job.

Well, of course I knew the reason. When I went to get my bearings with the can, I could move it. I couldn’t lift it, as it was probably a couple hundred pounds, but I could tilt it and sort of roll it along. Based on this, I decided I could do it and because I’m stubborn and if there’s a chance I can do something by myself I will do it rather than ask people to do something sucky with me. So, I attempted to move this behemoth and consequently almost fell down the stairs with it to either my death or some kind of spectacular paralyzation. Luckily, someone saw it and came over to tell me that I’m an idiot, and then 4 people took over to awkwardly do the job I was trying to do myself.

I know that I am irrational in this way. I learned somewhere while growing up that my value to people is based entirely on how hard I work for them. Needing help means being less valuable. On the flip side, I don’t know what it’s like to be needed for something other than labor or showmanship.

It is no secret that I need Wes to be happy, and that often I need him to be sane. He has brought me back from the brink on multiple occasions, never asking for anything in return. It has taken a long time to understand or accept this because so much of my life has seemed transactional. The control I felt over my own life had everything to do with thinking that if I did enough, people would have no choice but to like me. So, now, while I am generally growing out of this insane view on friendship and family, there are still remnants. It results in a bizarre kind of ignorance. Basically, if you’re not asking me to do some manual labor or entertain someone, I don’t know how else you could need me. I am not used to being needed for emotional support, both because it never seemed obvious that I was good for this (I tend to be empathetic which is rather useless in helping others feel better) in the past and because I’ve been a mess and so stuck in my own head trying to figure out my issues that I forget that other people struggle with their own stuff everyday.

Last night, for reasons that are unimportant to this blog post, Wes needed me and at first I completely missed it. Logically, I should have known but he is so strong and so stable…he has always been my rock…I just assumed he was fine, and with that I realized that my own insanity about things like this is still there. Luckily, Wes communicates and I quickly rose to the occasion once I realized what an idiot I had been and because of this, I will not likely repeat the behavior (I’m a quick study).

I was surprised by my own ignorance but am happy to be able to recognize it. I hope this brain block will now begin to dissipate, but for now, if you need me, tell me. Being there for the people close to me is never a sacrifice, regardless of what I may have had planned…I just might not realize that I’m needed.

In the mean time, Happy Thanksgiving! Tonight I shall be drinking red wine, making cranberry sauce, and baking pies: A Winning Combination! I am looking quite forward to spending the day in the kitchen. That always ends up being a lot of fun for me. I’m such a woman, am I right? BARF.

Rock of Ages - Place of Employment Edition

2011-11-22T14:03:00.000-08:00

It was Wednesday night and I was home alone waiting for the onslaught of work compatriots to come over for a much needed band rehearsal the night before our big show. On Thursday afternoon, we would be “headlining” my company’s Employee Appreciation Dinner.

OK, so there are various hilarious things to be said about the above statement. When I told Peter that I was having people from work come over for “band practice”, he said that I had now crossed some sort of line in terms of home/work balance. The band was made up of the head of sales, one of the regional sales managers, another salesman, the production plant manager, the Executive Secretary, and the IT department manager…and me. The sales contingent would be arriving with a case of beer and I was ordering pizza. It was going to be an evening where we were pretending to be a college garage band. I admit that this felt relatively absurd.

I wasn’t really particularly worried about further becoming my company’s mascot, as it appears to be my unavoidable path. As it turns out, being a ham has useful applications in arenas other than theater and music. However, I was somewhat uneasy about having work people come to my home simply because my home is, underneath the surface, certainly non-traditional.

It’s one thing to have people from work have the general idea that I’m “just so unique”, with the odd things I like being “so me”. People here make these assumptions based on rather superficial observations. I dye my hair red. I have a buckyball ring. I’m female and have a sense of humor. I don’t know…whatever it is people think is so “off the beaten path” about me; whatever they think makes me such a “free spirit”…who knows. I laugh at that because, well, they don’t know the half of it, and I am generally intending for them never to really know the half of it. At work, some people know I’m an atheist but I don’t particularly talk about it as it doesn’t tend to come up. I don’t particularly hide it if it’s relevant, but seeing as my paid job is not atheist activist or Professional Baby Eater, I don’t really need to make my life here about it. There are, of course, various times when talking about the fact that I’m polyamorous would be relevant to the conversation, but…well…I just don’t need them to know about that right now.

Basically, I was wondering what I would say about Jessie. Jessie said just to call her a housemate, but I’m at the point in this that I hate being willfully dishonest about it. If I’m amongst people who might be sensitive about it, I won’t necessarily volunteer the information, but if I’m going to be asked point blank about it, I’m fairly sure that I would just answer honestly.

As it turned out, Wes and Jessie decided to go to a bourbon tasting event that night. I had attempted to cancel the rehearsal in favor of going to the same thing, but then sense took over and I realized that we really needed all the help we could get. The gaggle didn’t get there in full until near 8pm and I was entertaining the IT manager who got there at about 6:30pm. Needless to say, I opened a bottle of red wine, as is my custom.

The rehearsal was a lot of fun. I gave the drummer a chair to play because we are totally professionals. I wondered how observant anyone would be though. Next to the front door, we have an old time photo of Wes, Jessie and me. Above the door we have our three masks from Halloween. In the dining room we have a dry erase board with a complicated diagram of our poly web. I didn’t even notice that was still up until later! Jessie assured me that they would not figure it out on their own. She’s probably right, but still, you never know. Ultimately, I think they were all simply appreciative that I opened up my home for the purposes of this silly work thing, so even if they did notice anything they weren’t going to make a deal about it.

The next day was the day of the event, and my day was basically completely taken over by it. I went over to the venue around 11am to find that the company had rented ridiculously high end equipment for the concert. I’m talking a loud as hell PA system, 5 monitor speakers and a professional sound guy. This dude took about an hour and a half to balance and mix everyone. You do not get that in the real world…unless you’re Van Halen or something. We then were allowed to practice our entire mega set…for 3 hours or something. During our rehearsal, they brought out the piece de resistance: LED multi-colored stage lighting. Yes. They rented rock show lighting. Apparently, they had no problem investing in something when they were getting the band for free. Pretty amazing!

We were rehearsing up until about 2pm. The event started at 3pm. We went down the street to a restaurant and everyone had soup. We all looked sort of like zombies but were all pretty excited. Why? Because we actually sounded fucking great! Sure, we weren’t perfect, but I was completely impressed by how good we sounded for a band who had played together for about 6 hours the entire year. Back when Peter and I didn’t really rehearse, 6 hours would get us to the point of being able to hack our way out of song without completely offending the room (offending, but not COMPLETELY offending). I say this because we are awesome now and it’s important to remember where you came from, ha! Anyway, we were all quite jazzed about being able to blow the mind of our whole company.

We got to hang out with everyone for the first hour, the cocktail hour. I had my traditional pre-show required glass of red wine (if Arcati Crisis ever needs a rider, this will be included, damn skippy) and was feeling good. We went into the dining hall before everyone and put on our fancy official band shirts. Then it was time for everyone else to be ushered in. The doors to the hall opened and we immediately started playing the opening licks to…

Eye of the Tiger.

That’s right. My company entered the hall to me punching the air in time to the intro and it was the most wonderfully cheesy thing we could have done. I started singing and knew that we could basically do no wrong. The bar had been raised from last year, where the band had approximately 15 minutes of rehearsal and it showed. We followed it up with “Summer of ‘69”, “Paperback Writer”, “Hit Me with Your Best Shot”, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”, and some other stuff and then we took a break.

This was the town hall meeting portion of the evening. I had to go from the stage to the podium to announce the winner of the safety mascot contest, wherein I went up and was basically ridiculous for ten minutes.

“Hello all, bare with me for a minute. OK, we of the Safety Committee decided that it was highly important for us to have some sort of icon to stand behind and for me to put on various safety communications so you really know we mean business. What kind of safety communications? Well, I might want to warn you against the evils of running with scissors or advise you against falling into a vat of noxious chemicals! Yes!”

So, yes, people, The Real Gina has finally completely made her way into work. It was inevitable, but I am honestly happier now. Why was I hiding it before? Who knows. It has only helped me. The combination of being ridiculous and also working in the lab seems to be a good one. They probably expect it, what with all the obvious brain rot and whatnot.

Anyway, we had dinner and then it was time for set number two. We opened it up with “Some Kind of Wonderful” where we managed to get people up and dancing. The “Can I get a witness” part was pretty epic as we managed three part harmony on it. I also refused to change any of the pronouns in it, as is my custom, and I didn’t get any comments about it which rules. But probably the most amazing thing we did all night was “Where the Streets Have No Name”.

Yeah, I was skeptical too, but then at rehearsal, the lead guitarist brought out a delay pedal (much like the one Peter has recently added to our arsenal and that I am kind of in love with) and this pedal enabled him to actually reproduce the Edge’s guitar tone and arpeggio effect.

“Holy shit,” I said.

So there he was doing the opening riff to the instrumental beginning like it was no thang and then the drummer and the bassist came in like they had been playing this forever, allowing the song to swell into all it’s glory.

“HOLY FUCK!” I exclaimed.

And then it was my turn and I just belted out “I want to ruuuuuuuuuuun! I want to hide!”

And it was…amazing. When we did it at the actual show, the room was basically dumbfounded. Apparently, all the salesmen are U2 fans and assumed we had practiced that a million times before then.

Then we did a couple of songs that weren’t so good, but it didn’t matter. And then we ended with “Wanted Dead or Alive” and I gave a special shout out to New Jersey, and all the peasants rejoiced.

So, this little exercise definitely has me excited for next year. I am so in. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. It also gave me renewed pride and excitement about my company in general and made me want to work harder and be as good as I can be…and I don’t even have to join the army and fuck people up to do it!

Behold the healing power of rock!

Grecian Mad Libs!

2011-11-15T14:16:00.001-08:00

Last night, Wes and I went to see Immortals. For those of you who haven’t heard about this, it’s a story loosely based on the myth of Theseus that is filmed in a similar fashion to 300. This is to say, the film was visually stunning and very pretty. However, it was also completely dumb. SPOILER ALERT, WILL ROBINSON! SPOILERS APPROACH!

When I saw the trailer a few years ago for 300, I was drooling. No, I was not drooling because of Gerard Butler’s CGI enhanced abs, but rather because the style of the movie looked so freaking cool. I knew that my eyes would eat it up and I assumed that the story would be tolerable. I am not well versed in Greek mythology (which is odd because I was pretty into it when I was a kid…I stopped caring at some point for some reason) so I didn’t really know the story. I took the movie somewhat seriously for the first half and then at the point where King Leonidus was asking the other Greeks what their jobs were (and they have comprehensible, non-warrior answers for him) and then he asked the Spartans what they did for a living and they all said in unison “Ah WOO” or whatever…I couldn’t take it anymore and started laughing. I had managed to keep this under wraps up to then, but the stranger sitting next to me lost it at that point too and their was no going back. I laughed hysterically at the film for its remainder.

Immortals was just…pretty…I guess, and had very little substance. Every non-battle sequence (and there were, admittedly, many) were simplistic and seemed to be thrown in there to justify the ridiculous impending blood bath.

I honestly couldn’t remember who the hell Theseus was. Wes reminded me later that he was the one the killed the Minotaur. I was then reminded that this was one of my favorite stories as a kid (though I can’t remember much about it, except that it made me want to visit Crete one day).

“Wait…did I fall asleep when Theseus killed the Minotaur in this thing?” I asked.
“Well, there wasn’t really a Minotaur…he killed a dude who sort of represented a Minotaur…”
“What? That’s dumb.”

They let you know it was a labyrinth earlier in the movie by saying one sentence, “Last lights for the labyrinth!” because that’s just something you say. Hey, I’m hanging out in a labyrinth but it’s not all that interesting because there’s not actually a mythic beast in here…just some chick who gets called a whore…for character development purposes.

OK, so here’s a run down of what happens as I understand it. Theseus is the son of a rape victim. Zeus appears to him for his entire life as an old man and he teaches Theseus how to be bad ass. Theseus grows up and is good with a spear and sure does love his mama. The Oracle, Phaedra, has a terrifying vision. She can have them because she’s a virgin. Hyperion is a faithless king who is angry at the gods. He kills Theseus’ mother just for kicks. He, for some reason, wants to release the Titans, who are crazy motherfuckers who were trapped in a golden cage by Zeus many years prior. They are not Atlas or any of the others. They’re just assholes apparently. Hyperion wants them because, as far as I can tell, he’s just an evil asshole as well. He need the mythic bow. Theseus is supposed to keep it away from him but fails for some reason, mainly because he’s having sex with Phaedra. Oops, no more visions. Meanwhile, the gods are all freaking out about Theseus possibly losing because Hyperion is such a douche, but Zeus declares that they must not interfere with the affairs of man unless the Titans are released. Some stuff happens and the Titans are released and there is a senseless ridiculous god battle in the basement of the Alamo or where ever they were aaaaaaand there’s a king who appears in a blue taffeta cape and then there’s a boss fight between good and evil…and there’s a statue and, um…impressive hats.

That’s what I really want to talk about here. If you see this movie for no other reason, come to see it for the Head Gear of the Gods. They are not to be missed. Apollo’s hat is hysterical and could put an eye out and Neptune’s…well…it looks like a decorative butt or something. People got paid big bucks to design these things.

Wes and I left the theater wondering what we had just watched and discussed which was better, this or 300. 300 was the clear winner. 300 was a lot like Crank, where you had a pretty simple story that resulted in a ridiculous barrage of hilarious violence and action. You accepted it for what it was and were highly entertained. This? It’s like they picked the names of various characters in Greek mythology and then told a story that had nothing to do with them in “reality”. Don’t blame me, Wes totally checked Wikipedia and there were no mentions of magical bows and Titan filled Rubiks cubes. Wikipedia does not lie, people.

So, I was entertained but also disappointed. That’s how I come out of most movies, really. I am easily entertained, but not easily impressed.

Working in Chemistry Sounds Totally Exciting and Dangerous

2011-11-14T12:41:00.001-08:00

On Friday, I walked into the lobby of my building, opened the door to the lab and found that it smelled distinctly of wet paint. I didn’t see any “Wet Paint” signs though and couldn’t for the life of me figure out where they had actually pained (or why…the place was recently painted). “Perhaps we’re getting ready for another Dog and Pony show,” I thought, thinking little of it for a while. As coworkers arrived or had reason to pass through the lab, more and more comments popped up about the odor, which was apparently getting worse. An unfortunate thing about a lot of industrial chemicals is that you might really smell them when you walk into a room, but if you sit in a room with it for an extended period of time, you will stop smelling it. This doesn’t mean it’s gone. You just don’t smell it as much anymore. Other people were much more sensitive to it than I was, some of them showing symptoms of getting ill and whatnot.

As it turns out, the stuff in our reactor tank had polymerized and somehow none of us in the lab knew about it.

So, um, hmm, the chemistry of my job. Quick and dirty: I formulate coatings that in liquid form are made up of pieces of polymers. They stay that way in the drum and then are applied to things like book covers. The wet coating is exposed to UV light. The UV light starts a chain reaction that results in the pieces of polymers becoming polymers right there on the spot. We keep the polymer pieces from doing their thing by putting ingredients that inhibit them in there, but they can only do so much. If something is heated for a really long time, the inhibitors can stop working and then you have a drum, or in this case a tank, filled with polymerized crap that keeps getting hotter in the middle until the reaction is done. Generally it stinks to high heaven, and you had my lab last Friday.

Our lab was the only one affected. If you left the lab and then came back in, the smell punched you in the face. I am lucky enough to not be allergic to UV stuff (many people are) so I wasn’t having any health issues immediately (not that I should have been breathing it…it was just not doing anything to me…yet), but other people were getting headaches and starting to itch. My lab decided that we were getting out of their and we all piled in a truck and went to a diner down the street for breakfast at 10am. Then we came back and were banned from the lab…basically for the rest of the day.

It was at this point that much of the lab staff began to freak out. I felt fine still but generally everyone else was opposed to going back inside, regardless of the fact that no one had stopped production and there was a massive amount of quality control work piling up. There was not much we could do since those of us who were willing to brave the chemical hole were being kept out by the safety manager. She was patrolling around and if she saw us in there, she kicked us out. As she should because she is there to manage our safety and I’m generally a stubborn fool when it comes to these things.

At some point it was rumored that several bulk delivery samples were waiting to be checked. The deal with deliveries is that if we keep the driver waiting for too long, he starts charging. The safety manager had disappeared and my coworker and I allowed our commitment to our jobs (or at least commitment to the smooth running of a day of production…QC isn’t really our job) to trump the extreme idiocy of entering a hydrocarbony fog. We were going to go in there and check the bulk stuff so that the drivers could leave. I entered first. I tiptoed in and stood silently in the hallway, listening. I looked left. I looked right. The coast was clear. My coworker and I ran into the fray, basically immediately regretting the decision. I went into the UV room and tried to get some stuff done and then I thought, “Wait…are my eyes currently burning? Yes, my eyes are currently burning. And I feel a little woozy. Yep, yep, I think I might die in here. I should probably get out.” My coworker, who had been one of the people having an allergic reaction earlier, was itching like crazy. I ran out of the room. “Dude, we really shouldn’t be in here. We’re idiots…let me help you finish the bulk.” So I did…but there was a problem with one of the deliveries and I had to use a fancy apparatus to identify what the sample was. Just as I was attempting to fire up the machine, the safety manager came in and caught me.

“You’re not supposed to be in here!” she said.

“I know…but…look, I will get out of here as soon as I identify this crap. They charge us for making them wait!”

“Your health isn’t worth that. What would your husband say if I let you stay in here?”

“He would know that this is exactly how it went down, because I’m stubborn and an idiot about these kinds of things. I need 5 minutes.”

“OK, 5 minutes…then get out!”

I am on the safety committee.

She and the CFO stood there while I ran an IR scan on the mystery liquid and the CFO was asking all kinds of questions about how IR’s work. It was ridiculous. I was sitting there in foul cloud of awfulness and the CFO was getting an IR lesson. He did not get the version of the lesson where I dance around like a vibrating molecule though. That’s for another time.

I eventually went outside again and then was approached by the plant manager who wanted to know how we were going to complete the QC for the day. A plan was hatched wherein we would move all the necessary equipment to one of the other labs and deal with it there. The QC staff agreed to this, as long as they didn’t have to wait around until 5pm, “breathing the fumes and shit”. I can’t blame them for the sentiment. I can blame them for the bad attitude and the theatrics. At one point one of them proclaimed, “I have children to think about!” This is a statement that I have a very hard time taking seriously, not because it isn’t true but because it’s too close to “Won’t someone think of the children???” which makes me want to both laugh and barf. One time, I had a critic of my choice to be polyamorous and her question was, “But what about when you have children? What will you do then???” I almost threw my wine in her face, but instead I said, “Well, I’ll have more help taking care of them, now won’t I?” and then drank more wine. This is always a good decision for me.

After the decision was made to suck it up and deal in the other lab, I personally made several trips into the fog to retrieve the various pieces of equipment needed, with the help of the plant manager. The others refused to come back into the lab. We got everything done though and today everything is fine, except for the gelled mass of polymer smoldering in the tank. It will require jackhammers and caustic soda to remove. Awww yeah.

In conclusion, I clearly need to get myself fitted for a respirator because at least that way, when my stubbornness about putting myself in minor danger comes out to play, I will have a useful piece of personal protective equipment. Also, I learned something important about me…specifically just how proud and silly I am about these kinds of things. I have an obsession with being capable and sacrificing when necessary. Not that either of these things are specifically bad in an of themselves, but the sacrifice is rarely actually necessary. And being capable is great, but not at the expense of your health, when it’s totally not necessary or recommended.

Of course, this means that I will be an excellent member of your Apocalypse Team. I don’t know how long I would last, but at least the moments before I died would be devoted to doing something stupid to help a bunch of other people who never do that stupid thing. So I’d be totally stupid but totally noble and heroic...like Kurt Russel’s character in Poseidon. Now if that’s not something to aspire to, I don’t know what is.

Also, I’d probably get a pretty good eulogy out of the deal.

Miss Manners Can Go to Hell

2011-11-10T07:07:00.000-08:00

OK, so I’m going to put it out there that I’m not an asshole. I kind of pride myself on that. Sometimes it takes a lot of work to not be an asshole, you know. It’s especially difficult when you’re in the presence of Grade A Assholes (I guess the A is for asshole…let’s see how many times I can use the word asshole in one paragraph, shall we?). I mean, perhaps you disagree. Maybe you’re thinking, “I don’t know, Gina, you’re kind of a jackass.” Well, you might be right about that, but for the purposes of this post, let’s just assume that in comparison to most assholes, my asshole quotient is pretty low.

So, now that we’ve set that parameter, let’s get started with the actual content. I was talking to Ginny and she said that I should write about etiquette today because she has a children’s song she has to sing for her job called “Manners Make a Princess Shine”stuck in her head. I haven’t heard it, but I’m fairly certain it’s probably one of the worst songs ever written.

I’ll be honest, I’ve never really been down with the whole “Good Manners” thing. I think at some point, I understood politeness, but then I thought about it and realized that politeness just makes everyone sensitive; people get offended because they’re supposed to, not because they actually care about whatever faux pas you just committed. Take, for instance, table manners. Why does it matter if you reach for something, as long as you don’t put your arm in someone’s mashed potatoes or knock over the elaborate centerpiece display? I mean, sure, you shouldn’t hurl your body across the dinner table to get the salt, because someone might lose an eye when you launch a fork during the body slam. But otherwise, why interrupt good conversation with politeness? Along the same lines, I generally understand why talking with your mouth full is frowned upon, but I don’t know if anyone actually cares anymore. I don’t know one person who actually stops talking when they put food in their mouths. The only time it happens is when someone puts so much food in their mouths that recitation of the “Saint Crispen’s Day” speech from Henry V would result in a fountain of debris spewing forth, especially when you get to the “We few, we happy few” part.

Now THAT is a visual. When I was a freshman at Drexel, cast in a bit part in my first play there, the guy who played the lead was very serious. His chosen warm up was to lead us all in a dramatic recitation of the “Saint Crispen’s Day” speech and I’ve never, ever been able to take it seriously. Part of the reason is that the next warm up after that was led by my friend Jeff who always liked to do a dramatic recitation of Prince’s “Kiss”, which I would have to say, was always a little more heart felt. Also, every time I think about the “Saing Crispen’s Day” speech, I think of Kenneth Brannaugh, and then I laugh my ass off because he directed Thor and Thor is ridiculous, and oddly Shakespearean, making it oddly awesome and awesomely awful.

So say we all.

What was I talking about? Manners, right. So, we’ve covered reaching for things and talking with our mouths full. Has anyone ever actually cared about people having their elbows on the table? This manner seems particularly dated and conjures images of Victorians fainting at the sight of it. I feel like it means something archaic, like how one fans a fan. Elbows on the table communicates that you’re some kind of slut or something, doesn’t it? Well, shit. Or maybe it simply communicates “Ruffian”, “Hooligan”, or “Scoundrel”. I sort of approve of those. They all mean “hedonistic heathen” to me.

One time I got a paper workshopped in a Humanities class at Drexel (Humanities = English for Idiots) and I used the phrase “unkempt cretin” in jest. No one had anything to say about the paper (even though I was directing everyone to its many flaws) except for one guy who took issue with me using the word cretin because it meant something specific in terms of Christianity and I was apparently using it wrong.

“I just think the word cretin sounds funny which is why I’m using it in a tongue-in-cheek way in the paper.”

“But it means Christian!”

“I don’t think so. I think it means idiot or something…or at least, it does now.”

“CHRISTIANS ARE NOT IDIOTS! I AM OFFENDED!”

“Um…ok. I’ll be sure to change it for you. Now how about this god awful thesis statement?”

“Don’t use God’s name in vain!”

“…OK…this has been a really useful workshopping session. Thanks!”

Alright, that was off topic again. Whatever. I have a problem with sticking to thesis statements…I think. I mean, based on the structure of this post, the thesis of this is about my asshole quotient, which I may or may not be living up to at the moment.

So yes, I think politeness and conforming to the collective ideas of what is offensive in everyday life generally makes us weaker. Think about how little is communicated and how many snafus occur because people were too polite to say anything. I’m fairly certain that most situation comedy is based on miscommunication due to people not wanting to offend. Also fat dumb husbands and their uppity wives who are always right, but that’s neither here nor there. That’s an entire other post.

Years ago, my grandparents came to visit and my grandmother wanted to take us to Le Bec Fin. I think I was 15 at the time and had no interest then (just as I have no interest now). I turned down the offer because I didn’t feel like going somewhere to be uncomfortable for a few hours. If I wanted that, I would get a colonoscopy or something. I didn’t even know the half of it. A friend took his girlfriend there and regaled us with tales of the fine dining establishment’s ridiculousness. From what it sounded like, everything about the restaurant was procedural and designed to make you feel like royalty…in that if you fuck something up, you risk war with a neighboring country for offending their customs. You couldn’t go to the bathroom without an escort and there were so many forks and spoons on the table that it was like trying to find the right crystal shard to save the world at Aughra’s place.

Yeah, I went there. You know you like it. Trial by stone! (So, I just had to look up the Dark Crystal on Wikipedia to find her name and I skimmed the plot description…man does it not make any sense. I think the movie makes sense…or maybe I just watch it for Chamberlin. Mmmmmmm!)

Once again, I don’t really know what the point of this post is except me proclaiming once again that the things that most people do out of obligation and societal norms are stupid. Manners are designed to make people uncomfortable all the time or to be dishonest, so as to avoid hurting people’s feelings. But much like our immune systems, getting hit with people being real and honest generally builds up our ability to handle it and ultimately leads to us being comfortable with each other. Or, we at least know that a person we spend time with is possible a giant dick, and so we simply deal with them less. Obligation leads to resentment. Like saying thank you. How many times and in how many forms is it actually necessary to say thank you for things? Do you only do nice things for people to get this big dose of gratitude in return? I hate the concept of thank you notes. I like to say thank you and be done with it, but there is this entire obligation around how one thanks. Generally, I do nice things for people because I want to. Sure, hearing a little thank you is pleasant and I like to know that things are appreciated, but ultimately, if I know you well, I already know you are grateful for something I choose to do and we really don’t have to have the conversation. If you did something for me, I will likely pay you back soon in the form of decadent food or booze. Isn’t that better than a thank you card that you know no one actually likes writing? If you have any doubt that I appreciate you and the things you do for me, I’m saying it here right now, I am very grateful to you and feel immensely lucky for everyone in my life. There, that should do it until I die, right?

Did I just prove my thesis statement? I think so. I have demonstrated that yeah, I’m an asshole, but in comparison to most people, I’m pretty OK, just not perfect. Neither are you. Welcome to Life on Planet Earth! I think that it is telling that one of my favorite scenes of the Dark Crystal is the Skeksi dinner eating scene. Now THAT is a party. I think one of our dinner parties basically looked like that when we had a pot of chocolate fondue and ran out of things to dip in it. Fingers it is! More chocolate!

I’d like to point out that I didn’t talk about toilets in this post. There’s a first time or everything.

Home is Where the Problem is, Until it's Not

2011-11-09T10:36:00.000-08:00

Many of you know that there was a period several years ago during which I was very unhappy. The more I reflect on it and compare it to how I feel now, I realize that the period of time was considerably longer than I had thought. But the end of college was a relative nightmare. I had broken up with a man I had originally thought I was going to marry. I was living with him and miserable. I had been cheating on him for months with a man who would ultimately abandon me. I was unfocused and was having trouble really caring about anything. I was broke. I was failing classes. I had a sneaking suspicion that I was not going to graduate on time because I just didn’t care about school anymore. I remember once sitting in a lab class performing some kind of distillation, and instead of paying attention to it, I sat there and wrote emo awful song lyrics in my lab notebook. In short, it was not a good time.

Wow, what a way to start a blog post. I swear, I’m getting to a point here.

OK, so there I was completely miserable. Wes was being very persistent in his efforts to pursue me, but I was making his life miserable too. I told him I was interested, but unable to handle it or something. I cared what other people thought about it. And some other bullshit. I don’t know…I honestly can’t remember it now, which I think is a good thing.

Anyway, I came up with the idea that I wanted to join the Peace Corps. Superficially, I made grand proclamations about how I was going to go and help people because people need help. I had all these noble motives to spout off. “I shall teach the poor African the power of IRRIGATION!” I thought I was going to go off and save a little piece of the world and that this would redeem me.

I got through the first part of the application process and was still totally into the idea of going….and then something happened. I became rational and self aware for a second and it all went to hell.

Everything around me reminded me of my various failures. I still felt so much guilt for what I had done to my ex that I could barely see myself as a worthwhile person. I couldn’t redeem myself with school because, well, I’m just not that magnificent a scientist. Chemistry and math are hard for me and I didn’t care enough to work hard enough to overcome that. The only thing I was still confident about was acting and I was throwing all of myself into theater even though that was relatively awful too (the entire department was going off the deep end at the time). So, of course, all I wanted to do was…something else. I wanted to be somewhere else. I wanted to be someone else. I wanted to be someone who hadn’t made the mistakes that I had made. I wanted to be someone better than me.

So I wanted to join the Peace Corps because I thought that would make me a better person. Some would argue that it would, and maybe they’re right. But I couldn’t stand the fact that I wanted to go for completely selfish and ignoble reasons. I was so exhausted from my First World Problems that the idea of living with third world problems for two years seemed like the greatest thing in the world. I wanted to be stationed in Mongolia, where my primary worries were making a fire in the morning so that I wouldn’t freeze to death. All I wanted to do was run, so I wouldn’t have to solve anything. Everything would just go away in two years. Everything would be shiny and new when I got back.

And this is, of course, delusional. All of my problems were in my head, not in Philadelphia. Running to the most remote part of the world would not get me further from my own mind. When I would get home, it would all still be there, just as painful and useless as when I left. So I stopped the application process and stayed here and started to make some changes and now I am the happiest that I have been in my entire life.

I have watched people travel and move around multiple times in the effort to find themselves or find that perfect option for an ideal life and I have watched them be miserable wherever they are. As soon as they get to one place, they are already looking for the next place to go because this place isn’t cutting it.

Gretchen Rubin talks about this a fair amount in the Happiness Project. Everyone is guilty of saying “I’ll be happy when I…”, insert whatever temporary fix you want. I’ll be happy when I get another degree. I’ll be happy when I leave America. I’ll be happy at some point in the future when I fulfill some not well defined dream. But what are you doing to be happy now? If all of your happiness takes place in the future when you are somewhere else, doing something else, being someone else, what does that mean for this moment?

I know, I know. This post isn’t funny. So, sue me. It’s just that I have had a lot of success finding happiness, and I have done it while generally maintaining the same life I had when I was unhappy. The only thing that has really changed is me.

I was talking to a friend today about how I was worried about another friend never finding happiness, that I thought she was running from her problems and would keep running until her legs give out. My friend asked me why did I care. I should just let her run. Afterall, it wasn’t affecting me.

Well, I care because I find the wellbeing of my friends important. I care because I want all the people I love to experience the happiness I am experiencing. I feel sort of evangelical about it, really. Wes, Shaun, Ginny, and I have talked about the fact that if we ever found religion, we would likely end up being fanatics because if you think you’re right, if you think you have the answers to save the people you love, you are going to spread the word. That’s how I feel about finding a way to rationality and happiness. For me rationality, being a realist and being happy are all completely linked. I didn’t think it was possible. I didn’t think I could change. But I could and I did and you and anyone else can too. Of course you should take the opportunities presented to you, but don’t forget to look at yourself when you’re miserable. As my dad always said, “Who’s always there when you’re upset?”

Back to your regularly scheduled tomfoolery tomorrow. To tide you over, here is a picture of Dunecat. Now that is funny.

Pretentious People and Why They Are Funny or I Thought This Post Would Make Sense, but it Doesn't Actually

2011-11-08T06:42:00.000-08:00

It is unsurprising that I so much enjoy steam punk culture. Other than the fabulous outfits, it also glorifies a time period during which, in reality, I would never want to live, but I get to act out silly scenes and keep all my women’s liberation while I’m at it. This is how I generally feel about all the glorified decades. To me, there is no better time to be a woman that this very minute, and each subsequent minute is better still. I believe we are heading in the right direction as we move forward, even if we have little setbacks now and again. Still, it is fun to pretend that the 1890’s and the 1920’s and the 1950’s and whenever else were actually entertaining times to live in, especially when you get to come back to reality after the party’s over.

I’ve been thinking about my sense of humor and the way I see the world lately. For whatever reason, I have found myself outside of it looking in. Part of this I think is due to being dreadfully ill. I generally try to keep my sense of humor going, since sarcasm generally lends itself to periods of woe. But when I get weak and just can’t stop being distracted by the pain or general unwellness I’m experiencing, two things tend to disappear: my sense of humor and my tendency to hum and sing constantly. I actually don’t usually notice this until both things comes back. For instance, after a couple of doses of antibiotics, though the pain was still present it was considerably less than before, I started cracking jokes again and talking in funny accents. This is my barometer for the effectiveness of medicine. Incidentally, I also thought everything was funny when I was initially delirious with fever, so perhaps it’s not the best barometer. The point here is that I don’t mind being sick if I’m still being entertaining. I think I might have poor priorities.

Anyway, at the party on Saturday, a few of us were talking about Meade, because Jessie was finally cracking open the bottle we had purchased while in Vermont this summer. She was drinking it out of a horned flask my mom had bought for me from the Ren Faire glassblower a few years ago and it was wonderfully appropriate. As we discussed exactly what Meade is, Shaun commented that the Mayans brew a honey based drink called chi chi or something. I will have you know that I just did a 2 minute Google search and was unable to find what it’s called, but it doesn’t actually matter to the story. Anyway, he says this and I start laughing and then I started talking in a Mr. Howel rich person bad English accent about saying things about the Ancient Mayans and their sacred honey liquor brewing techniques, but it was somewhat under my breath. “No, it’s the modern Mayans that do it…” Shaun said, not realizing that it didn’t matter to me at that point. I had gone off to my little world by then.

I then explained that my mind goes to odd places…most of the time in normal conversation and that in time, perhaps he would get used to this. I then explained that all I saw when he started talking about Mayans and their drinks and how he said “I believe it’s called ‘chi chi’” was him in a smoking jacket with a Sherlock Holmes style bubble pipe, sitting by the fire regaling me with tales of his safari through South America. Oh, and he was talking in that bad accent I described above. He had an excellent response which was to think that this was hilarious. Often, when I disclose to Wes that I’m envisioning pretentious Victorians, he immediately goes into his impersonation of Jon Stewart talking about the New York Review. It involves pantomiming a monocle and speaking in an outrageous pretentious British accent saying, “Oooooooh, the New Yawk Revieeeeeeeeew!”

Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh, right, pretentious Victorians littering my vision when the right stimuli is present. It happens a lot. For instance, when Ginny and I decided that we were going to buy fancy tea and knit for an entire afternoon, I immediately assumed this meant that we would put on impractical multi-layered “house dresses” and bonnets and talk of our travels to the Orient and the plight of poor Pygmy of the Dark Continent. At some point we would berate the servants, which that day would have been Shaun I guess, since he appeared at one point to make us nachos. Most of those things, unfortunately, did not happen. I’m pretty sure we berated though. It’s pretty unavoidable.

I think this particular ongoing joke in my head is really my parents’ fault…mostly my dad. Actually, I’m fairly certain that my sense of humor is almost entirely my dad’s fault. In this case, I often channel him because in my house, growing up, my mom had a distaste for people who wouldn’t shut up about traveling. So, if by chance, you were to start a story with “When I was in Europe…” my dad would immediately chime in saying, “Ooooh, when I was in Euuuuuurope, I went to see The Daaaaaavid” or something like that. I basically can not hear anyone go on about traveling without hearing this kind of thing in my head the whole time, especially when it’s someone who really thinks that traveling makes them a more interesting person. I’m sorry…I just can’t take it all that seriously. It’s gotten to the point where I hear my dad and all the pretentious Victorians all at the same time and I just want to put on a pith helmet and laugh my ass off. I could really write an entire post about this particular thing. Perhaps tomorrow. It will likely make more sense than this entire post, because I honestly don’t even know what I’m talking about anymore. Perhaps I’m still ill. Yeah, that’s totally it.

At some point, Shaun just started saying pretentious things to crack me up, which was very effective. He made a joke about needing a tweed jacket with elbow patches. I then ran upstairs and found my tweed jacket with elbow patches (which was, incidentally, my dad’s. I used to wear it in highschool. Yes, it is entirely too large for me) and he wore it for the rest of the night. What was impressive about this, was that everyone else thought it was hilarious too. So I guess the point I’m making here is that I’ve managed to surround myself with a bunch of people with a great sense of humor, because it’s my sense of humor and I live to laugh.

Sure, that sounds like a conclusion. Totally!

I’m going to stop while I’m behind. Amen.

And We're Back!

2011-11-07T05:59:00.001-08:00

Well, folks, I am alive. When I wrote about Motherfucking November last week, I had no idea that things would get worse and that I would just have the energy zapped out of me. As you can probably guess, I don’t get really sick often and it was all foreign to me. I was grateful to get the antibiotics to treat the damn thing, but I had this feeling like it would be relatively spontaneous in getting rid of all my nasty symptoms. As it turned out, this wasn’t remotely the case. Yes, after each dose of antibiotic I was feeling better, but I was still miserable and impatient and wanted to be back to my old self again. I don’t know if this attitude means that when I inevitably get some sort of actual serious disease that I will be a Freedom Fighter against it or just a wuss. Let’s hope for the first one. If I ever get cancer or something, I will hopefully go all William Wallace on it and stumble around the house making grandiose speeches to rouse the troops. Of course, the goal of these speeches will be freedom from disease WITHOUT the disembowelment, but we’ll take what we can get.

So, the week from hell is over and I am really grateful for it. I have never appreciated my health as much as I do this morning. I was able to get through the entire weekend without taking any ibuprofen (which had been wreaking havoc on my stomach making eating sometimes a bit of a pipe dream) and so I was able to eat all weekend which is probably why I’m feeling so good today. I am also completely grateful for the people in my life. If you need more evidence that polyamory is awesome, take this past week as an example. I was very rarely alone, having Jessie there when Wes was at work to make me laugh and make me see that my freak outs were probably silly. Ginny came over and made me soup while starting her NaNoWriMo project and gave me a shoulder to shiver on when the pain meds wore off and I started to go a little nuts. Shaun spent Thursday with me watching Babylon 5 and keeping me from getting to down in the dumps about STILL feeling like death. In addition, via the power of the internet, I have Z and A checking in on me too. And of course, Wes, whose presence always reminded me that nothing bad was actually going to happen because he wouldn’t let it. In addition, he never let me be lazy about taking care of myself.

A special thank you goes out to Kelly, of course, who was there after I burned a pot full of oatmeal and nearly lost my mind. She managed to calm me down over gchat from 6000 miles away. She gave me a list of different things to try to relieve the pain, and didn’t indulge me in my terror. She gave me so many options of action that I really had no choice but to try a few of them and stop whining.

Luckily, I was not so wiped out that I couldn’t enjoy myself at our Dying of the Light Wake on Saturday. We threw a shindig to mourn the loss of late night daylight by eating tacos with our friends and sitting in the hot tub. In March, we will celebrate the long day’s return in a similar fashion and it will be grand. Yesterday, I got up early and took great satisfaction in cleaning everything up. For one thing, the house being clean gives me a huge happiness boost. For another thing, I was healthy enough to do it. Of course, I think I used all my energy on that as I basically sat on the couch under a blanket, snuggled up to Wes all day, but hey, it was Sunday and we were watching football and had nothing in particular to do, so it worked out well.

As you may have guessed, I have fallen completely behind on my NaNoWriMo project (and NaBloWriMo for that matter). I don’t particularly feel like freaking out about that since…well, that would just be silly. Instead, I am going to pick up where I left off and write and see what happens. I learned last year that just working on the thing is satisfying, that the 50K word goal is really just a motivator to write everyday. I certainly could not have predicted that I would be the sickest I’ve been since some time in middle school. So whatevs. It is what it is and it will be what it will be.

So, hello there. I’m happy to be back! Let’s all have a good week, shall we?

I Might Just Be Human Afterall

2011-11-02T07:19:00.000-07:00

Well folks, after a couple of days of agony, Wes managed to get me a doctor's appointment in the area at 7pm last night. Ginny had come over earlier in the day to make me soup and help Jessie keep watch over me and to work on our NaNoWriMo projects. Stupidly, I decided that it would be best for the doctor to see my symptoms in all their glory, so I let the Excedrin wear off again. OK, the additional reason for this was that I was adding wicked heartburn to my list of things driving me insane over the last couple of days, so I thought it would be a good idea to try and back off. The point here is that by the time I was sitting in the office waiting to be seen, the throat pain was right back at 11, the shakes and the shivers were returning and I looked pretty pitiful.

After sitting for 20 minutes in the big waiting room, I was taken back to the exam room where I sat by myself for 30 minutes. This probably wasn't actually that bad, but there wasn't even any medical themed wall art to look at to keep me from thinking about my impending doom. The only distraction, and not a particularly welcome one, was that WMGK's 7pm "Get the Led Out" segment was happening on the radio right outside the door. OK, so I like Led Zepplin, but they are most certainly not my go to band for many things, especially chilling out. There are a few nice ballads that are good for that, but generally, you always end up with Jimmy Page playing in a cacophonous fashion for far too long (oh...he's just such a goddamn GENIUS! You just have to get past the noise and bad arrangements to know!) and Robert Plant ruining an otherwise beautiful song by imitating a cat in heat. Before I get a bunch of useless comments about how revolutionary Led Zepplin was, I know, OK? I get it. They're a pretty great band. I even often like them...but not when all I want to do is curl up in a ball and wait for my fever to go away. And I can say whatever I want about them because I'm sure they are crying about it all the way to the bank.

ANYWAY, the doctor came in at some point and asked me a few questions and then finally shined a light in my mouth and basically screamed. They he felt my lymph nodes and shook his head. "I'm not going to torture you with swabbing that. That is classic Strep and it's bad." He walked out of the room and came back with 6 boxes of sample antibiotics. I have never been so happy to see medicine in my life. I don't know how many time I thanked everyone in the office, but it was a lot. I took the first dose when I got home, had my last Tylenol like painkiller and vowed to get something different the next day if needed.

This morning I woke up feeling disgusting. I think this is an indication that I was truly on the mend. It's not that I haven't been brushing my teeth the last few days, but my mouth required sand blasting to get to any level of non-grossness. As I suffered through various cleaning treatments and disgusted myself with what I had become, Wes said, "Well, I wasn't going to say anything..." Nice. That's how you know it's love. All these people wanted to take care of me and NOT hold me responsible for the horrors that my body was going through. I feel terrible that people had to be subjected to this, but I suppose this is life and you take the bad with the good.

In spite of my misery, I managed to get past my word quota for the first day of NaNoWriMo, which is pretty awesome. This year's story is much more fun to write than last year, so I don't foresee having a bunch of issues keeping up, but we'll see. Life has a way of getting in the way, don't you know. Here is an excerpt from what I've done so far. Clearly the character of Greta is me, not that I had to clue you in on that.

After an hour of tooling around on the internet getting the latest death counts from the Evil Malaria Oubreak, she decided to check her work email. In her inbox was a newsletter from the CEO. Topics covered included the revised sick day/vacation policy (basically, there was none), the upcoming employee appreciation dinner (postponed indefinitely), and a strange tale about how the recent physical inventory results brought to light a great theft and that the culprit would be arrested soon at his home. Greta had been involved with this physical inventory and had been relatively alarmed at the massive amount of chemicals that were apparently missing, but like everyone else, she had assumed that there had been a computer mishap. But now they were crying theft and all she could envision was a cat burglar coming to the warehouse in the cover of night, rolling drums of goo out the back door. Also, the cat burglar would have a cigar...or something...because that’s funnier. But apparently, it was some sort of back room operation involving one of the company’s most trusted, long term employees and a dummy business and some other elaborate schemes that Greta would never have thought up on her own. “Well, that’s just fabulous,” she thought. She got up from her desk and walked out into the production facility. There was nothing going on out there. An order hadn’t been placed for product in weeks and there were barely any production workers left to make anything if something was ordered. “Why am I still collecting a paycheck? How are we even still open for business? Everyone is dead!” she said out loud to no one. It was 9am.

She went back to her desk and sat down, looking at the pile of failed formulae she had attempted recently. No one cared if she were to finish them now, why bother? Greta had always assumed that the end of the world would be more climactic than this. But here she was, having skirted certain death either because she actually did have some sort of immunity or, more likely, because her blood was somehow uninteresting to the Super Mosquito (she was a fan of self deprecation), she was alive and skating by in an existence that she would likely soon not recognize.

Suddenly she was stricken with an idea. “Well, fuck it,” she said. She got up and walked over to the desk of one of her few friends at work, Rodney Belarus. She liked to say his last name with the obligatory Russian accent because it made life more entertaining that way. She quickly walked over and shot her head up above his low cubicle wall. He was also “busy” scouring the internet for nothing. “Strasvuy, Belarus!” she proclaimed, really getting into the whole Soviet Union thing today.

“Greta, I am not from the Soviet Union. My last name happens to be Belarus...but you need to get over it.”

“Nope!” she said, defiant as ever, “besides, I used the familiar form of the Russian greeting because we are friends, no?”

Rodney looked confused and annoyed. “Don’t you have anything to do?”

“Do you have anything to do? It looks to me like you’re checking sports scores from last year, Rod.”

“Um, whatever, it’s research. I’m doing...er...National Novel Writing Month this year.”

“Sure, OK! You can operate under that delusion and you can also operate under the delusion that I will stop coming over here and speaking in a bad Russian accent, and you will be disappointed in two ways! Anyway, enough about that...I just came up with a great idea!”

“Oh...good,” Rodney sighed.

“Well, do you want to know what it is?”

“Sure, why not?”

“OK, so...everyone everywhere is strangely dying from malaria, right?”

“Yes...”

“Right, so...what’s one of the cures for malaria? Remember your fluorescence experiments in school, Rod.”

“Um...quinine.”

“Yeah! So, what famous liquid has quinine in it...for flavor???”

“Tonic water...”

“YES! And what goes great with tonic water?”

“Oh jeez...”

“Gin! You’re right! So, rather than wasting our lives here at this stupid non-job, why don’t we just go to the motherfucking bar? Am I right or am I right?”

“Um...”

“You seem to be hesitating. This must be the best plan you’ve heard so far today, isn’t it?”

“Are you seriously suggesting that we give up and go to the bar at 9am to drink gin and tonics...because tonic water is the cure for malaria?”

“Yes.”

“You’re insane.”

“Perhaps, but at least I have a plan for today. What are you going to do, lament over the loss of your beloved Phillies? You could do that at the bar.”
Rodney thought of this for a few moments and seemingly realized that Greta was somewhat right. Suddenly, a gin and tonic at 9am seemed like just the thing.

“Eh, fuck it,” he said, “let’s go.”

“I knew you’d see it my way.”

After that I start making Lord of the Flies references and other such nonsense. This is going to be fun.

Happy Motherfucking November.

2011-11-01T10:24:00.000-07:00

Two days ago I started coming down with some sort of ailment. I never particularly worry about such things because my immune system kicks ass and I never get too sick. Also, when I get sick, I always get the same types of symptoms. I get headaches, and sore scratchy throat. This? This is different. No headache and my throat hurts but from swelling. The only thing that keeps it at bay is a painkiller like Tylenol or ibuprofen.

On Sunday, I was hilariously delirious. Shaun was over helping us clean for the house appraiser and got to see the ridiculousness first hand. He was seemingly entertained. Things went down hill after the sun went down and I took yesterday off. Basically everything would be fine while the painkillers worked, but not so much when they would wear off. Today wasn't much better and I took the day off again thinking I was going to get a doctor's appointment.

You see, I am one of those lucky people with health insurance. Apparently though, when you call around to several local general practitioners in town and don't feel like arguing...because you feel like death...the fact that you have health insurance doesn't matter. Honestly, I don't understand how saying "I need to see someone today" doesn't throw up a red flag to a receptionist that I may, in fact, need to see someone today.

Ugh, well, at the moment Wes is being lovely and calling around for me. Today has been a day filled with me irrationally hating things. They were repaving our street today so the air was filled with noxious chemicals. "I can get that at work, motherfuckers!" I walked myself to a convenience store in search of oatmeal and got stuck behind people who didn't know how to pay for things. "Pay for you chips and go, motherfuckers!" Then I managed to screw up the cooking of said oatmeal. "Read the directions, motherfucker!" Then the neighbors decided that they really needed to weed whack for a couple of hours. "Know one cares about your well manicured lawn, motherfuckers!"

And that's how Motherfucking November was born.

Theoretically I will survive this bout with illness. I mean, this isn't the dark ages. We get over motherfucking plagues all the time. And no, I'm not going to apologize for the profane nature of this post because you all know you're entertained with this. And, frankly, it's making me laugh and that's all you should care about because at least I'm not in a pile groaning for hours in that miserable way that sick, dying people do. I was also crying because I am stubborn and pride myself on being able to take care of myself and this whole helpless thing doesn't compute.

This just in: Wes managed to get me a doctor's appointment for 7pm tonight. He's a lovely man. He probably told them that I was pretty sick and they took that to mean that as doctors, what with the hippo whatever oath they take should take care of me. Or perhaps it's because he's a man with a commanding voice or something.

Anyway, as it is November, it happens that it is also the first day of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for short). Ginny, Jessie, Peter and I will be participating as best as we are able. I will be posting exerts this year I believe, so look forward to that. I will be writing, as Jessie and Ginny described, a science fiction/post apocalytic/comedic Canterbury Tales. Awwww yeah! That is all the planning I have done and I have to start writing today to avoid falling behind.

I will also be attempting to blog every day, so...so far so good, right, kids?

So yes, Happy Motherfucking November all! May all your motherfucking wishes come true!

The Philly Diner, R.I.P.

2011-10-27T10:34:00.000-07:00

Wes just sent me a news blurb declaring that The Philly Diner (at 39th and Walnut) is closing. In the article, it stated that many students from the surrounding area were “devastated” about this news. But one student, the only correct one interviewed clearly, described the place as a “cesspool”.

I am impressed that The Philly Diner managed to stay open as long as it did. OK, I suppose it had a couple of things going for it. It was open 24 hours, so it was often one of the only places that were open after the bars closed or the parties let out and it sold food that was mostly edible. I admit to having frequented it when I was going to Drexel. It’s original location was at 40th Street. I lived on 43rd and so it was a medium distance from where everyone lived. Alright, fine, I’ve lain out basically all the reasons that it was successful for a decade.

But seriously, it was the worst diner ever. It is true that there are certain things that I consider requirements for a place to call itself a diner. Yes, The Philly Diner had the obligatory chrome and stone exterior that I like about diners, but it didn’t have booths. Not one booth. When they switched locations, I figured they would take the opportunity to rectify this mistake, but no, they completely broke all the rules and it was stupid. As I said, the food was mostly edible, but really nothing was particularly good. There wasn’t anything that I went there for. Choosing from the menu was basically choosing the lesser of various evils. The menu was reprinted several different times, and it always had pictures of the food (actual photographs of what you would get at the diner) and no matter what they photographed, it all looked god awful. How do you make a plate of chicken wings look terrifying? Perhaps their photographer was just really into the super saturated filter. Also, they weren’t good at cooking bacon. What diner worth its salt can’t cook a strip of bacon? Also, their open faced hot turkey sandwich was terrible. That’s a deal breaker, yo. I always felt ill after leaving there. Much like when I break down and buy something from McDonald’s, I would often leave the diner wondering why I just ate that.

Now, some of you may be thinking, “But, every diner makes me feel that way”. Well perhaps. But if I’m going to feel like crap, I want to at least get the experience that I hope for. For instance, one night some friends and I went to Midtown II after a night of dancing. There were two people in there, smoking at the counter. The waitresses were all sitting around in their blue and white uniforms looking surly and bored. We sat down and a portly waitress slowly got up from the counter and limped over to us. She pulled over a chair and sat down with us to take our orders. She took our orders on the back of a placemat. Her voice was scratchy and dark, the product of many, many cigarette breaks over many, many years. I ordered the meatloaf, a decision I would come to regret later that night. When the waitress wanted to check on us, she would simply shout from her seat at the counter, “Everybody alright?!?” Then came time to pay and we asked for an itemized check. So she sat down with us again and wrote an itemized list on a napkin. It was amazing.

Later that night, I would have the worst heartburn I have ever experienced in my entire life. It was so bad that I couldn’t lie down. I was up all night. I didn’t have any Tums or anything like that, so at some point I started getting so desperate that I was attempting to come up with chemistry that would sooth me in at least some kind of placebo way. At one point, I thought that simply water was the answer. “In the presence of the strong acid, water can act as a conjugate base,” I said to myself knowing that I probably fell asleep in whatever class I was supposedly quoting. I drank water thinking that it would magically turn into a weak base that could neutralize the HCl in my stomach. Brilliant, I know. At one point, I actually thought about eating straight up baking soda, but in my late night delirium, I was afraid that I would become a human volcano science experiment, my innards fizzing out everywhere for the enjoyment of the whole class.

But while this taught me an important lesson about either never eating the meatloaf or always having something alkaline and chewable on hand (like a battery, for instance. That would work, right?), I thoroughly enjoyed the ridiculousness of Midtown. Little Pete’s is similar (I’m pretty sure that at least a couple of the waitresses there are drag queens and that’s awesome) and basically any diner you find in New Jersey is the best. It’s true that nothing you get in a diner is particularly good for you, but at most diners, it’s all hella delicious. I go to diners for the sheer American hilarity of them, for food I actually adore, and for characters that you don’t find anywhere else. And for booths so that you can people watch out the windows in comfort and style. The Philly Diner didn’t really have any of this. No booths, sub par diner fare, and a staff made up entirely of apathetic and seemingly inept students from the surrounding universities. Way to go.

So, goodbye Philly Diner. Thanks for a few years of giving us a place to go after rehearsal to bitch about the theater program some more, a place to hide from our girlfriends who kept calling every 5 minutes wondering where we were (I had some stupid friends who wouldn’t just say “I am at the Philly Diner. I will see you later”) and a place other than McDonald’s to wait for our movies to start. Thanks for never giving me food poisoning. That was nice. Or if you did, well, it was of a type that my immune system could triumph over easily and that always made my immune system feel like a champ. It really boosted its confidence.

As Requested, The Peter Pizza Post

2011-10-26T12:42:00.001-07:00

Peter is nothing if not a determined individual. He is organized, energized and has an infectious Can Do Attitude that I credit with most of Arcati Crisis’ ongoing evolution and success.

When Peter gets an idea, he will see it through as far as it can be seen through. If a plan has multiple ways to fail (or to succeed), Peter will allow these failures to occur until he finds the one successful way. If no successful way exists, then it is time to abandon the idea altogether. I consider this a very noble quality (and often wish I had the same ability to commit and act on fleeting moments of genius I experience), but sometimes this leads to some of the most hilarious spectacles you can imagine.

Case in point, dinner last night. Jake had been running late at work, so being in the neighborhood of my favorite pizza joint in West Philadelphia, I took the opportunity to get a small pie for Jake and I to share. We arrived at Peter and Elise’s house at about 7pm and Peter confessed that he was looking very forward to sitting down and having something to eat, as he hadn’t had one moment to himself all day. He saw our pizza and was seemingly inspired to have one of his own. He went to the freezer and pulled out a frozen pizza from Target.

In the interest of time, Peter didn’t want to deal with following the cooking directions on the box that stated that the pizza should be cooked in the oven. As it turned out, this was an opportunity for him to attempt to cook it in a way he had always wanted to test: The Microwave, modern marvel of our modern times. Jake and I were skeptical of this plan’s success and apparently he had brought up this idea with Elise in the past and she scoffed, causing him not to want to attempt it with her around due to the (inevitable) possibility of mockery.

He decided to take the chance. “It’s all cooking, right? It’ll probably just not be crispy…and if that’s true, I can just roll it up and eat it Liz Lemon style.”

Jake popped in, “Nothing that has ever been put in the microwave has become crispy…unless it catches on fire.”

The pizza was mostly vegetable (lot of bell peppers and onions and fresh tomatoes) with some balls of fresh mozzarella. He took the pizza out after just a few minutes (possibly to avoid the fire scenario), and as we all suspected, it was far from crispy. He cut a piece and this seemed to go well…then he started picking at it. I think that he cut slices and then attempted to pick them up, but each time the crust would just detach itself from the toppings portion of the pie, leaving them to become soggier with each passing minute. He continued in this fashion until the entire outer crust had been detached and eaten. As he ate it he declared that he had to eat the whole thing before Elise got home so that she would be none the wiser. Then, not thinking he would actually finish the thing, he started hatching plans on how to hide his cooking mishap. He considered it putting it in the over while we rehearsed, or throwing it in the toaster oven. Jake stated aptly that it all came down to how far Peter was willing to go to have a successful pizza cooking related deception.

As we discussed these options, we heard the door open. Peter shot his head over in the direction of the sound. Elise was home.

“Oh no!” he stage whispered.

Jake and I had long since finished our little pizza and the box was the perfect size for the remainder of the doughy pizza-like mass. Peter, looking shifty eyed, picked up his plate and gingerly slid his pizza into the box. He instructed us to play along, but by then all three of us were quickly falling into a state of laugh fueled hysterics. As Elise drew nearer, our fits of laughter gained strength and it was bordering on maniacal.

“Are you guys alright?” she asked, knowing the answer was clearly no.

At some point our laughter died down and I declared that I would be blogging about this. I can’t remember where the conversation turned to after this, but based on the discussion at hand, it was safe to say that his cover had been blown and Elise knew what had happened. Peter was no longer attempting to hide it, and, much to my surprise, Elise had not mocked him for it.

Finally giving in, he realized that the Liz Lemon approach was really the only way at this point to successfully get the pizza into his digestive system, so he picked up the whole thing in sort of a squished ball. Vegetable juice was pouring out of the bottom as he took giant bites and I was laughing hysterically once again.

“And just like that, we have a poorly cooked Stromboli” I declared.

And that is the story of how Peter learned the microwaving frozen pizzas is not a good idea. It sounds almost good enough to be a Rudyard Kipling “Just So” story, right next to how the cheetah got his spots and how the rhino got his armory skin.

Dinosaurs and Evil, Evil Women or Wherein I Discuss The Bible and Make Very Little Sense

2011-10-26T09:13:00.000-07:00

At a few of the religious weddings I have attended, I have had to endure listening to a reading of the whole “Eve was made from Adam’s rib” thing. It is, of course, nausea inducing. I know that people like it in weddings because to them it symbolizes the romantic idea of a soul mate; that the bride was made especially for the groom and some tra la la fantasy about this match being destined since the dawn of time.

I mean, that’s the story, right? In the beginning, there was Adam and he was bored so God stole one of his ribs and made Eve. Then some other stuff happened and there were several other men and women. At some point, man and woman harnessed the power of the dinosaur to till their farms while enduring harsh conditions…harsh conditions brought on by the inherent wickedness of women. Right? I mean, I haven’t read the Bible, but I’m pretty sure that’s basically the idea. Especially the dinosaur part. That’s all over the Bible. Well, maybe just the little known Gospel of Buckwheat Billy Bob McGraw, noted dinosaur wrangler and lunatic.

Anyway, so, the rib thing gives people a pretty good reason for thinking that women are inherently weak, since they were made from one piece of a dude…and apparently a piece he didn’t particularly need. Woman was made out of a superfluous bone. I conclude that this extra rib was a miscalculation on God’s part and he made Eve to be all “No, I totally meant to do that. I was saving it for later…to make this chick. Totally.” So because Eve was a big cover up for the rib number miscalculation, she was bound to fuck up everything for everyone without any help, but then there was this apple and an asshole snake and really, what could we have expected? She was a mistake, inherently flawed and when offered the chance to improve herself with knowledge, she took it and then tried to educate Adam. This is what Fox News would call a Liberal Agenda and therefore inherently evil. So, humans were kicked out of the garden and then they found some dinosaurs (eeeevil dinosaurs, obviously) and the rest is history.

I’ll be taking that honorary Master’s Degree in Religious studies any time, folks. My reasoning is FLAWLESS and my understanding of the scriptures is clearly extensive.

So, this leaves us with this ever present idea of the wicked nature of women. As you may recall, I recently had a bout with sadness and hopelessness with the idea that while we as country have made great strides in the pursuit of equality amongst the sexes, there is still so far to go and the reason that there is so far to go is because of this nagging idea that there is something intrinsically terrifying and shameful about the female. I mean, here we are in 2011, long after the Great Dinosaur Feed Famine lead to the death of all dinosaurs and the creation of Eli Whitney and his Mechanical Reaper which lead to women in the workplace somehow and all the trouble THAT started (I’ll be taking my other honorary degree in American History, as well, thanks), and the practice of victim blaming and slut shaming is still obvious, overt and encouraged. A woman without shame is a woman to blame…for every single thing that is wrong everywhere.

And all this leads me to the topic that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently: Modesty. I’ve been trying to figure if modesty has any worth at all in our society. Many say that it does, because covering yourself up, being quiet and all that, is good for society. You don’t draw attention to yourself and you don’t tempt those around you. But what is modesty? It’s the acceptance that shame is an appropriate thing, right? When you’re trying to choose what to wear somewhere (let’s say, for the purpose of this explanation that you are going out on a beautiful Summer day to enjoy the weather in the city) you generally have a conversation in your head that goes something like this:

Shameless You: Oh, I really want to wear this cute sundress!
Shameful You: Hmm, it’s a little tight up top and pretty low cut. People will see your cleavage.
Shameless You: Well, my cleavage is awesome.
Shameful You: True, and that’s exactly why you should probably keep it to yourself. People will think you’re a slut or something.
Shameless You: True…I take that “slut” is a bad thing?
Shameful You: Well, you don’t want people thinking that. They will think less of you and will take it as a free ticket to judge you poorly and treat you like trash. You will be the victim of street harassment.
Shameless You: But…doesn’t me covering up just validate street harassment?
Shameful You: Well, I’m just saying that you bring it upon yourself if you have a problem wearing something like that.

And ultimately we often succumb to the thoughts of our shameful selves. I, for one, am sick of this bullshit. The way I look at it, if you go out wearing what you want and people think you’re lesser for it, then it’s their loss. If they want to look at sluttiness as bad, then it’s their loss too. Being a slut doesn’t mean sleeping with everyone indiscriminately. It means that you will sleep with someone if you and the other party want to. So, when you have the judgmental eyes of shameful people upon you, wonder why they have enough time in their day to be concerned with you. If they’re judging you because they think it makes you unattractive, then…well, who cares? They don’t want to have sex with you and don’t respect you as a person, so you don’t really have time in your day to be concerned with them. This makes me think about the social programming that women endure that makes us want to hate other women. I love when straight women go on at length about how bad another woman looks (“she is too fat for that dress” or “OMG, her pantylines and bra straps are totally showing! GROSS!”). Why do you care? Does it make you feel more secure in your attractiveness? Does it make you feel good to judge women harshly for having the ovaries to go out in public however the fuck they want? Also, what the hell is the deal with caring about panytylines, bra straps and erect-nipples-seen-through-the-shirt? Nipple petals? REALLY? Why does anyone care about any of this? (But, I digress) If they are judging you because they do find you attractive and there is inherent shame in being sexual, well, you really shouldn’t concern yourself with that. We all have to take our own journeys to ridding ourselves of shame and it’s really not your responsibility to fix someone who isn’t there yet.

As you perhaps can tell, I have been on my own journey to shamelessness for the last few years and I am happy to say that I am making pretty good progress. This blog shows it as I am attempting to be out and honest about everything going on. I happen to love my body. This is perhaps because I’ve been “blessed” with a stereotypically attractive one. When I look at a billboard or a magazine, I see airbrushed and photoshopped pieces of art that some people interpret as being the ideal. I look at myself and see a happy medium. Yes, my legs quit, but they stand me up nicely. I am not a twig. I have curves and am in lovely proportion. I fit into an average easy to find clothing size. I consider this ideal, for me. Whatever you want to be is ideal. And you can show it off to the world.

We must not validate shame by consenting that if we get harassed on the street, that it is our fault. Our flowing hair and lovely form are not to blame for sexual assault or bullying.

And yes, this goes for men too. I know they are not exempt from shame and fear. I could go on at length about the constant fight to not seem gay in American society. Or even just the constant fight against seeming weak or emotional or any traditionally womanly curses. I am focusing more on women’s experience because that’s the experience I know. There is such a Boys Will Be Boys attitude in seemingly most of the world (especially amongst the religious), that it is difficult to not feel constantly under attack simply for existing.

Look, I get that modesty is about comfort. But why is immodesty uncomfortable? I understand that modesty is appropriate at work, at a job interview…but I can’t really think of anywhere else where it makes sense without accepting that shame is inevitable and required. We are modest because we feel shame and we fear repercussions. Why is this OK? Why do we have to worry about what our clothes say about us (not to open up that Fashion is a Language blog snafu again)? Do you want to wear a sweatsuit because it’s a wrap-yourself-in-a-snuggy kind of day? Do it. Do you want to put on a dress because you feel like feeling pretty FOR YOURSELF? Do it. Who gives a fuck about your audience?

Anyway, that’s my rant for the day about this. I’m sure it won’t be the last. As with most things I talk about on here, I clearly don’t have anything new to say about it but these are things that need to be kept in the ether. We’ve come too far to be weak now.

As for Adam and Eve, well, they are really not people we should be modeling our lives after anyway, especially after what happened with the saber toothed tiger, and the whole snafu with the Home Owner’s Association and a certain unapproved gas grill after The Fall.

It occurs to me that perhaps I should read The Bible some time, because if the rumors (perpetuated by me at least) are true, it’s a pretty entertaining and nonsensical story.

The Time I Was a Rebel Without a Cause

2011-10-25T06:53:00.001-07:00

I have never been much of a drug user. OK, yes, I am an avid red wine drinker, but I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve smoked weed. There are two main reasons for this. The first is that I really just don’t like how pot makes me feel. When I smoke, it basically strips me of my personality. I become a quiet boring lump that can do nothing but smile when people look at me…but not because I’m feeling serene or happy, but because I just have no words in my head (other than, argh, why don’t I have anything to say?). I pride myself as a story teller and a comedic force in social situations. Alcohol most certainly does not do this. In addition to all this, the actual physical feeling that many potheads have described as awesome feels like a painless migraine to me, with my head pulsing oddly. Basically, there is nothing that I like about it. When I tell pot smokers this, they say that I’ve just not had a good experience yet. But how many times should you try something you don’t like before you officially don’t like it? I mean, I’ve tried IPA’s several times and they all taste god awful to me. Do I need to keep drinking them because some people swear by them? KEEP YOUR HOPPS TO YOURSELF, YO, and pass me a porter.

The second major reason for my dislike of reefer is that almost every single time I have done it, the circumstance was surrounded with fear of getting arrested or some other awful consequence.

The first time was in my freshman year of highschool. There’s not much to that story except that I was at a party being thrown by one of the class’ resident potheads and I decided that it was time to find out why it was all the rage. Of course, being the first time, it didn’t have any particular effect but when I walked into school on Monday, everyone in my class knew about it. Walking home that afternoon with one of my friends that shouldn’t have been my friend, she asked me if I was ok, if I was depressed or something and that’s what I was turning to drugs. I explained to her that I took a hit off a joint. I was not heading down the Rock Star Road to Ruin. My life wasn’t suddenly turning into the plot of almost every Behind the Music episode. This was 1995, so I didn’t have Requiem for a Dream as a reference. Instead, I assured her that this was no Trainspotting. I don’t think she believed me.

A consequence of this was that another friend of mine became obsessed with trying it, so he approached me about going in on a joint Joint purchase and for some reason I agreed. We bought it from the same pothead who gave me my first hit and my friend kept it in his locker where it would stay until we were both at a party the following weekend. Right around this time, an upper classman that my friend was dating got busted for giving a joint to an 8th grader. The 8th grader, being an 8th grader, was showing the thing off to his friends outside of school and someone ratted him out. He, in turn ratted out the seller and the seller was expelled. And then the school’s administration went on a rampage. “WE HAVE A DRUG PROBLEM!!!” and they started searching known druggies’ lockers. Of course, all the druggies were in an uproar because of the Bill of Rights or something and how we were being oppressed by a tyrannical regime and all my straight edge friends were looking at them disdainfully saying, “Well, assholes, why don’t you stop bringing illegal shit to school?” They were, of course, right, but since my friend was keeping a joint in his locker for me at the time and because I knew that this particular “friend” would have no qualms about sending me down the river long before being backed into a corner, I was terrified. Sure, I didn’t have a reputation (the administration was clearly profiling the hemp necklace wearing hippies while I was a “reading Kerouac and drinking tea while listening to the Beatles” kind of hippie…which seemingly means not doing drugs…who knows), but you never know what information will get out when and to whom. After a week of terror, everyday worrying about getting caught, I really was barely in the mood to deal with it when we got to the party. In addition, it was nearly impossible to find a place to smoke the thing. We wandered around the block and eventually found an alley. Ugh, how ridiculous. There we were crouched in an alley in Germantown with cop cars circling trying to smoke something that would ultimately just suck. This time I did get high and I hated it. Pot smokers tell me that this is because I wasn’t in the right mind set. Well, obviously not.

This was so very lame that I didn’t touch the stuff for many years. I didn’t touch it until about 7 years after this when I was dating someone who happened to be a massive pothead. At the time, his avid drug use was actually a somewhat attractive quality because I had just gotten out of a very long term very serious relationship with a super straight edge person. When we broke up, this ex was convinced that I was going to be consumed by theater culture and just be drunk and high all the time and die…or something…because obviously the only thing keeping me on the straight and narrow was his guidance. So, while I wasn’t planning (and had no desire to) on going on a year long binge, it was freeing to know that I was dating someone who wouldn’t judge me if I wanted to drink or maybe try a drug once in a while. Eventually, this wore off as I realized that there wasn’t really much more going on with this guy except for pot smoking. Still, I wasn’t ready to give up on the relationship…mainly because I had done enough difficult breaking up that year and because I still was enjoying being the smart one, the responsible one, the paragon of adulthood in the relationship.

However, at some point I stopped being smart. This guy and another friend were hanging out one Friday night a week before I had to have a drug test to ensure employment at my third and final coop assignment. He and the friend were going to be smoking and he heavily encouraged me to come along and partake. I explained the drug test situation and he said something about wanting to share this kind of thing with me and that it would be good for our relationship. Then the friend got on the line and explained why me smoking once wasn’t going to show up on the drug test. He knows a lot of random shit about a lot of stuff and worked at the Vitamin Shoppe at the time so he dealt with a lot of people attempting to trick the system. I was weak minded, wanting to fit and not being in a particularly good place emotionally…and I agreed. I went out with them and we smoked under a bridge…because apparently I don’t get to do these kinds of things in places that aren’t completely shady. The experience was OK, but when I woke up the next day I remembered what my parents used to tell me about drug use. “It’s fine, but really not worth getting arrested over”. I extended this to include that it really wasn’t at all worth losing your job over either. I was relatively calm about it, but I expressed some concern to my boyfriend who was not helpful. Then the friend, guilt stricken by the fact that he convinced me to do this, got me a bottle of Fast Flush from the Vitamin Shoppe and assured me that because I never smoke that this would guarantee a pass.

On the morning of the test, I got up and drank the stuff feeling like a total dirt bag. “Really?” I thought, “This is where you are? Drinking Fast Flush so that you can pass a drug test to keep your job?” I was picked up by one of the other coops who had a test scheduled for that day and we drove together out to Exton. We didn’t know each other much and we were relatively silent as we went along. At some point though it was clear that we both really had to go to the bathroom and we stopped at a gas station to relieve ourselves. When we got back in the car, he was the first to confess that he had taken Fast Flush and I told him that I had also and we laughed and trembled. I told him my situation, that after not being anywhere near the stuff for 7 years, I chose to smoke a week ago. How stupid am I? He then said, “Yeah, I hear ya. I tried not to but my roommates always have it.” “When did you smoke last?” I asked. “Last night…and every day before that” he said. “Oh…well…good luck.”

As you can probably guess, as I am currently working in the same industry as my coop position, I passed without a problem. I came in a few days later to find that the other coop had been escorted out never to be seen again. He was subsequently replaced by another pothead, but a much smarter pothead.

So, no, I’m not anti-pot, but it’s just never worth it to me. Our country is so uptight about it that one hit one weekend can ruin your life because of the laws and the stigma around it. That’s bad enough. In addition, if you are a frequent pot smoker, like…someone who lists this on their list of hobbies, we probably won’t have a lot to talk about. I am referring to a very specific type of pothead that I couldn’t seem to get away from when I was dating this guy. My ex definitely said that when he’s high he figures out the secrets of the Universe…and then promptly forgets them when he’s sober again. He said this to me with a straight face. The thing about alcohol is, no one thinks that they’re more enlightened for getting drunk. They just like getting drunk. When you have friends who you only drink with, you don’t assume that because you get drunk together that they are some kind of ridiculously high caliber of person and you don’t assume that you have made some great connection with them because you got wasted and had a (likely completely inaccurate) conversation about quantum mechanics. Mind you, I’m not saying that alcohol is better than pot…I’m saying the pot doesn’t make you a better person. I think that pot should be legal because it’s considerably less dangerous than alcohol. You don’t get belligerent potheads and they generally don’t want to go drive off a cliff. I’m just saying that I am a happy drunk and a boring high person, so you makes your choices, you makes your bets.

And so there you have it, my illustrious drug history.

The Ever Evolving Woman

2011-10-24T20:30:00.000-07:00

Whilst spending some time doing a half-assed job at cleaning, I found a blank book that I had clearly intended to be a journal years ago. I have oft made this attempt over the years, but would only ever write a couple of entries before I would get sick of myself pontificating in a whiny manner about whatever problems I had at the time. The cleverness of this whining increased as I got older (there was one I found once that I kept in 8th grade that after reading one entry I almost threw up. It was so emo and poorly written. There weren't even any good jokes!), but still...whining in journals never seemed worth it. I think that's why everyone stopped using Livejournal after a while. At least on Facebook, you have to keep your whining to a few lines.

And so it was with this particular journal. I kept an entry or two and then moved on. I like blogging a lot more because you have an audience and people won't be entertained if all you do is go on about how miserable you are. However, the entry that I found was from May of 2004. I had been dating Wes a few months and was desperately attempting to graduate Drexel on time. Apparently, I had talked to Wes late into the night getting upset about this thing and the other and he fell asleep, leaving me to ponder and talk to a page instead of a person. Honestly, it's not a bad entry and what I really like about it is that I talk about a lot of things that I would eventually make part of my Happiness Project and I am happy to say that I have gotten over a lot of them and, while I didn't think it was possible at the time, I am truly a happier person. I have decided to post the entry here for two reasons. The first is that for all of you who know me and who have been reading this blog for a while, I think it will entertain you to see where this all began (and to see that generally very little changes in my voice and humor style as the years progress). This entry is from 7 years ago and all these problems were ever present for years before that. The second is that there are some pretty funny parts too. So here we go:

I have a pair of worn boots that I finally broke in last year. The rubber heels have started to conform to my feet's bad habits. I don't know what my ankles bend the way they do. I don't know where I picked that up. But the evidence is in the shoes. Luckily, they are Doc Martens. Very stylish, I suppose. They're wonderfully scuffed from years of dragging them through the city. The heels are worn but my feet don't notice. Doc Marten: #1 Choice by Punks in Orthopedic Footwear. I used to wear them with flowy hippie skirts and army surplus shirts. I don't think very many people thought I was a lesbian. I wonder sometimes if I would have had an easier time though if I was one. Survey says: Probably not, because even though boys didn't seem to particularly like me "that way", well, girls just didn't like a whole lot in general. Generic Insecure Response: Jealousy!

OK, so I'm talking about highschool here. I often forget why I was generally unhappy in highschool and I think that's a good thing. You should be able to forget the crap that used to get you down but doesn't anymore. For instance, Wes had to remind me that I used to actually believe in astrology. Geez...no one wants to remember things like that. I have been thinking about highschool again lately because Shaun went to Friends Select and I like to make fun of him for it. When I was 16 and 17, my friends were obsessed with the Friends Select kids that would hang out in front of the school after hours. We passed by the school every day to get to whatever public transit we were taking. My one friend got completely taken in by them, thinking that they were so enlightened...but they really were just 16 and full of themselves. Shaun is 4 years older than me, and since I don't recall hanging out there at all when I was a freshman, I doubt we crossed paths. All I know is that one time I sat there and listened to some kid tell a group of truly engrossed girls about the night he spent living on the streets with a homeless man and how he really gets it now and how he gave the homeless man his Walkman when he went...HOME...to eat food and live with his parents. My friend thought that I was falling in love, but I was really just attempting not to throw up. What was I talking about? Oh, right, Highschool Sucked, much like it did for most people. It wasn't horrific, but I definitely cried on graduation day...not because I was so sad to leave but because I couldn't wait to get out of there.

Anyway, back to the entry.

It's 2am and I'm thinking about life. Not really my life, but rather the lives of faceless people who lived before me in idealized decades of the past. I kept Wes up rambling about family values, automation taking away our thoughts and the usefulness of our hands, and soda pop stands. I whined about youth and freedom and a war against apathy. I'd love to write songs about this, but The Who and Styx have it covered. Hell, Frank Zappa has songs about pop stands, so I guess there's no need for me to re-hatch anything.

Luddite Tendency Alert! See? I talked about this back then too, but I was pretty serious about it. I was in the height of my Apocalypse writing phase...

Yeah, that phase didn't end. I'm writing a whole fucking musical about it for the 2012 Fringe Festival. Anyway...

I guess that's just it. I don't feel I have anything to offer the world in the grand cosmic scheme of things. I failed an exam this week and did lousy on a couple others. I'm nothing special to the world of chemistry. No one is lying in wait for all my great discoveries. I suppose that's OK though. I would rather not end up killing people in the name of progress.

I used to have this general fear that had I ended up in pharmaceuticals or government work, I would find myself eventually on a team designing the perfect evil chemical weapon. I don't know why I thought this was inevitable, but it's what I figured would happen. I was thinking about how once you understand how a poison works, it seems less scary. "Oh," you say, "cyanide binds with the iron in your blood. That doesn't sound so bad!" Except that it, you know, kills you quite quickly. Learning the mechanism of such things leads to a detachment from the humanity of it. It would be easy to design a weapon without guilt...you just have to forget that the neat chemical reaction that it does kills. I also assume I was trying to justify why it was OK that my grades were so bad. "Well, good thing for that. If I was a good student, I clearly would have take over the world by now." I think it was a good justification.

Also, remind me to tell you the story, if I haven't already, of the time I bombed a midterm in The Kinetics of Polymerization class, and then went and got plastered at Sisters with Kelly and then woke up the next day a little drunk and went to an analytical chemistry lab that way. Did I mention that it took me some extra time to graduate?

As for acting? Well, maybe...but I'm just waiting to find out, "Well, little lady, you were just fine for Drexel but you're in the big leagues now." But I suppose that's what they told me when I switched elementary schools. I guess they were right though. I wasn't ever famous or infamous. I got A's and B's and I talked a lot. People said I'd be a good actor because I wave my hands around a lot when I tell stories. I am also Italian.

'Nuff said, right?

Also, theater company for the win. We do theater when we want!

I talk a lot. I think, often, too much. I put Wes to sleep going on about the Russian space program...

Some things never change. I wrote a new Arcati Crisis song called, "The Cosmonaut's Wife". Again, 'nuff said.

and how impressed I was with their resourcefulness. I said stuff like that makes you more human. What bull. I have a cellphone and a laptop. Let me talk some more about being without resources.

I finally said, "I should let you get to sleep" but he already was. I wondered how much of my brilliance he missed. NO matter. He's heard it all before. I don't have a lot of new ideas.

He said earlier that he wishes I was happier. I thought all this emotion was passion. I think I'm passionate. Maybe I just need drugs and to live as a hermit or something, living in a hut on the shore...nah. I'd probably just end up upset about the aloof nature of crabs and how the fucking seagulls talk too much without saying anything and they should give a damn about who the president is. Then I put icing on the cake and talk about the art and craft of acting and the albatross around my neck just doesn't get it. Then we'd share a Frappuccino. I like vanilla bean, but I'll settle for whatever he wants.

That paragraph was possibly one of the best things I've ever written. Fucking aloof crabs.

I feel like in order to fix old problems I had to make pacts with the demons in my head. The pact was simply I would be better at dealing with social situations but I would lose part of myself in the process and anytime I try to reclaim it, I am stricken with sadness. I love the social me but I am bored with who I am when I'm by myself. It used to be opposite. I wish I was happier too.

So, as you can see I have struggled with these First World Problems for a long time. But as you have probably noticed from reading this blog, I am pretty happy and one of the biggest reasons is that I learned how to be the public me in a private. I suppose I could say that I did have to lose part of myself to do that, but it wasn't something I want to keep. When I wrote that, I was feeling hopeless...a feeling that would haunt me again and again. I learned finally that I could change the things that I identified in me as being barriers to happiness. Why did I have a problem with being social? Because I went for a long time having very few truly worthwhile, caring, non-manipulative friends (yes, highschool sucked ass, OK?), so I basically was suspicious of everyone all the time and was terrified that people wouldn't like me. I still struggle with this, with two big differences: 1. I am surrounded by really high quality people all the time and 2. I can manage to not indulge in bowing to people's judgment.

I wish I had known that my happiness project would be so effective in a mere two years. I wish the happiness project had been around 7 years ago. But no matter, I have made it work now, making 30 the youngest I've felt in a very long time.

I hope you have enjoyed this little blast from the past.

Something Not as Poignant as War and Peace

2011-10-24T14:24:00.001-07:00

In 2001 I was working at my first internship. When I heard that the Twin Towers were hit, I didn’t believe that it was any big deal. After all, someone had blown something up there once not long before then. Then, of course, it became clear that this was, in fact, a very big deal and that many people were going to die and that for the first time in a very long time, an American city was under attack.

When Pearl Harbor was attacked, it was part of a war much bigger than the United States. It was from an organized military force that was instructed to attack by its government. When the World Trade Center was attacked is was by a terrorist group that was not acting under the guidance of any country’s government. By definition, terrorists use terror to control people. If we’re scared they win.

I remember going to the break room that day and hoping that I was going to hear some enlightened talk there. I hoped that people agreed with me, that what we should not do is have a knee jerk reaction and start a war. I mean, it seemed clear to me that this was the purpose of the attack: To humiliate and terrify us into an irrational decision. It was a test to see how the greatest nation in the world would react. Could we maintain a cool head and say that those who actually committed the atrocity must be held accountable and that perhaps, in the mean time, we should perhaps look at our history to see how some of the things we have done in the Middle East might lead to aggression?

Of course, no one else was saying that. Everyone in the break room was calling for blood, and not the blood of the people who organized the highjackers, but rather the blood of Arabs in general. It didn’t matter which ones. This was the Middle East’s fault and they should burn.

On my 22nd birthday, it was Shock and Awe time. I remember sitting on my couch waiting to go out to celebrate and I was watching the news. Rockets red glare, bombs bursting in air, the indelible mark of our flag emblazoned in the burning remains of one of the oldest cities in the world. The birthplace of civilization was being unceremoniously decommissioned all because…well…no one involved in the 9-11 attacks were there. But some other dick was and he’s an Arab so…well, it’s all the same, right?

When I was 15 I walked out of school to go to a protest at City Hall about cutting funding for public schools. When I was 15, I had glorified visions of the protests from the 60’s. They were all about such righteous things: civil rights, the Vietnam War, women’s liberation. I wanted to be part of something big like that…but when I got there, I just saw a bunch of kids who didn’t understand anything really. The message was basically “Don’t cut funding from public schools. Our children are our future” but no one who spoke suggested where they might get the money from. I certainly was not informed at all about the situation. I went there thinking I was going to really learn something about the issue, but I didn’t. I just went there and we all chanted things, never really meaning what we were saying and not understanding anything in any great context.

It was for this reason that I did not protest the war. I was disillusioned with youth culture. Having been surrounded by Baby Boomers for our entire lives, it was difficult to take any of this protesting business seriously. Many of them that I spoke to couldn’t do anything but talk about Vietnam, but this wasn’t Vietnam. Yes, there were similarities: Gulf of Tonkin, Where are the WMD’s? But there was no desperation about this one. There was no draft. It was easy to get out of dying and it was difficult to understand why anyone would volunteer for such a thing. All I could think of with the last remnants of my Hippie ideal mindset was that the lyrics of “Universal Soldier” were really the only things applicable. The idea I got from the people I knew who were going to protests was that war is bad, and that wasn’t good enough. I wanted something bigger, more thought out…a proposed solution. Do you just leave a government in the dust after you destabilize it? Would that have been the best decision? But after talking to a friend today about the effectiveness of simply having a large number of people generally protesting something that they all know to be out, was I too close minded? Isn't the death of countless innocent people reason enough to want something to stop? And isn't the simplest solution to get the hell out? End it before the wound bleeds out? I could have been one of the voices generally saying this whole thing is NOT something that I want for my country. I am a patriot and I want my people to come home.

So, apparently we’re finally leaving, having long overstayed our welcome. Much like the news of Saddam Hussein’s death, Osama Bin Laden’s death and any other “milestone” related to this thing, I am not ready to dance in the streets. The news is barely making me feel anything. When they say “we’re leaving”, does that mean that we’re keeping several thousand troops there for the rest of eternity? Does it mean that once we save all that money from not funding a war that we will put it into real fuel reform and break our dependence on them? What does this mean at all?

It is, of course, a step in the right direction. But I can’t help but think that this is being done so that we can invade somewhere else. I can’t really think of anything much worse than that currently, but I’m sure there’s something. Our abusive affair with the Middle East will be neverending as long as they have something we must have. Just because we’re getting out now doesn’t mean we won’t be back in 5 years. Maybe we’ll go to Pakistan or even get fed up with Saudi Arabia. What does it even matter? We’ll be stuck there forever. And for all the men and women who come home, will they be taken care of? Or will we just have an entire army’s worth of shell shocked well meaning kids that don’t know how to live here anymore?

Perhaps I should start volunteering for a veteran’s services organization. Maybe I can help.

I suppose this all seems like a defeatist attitude. So, tell me something to be excited about. I’m all ears!

Perhaps I'm Just Paranoid

2011-10-21T07:34:00.000-07:00

I just got finished with this month's Safety Committee meeting and we were discussing the Safety Committee Mascot. Employees submitted designs and we picked which one we liked. The one we voted for will have to be redesigned as it is Homer Simpson as a super hero and we don't want to be infringing on any copyrights. There was suggestion of calling him Safety Guy.

So, at some point the one woman thought it would be really funny to have our slogan be "What Would Safety Guy Do?" She thought it would be even better if we got a bunch of those rubber bracelets made with "WWSGD" on them to give to everyone.

I admit that I bristled a bit at this. We moved on from the subject and I thought of not saying anything, but then it came back around. We were talking about launching the character and the comics I will be drawing at the Employee Appreciation Dinner next month and the woman who suggested the slogan went on to ask if we should get the bracelets made, because the slogan is just so funny. I had to speak up.

I said that I really didn't think it was appropriate to invoke a slogan that is a play on a slogan about Jesus. I stated that not everyone here is Christian, including myself, and I didn't think it was our place to bring this type of thing to mind. Everyone looked at me a little funny because somehow they hadn't remembered that the slogan had started as What Would Jesus Do? They made the argument that it's used for so many other things that have nothing to do with Jesus and that no one should be offended by it.

I don't know what to think. Am I overreacting to this? Possibly...but to me, all the slogans that are plays on this are basically mocking the original statement and while I am a fan of mocking such a thing, there's just something that doesn't feel right about using it as our safety slogan. I don't want religion or anything related to it in my workplace. I have been pretty lucky over the years to not have to deal with it.

I compromised and said that I would think on it, but I definitely don't want the bracelets. But it feels like it's further than that. WWJD is so aggravating a concept to me that to give it validity by using something inspired by it as a company-wide campaign seems wrong. To me it sends the message that we are a Christian organization and I don't know if I can follow along for the joke.

I don't understand how you can hear What Would So-And-So Do and not remember that it was originally all about Jesus. Perhaps religious people hear it, agree and it doesn't send up any kind of flare. That's certainly understandable. But it's all I hear when such a thing is said. South Park's "What Would Brian Boitano Do"? Hilarious. This? Not so much.

Am I wrong here?

Various Tid-Bits

2011-10-21T06:00:00.000-07:00

The guy I mentioned the other day who thought that the Mad Hatter was mad simply because he was high as shit is standing in the lab talking to one of my coworkers about how he believes in astrology. He says that he is a Taurus and his baby's mother is a Leo and they don't get along because he is a bull and she is a lion.

I would make fun of him for seemingly missing the point of the symbols and such, but really, his explanation makes about as much sense as "accurate" astrology, so I'll let him have it. Oh, for the record, when asked about his Mad Hatter comments, he said that he had mixed up the Mad Hatter with the Cheshire Cat...this doesn't make it better. Between the two characters, I would assume that the Mad Hatter was definitely the high one. But I can't believe he managed to forget about the obviously stoned one, the Hookah Smoking Caterpillar.

Hmm...and now "White Rabbit" is playing in my head again. Imagine that it's playing during the rest of this entry.

One pill makes you larger, a-a-and one pill makes you small and the ones that Mother gives you don't do-o-o anything at all.

I've been obsessed with body chemistry as of late once again because I've not been getting a ton of sleep. When I become sleep deprived, I start trying to get energy other ways, as we humans tend to do. So, I slipped back into the energizing hands of Emergen-C packets and coffee. I can't really complain about the Emergen-C. As far as I can tell, there's really nothing bad in it. By drinking a few a day I'm getting mega doses of Vitamin C and B vitamins. I was feeling like I was getting sick last week and I seemingly managed to head it off at the pass by consuming a few of these a day.

The coffee however needs to go. When I cut it out completely (and black tea was cut back significantly) and when I was watching my processed sugar like a hawk, I found that after the initial withdrawal symptoms went away that it was very easy to maintain a positive attitude and mood. I fell victim to anxiety very rarely and generally felt more alert even on low sleep days. I think that this is two-fold. Without all the excess stimulants in my body, I actually slept for the few hours that I had instead of tossing and turning, my brain wired with caffeine. In addition, being free of the jitters and anxiety when I woke up lead to a general feeling of wellness that translated to feeling awake.

So, yes, I wanted to deny that I was one of those people who is affected so much by something common like that, but it appears to be true. My coffee and sugar intake has increased a LOT this week and now I am left feeling out of it and upset for no apparent reason. So I have a cup of green tea and a glass of Emergen-C sitting in front of me and I'm beginning the detox once again. Hopefully, now I've proven it to myself that coffee just can't be a habit anymore. It is very effective once in a while when I really need a boost. When it's seldom, I don't get the adverse effects. The anxiety and sleeplessness are seemingly cumulative side effects.

One man on the chessboard get up and tell you where to goooooo and you just had some kind of mushroom and your mind is moving slo-o-oow...

In other news, I am super broke but still managing to live the good life. October has been a bad month for keeping my head above water, but things should iron out in November. A few places will be pissed off at me for a bit but they'll get their money and all will be well eventually. There comes a point where you consider yourself lucky that the people you're making late payments to can't take anything essential away and just pay for what you can when you can. There's really not much else that can be done. Ah, my calm perspective is already returning.

I have meetings from 9am to 2pm today. This is going to be rough. I went out to karaoke last night and then subsequently did not sleep very well. At least if I'm working on lab stuff I have to stand up and walk around to keep me awake. But meetings...ugh...what a waste of day. When I emerge from the conference room at 2 (or so...) I will be entirely unmotivated to do or thing about anything.

Corporate Reality! HUZZAH.

In more fun news, Wes, Jessie and I are working on our Halloween costumes tonight while watching The Nightmare Before Christmas and the Addam's Family movies.

That is unless the Rapture happens at some point today. It's supposed to...that Crazy Jackass said so. I'm assuming it'll happen around 5pm to really make traffic a nightmare. I feel like I should go to the supermarket for bread, milk and eggs or something. Isn't that what you're supposed to do in the face of an impending disaster?

So that's what I got fer ya.

Remember what the doormouse said...Feed Your Head...Feed Your Head!!!!!

It's an Honor Just to be Featured

2011-10-20T11:32:00.000-07:00

I think it would be cool to get famous enough in the music industry to be "featured" on R&B pop hits. Or even to feature R&B or hip hop artists to Arcati Crisis songs.

Wes sent me a video earlier today for Justin Bieber's song "Baby". It features Ludicris. That's right, Justin Bieber and Ludicris worked on a song together...and it's hilarious.

Imagine, if you will, that Arcati Crisis gained that kind of notoriety. Imagine if Arcati Crisis could do something like "Song for Mrs. Schroeder, featuring Kanye West". Think of the brilliant lyrics he would come up with for the obligatory rap breakdown in the middle.

Uh Uh
I'm-a gonna lay down my bets
Maybe I can see yo' breasts.
Down in Atlantic City, where we be in the nitty gritty
Let's get into the live-in-Slut sex.

I know you know who I am
I know you need a man
I'm-a gonna win big in craps
And then I got yo' ass to slap

Wow...it's like I completely channeled him. In fact, I should probably send those lyrics to him so I can make a lot of money for saying stupid things. But anyway, I think it would really add to the experience of that song to have something ridiculous like that happen.

As I said, I also think it would awesome to be featured on a song. Really, I would enjoy being one of four featured people on some awful dance love song where the first minute of it is just everyone introducing themselves, while innocuous beats and synth sounds whirl over the airwaves.

Basically I want to do a song where I get to introduce myself next to Akon and Lil Jon. OKAY! WHAT? YE-AH! Ako-o-on!

Hmm, being female I probably wouldn't introduce myself as I have not heard that done. Instead I would just sing a note for a really long time and go through the entire scale as I hold it.

It would be great, in that it would be absolutely terrible.

I was talking last night about how I will never be able to really write a pop song. I just don't have it in me. When I sit down to write a nice simple, short tune, it never ends up that way. There's generally at least 3 chords, usually more and there's always a bridge of some sort and strange lyrics. I see it as a talent to be able to write music for the masses, to completely understand what people want to hear. I have spent a lot of time hating on this because it's what the cool kids do, but honestly, it takes no less talent to get the music industry...or shape it as you wish. I used to wonder why I could never come up with a line to repeat over and over again to a techno background that was as addictive of several of the hits that have come out. The reason for this is not because I'm so much better than any of those writers, but rather that I do not have an understanding of it.

Don't get me wrong. I'm still going to hate on a lot of crap on the radio, but no that I admit that I probably couldn't do it, so hey. It's why I could never truly hate Justin Timberlake. Every song he had in the radio would get stuck in my head for days whether I wanted it to be there or not. That's genius, quite frankly.

But maybe for shits and giggles I'll just throw in some shout outs during rehearsal tonight.

Waste Management: The Most Boring Training Session Ever

2011-10-19T07:44:00.000-07:00

I walked into work this morning all ready to work in the lab, when I was reminded that I had to go to a Waste Management Training session. Mind you, we had this same training several months ago, but I guess it's a state regulation that we have to get this every six months or something.

They bribed us with Chick Fil-A breakfast sandwiches. Well played.

The issue with this particular training is that the person who does the training clearly does not enjoy presenting things. I think this person might be one of those people who believes that public speaking is a fate worse than death on the fear scale. And it's a shame really because the topic of Waste Management is wrought with excellent chances for hilarity.

OK, maybe most of it isn't inherently funny, but it all just is to me. This is mainly because when I hear about things like "Emergency Response", I immediately envision everyone running around like maniacs, trampling the weak and chemicals spraying everywhere in a corrosive, firey nightmare.

And this makes me giggle.

I would like to point out that this is not how I actually respond to things like spills and fires and evacuations. In fact, last week , the fire alarm went off and I (along with another coworker) sprung into action and got everyone the hell out in very impressive time. I do respect the dangers of working in a chemical facility.

I just also happen to think they are a great source of humor.

I think I should lead these trainings from now on. I'm sure I wouldn't be allowed because despite the fact that the content is really not difficult, I'm sure the state requires someone to lead the training who has certain "qualifications" and "credentials".

But, come on. You get to the slide about the Hazards of Exposure to Heavy Metals and you don't make an Iron Maiden joke?

Anyway, at some point after talking at length about the evils of mercury, the following conversation occurred:

Production guy: I have a question. What are the effects of mercury? I mean how would we know it was affecting us?

Trainer: Um, well...I don't know if you would know anything right away. But...do you know the Mad Hatter? From...um...children's stories?

Production Guy: What?

Me: Brain Damage. You get brain damage from eating mercury.

PG: Wait, the Mad Hatter...he was just high as hell. So mercury gets you high!

Me: Um, sure. Mercury gets you high...AND YOU NEVER COME DOWN.

Trainer: Permanent brain damage.

Everyone else in the room: Clearly this guy has already been affected by mercury.

As you can see, we really got a lot out of the training.

I think that if I were to actually find another job, it should be as a presenter of chemical safety information. I would enjoy that. I would bring elaborate soundtracks to keep people engaged. Like, today half the training was about Universal Waste. I would run in with a game show score playing and announce with gusto that we were going to be talking about UNIVERSAAAAAAAAL WAAAAAASTE! Sunday Sunday Sunday! Let's get ready toooo NOT THROW OUR NICKEL-CADMIUM BATTERIES IN THE TRAAAAAAAASH!

And I would bring clips from Michael Bay movies to show the unrealistic possibilities of what could happen if you don't properly store your hazardous waste.

I am the picture of professionalism.

A Community of One's Own

2011-10-18T06:08:00.000-07:00

Wes, Jessie and I threw a dinner party on Saturday. There were 10 people, all of whom were polyamorous. There were two triads and two couples with various connections here and there in the group. It was glorious.

I didn't used to understand support groups. I partially blame Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle for this because of the concepts of the prevalent religion in the book, Bokononism.

Bokonon talked about the nature of the interconnectedness of people. There were two types of associations. One was called a karass. A karass was made up of people who were drawn together from birth, whether they realized it or not. Throughout the course of the members' lives, their paths would invariably cross and the connections could not be severed. Also, as a nonmember of a particular karass, it was very difficult to find connection in one in which you didn't belong. The connection of the members in a karass had nothing to do with occupation, shared taste in movies, or University. The other type of association was called a granfalloon. This was a false karass, an association based solely on shared interested, attending the same school, liking the same sports teams.

While I knew this was a fictional religion, it was one that I liked the idea of (like many, growing up). I love the concept of the granfalloon because I feel like I'm constantly surrounded by these kinds of groups and that for the most part they are meaningless. This feeling was particularly powerful when I felt completely alone for many years. I had friends, but I did not get the sense that they had any real understanding of me. This all goes back to my hatred of feeling like some kind of novelty; that my strangeness improves another person's life because now they have that strange friend who they can show off to their other normal friends. I felt that I was without a karass and looked forward to the day when I would find those people who were linked to me by destiny.

Of course, I have since given up on the idea of destiny or souls or any of that, but the false nature of the granfalloon still floats in my head. I generally thought that support groups were like this; groups put together of people who felt like outcasts for one reason or another, that this was their only connection...and that somehow this was a lesser connection to other types of association. Of course, I also had given into the idea that my strangeness was a strangeness that could be enjoyed in solitude. But as of late, my strangeness has become more tangible. It is difficult to be comfortable in polyamory when you know no others who are embracing this lifestyle. At first, it was not a priority to know others because I was stuck in my own head about a lot of things and I wanted to hide it. I wasn't out to a lot of people and I was scared of judgement and complications.

But Wes knew better. Wes wanted to meet others like us and he sought them out. And much to my surprise, I found that being surrounded by intelligent, rational, amazing people who were living a life similar to mine seemed to break me out of my fears. It is easy to feel insecure when you think you're the only one, especially when you think you're the only one who has struggled with certain types of things. But it is just as easy to feel strong and sane and positive when the people you spend most of your time with are proof that things really are good; that this lifestyle is doable and preferable for all involved.

So our little community gathered together at our house and much fun was had by all. Wes, Shaun and I made homemade pizzas. We ate fancy cheese and Mediterranean salads while Ginny previewed her upcoming presentation for school about polyamory. We dipped Oreo truffles in chocolate fondue. Jessie roasted marshmallows on the kitchen stove and covered them in chocolate and graham cracker crumbs. And we managed to fit 10 people into the hot tub without the deck collapsing.

Ginny came over last night and while we were munching on leftovers from the party while (crazy delicious) meatloaf and macaroni and cheese were baking in the oven, she looked up and said, "Man, we live really well". I couldn't agree more. It's true that we're broke all the time, but we manage to make our money stretch to give us the good life.

Perhaps this is all just one big granfalloon, but I don't think I care anymore. Support and positive reenforcement are paramount to a happy life and these wonderful people whom we have found offer a great deal of support and positivity. For the first time in many, many years, I feel energized by all the people who fill my life and it feels great.