Anyhow, I ended up cleaning garbage out of the creek in Dottie Jordan Park. This sounds really dumb to you probably, and most of the people picking up litter with me were also confused about why I ended up wading in knee high, but the idea of a park, of many parks in Austin that have their own creeks is just mindblowing. Growing up in a desert dressed like a garden will do that; the smallest truly naturally occurring groundwater features or the tiniest native frog almost make me gulp back sobs sometime. So I will clean garbage out of Austin streams with pleasure.
But like I said, I really like this day, so I also (well technically I did this earlier in the morning) built a fence at tiny Palm Park right downtown, so that people who want to get their drunk on do not brazenly park in the park, but rather must stop at the parking lot. On paper, and in the way I have crudely worded it, this also sounds dumb, but again, IT WAS NOT. After 2.5 hours, 20 dudes from Texas Gas Service and I made a very nice looking double cedar-rail fency with concrete poured and everything. We joked about how soon it would take some drunky to crash through it, and scrimped on the donated concrete by digging up medium-sized rocks from the parking lot and winter-growth brush. The rocks were my idea and the Gas Service engineers seemed to think this was pretty perspicacious, and I ate a doughnut and said you are welcome.
In closing, please enjoy this City of Austin Parkviewer, probably one of the only remaining non-Google-based navigable satellite maps you'll be likely to see; what it lacks in actual clarity it makes up in home town pride; AWKWARD TEXT+IMAGE MELD KEEPIN AUSTIN WEIRD FTW!!!! As for me, I am going to sit in this chair with the slouchy posture my normally type A spine is only able to achieve tonight thanks to Luis S., yoga instructor of the hilarious Spanish guitar version of Stairway to Heaven which was very hard not to fall out of breath cracking up to, today.
Whenever I have the good fortune to go to the movies with Johnny, he always ends the trip with, "See ya later, good to sit in a darkened room in silence with you, not interacting at all!" Often there is actual dining or other hanging out before or after, and very often it's a funny movie where the good lines are rehashed. But I do think it is an odd ostensibly "social" activity.
I realized when I went home for Christmas this year, all the time I had with people seemed so precious that I only saw one film, with my mom. The rest of the time I wanted to be doing something else with the person.
I know a lot of people won't go to the movies by themselves, but I go alone most often. There are numerous reasons: I really like movies, both because I love reading and because I feel I am supporting my hometown (oh brother, right?). Sometimes in individual cases, it is a matter of taste: I didn't want anyone to know I would pay good money to watch Vince Vaughan in "Four Christmasses," didn't know anyone who hadn't already seen "Slumdog Millionaire," everybody already knew I'd seen "Sack Lunch" and would want to know why I wanted to see it again. And John's right, you don't get a lot of added value by bringing a friend into the theatre with you (unless it's for, you know, making out or whatever) so it's a lot less weird than the idea of going to see a band play by yourself. I do that too, but at a concert, there's the possibility of real live people doing something unique, something that won't be recreated that spot over and over again for weeks.
For this reason, Michele's and my ingenious "virtual movie date" makes actual sense when the two of us are the only people we know who want to see some (usually terrible) movie, but we live 1100 miles apart. There's a time difference, but since Los Angeles and Austin both have tons of movie theaters, a near-simultaneous viewing can be arranged. If something awesome happens two hours in, we can talk about it later. I can't tell if I feel embarrased sharing this strategy.
I was going to say, since my solo-concert-going predates my solo-moviegoing that it paved the way for it, but I don't think that's correct, especially since I am probably at peak group-music-watching age and I seem to like it though I used to much prefer going alone (no one at my high school wanted to see Sebadoh). I think what actually makes me feel comfortable going to the movies alone is having gone to church alone for 10 years, now.
Those two experiences are actually much more the same. I like to arrive right on time (or rather I hate to be early) and this drives some people up the wall. There are ritual food and drink, you aren't really supposed to talk, and it's a time to be told stories and to reflect on them. You're around a bunch of (for me at least) strangers but are feeling roughly the same emotions, and you're there because you choose to be, for no other end than being there itself. You probably paid a little bit of money. Sometimes it's disappointing, sometimes you cry, sometimes you get really angry that someone's trying to feed you a line of bull. In church, a lot, I think about all the experiences piled into the room and how they are coloring the reception of the words I'm hearing differently. I don't get to hear what these different interpretations are because people don't generally say them out loud, which is too bad because "the Bible is such a rich text" by which I mean some of it is totally multifacetedly insane, although not quite as bad as, say "Mulholland Drive." On the other hand, people love to give their opinion about movies, and I love to hear and read them and are grateful to hear them talk in a way that it's hard to get them to talk about anything else. I guess it's the closest I'll ever get to being in a literature class again. I think partly what I am saying is it would be really cool to have someone to go to mass with someday, like, often, but I don't really think that will happen.
"Benjamin Button" was fantastical in just the self-absorbed way that I hate most - it was like the anthropocentric bombast of science fiction made personal. ALSO, it's a little condescending to suppose that I need to watch the most attractive face in the world to get me to care about the aged, or about Hurricane Katrina. "Doubt" was good.
Haha I only blog about movies and church. Don't worry, Oscar season's almost over.
**"Sack Lunch" is really "Garden State."
I am reminded of this sick sense of anticipation of something that could be great but have long term cost-consequences as the "economic stimulus bill" prepares to be passed. Last year, as the news focussed on people's shallow electoral identity politics, I often felt like I had nothing in common with anyone. Now, though I have a job and am free of debt and dependents, I feel as though people are paying attention to the important things (and how little they know about how to preserve them) same as me. I'm happy about the election, but also to see as many vaunted Democratic elders as didn't pay their taxes fall before congressional hearings (JESUS GET IT TOGETHER), and I'm resigned to things being "bad" for part of my young-mid adulthood. Pessimists are happily surprised, right?
I'm working my way through the Oscar nominees, whittling away at the honoree totem (till I get to the Benjamin Button angry lidded osprey head at the bottom and say f--- this) and my favorites have been "Gran Torino" and "Wendy and Lucy" --- oh wait neither of those were nominated ---- but I enjoyed "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Frost/Nixon" and "Milk". My father said he didn't need to see "Frost/Nixon" because he lived through it and I agree, but that, even more than "Milk" reminded me that the world IS different from the time I was born in terms of personal, social freedom.
I don't know if the comments are true, but there are two points in the movie where Nixon asks Frost two questions which are meant to, and do, intimidate him: once he asks if he and his girlfriend "[did] any fornicating" the night before and once when he basically says "your italian loafers are gay." The idea that anyone, even a former president, could belittle someone, especially a TV celebrity, with words like that is almost imcomprehensible to someone like me born in 1980, more insane-seeming than the hairdos and the metallic wallpaper, even. Maybe that's a creepy example of the inversion in public respect for TV personalities and elder statesmen, but if it is, it is of course because of people like Nixon (duh). I'll always have a sticky spot for Richard Nixon, sweaty non-photogenic nose-to-the-grindstone Southern California native that he is, but calling it a soft spot would be wrong.
I told Chance that politicians, like teachers, get short shrift when it comes to job performance - how many of your relatives and friends work their asses off at what they do; how many just do what's required? The private sector has no monopoly on smart, hardworking people, does it? I don't know what will happen in this country in the months to come, but I hope, perhaps irrationally, that some jobs being lost were hateful anyway (show me a person who works at the mall who doesn't owe it to themselves to find something better), and that some good, new, organically needed ones will arise, unexpectedly, for the people willing to see their invisible outlines limned out in the freshly emptied space.
Hello, I have dropped back ON to the face of the Earth.
Yesterday I kept hearing about ham. In the morning as I was tidying my room I watched an episode of Mad Men where the mysterious Don Draper's son asks him, non sequitor, what his father liked to eat, and Don, truthfully for once, says ham and fancy candies that smell like lavender. Then I judged a science fair and a kindergarten project entitled "YEAST Is it Alive?" featured a series of questions, one of which was "What does bread smell like?" Apparently the bread with yeast smelled "normal" and the bread without yeast smelled like ham. Lastly I went to watch "Gran Torino" and Clint Eastwood is finally won over by his Hmong neighbors when they bring him tinfoiled trays of "... what is that grrrrowl ... Ham?"
I had a ham sandwich today, 2 actually because I'm bringing my lunch these days and it's Friday and I was running low on ingredients in the lab non-chemical fridge. This ham was distinctly realist, not the sort of ham that is magical enough to be alluded to in a set of three. That ham is storied and sweet like Turkish Delight was when I was first reading C.S. Lewis, before Steve took me to Sahadi's and I first tried it (in my mind, strangely, Turkish delight was a lot like Sweet and Sour Pork). That ham is something I have not yet tasted.
I liked Gran Torino, because I am an old man, and also because I, left without a president to lambaste, have turned my attention to the really disappointing Oscar nominee list (maybe some perspective is needed, but even Screenplay noms didn't make me smile this year). I am usually try to see all the films, but this year I'm going to try to see all the films just so I can talk about how many of them are far superior to Benjamin Button.
Out of blogging practice. I'll come back slowly so I stick with it.
Although I do spend a little bit more time lately reading about conservatism and trying to understand it, since that's the group of soul-searchers that has the most cache lately. I find their idea that "conservatism is struggling now because it met all of its goals" intriguing. I guess just because a liberal will never ever ever ever think they've succeeded, as long as the world exists. Am I wrong?
I'm not old enough to really understand the idea of a young person excitedly embracing Reagonomics and I lazily fall back on "Family Ties" memories to help me. Then I remember Nick the Trash Artist Boyfriend! What a great show. So I'm starting to watch "Gossip Girl" and I think that's going to help put a fresh nubile face on the free market or whatever it is people intelligently right of center believe.
Ok, I will beg off for now. This doesn't really apply to a blog, but I'm just regetting my social bearings still. At least for an introvert like me, it takes an odd and different energy to talk to strangers about politics than it does to talk to your friends about wonderful, lame minutia and gossip, and it has required a week and a half of transition time where I just watch a lot of movies and think about what I like doing in my free time. Man, I had a ton of anecdotes to recount but it'll have to be later.
I went to see "Religulous" tonight. I had forgotten, and my mom reminded me, that when I was in high school I was totally into Bill Maher and would stay up to watch (or program the VCR - god what a NERD) "Politically Incorrect."
Some ladies sitting next to me got up and walked out about a third of the way through, which is fine. I remember really wanting to walk out of "Sin City" and realizing after it was over that Sean had kind of hated by it too. Officially the only movie I've left in the middle was "The Nutty Professor" - that was with my parents - we got our money back and I remember being glad to know that you could actually do that. My point is that a LOT of movies suck way worse than this one, but it's your right if you wanna leave.
I've been thinking about Catholicism, not any more than usual, probably, but because the election is coming, and once again I have to hear first hand about my grandmother's church telling them they have to be single issue (re:abortion) voters. Also one of my undergrads has this amazing story of how she was born Baptist and converted to Catholicism, got kicked out of her parents' house, and then eventually moved back in and then converted them as well! I've been Catholic all my life, of course, and haven't made much of a move to slow the exodus of my family away from Catholicism. I am always fascinated by the energy converted people have, I guess I have the luxury of secret laissez-faire uncertainy that being born into a religion you can stomach affords.
Maher, 1/2 Catholic and 1/2 Jewish, makes fun of everyone he talks to in the movie except ex-Mormon musician Tal Bachman, and these two guys who are skeptics, who he gives a wider berth - an astronomer and this round headed old man he meets outside the Vatican - and they're both Catholic priests. He seems to respect them more than the other people he talks to, and doesn't (at least in the film edit) tape their answers to questions about isn't it crazy to drink wine-blood of a dead guy. It's not fair, but it was funny to me.
The astronomer points out that the scientific revolution occurred after the major religions of the world were already firmly in place. That's a pretty Eurocentric argument, but I do think it's a fun thought experiment to imagine living in a world where being a theologian would have put you on the cutting edge of inquiry.
The NYT review thinks the weakness is at the end, when Maher criticizes Islam. I felt that part was as fair as the rest, but begs the question of other religions - no mention of Hinduism or anything. Well, maybe they aren't a violent religion like the others, but in that case, his premise that religion itself is always dangerous falls apart. So I guess that's a reason to skip it.
My real two problems with the movie popped out, rather, near the beginning. Five minutes in, Maher says to a bunch of guys in a church made out of a trailer that he's privileged enough to not need religion - that a guy in prison or homeless, sure, needs god, but not Maher, and not, he says, seeming to think he's flattering his Christian hosts, You Guys either. I found that cynical in just the way that people depicted Obama's clinging-guns-religion gaffe to be - in fact, he goes even further and conflates this well-off-ness with intelligence: "you guys aren't dumb" he says "why do you need this?" That was one of the only parts of the movie that offended me, because while many of the people he talks to are arrogant and utterly defensive of their certitude, I think there are actually (1) smart people in prison who still need God (2) people who are affluent who, Christian or non-Christian, aren't that smart and (3) people who are religious who don't "need" religion.
Maher proclaims himself as a sort of prophet of doubt, and I do think it really is helpful to have someone saying what he does - I never would have walked out of this movie, "Dogma" or "The Last Temptation of Christ." But he has a couple examples of when he "turned to faith" - when he got dumped at 17 and when he quit smoking at 40. He talks about being glad to have the idea of God as a powerful figure as someone to turn to. I'm flabbergasted because, well, I haven't had a hard life, but I've gotten dumped hard, and you know, I never prayed to God to win the guy back, or to smite him, or whatever - it just seems cheap, like hitting up your rich uncle that you barely know for money. Also, if you admit that people in need turn to God, I'm not sure why the fact that people like Maher or myself, probably in the 5% most comfortably living people on the planet, should be able to assume that their freedom from want liberating them from a state of spirit-seeking is "natural" or "correct."
Ok, so this really brings me round to my number one problem with the movie. Right at the beginning, Maher says two things, one that it's too bad man learned how he could destroy the world with nukes before he learned to share and love and whatever across the globe. And sure, that does suck. But it also sucks that for all the evil religion has caused, no tool of religion will ever destroy the world completely - my money's on the way that will happen will probably be when the environment collapses as a result of technology and lack of human stewardship, which has happened globally and the Christian tinge of Manifest Destiny notwithstanding, irrespective of faith. Even if we do blow each other up, I'm not sure it will be a religious country that drops the first or second bomb. China's not religious, nor were fascist or Soviet states.
The real problem with the movie is when Maher says "people are rational about everything else, why not religion?" Well, you know what, people aren't rational, at least no person is all the time. They're not rational about love, about sports, about what they eat, how they dress - this woman at a MoveOn phone party today started talking to one of her contacts about vaccines and autism, and secular humanist though I am sure she must have been, she didn't have a clue what she was talking about scientifically. Even without religion screwing people up, Freud says we still have all this envy and jealousy built into our relationship with our parents, and that seems like it's true. People crafted religion, and whether there was a divine inspiration guiding that craft, human beings screw up everything they do. Everything. The movie was pretty funny and I learned some factoids, and I guess I probably still have a slight crush on Bill Maher like I do on all smart lapsed Catholics, but blaming religion for the world's problems, it doesn't getcha outta jail free. *wink*
I'm not a person who is particularly quick to anger, but I don't know what to do with my feelings of actual rage when I hear Rudy Giuliani say Barack Obama has "kind of almost a socialist notion" to use the tax code to "redistribute wealth," while in the same sentence saying that his plan "would actually deprive the federal government of revenues." First of all, the federal income tax redistributes wealth every time it is revised in any way. When any tax law, including a "tax cut" such as George Bush's which favors the very wealthy, is put into effect, THAT IS A REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. So, that's an empty statement. Also, whenever you cut taxes, you are cutting the amount of money the federal government takes in, because people will be contributing less money. So I don't understand how someone can be socialist-ish while claiming less money for the government. Isn't it the Republican platform that it's "your [the citizen's] money?" SHOULDN'T the government BE DEPRIVED OF IT? These are either empty statements, or self-contradictory.
Giuliani also dodged the question of whether the now famous "Obama Sex Ed" McCain ad was misleading - rather than addressing the insinuation that the plan would teach kindergartners about sex, he says twice that "it also talks about HIV-AIDS education for children K through 12," which apparently is ALSO, now, a horrible thing to teach children at any age before they graduate. Yeah, it seems like a pretty irrelevant topic since cases of teenage HIV infection are have recently increased.
David Foster Wallace, who was my favorite living writer, hanged himself this weekend. I told my mom, who I never got around to asking about how to be happy earlier in the week, about it this morning. She didn't know who he was but my shorthand bio was that he was a writer who I really liked, who taught at Claremont (a few hours from my parent's house) that I heard he was a really good teacher, and that he wrote the 1,000 page book that I brought the time our family went to Hawaii. She said something about how some people feel trapped by the world and like they just can't stand to be around other people anymore. I guess I wasn't expecting HER to say it in such a way that it sounded like a sad, but perfectly understandable emotion.
I watched Charlie Rose's 1997 interview with DFW last night in a sleepy melancholy haze, and I find it amazing, though not surprising, how honest and self-conscious and careful he seems to be about diction, even compared to the other not-overly-slick people who are also on that show. At a couple of points he winces when he catches himself saying something which he seems to feel was accurate, but has come out sounding overly nuanced or mannered or qualified, but it doesn't seem like he can be any other way.
In the interview, Rose asks Wallace what a David Lynch moment is, and they go on to talk about movies like "The English Patient" as a way to talk about something besides Wallace's own writing. I can't describe what it means for something to be David Foster Wallace-ian, because I simply identify with the way he wrote about the world too much. I can see anger vibrating out of Dave Eggers, I can see the sometime slackness of Thomas Frank's prose when tighter writing might weaken the emotional power of his argument. I can see the lack of real understanding of how scientists do research when Wendell Berry writes about science rather than topics he owns fully, and I've read only enough Phillip Roth to know he has written some really really bad books. Kakutani's obituary today was appropriately critical, but to me, David Foster Wallace's writing is just as exactly exhausting and confusing as waking up every day and trying to figure out what the hell to pay attention to; who to talk to with candor, what to get done at work, what aspect of yourself to try to improve, and what it wouldn't be a sin to ignore. I'm really glad Hawaii was actually, not just supposedly, fun enough that I've only ever got 1/3 of the way through Infinite Jest.
Well, I've spent the first two weeks of my life as a 28 year old listening to the Democratic and the Republican conventions. It's 10:05 here in Austin and John McCain has just finished his acceptance speech, and I'm going to go take a shower soon.
It's a long shallow slope since I was little and my mother used to reprimand us for saying bad words. I can't remember ever spouting any Pacificas when I was small, but I would still get in trouble for calling someone "stupid," telling someone to "shut up," or for saying "whatever" (the kind that's a whole sentence, not an adjective.) I say these things every once in a while now, but in the 7 years I've had a radio show, I'm pretty sure I've never said any of the 7 words-you-can't-say on air. Off-air, when I do, it seems to have great effect, which I think is sort of cool. And it still shocks me when people use the N word, or the C word, or they call each other sluts or tell their friends to eat a dick. I don't doubt that there have always been crass people in the world. But I can't help but think less of people when they say ugly stuff they needn't, because they think it makes them sound cool.
I went to watch that movie with Penelope Cruz and Ben Kingsley tonight, mostly because I didn't think I could handle, but wouldn't be able to resist, listening to the last night of the RNC's speeches. I made sure the movie would get out in time to hear John McCain's though.
I admit to crying far too much on this blog. I cried the entire drive home listening to John McCain's speech.
I was thinking today while telling Stevan what a "wedge issue" was about how excited I was a whole year ago, when the debate cycle was beginning - to hear all these people I didn't know speak and to figure out whether any of them had any real new ideas I had never heard of before. There were, at that time, something like 18 people running for president. There was no one I thought was perfect, but you do learn something about people even in the sound-bitey format on a very full stage. Now, a year later, I feel pretty exhausted and the details between the two guys left standing are starting to blur.
Last night after Sarah Palin's speech, which I also listened to in the car, on my way to buy drugs for my cold, I was struck by the anger in the voice of this person I've barely ever heard speak before. I was amazed that someone who joined the race a week ago, who has never debated and never campaigned outside her own state and doesn't have any real feelings about the Iraq war and certainly doesn't know John McCain as well as even I do, could pick up so smoothly on the trail of attacks beaten earlier in the night by Giuliani, Romney, and Fred Thompson. I was scared that the way she talks will work, and I was scared that I've convinced myself the way she talks is bad, when maybe the people I think are "good" are really just the same.
Then I remembered two things, and I pounded some TheraFlu, and went to sleep.
The first is that the chick who read those multiple insults about the guy who "gives a good speech" was giving a speech herself. And she didn't write it. And the people who did write it, wrote nearly all of it before they ever knew who would read it. She's a very attractive and convenient seat-filler, and I hope she'll stay that way.
The other is that Giuliani, and Romney, and Thompson all got cheers and creepy chants of "USA" last night, but that was in their own house. A house whose seats they couldn't fill until their celebrity showed up last night, and a house so divided that McCain kicked all of those guys asses so fast he wrapped up his nomination three months (maybe 5?) before Obama.
All of them are saying stupid shit to look cool and sound cool to the angry little knot of people in that stadium who have made known what they think cool is.
I remembered feeling a genuine rush of relief when Mitt Romney dropped out of the race in the spring. I said to myself that whoever wins the election in November will be a better man/woman for the job than George Bush is. I have some reservations about McCain - if he wins, I will pray every day for his health, and pray that - even though the same bastards who beat him in 2000 ran his campaign this time and forced this VP choice on him - he has the strength to get them off his back once he takes office.
I think I was worried that I would listen to John McCain tonight and feel instantly, reflexively angry, and realize that I'm just as biased as all these people who've been creeping me out all week. I'm really glad that when I heard his voice coming through the radio, that it reminded me of the debates and how a couple of things he said were all right. I remembered hearing how much some Republicans hate him, and I didn't hear him say anything as execrable as
"Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America ... [Obama]'s worried that someone won't read them their rights?"
I don't know the heart of John McCain (I'm not able to look in someone's eyes and do that like our idiotic president). I think he's said some things that are weird or stupid, and then said they were jokes or apologized ($5 million dollars and Janet Reno respectively)
But I think there's a difference between the people I heard speak last night, spewing the same filth about "those people who don't put America first," about anyone who doesn't share their religious views, about people who "think we're in a Great Depression," and even about themselves - I am continually astonished by the self-hatred put on display by Republican politicians, their ability to deride everything government does and to call for its destruction. I heard John McCain speak tonight about public service and about growing to love his country when he didn't before, and I didn't hate him, and I believed him even when I didn't agree with him.
I know they are just words, and I know that when I look at their records and their goals, I'll still choose Obama. But John McCain at least made me feel tonight that I'll make it through the next two months and beyond O.K., and reminded me that he already beat the worst of the worst in a primary (VP back-door entry notwithstanding). I didn't hear him say anything that made me want to spit. A speech is just a speech but I think sometimes you can tell something about a person by what they won't lower themselves to say.
And I still have hope, because they finally made a TheraFlu that doesn't taste like barf. (the apple one)
But I went to Europe and felt like a real outsider for the first time in a long long time. I turned 28 and couldn't think of anything I wanted for my birthday except for Joe Biden to be selected as the vice presidential candidate, and my wish came true. I have been eating a lot of free faculty/staff burritos and free Lyndon Johnson birthday cake and Chemistry cookies and soda and barbecue and back-to-school pizza.
I've been trying to get used to David Gregory as moderator on Meet the Press (I will never get used to Tom Brokaw - that show is not meant to be hosted by a generalist anchor, it needs to be hosted by a nerd). I've been adjusting to being the "senior" grad student in my lab, on my hall, in my department, but still getting embarrased in front of my boss because he saw me biking without a helmet. I've been thinking of my family who is hanging out together in California and going to Costa Rica together. I've been making weird looking dresses with a sewing machine that I am finally doing right by (in the style of the McCartney protagonist in "Getting Better"). I have not been cooking much but I have been sleeping well.
Well when I write it down now, it doesn't seem like that much. (Which is the point of regular blogging I guess because I probably forgot a bunch of interesting stories already).
Dr. Robertus introduced himself to me in the hallway today - I horned in on a conversation he was having with Keff and he didn't know who I was, which has been true for 4 years, but today he seemed interested because I was talking a blue streak about how to get mass spec results. We met a violist at the grad student barbecue who told us how she got a job in a physics lab this summer even though she has no scientific training. And I listened to Bill Clinton tonight do such a better job tonight in endorsing Obama than Hillary did last night, and I am beginning to believe that people qualify themselves for the things they believe they're capable of doing. I'm not sure if it's magic, but I'm trying to expand my belief in meritocracy to accomodate it.
Since high school, I've had this image of myself as a person without ambition and I've seen that as a good thing. I left diverse, integrated, chaotic Hughes Middle School for a magnet school with an entrance test that I convinced myself was elitist and overrated and boring as dirt. I thought that the popular kids were rich and the rich kids were popular and that I didn't need most of it. I guess this is pretty typical - a lot of adolescence is about negative definitions, and for some reason I never got into hating my parents because it seemed much more logical to hate on my school.
I didn't really feel any loyalty till around when I was graduating and my brothers, forced to enroll there at first, were allowed to leave after 4, 3 and 2 years to attend the far far far inferior "regular" public high school near our home, and I started to realize what teachers and peers without ambition really look like.
My 10 year high school reunion is next week and I'm not going, but it's not out of spite for the people I went to school with. The people I rolled my eyes at in high school for shopping at the Gap or being proud of their Acura might not have been my taste, but when I went to college and first met private school kids, I realized they how far they were from being super-wealthy. And Oberlin may have wealthy students, but I didn't realized how hardworking and curious everyone I knew was until I left THERE.
I'm very excited about the upcoming election. I plan to watch the RNC next week and I'm sure the tone will be different, but I've watched the DNC this week with interest; I really think that choosing a "clean and articulate" black candidate has opened a very complex can of worms about American identity. I heard Pat Buchanan say yesterday that in the past, a guy that came back from a war and married a wealthy beer heiress would have been congratulated, he seemed to be suggesting that this was one form of the American dream. It might be, but it's not a form I find particularly character-building. And Hillary Clinton gave a long speech about herself last night - I was disappointed to hear so much about her - despite her tales of bald-headed uninsured adoptive mothers of autistic kids, I still feel cold when I hear her speak, and I hope many many many more women politicians make quick work of advancing much further in politics so that the bad taste of her trying to make me think I owe her something is washed out.
I like to think of myself as rational. And unambitious. And for these reasons I haven't gone bananas for Barack Obama - it's almost like I think he's too much like me, and I'm afraid/unbelieving that someone like myself is likable and capable of winning.
I like to think that reading long technical papers can teach you stuff, and that telling people things they don't want to hear right to their face, even if it doesn't force them to change, is useful, which is why Joe Biden has been my favorite politician for a long time.
I feel like it should feel strange to be one of those people who felt like an outcast in high school, and went to a weird hippie school to feel a small solid chunk of joy watching something as square and moderate and accepting of a two party system as the Democratic convention this week. I feel like it's weird to like this country as much as I do when every day I hear a fellow American say something that impugns my field of study, my gender, my age, my religion, or my intellect. I feel as though it ought to be a respectable version of the American dream to do things like: be accepted into a good college, and go there and work hard there and distinguish yourself; to decide not to have children; to work a government job; to hold separate your religious law from the laws you would require people of all religions to follow; to travel to other countries and appreciate the good ideas they have; to regard natural resources as public property and public responsibility. I haven't always thought all of these things were important and I can't expect other people to agree with me yet or ever on all of them.
But Barack Obama seems like a credible guy to me because he seems to truly have catholic tastes - to not be scared of people who aren't like him. That's a rare quality for someone his age - I think it's more common among people my age and younger (haha I think Barack Obama is OLD!). It's hard for me to like someone so likable because I hated that quality in student council types in high school, but I've decided when it's genuine, it's incredibly valuable, and necessary. Just like going to the best high school you have the chance to go to is necessary, even if the place weirds you out, or going to a country whose language you don't speak, even though, or perhaps because it'll make you feel like an asshole.
I'll never forget the day senior year someone I considered a good friend told me I only got into the colleges I did because I was Mexican. Humility is a cardinal virtue, and it can be a pain in the ass to hear that kind of crap from people, so I guess it makes a kind of sense to adopt a sort of Generation X ambition-averse persona, and walk around, even now, saying "oh yeah, you know, I'm just sort of in graduate school" as if I don't want to get something out of it. It's uncool to like politics because politics at their worst are about risible, dishonest, self-interest, and at their best are about self-confidence in the service of public interest, and you can't get away with self-deprecation, or other-deprecation, when you're trying to show that. Ok, well I'm not actually sure what being "cool" is anyhow, but quoting 65 year old senators from Delaware most certainly is not and so I will just end here with Joe Biden, who I love, and who manages to sound ambitious and Catholic all at once, which is probably the other reason I am so in love with him*:
"No one is better than you. You are everyone's equal, and everyone is equal to you."
*Also because he's an interminable windbag, and so, quite evidently, am I.
I remember going weeks in college without talking to my parents; before I had a cell phone, phone bills were one of the college expenses I prided myself on paying with my own money, so I would usually only try to call home once a week, at a time when everyone would be home and the phone could make the rounds, bounding up and then back down the stairs from person to person till I had talked to all 5.
The first semester, I called home more because I was convinced I hated everything except what was back in Los Angeles. They wouldn't call me because I think it was pretty obvious after each call that I needed to get off the damn phone and go meet the people I was meant to start meeting.
After I started liking college, it was always my sense that they didn't call me a lot because they wanted to give me space - space they were sure I wanted since isn't that the only reason someone would move from California to Ohio to go to school?
I call my parents more often now that I have a cell phone. For about three years they would always ask, first thing, if they should hang up and call me back so it wouldn't be expensive. I've never been one of those people who runs out of their daytime minutes, but I guess when you're a parent, the umbrella of things you worry might happen to your kid extends to "a terrifyingly, slightly large phone bill." Anyhow, after a while, I guess they believed me when I said with a cell phone you get charged whether you're the caller or the callee. Or maybe one of my other brothers with way more friends got a phone and they rightfully turned their attention to him.
This makes it sound like my parents aren't technologically savvy, which is partially untrue. My mom hates most things with circuit boards, but it is pretty fun to talk to her on instant messenger; for some reason she handles the format better than I think most people her age would, maybe because whenever she talks in real life there are always 2 or three conversations going on at once. And my dad basically knows everything about anything with a liquid crystal, a battery, an LED or an amplifier. I'm always amazed at how modestly he lives, gadget-wise, when there are so many guys I know, my age or slightly older, who blow hundreds of times more money than he does on stuff they claim to be "into" even though they have no idea how it works.
Text messages saved on erstwhile phone that I will miss scrolling through when
(1) bored on a bus without a book or
(2) pretending like I am receiving late-breaking correspondence when I'm in a bar/at a party having a miserable time:
(these are mostly inside jokes but sometimes a blog is a diary so whatever)
"I'm trapped in a fondue nightmare!"
"I'm jamming so hard to Hall and Oates!"
"I'm masturbating like a little boy!"
"Damn it, I just paid cover and it's a fucking country-western band tonight"
"Best present ever in my life"
"I just went Christmas shopping and bought plates for MYSELF I suck"
"Jury duty is making me so aggro"
Picture of a Hut's hamburger wearing Peter's glasses
Picture of the Margaret Wertheim's crotcheted coral reef
"Not sure if this is appropriate to ask in a text but have you ever had an abnormal pap smear?"
"Hohoho HAPPLES"
"WHO CARES"
Detailed directions from JFK to a Queens hotel that I sent my parents on their trip to New York City, partially to demonstrate the utility of text messaging at all and partially to demonstrate my utility?
Darn, I've already forgotten a lot of them.
The last text I saved was from my dad the night of the last Democratic primary, this month. It said "Hiya Chels, you live in interesting times." People had been telling me this during the whole primary season, from the opening when Joe Biden called Obama clean and articulate, to Hillary's concession speech where she said the remarkable had become unremarkable. But it only really made sense to me right then, coming from my dad, with his characteristic deference to me, as if these were no longer his times as well, and the studied but casual language that fits him and me better than the breakneck instant message pace, typos and syntactical inversions and all, that make it so fun to "chat" on "AIM" with my mom and my fully Generation Y brothers. (Sorry for typing "Generation Y")
My labmates have watched me follow the political season with zeal since I returned to school last fall. None of them were around in 2004 when I moped for the remainder of the school week after Bush got reelected (wearing black, which you know I never wear). But I guess they can tell I take it seriously. I think they would have been freaked out if they had been here in the computer office when I checked my email this afternoon and saw that Tim Russert is dead, because I would have tried to make them understand how I actually feel like mourning. My boss is on vacation and they're at paintball today anyway, so in the empty room, I picked up my new telephone, which is small and shiny and pink, and called my dad instead. I know the last half of this blog entry was about texting, but this time, I actually wanted to talk, because talking, though it is often harder for the quieter among us, is also usually better.
