God I hate Reedies (sorry M!)

This fact was confirmed for me today when I sat in my car listening to NPR for two hours in the parking lot at work because I had left my keys inside the night before. (Or so I thought. Turned out they were at home in my pocket. And a co-worker had snuck inside through the front so I could have only waited an hour if I'd chosen to wait where I could see both entrances. But that is neither here nor there.) I really like Think Out Loud, except that it's too short and on at an inconvenient time for me to catch it very often. Today their topic was WW's story on Reed (related to a recent student death via heroin overdose): are their drug policies too permissive? I really liked both Reed's Dean of Students and the WW writer right off the bat. But the longer they talked (and then argued, however civilly) the more irritating they became. And then a recent Reed grad, the 2005 student body president in fact, joined the conversation and he irritated me from the get-go. Ultimately this was about my feelings regarding Reed, but there were some unrelated things that ired me too. I will list them later so I can get to Why I Hate Reedies Oh My God So Very Very Much Seriously Guys Get Over Yourselves. (Don't worry - it's a short list. But poignant. Very poignant.)

Okay, so when I finally got into my office I was going to post on their blog about this. But for reasons that are not worth going into, I was thwarted by their login system. And this is probably for the best. I will copy for you here the text that I wrote in anticipation of a future post and you will see that this is most likely not the kind of thing I want to post on OBP. I'd like to look like, you know, not a huge asshole. (I know, it's a small goal. Baby steps!) Also, when I'm angry and trying not to swear, I come off sounding like a hugely pretentious prick. Keep in mind, I had like half an hour to stew before getting a chance to put fingers to keyboard. You can imagine how pretentious and douchey an earlier draft would have sounded. Also, I've added anything in [brackets] because the tone was kind of uneven and I would have cleaned that up before posting it anyway.

"As I listened to this program, I found myself more and more irritated. Reed students and faculty talk about the school in a very insular way: it's always us versus them. "We" this and "our" that, in a way that is completely different from any other University with which I am familiar. In some languages it is possible to distinguish between "we" inclusive (you and us) and "we" exclusive (just us, not you). English is not syntactically or morphologically one of them, but pragmatically Reedies have found a way to exclude everyone with their We. Somehow when I hear administrators or students from either of my alma maters (U of O and Georgetown) talk about their community, about their "we," it always feels more inclusive, like "we at the U of O" could be extended to "and state schools in general" or "and Oregon Universities in general." As a sociolinguist, I'm almost tempted to study this phenomenon. But as a listener, I'm too irritated to really consider it.

Did you notice how both the Dean of Students and the ex-Student Body President both talked about Reed like it's the only college to ever have intellectual students bent on serious academic pursuits? [sarcastically] Yes, we at the University of Oregon were only interested in cavorting and picking our noses. And at Georgetown… well, don't get me started on how unserious the students were at that place!

Reedies work very hard to set themselves apart, but not in the quiet way of people focused on action and effect; rather in the noisy way of people desperate for attention and approbation from the very people from whom they claim to be so far apart. Harvard alums may mention their alma mater in the first five minutes of any conversation, but that word stands alone as a symbol of intelligence and academic excellence (even when the act of mentioning it without context is irritating and belittling). What does it say about Reedies that it isn't enough to simply mention Reed, but requires a minor soapbox about how intellectual and above everyone they are. Insecure much?"

Yes, I am a mature adult. And everyone cares about my opinion. I MUST SHARE IT WITH YOU NOW!

::ahem::

Sorry. Moment of introspection. ::cough:: I think it's passed now.

I will now summarize the experience of listening to the reporter and the dean argue with this brief one act play.

Reporter: I was working on a different story when this kid died. I interviewed a BUNCH of people. Plus, I live in Portland, so I've heard all about Reed.

Dean: Yes, Reed has a drug problem, but so do all universities. I was a little sad that you chose not to talk about that.

Reporter: Sure, they all have drug problems, but Reed is perceived as particularly permissive and I wanted to investigate that.

NPR Lady: Dean, what would you change about the story if you could?

Dean: I was very very disappointed at the characterization of Reed as untouched by the student's death. We were all very upset! VERY UPSET!

Reporter: Yeah, I know. I talked to the kid's friends and family. What I was commenting on in my article was the fact that no policy changes have been made. The administration has seemed virtually unmoved from a policy standpoint.

Dean: WE WERE ALL VERY UPSET! VERY UPSET!!
Reporter: But you're not making policy changes.

Dean: Yeah huh. But we were reviewing that policy before anyway. It's very complex. Reed has a very complex view of the world and its students. But Reed is very open too. We welcome everyone. Our students are intellectuals.

Reporter: I was physically escorted off campus four times.

Dean: Well, we're open all but three days of the year. Our Ren Fair is only open to Reedies. Who are intellectuals.

NPR Lady: Why is that?

Dean: Because, we want to keep out undersirables. But Reed is very open. And intellectual. And complex.

NPR Lady: Undesirables? Did you seriously just say that?

Dean: You know - high school students - it wouldn't be appropriate - and people selling... things... that would be... bad. But Reed is very open. Except during Ren Fair.

Reporter: If it's so open, why was I asked to leave four times?

Dean: You shouldn't have come at Ren Fair.

Reporter: I had a pass! I went through all the official channels - I was the invited guest of an alum! I didn't interview anyone, I didn't ask any questions. But within five minutes of being on campus I heard some kid screaming like an animal on a bad psychotropic trip.

Dean: We have a tent set up for that. Reed is very open. Reed is very complex. VERY COMPLEX! Our community is very complex. We're intellectuals. SO SMART!

Fin

So there you have it. The implication throughout was that Reedies are too smart for anyone else to get them. My favorite part was probably when the reporter asked the dean why it is that Reed only graduates 72% of its students whereas comparable "elite" colleges graduate 95%. Could it maybe be the drug problem? I will give the dean this: he started out by saying "It could be, I don't know! I've never seen a study looking at that, so it's possible. We can't know that." And then he went on to say that basically a lot of students come to Reed and don't get how Intellectual and Complex it is; they can't hack it and they leave. Please note: I've only known two Reedies (that I'm aware of). One is brilliant and flourished, graduated and went on to bigger and better things. The other was a HUGE pothead, became a bigger pothead, was suspended (or something), given second chances to clean up his/her act, and then dropped out to go to a school where people just cavort and pick their noses all day. (Potheads are known cavorters.) I don't think that says anything about Reed, necessarily. I think the us/them thing says everything, though. (Please to note: my successful Reedie friend never talks about Reed in those terms. Ever. It's like it's just another school and we all went to school.)

Here is my list of things that bugged me in general. It's only two things; does that even qualify as a list?

1. Both the Reed Alumn and the Dean of Students misunderstood about 40% of the questions they were asked. It wasn't that they missed the point. It was like they only heard 2 words out of each sentence and were guessing at what the question was like some kind of horrible Jeopardy-Scattegories hybrid. The irony of this was intensified by the fact that they both kept harping on how brilliant everyone at Reed is. So brilliant they can't listen to full sentences OR so proud they can't ask for clarification. But mostly the former.

2. There just wasn't enough time. The NPR moderator kept asking for people to call in and they only had time for two, maybe three calls. "Have you ever been addicted to drugs? Have you ever known someone who has? Call in and tell us about it!" Then ten minutes later - no calls answered, by the by - "Are you a college student? What is your schools drug policy like? What do you think of Reed's" and of course none of those calls, assuming there were any, were answered. I would have called in, except I kept expecting my boss to show up and let me in the building and that would have been embarrassing. Also, I probably would have just shouted into the phone "glarbedyglarbdityaaahglefrazzlebagglebaggledybuh!" I was so annoyed by the end. (And the two Reed guys would have been like, "Ah, you must have attended a state school!")

So there you have it. That is my Reed Rant.

Reed: if Georgetown and Harvard can manage to talk about their student body inclusively, so can you. Please get over yourselves, your holistic evaluations, your organic vegetables and your COMPLEXITY and INTELLECT.

Also, is "snuck" not a work? Doesn't that sound right? If it is, what's wrong with my dictionary? If it isn't, what's wrong with English?

Masculinity Personified

Clint Eastwood.

I've been watching Westerns on ACM lately - Silverado, Hang 'Em High - and there is no one else who can do all of his character development in the first ten seconds of a movie. I know, Clint isn't in Silverado, but it's Silverado as compared to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly or A Fistful of Dollars. Silverado was just a mess of a movie. I mean, just a mess. It has about 70 plot points, but no actual plot to string them together. It has too many characters with no chance for character development. And it was pre-Dances with Wolves (which turned the Western motif on its ear, being about society as the insurgents rather than society plagued by insurgents, if I remember my Pop Culture and Anthropology class correctly), so it had a lot of standardized tropes with which to work. Silverado was not trying to turn anything on its ear. Which is why it is so shocking that such a predictable movie could waste so much time on an overly complicated plot and visual exposition cum character development. I mean, it has a petty criminal/gambler turned barman, a kingpin turned sheriff and mayor, a slick gambler called Slick, a petty criminal/prettyboy, the brother of the prettyboy, the free blackman/sharpshooter, the midget lady saloon owner... and their families, and their friends. Kevin Klein (yes, Kevin Klein in a western!) is the most convincing. He delivers his lines quietly, a man made of sheer confidence. And they're all lines like, "That's my hat," and (about his horse), "Can't you see she loves me?" Kevin Costner is (of course) the pretty boy, and he's (of course) very good at that. But that's all the more we get to know about his character because he's not capable of or allowed to use more than the broadest of strokes. Don't ask me why Klein gets to use subtlety and Costner is asked to ham around and look like he was told nothing about his character or the plot beyond "you're a sexy cowboy with ADHD that none of the ladies can resist." Only there aren't really any ladies, so a lot of the time he looks lost and confused.

Silverado has an all-star cast. Besides the Kevins there's Danny Glover, John Cleese (plays an Englishman in America), Jeff Goldblum (Slick), Rosanna Arquette (okay, so there are a couple ladies), Brian Dennehy (playing a very convincing low-talking kingpin turned sheriff) and some guy called Scott Glenn, who movie nerds probably recognize. You would think that each of them would be able to embody and demonstrate their respective cliche in less than a minute, but the movie works tirelessly to reinforce the stereotypes with scene after pointless scene of each character reaffirming who he is. And the plot. Oh the convoluted and yet entirely too simple plot.

Here is the plot, in a nutshell: Two guys who meet by happenstance. One wants to be a bartender. One wants to move to California with his brother. And they do.

Everything else that happens is impossible to follow. But I have an analogy. A piano can only play 88 specific notes. Your brain fills in the midtones to make scales sound smooth. A guitar has infinitely more variation possible - you can actually make the midtones on the instrument. (And if "midtone" isn't a real word, too damn bad, it's the one I'm using.) Silverado is like a piano: it has lots of set plot points, but nothing in between. Your brain is supposed to fill in the plot between Kevin Klein in the desert, left for dead and Kevin Klein discovered by Scott Glenn. Then they are in town. Then Kevin Klein shoots a guy to get his horse back. Then he makes out with the horse. Then he sees Dennehy, an old friend. Then he has new clothes. Then he turns down a job with Dennehy. Then he misses his hat. Then he goes with Scott Glenn to some other tiny town. Then they have dinner. Then the hotel discriminates against Danny Glover. Then... You see, it's all discrete events, but there's no real connection between them because they have to rush on to the next plot point at breakneck speed to make it through the ridiculously complex story.

But what has this to do with Clint? Clint Eastwood knew (and probably still knows, but is no longer making westerns, mores the pity) that the point of cliches was to cut to the chase. You don't have a crusty loner with no past because you want to delve into the depth of his past. You have a crusty loner because you want the viewer see everything he cares about for themselves. A crusty loner is a kind of tabula rasa. The thing is, everyone knows you don't just wake up one day crusty and alone. A past is inherent. But it's going to be a bad past, a sad past, of trespassing or being trespassed against. It is mostly irrelevant. Clint knew that and he worked it. In the first minute he's on-screen in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, you know exactly who he is. With one look he banishes the need for a past. With a flick of his wrist and a light to his cigarette he banishes the need even for a name. He wears the cliche like a suit and it looks good.

There's a moment in Hang 'Em High (he's in the brothel having fallen from his horse after a grueling three day round up of some cattle rustlers and a guy who tried to hang him at the beginning of the movie - see, lots of plot, none of it in isolation!) when the prostitute who is bringing him breakfast coyly asks if there's anything else she can do for him... he's staring at her hard and angry, like he stares at everything throughout most of any movie, and then she asks in this little knowing voice, and his face kind of lightens, and then he smiles so sweetly, with something like genuine pleasure. Character development! Now we know he's not dead inside! And it took no exposition, no unlikely conversation, and it didn't waste valuable plot development time.

Now: is Hang 'Em High a good movie? Well, that's a fair question. It's very predictable. It's about lawlessness and what happens when the rule of law is as unconcerned with justice as the brigands. And two lonely people who were violated by lawlessness find love, some amount of healing and bring true justice to the west. Or so I assume. I'm only about 3/4 the way through it. But they let Clint smile at the Broken Girl, so I'm guessing they totally do it by the end. But Hang 'Em High does it's job, mostly because Clint is so awesome. It lacks the artistry of Sergio Leone. (But what doesn't, am I right?) But I will tell you this: Hang 'Em High is a better classic western than Silverado by a long shot.

None of this really makes a case for Clint being the very soul of masculinity in our times, but it does make a good case for him being an awesome badass, so that's something.

My conclusion: Clint Eastwood is so manly I think I may be pregnant.

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OhmigodI'malreadytoohot

It was only like 80 today and I'm already too hot. (It may have something to do with hot ridiculously hot my computer gets too.) It's supposed to be 95 tomorrow. 95! but back down to 68 by Monday. Ah Portland... I had actually forgotten what naturally hot air felt like. I'm not kidding. I went on a little walk to mail a letter today and I was just giddy. I skipped through a sprinkler. Well, around it really. But it is too hot. I hate shorts and I think I may be low on work-appropriate skirts. Seriously: this is the thing I have most to worry about right now. Life is pretty good. (Yes, the sunshine has activated ALL of my serotonin and I'm freakin' high as a kite on Love For Everything In The World Oh My God It Was So Beautiful Today. Aren't you glad I'm not an actual drug addict? Can you even imagine what I'd be like on meth or heroin?)

Also, "For your blue" is a really sweet song. If Pete were ever to write a song about me, that's the kind of song I'd want written about me. It's just nice and fun and sounds like someone who both loves his wife and enjoys spending time with her. Fancy that!

Oh, double also: Pete wins. All other husbands can just quit; it's over. He is, hands down, the best ever. This week when I casually asked if he had any ideas for dinner, he volunteered to run to the store and get the stuff for galettes and berries for dessert. So we had buckwheat crepes stuffed with ham and gruyere and topped with an egg for dinner and raspberries over vanilla ice cream for dessert. He also vacuumed, took out the trash and even though he was dead tired, made extra crepes before he went to bed so we would have some for lunch the next day (crepes reheat very well, by the by). So yeah, Pete wins. Also, he smells good.

It's late. I'm rambling. Did you know kids get high off Axe body spray? What is wrong with them! This is quite possibly the funniest thread ever. Old ladies are adorable!

Edit: the last paragraph and the last statement in the penultimate paragraph are not related. Pete just naturally smells good. And he's not huffing. I don't secretly fear for him or anything. Although given his reaction to when we've idly smelled Axe body spray at the supermarket, imagining him trying to huff the stuff is pretty funny. It would be all grimaces and sneezing.

Neighbors

There are good neighbors and there are bad. Pete and I have had both. The worst were probably in Eugene our senior year. The guys upstairs left their empties in the hall and fell asleep in the laundry room; the people next door were drug dealers who partied late into the night on weeknights. (I called the police non-emergency line on them multiple times when they were non-responsive to polite requests for quiet so that those of us with morning classes could get some sleep.) Mostly I think of good neighbors as ones you either know well, like those I grew up with, or ones you never know at all. Right now, I consider our across-the-hall neighbor pretty good (I can't remember her name, so I will call her The Pretty One because she's pretty, if very skinny). She's quiet, she keeps to herself, when she has people over it's never very many and then the only sounds that carry into the hall are of laughter and talking. I'm not sure about our upstairs neighbor right now (I will call them Other Lady and Guy). They seem pretty good, except for one or two loud domestic disputes that went something like this:

Other Lady: [loud indistinct shouting and maybe crying]
Guy: [Angry responses]
Other Lady: [Punctuated retorts] Now! [Indistinct shouting and definitely crying, but of the angry variety]
Guy: I don't even know what you're so mad about!
Other Lady: [Screaming crying stomping door slams]
Guy: Fine! [front door slams, runs down stairs, down hall, out front door]

We don't know what they fight about, but I'm guessing they don't know how loud they are. The Pretty One is single and so if she has a boyfriend and fights with him, it's at his place of residence. Pete and I are very quiet. We don't really fight, and when we do it's more of a silent resentment kind of fighting punctuated by long discussions in which I explain how even though I know he didn't mean to hurt my feelings he still did and that is a valid emotional response to the situation, and he tries to explain that it's past midnight and he's pretty much already asleep and definitely not able to follow what's going on, and then he falls asleep for real and I stare at him resentfully until I fall asleep. (And in the morning we either very quickly agree on a solution to the problem (real or imagined) or can't remember what we were fighting about and decide that that's as good as a solution.) So I'm sure they have no idea how well voices carry around here, unless they've heard my incredibly loud sneezes or inappropriately loud laughter at things on TV. (Seriously: there is something wrong with me. I cannot control the volume of my laughter while watching sitcoms. Pete can attest to this.)

Our downstairs neighbor is what I would consider not an ideal neighbor. She's not a bad neighbor: no loud parties, no empties at our doorstep, no selling of drugs. But she is a stoner of the highest degree and has this awful hacking cough that sounds like someone vomiting that can be clearly heard from anywhere in the apartment. After Eugene, I knew I wasn't crazy about the smell of pot. Now I know: I hate the smell of marijuana. It is sickening. I don't have anything against people doing it - victimless crime and all that - but please please please, not in shared spaces. What ever happened to the days of trying to cover up the smell of your three-times a day habit? I think I might actually prefer pachoulli or nag champa to the reek that is our shared hallway. (Ask anyone who's visited us: if you're looking for a contact high, bring a lawn chair and breathe deep.)

But as gross as the vomitoughing is and as much as I hate the disgusting smell wafting under the door, she is an ideal neighbor compared to those next door. Yes, the worst neighbor is the Club/Theater. The music routinely continues past 10 (which, as I was informed by the neighborhood watch, is the legal noise ordinance time for weeknights), their patrons vomit in our alley, they leave empties and garbage out front, and garbage from their dumpsters overflows into our little parking lot. Mostly the patrons are disaffected goth or emo kids who roll their eyes as you pass and try to kill you with the sheer force of their nihilism and angst. I kind of like those kids. They want to hear some loud music with a boring bass line (that's really all we can hear - we've only lived here in cold months, so the doors are closed; I bet we hear a lot more as it heats up) and feel like they belong to something. Go ahead: aim your laser beam angst-vision at the squares entering the house next door. But not for too long or people will know you care and your cover will be blown. The patrons who pushed me over the limit were the Insane Clown Posse family-member band (whose name escapes me; I doubt it matters). If you are not familiar with ICP, then lucky you.

These face-paint wearing, generally fat, 30-somethings started showing up at 5 on a saturday to shout obscenities at traffic and chant "FAM-I-LY! FAM-I-LY!" at each other. They dropped empties, they harassed passers-by, they were drunk and idiotic. One of them - in full green and black clown make-up, mind you - shouted, "What're you lookin' at?!" at a car waiting to turn left. Pete was like, "Um, you and your desperate bid for attention, you painted douche?" Yeah, that's probably it. They were just so so so depressing, on top of being scary (they kept threatening to get fucked up and fuck shit up, etc.) because the scariness wasn't from their ICP look, or whatever: it was from the fact that a bunch of adult males, presumably with jobs and desires for their futures, put on clown paint to come stand in front of a very small venue and chant "Family!" with a bunch of other lonely losers for four hours just to see a band that is vaguely related to the group that actually represents their purported ethos. Plus there were the white supremacist overtones inherent in any costumed, aggressive gathering of young-ish white men. (Note to comic nerds: comicons don't count because they're not aggressive. Yes yes, I know, you're very aggressive when dressed as Wolverine because you're "in character," but seriously. Comics. Not scary. Now put down your Japanese purple-heart oak bo and calm down. Here's you're inhaler. Yes, that's a good nerd: deep breaths! It's okay. You don't have to be scary and aggressive to be masculine. We all like you just the way you are. Now run along before your "adamantium" blades wilt any more.)

Anyway, I'm thinking about this tonight because the club is actually quiet for once (and has been since 10!) and when I started writing this half an hour ago my downstairs neighbor was hacking up a lung (it's so so disgusting sounding. I cannot impress upon you enough how nasty her coughing is) and the hall is, shall we say, "fragrant," and it got me thinking. I like this apartment, I don't mind my neighbors most of the time, but I'm beginning to think my standards might be rather too low. Perhaps I should think back to the days of my youth and the neighbors I had then and that is what I should shoot for. But I don't think we'll achieve that kind of situation until we can afford more in rent each month. Until then, try not to smoke yourself too stupid, Stoner Lady! Hey, we can hear you fight, Loud Couple! Um, you're doin' just fine, The Pretty One! Stay Classy, San Diego? (Damnit! I've spent too much time with my brother recently and now I'm broken.)

Local Politics III: Profiles in Audacity

Okay, so did all the republicans in this state get together and say, "Let's just say whatever we want in our ads and see if anyone notices"? Mike Erickson is running adds accusing Kevin Mannix of being pro-tax. I mean, I actually agree with Mannix for once: Erickson doesn't understand what is and what is not a tax.  In the immortal words words of War, "This really blew my mind."

Erickson's campaign thus far has been kind of interesting in that he focuses on one issue at a time (ONLY ONE ISSUE!) whether it is relevant or not. First it was illegal immigration.



Mom thinks he had these in the can months ago, trying to predict what the top issues would be. You can see the logic: economy getting worse -> job loss -> fear of job loss/job stealing -> anti-immigrant pandering. Now he's on to taxes.



I will try to find the Mannix one when I get home from work. It's just craziness. I mean, I know why he's using these ads: it cost something to make them, so he can't waste them. But seriously: this is not a strategy. I can't believe that his constituency is like, "Yes, Mike, tell us what to care about. We have no important questions of our own that define, for us, the current political climate."

Best... Craft... Ever...

I'm on a crafting kick. Because I am a huge nerd. And I love to have unfinished projects haunt me for all of my days. Anyway, I recently needlepointed a boat (with the poorest of poor techniques) and have developed the beginnings of calluses on my right forefinger and thumb. This is very exciting for me. It's like crafting-cred. I don't want to lose it, but I have completely forgotten about how to needlepoint, so before I go back to a project I care about, I wanted to get a small one I didn't care about to fuck up and get it out of my system.

The problem with this plan is that small + cheap = Michael's + dolphins/horses/kitties/trite maxims. Things I will needlepoint in a pinch to warm up: flowers, various natural scenes... um, did I mention flowers? They're kind of the safe bet. The problem is that I don't want to be stuck with whatever it is I make because, as something cheap, it will be some kind of wall hanging or display. I was once very lucky and found a spray of roses that covered the whole square canvas that I thought I could turn into a small pillow. (Hm, I wonder what I did with that?) But today... today was just epically bad. I did find something, but I'll wait until I'm done and if I like it okay, I'll post a picture. Otherwise I will deny this conversation ever happened. Such as it is. My second choice was a kitty picture - it was actually a kitten hanging miserably over a rope and seriously said "hang in there" at the bottom. I considered purchasing this awful thing and sewing it up, only with the text "I hate you guys" at the bottom. I mean, who put that cat there in the first place? But then I realized I would actually be creating a "hang in there" poster and withdrew my hand from the rack.

The two things I saw that I wanted - oh did I want them - were both cross-stitch, which is not adequate practice for needlepoint. Now first here is something to understand about cross-stitch: there are two kinds, stamped and counted. In my opinion (and that of little old ladies the world over, I'm sure) the only real cross-stitch is counted, where you fold your aida cloth into quarters and mark the center with string and then count where your stitches should go based on a printed pattern. Stamped cross-stitch, on the other hand, has the pattern printed right on the aida cloth so you don't have to count anything. I assume this is for beginners, lazy people and people who are planning to craft as they fly somewhere (it sucks trying to count stitches and the little tiny squares between then on a turbulent flight). I think some of the printed pattern always shows through the stitches (which are not as tight as in needlepoint) and it looks even chintzier than regular cross-stitch. (I love it as a craft, but man, there is nothing more useless.)

Okay, so now you understand what it means when I say that I very very badly wanted to purchase and take home with me the Stamped Cross-Stitch Last Supper. Oh my God (no pun intended), it was so wonderfully awful. The most horrible part of me wanted to just take it home and set it on a shelf. Just to have it there. This kind of surreal artifact from another world. But I know there are little old ladies across the country who think this is just precious. Their eyes are failing them, they want to honor their Lord and Savior in the best and least useful way possible, and then God just sets down this $23 Honor Buffet right in front of them. But seriously. It's just terrible. Pete pointed out that if I had gotten it, we would have just come to find that Katie already had it attached to the flap of her satchel or something because she's just that cool. And then I then I would have had to hide my objet d'art so that no one would know my secret secondsies shame.

The other thing I wanted so very very badly was this Magnificent Wizard. By Merlin's beard, I feel his glorious wizardry just looking at him defeat that dragon! Or maybe the dragon is just waiting for the batteries to run out on his nerd-stick so he can eat him. Either way, how could you not want to make this and send it to your favorite Dungeon Master? ::ahJOEem:: Alas, at $40 and god only knows how many hours of work, I just couldn't justify the cost for the joke. I mean, irony is all very fine, but one has one's limits. (Mine are apparently $22 and the vague risk of offending some old ladies who will never know or $40. Who knew that vague old lady offense risk was worth $18?)

So there you have it: those are the best crafts ever. I may have to go back for the last supper one. Or order it on eBay. And I may have to find that matching satchel. Katie is probably the only person I know cool enough to pull it off, but it would likely horrify her parents. Or give them false hope. Ooh, I smell a social experiment!

Local Politics, Part II

This morning - not five minutes ago! - I saw a Gordon Smith ad against Merkley and Novick. I commented to Pete that the worst thing Smith had on Novick was "he thinks taxes are good." (Not that what he says about Merkley is so bad; just another example of low-level hypocrisy I think is inherent in living a public life. Lord knows I wouldn't stand up to that kind of scrutiny. Not that I'm an apologist for hypocrisy - but if my choice is "universal health care and some publicly acknowledged, legal campaign finance shenanigans" or "the current system," I'll probably go with the former. But I digress...) Pete said, "Oh man, have you seen this?" and ran it back (woot, TiVo!).



"Did you see that?" he said at the end. "Huh? Oh, no," I said, not really paying attention. He played the end again. "There," he said. I had no idea what he was getting at. "Okay..." I said. He quoted the end of the ad: "More of the same, it's time for a change." I still did not follow. I mean, that's what every political ad sounds like these days. "He's the incumbent." And then it all clicked and I was left with a feeling of pure strange.

Yes, Gordon Smith. It is time for a change. Let's not have business as usual with those tax-loving politicians who enact campaign finance reform. That's exactly what the last eight years have been like.

Also, here is another Novick ad. This is the first one, from January 2008.

FYI

Just to let everyone know, we did not win the lottery this evening. But we DID donate $2 to the Oregon schools.

Oregon Primary Voter's Pamphlet: Comedy Gold

Every election the voter's pamphlet is my favorite part. It's just full of crazy. Here is my question: if you are going to run for office and you are totally, completely unqualified, why wouldn't you at least glance over your candidate statement before submitting it? Maybe run a search for double periods and read it out loud once to see if the sentences make sense. I mean, you're already totally unqualified; you don't want people to think you're lazy too. Apparently this is not a concern for some of the nut jobbers who run for office. I'll post my favorite examples here, but if you want to see the whole thing, you'll have to download the pdf for yourself.
Hm, these might be too small. But maybe you can enlarge them. I hope you can read this first one, because it's easily the best.

It looks like Goberman ran for State Senate as a Libertarian in 2000. Surprisingly, he was not elected. I think his greatest qualification is "beekeeper" and my favorite line is "Smith has no faith/integrity, ignores, violates, doesn't support and criminal contempts the Constitution and Code of Ethics for Government Employees." His policy statement about crime is pretty good too. "Crimes: Harder punishment." And who doesn't like a democrat who is also a supporter of the NRA?

It also seems like this year there is an increase in the number of people who have included their grade school as a part of their educational background; who "attended" college, but did not graduate; or who took classes at several colleges over a period of many years. I think we're supposed to be impressed by this. But it just makes it more obvious that they are totally unqualified; no one cares that between 1968 and 1985 you took "night class at 8 or 9 collages [sic]," Richard Nathe, democrat running for Representative in Congress from the 5th District.

The best picture is probably Joseph Walsh (Lone Vet) who is running against Earl Blumenauer in the primary. Check this guy out: I may not want him to take Earl's place, but I think I might want to hang out with him. He's just so happy! Also, he has this line in his candidate statement: "Justice for the farmers who cry out to stop the very Peru trade deal that Representative Blumenauer is always bragging about." Hilarious! It makes it sound like he and Earl are neighbors or relatives and every time they run into each other Earl finds some way to bring up his "Peru trade deal" and Joe is just sick of it. Okay, Earl, he gets it: you're real proud. So just shut up about it, okay? Also, did he have to change his name to "Joseph Walsh (Lone Vet)" to get that in the pamphlet? I know that in some states you can only put your name and some guy in like Utah changed his name to "Only Prolife Candidate" and there was a big hullabaloo about whether or not he would actually be allowed to post his statement.
The most insane candidate statement, by far, is Gordon Leitch who is running against Gordon Smith in the Republican Primary. And by insane I mean "completely unrelated to anything that is happening anywhere in anyway." Sure, his picture says "I'm a sweet old man," but the text says, "Who doesn't know what year it is. Where's my pudding? Who opened that window? Where am I?" Oh man, I hope you can read this. It's all about the value of old eagles in 1834. Seriously. If you can't, go look at the pdf. It's page 51 of the Multnomah County pamphlet.

For the people who are qualified, a surprising number went to Harvard. It's like everyone from this state who goes to Harvard does so with the express intent of someday running for office. Actually, that might be true. This is not a big state; we can't possibly have that many Harvardites, right? (I don't know what Harvard students are called and the Internet is not yielding useful results. Come on, Harvard; Yale students are Elis - get it together!)

So yes, I hope you have enjoyed this tour of Primary Election Crazy from the state of Oregon. There is nothing I don't like about the democratic process, except the Electoral College, but that's not really very democratic, is it?

File under: Ideas that would totally work if Inspector Gadget were still on TV

A laptop for little girls that looks like Penny's book. Yes, that idea is awesome. And I totally would have begged for such a thing 20 years ago. Before laptops existed. And little girls would totally beg for it today if only Inspector Gadget were still on TV. ::sigh::

xkcd fruit chart: not accurate enough

Pete pointed it out to me: the "Fuck Grapefruit" chart on xkcd is not especially accurate. So I made my own much-more accurate chart. And then Pete accused me of being inaccurate! Well, I can't wait to see his chart... ::scoff:: Please to note, in a bid for sympathy, I have colored the names of the delicious fruits to which I am allergic red.

Thank you, Jeph Jacques, for character development!

First, a note: that title is not meant to be read sarcastically. I am totally sincere and it should be read cheerfully. Also, I'm not meaning to imply that there has never been character development in QC before. But the new stuff that's going on is all exciting and that's what I'm psyched about so that's the title.

So one of my complaints about comics (web or otherwise) is that the more people care about the characters, the harder it is for the author to have any character development. Or at least I assume it's due to reader complaint, that no author would want wooden, static characters. But I digress... One thing I love about Questionable Content is that the characters have changed and developed over time. I have enjoyed the story arcs as much as the one-offs and that is not usually the case. (Normally I get irritated when there's a non-story comic because I'm into the story, or when non-sequitur comics go all story on me because I'm like, "Why are we dwelling?") Recently I have been worried that the main female protagonist on QC was becoming a one note character, whose purpose was to act as the sadly-cynical counterpoint to an otherwise happily-cynical cast. I am really happy to see Jeph take her in a kind of new direction. (It's not totally new because he's been foreshadowing the improvements in her mental health for weeks; but he could have decided to go for drama and had her toe the same old "I'm too emotionally scarred to be anything by afraid" line.)

I think I've ranted about the relative merits of mono- and polyvocality before (probably many times, and no doubt to everyone's general chagrin), but comics offer a different set of challenges when it comes to authorial voice. Because the graphic style is (usually) consistent throughout, there's an inherent monovocality to any comic strip or graphic novel. All polyvocality must be character and dialog driven. In a book, an author might show each character's individual voice in first person or third person-limited descriptions of environment and events that evokes the character's independent perspective, as compared to third person-omniscient descriptions from the author's perspective. Sometimes the author's perspective is very subtle - it's in the way s/he gives you access to the characters thoughts and motivations, almost pleading with the reader to understand, to think: "Her reasoning is so flawed!" or "But he had such good intentions! Why can't he see how wrong he is?" But in a comic, options for separating out individual character voices are limited. (I actually think this is why so many web-comics are semi-autobiographical. But that's another post for another day.) In the beginning, as new characters were added to the QC cast, it seemed to me that they were really a parsing out of different characteristics of a particular lifestyle. Archetypes almost. And that was fine with me because it's funny and well-drawn and interesting stuff happens. But as the cast reached a stable level and Jacques started to flesh out their backstories, they really began to develop individual voices. Actually, I sometimes find it hard to distinguish Dora and Martin, or Dora and Faye, depending on who is in a scene. (Not visually, obviously; but those pairs are equally likely to make an obscure indie music reference, or threaten to pummel someone.) But most of the time I feel like I could tell you who was speaking without seeing the drawings. And that's without crazy accents!

Anyway, I've been so excited about this new story arc that I've been refreshing my QC tab every five minutes once the clock strikes 10. If Jeph posted a new comic three times a day, I would still be like, "Why do I have to wait??" So this is just to say, Thank you!, to Jeph Jacques and to prattle on about narrative voice for a bit, as I like to do. If you've read this far and are ready to kill me for being so damn boring (and such a disgusting fangirl), (and totally pretentious, all talking about literary criticism ideas she learned in a linguistics class like she knows anything), well, all I can say is: Dude. (I can't actually think of a better response that doesn't come off as trying-too-hard-to-be-clever or adversarial, so I stick with what I know.)

Sam Harris: You are a boob - Part 1?

Okay, as promised in the comments to my February 13 post, here are my complaints responses to the first 14-pages of Sam Harris' stupid thought-provoking book, The End of Faith. I've only been able to read one or two pages at a time because I've been filling the margins with notes and then getting too irritated to go on. I'll put my comments in order, with his section titles and page numbers. I have the 2004 Norton & Co. paperback version, which starts on page 11. Is there a foreword or an epigram? No. But the publisher is counting the title pages, table of contents, copyright page and the page of review pull-quotes in the page count. Maybe they always do this and I've just never noticed. But I thought those pages were supposed to be on some sort of other numbering system, using lowercase roman numerals.

"Reason in Exile" pgs 11-
11-12: I hate this first vignette. It provides this picture of a suicide bomber that is both callous and facile. Harris implies that the specifics are irrelevant because ultimately all suicide bombers are the same: they have no regard for life, no second thoughts, they're totally calm and devoid of personality. Oh, and they're Muslim. Through his generalized vignette, he intimates that the parents of suicide bombers are all proud of their children's actions and find them not just laudable, but cause for a neighborhood-wide celebration. While this may be true some of the time, it's certainly not true all of the time. The only reason to make such an intimation is to manipulate and inflame anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment.

12: He equates "belief" in science with belief in religion, aliens and politics. So let's see here: that's science=culture, science=crazy, and science=personal preferences for cultural products.

13: Here is a fun syllogism. Most people in the world believe that the creator of the universe has written a book of some kind. Each such book claims to be infallible. THEREFORE all people who believe in sacred texts believe that those texts are infallible.

13: All of these texts agree on one point: God does not endorse respect for other religions, their values, their believers or the views of those believers. "Intolerance is thus intrinsic to every creed." Next to this I wrote, "You are a boob." The implication is, of course, that if you believe in a religion, you must also be intolerant. He follows up the previous quote with "Once a person believes - really believes - that certain ideas can lead to eternal happiness, or to its antithesis, he cannot tolerate the possibility that the people he loves might be led astray by the blandishments of unbelievers. Certainty about the next life is simply incompatible with tolerance in this one." Why is this an absolute statement? By stating this as an absolute, I am forced to think, "Not all the time." And then I thought, "Wait, so you're telling me that adherents who don't try to convert everyone they know don't really believe?" I mean, it's just disrespectful to everyone.

13: He actually says, "...criticizing a person's faith is currently taboo in every corner of our culture." Yes, because Mormonism and Scientology aren't real faiths. And depending on what part of the country you're in, neither is Catholicism.

13: "...religious beliefs are simply beyond the scope of rational discourse." My note reads, "That's because they're not rational! What are you? A Vulcan?" Seriously: anyone who has ever gone through an uebermensch phase in high school knows how irrational emotions are and how difficult they are to ignore. This was the first clue that Sam Harris has not matured past the 10th grade.

13: Okay, here is a link between my problem from page 12 and the above problem also from page 13: "Criticizing a person's ideas about God and the afterlife is thought to be impolitic in a way that criticizing his ideas about physics or history is not." That's because someone who believes gravity is one of the unappreciated "sticky" forces is a buffoon. Physics is objective. And history is really meant to be an interpretation of objective data. You can ask someone to explain their interpretation, to back it up with evidence. You can't do that with religion because it's a different kind of thing. It's silly to compare them. You might as well say, "Criticizing a person's personal taste in clothing and food is thought to be impolitic in a way that criticizing his ideas about addition or what his name is are not."

13: "And so it is that when a Muslim suicide bomber obliterates himself along with a score of innocents on a Jerusalem street, the role that faith played in his actions is invariably discounted." Whaaa? Are we reading different newspapers? Are we watching different tv stations? Because from where I sit it's far from discounted: it's so obvious, it's taken for granted. There is the second sign that Sam Harris has a 10th grade perspective on the world: he can't tell the difference between taking something for granted and discounting it. He follows this up with, "Faith itself is always, and everywhere, exonerated." That is just not true. What he sees as exoneration is, in my opinion, respect for complexity. If every suicide bomber were touted as Muslim Faithful Kills Dozens, it would leave no room in the discourse for the millions of Muslims who have not and would not blow themselves up. We talk about political alliance and economic state not because we're saying, "Faith is never dangerous," but because we want to say that faith isn't always dangerous, isn't usually dangerous.

Okay, that is just three pages and this is already really long. I'll post more later. There's fun stuff to respond to: Harris believes beauty is objective! He uses bad examples! He assumes a null hypothesis of "God doesn't exist" instead of "God does exist"! It's fun fun fun!

My Royal Challenge

Have you read "The End of Faith" by Sam Harris? If you have, post your OUTRAGE here! I've only read the first five pages but I am so filled with ire at his absolutist hypocrisy I'm not sure I can go on.

And so I issue this, My Royal Challenge: I dare you to go into any bookstore and read more than the first five pages without feeling disgust, anxiety, sadness or just pure, unadulterated homicidal rage. If you can do this, than you are a better dude than I.

Notice my links!

I've recently added two new webcomic links to that bar thing on the side. With the links. You know: it's over there ----->
Anyway, you should check them out; they are awesome! Kate Beaton is Canadian and does historical comics as well as comics about her life. She is from Cape Breton and claims to have a crazy accent; I would enjoy to hear it because I love a good accent. (Why is it so much fun to hear one's own language spoken in a way that makes it almost unintelligible? I don't know!)
Anders ::hearts:: Maria is drawn by a Swedish lady, and now I know that "puss" is Swedish for "kiss." My whole Swedish vocabulary now consists of "Swedish," "girl" and "kiss." Oh, and "pant," as in the "I ran so fast I was panting," but I learned that from Anders ::symbol:: Maria as well. I recommend starting this one from the beginning otherwise it is confusing as it is in a flashback right now.
If you are not already reading Achewood, I swear to God.... Do not make me stab you with a fork. Also, Overcompensating has had some really hilarious political comics lately. They're so funny, I almost used "really" twice! And I love Scary Go Round, but Pete's hatred for it grows and grows. I would be interested to know: do any dudes like Scary Go Round or is it just the ladies? If so, kudos to John Allison (the artist) for coming up with the ultimate strategy for gettin' the ladies and gettin' rid of the dudes! (Now I am imagining the Emcee in "Cabaret" inviting people in, saying, "Meinen Damen und Herren, Madames et Monsieurs, Ladies and Dudes...") Or maybe he is gay. I used to totally love the band Moxy Fruvous (which Pete tried very desperately to ruin for me, because he hates all male, Canadian a cappella groups more than Dick Cheney eating the piece of the world's chocolate, thereby ruining sweets for him forever) and I said something about there being "the gay one." Pete said, "Dude - they're all gay." I said, "No they're not. Or at least, only one of them is obviously gay." Pete knitted his eyebrows together the way he does when he believes you are speaking what is fundamentally nonsense. "No, that's the decoy gay, to get you to say, 'Oh, that's the gay one,' and to distract you from the rest of them. They're all gay." Ask him about his theory. He was forced into a field study of this phenomenon while working at Hollywood Video, where he had to watch Tap Dogs again and again. (Also, he hates tap dancing. And musical theater. Although I'm not sure that last one is related. I think he just doesn't find their breaking out into song all the time believable. Too much Python as a lad, perhaps.)

THOSE ARE MY THOUGHTS.

ALSO, I MADE THIS AWESOME ASCII DOG (or whatever it's called with the pictures of dots and slashes) BUT THE THING MESSED IT UP. ::sad:: This is another try. With periods.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^_
/.\_/.\''''''''''''''''''''''''''''\\
|o....o..|________//
|_*__.........................|
.|.......\......_____\...|
.|_/....|_|..............|_/

Man, that is scary as fuck. It's like that dog is being shot with some kind of crazy particle ray.

Narrative In The Modern World

I have frequently thought about what the purpose of blogging is. For me, anyway. I mean, I'm not famous; I'm not doing anything earth shattering (or even interesting, for that matter); I'm not living abroad; I don't have kids; I'm not an artist; my opinions are often prosaic; and I've been told no one wants to hear about my dreams. (I blog about them anyway. Ha! Take that, People Who Aren't Interested In My Dreams!) I kind of think blogging is great. I love getting to hear what my friends are thinking about, where they're going, what they're cooking, what their kids are up to... It's like being plugged in without having to spend hours on the phone. All the stories, none of the greetings or awkward transitions. Actually, I used to love the phone. Until everyone had a cell. Now with delays, echos and quiet zones (where you can't hear someone, for no known reason), I dread the phone.

I have asked myself the same questions about journaling. What is the point? Who am I doing it for? Does anyone really care about my thoughts on politics or media or whether or not it's weird for Julian Lennon to hear Hey Jude as muzak in an elevator? More importantly: does it matter? Maybe it's worth it just to put something out there. Therapy for therapy's sake. Experiential recording for posterity's sake. I don't know. My journals are weird, weird books. Usually only the first quarter ever gets filled, and yet that can represent three or four years of entries. And there's lots of (probably) unnecessary exposition. One even has a family tree. You know - just in case. Just in case what?? What could I possibly be anticipating?

I've noticed a lot of commercials are appealing to the modern American's desire to leave a narrative mark. "It's your story. Citi Bank helps you write it." That's the one I saw most recently. But this idea that everyone has something to say... No, scratch that. That everyone has something interesting to say. Or worth saying. "Log on now and chat with your favorite characters!" I mean, does that make any sense? They're not real! It's a writer, or an intern, who drew the short straw and has to answer your retarded questions. "What's your favorite color?" "What inspired you to become a detective?" "Are your parents proud of you?" Some of it is cool, like the CNN iReporters. Every time there's a flood or an ice storm, you get awesome pictures of the bizarre shit that happens in Ruralville, Kansabraska. But even then... I have learned to never read the comments posted on CNN. They're all like, "I will pray for him. That man needs all our prayers!" And that is for everyone, from the President, to Obama, to the father of a dead child, to a serial killer. It doesn't matter; all CNN commenters ever do is pray and exhort others to pray.

Anyway. These are my thoughts. Read them. Also, I have been hittin' the lolcats again. Sry. But it's Ben's fault. He IMed me this link.

Is it my meds?

When Zyrtec (my allergy med) went OTC last month, there were three days or so between when my last script ran out and when it would be available in stores. So I was without it for three days, which kind of reset things. Zyrtec used to make me tired right after I took it, for like the first month or so, so I thought I'd start taking it at night because, you know, I have to sleep then anyway. But since then, I've been having some hell of crazy dreams. Is it the Zyrtec or is it just coincidence? Who knows. But last night I dreamt that I was playing an arcade game about skateboarding (with an actual skateboard on a roller in a Dance Dance Revolution-like set up) and then Radiohead came on and I went through the screen into the streets of the game. And Thom Yorke was there and he handed me a piece of asphalt, for which I was surprisingly grateful. He was walking backwards and singing, and I kept tripping as I was walking forward, and the asphalt would fly out of my hands. Thom would jog over and pick it up and hand it back to me. At some point, we'd gathered a large group of people around us, and then we went into a bakery for breakfast. There was a discussion about how too many sweets for breakfast made my brother sick. Then we sat at a large table and ate bagels.

I'm not even a big Radiohead fan; I pretty much only know what Thom Yorke looks like because Pete is a big fan. But the skateboarding game... I think that would be popular! It had a little display at the bottom of the screen highlighting which part of the board you should be leaning on to do the tricks. And when you pushed forward with your left foot (I'm a righty, so that's how I rolled), it was the board that moved on a roller, not a treadmill under your left foot, which added verisimilitude. I was only on the easiest level (and not very good at that), so I have no idea how tricks, jumps and allies would work. Maybe you'd have to jump and it would register the weight difference. I don't know. Anyway, video game manufacturers - get on it!

Mike & Mike: Completely Biased Commentating

Pete's been watching a lot of Blazers games, so I've been watching a lot of Blazers games. I have come to both love and hate the two local announcers. I love how much they admire the players and how excited they are about this team. I think it's funny how totally pro-Blazers they are, especially Mike Rice, who at least once a game is ired by some imagined infraction missed by the officials. Mike Barrett (or "MB" as Rice calls him, which never ceases to crack me up; it's like he's a 15-year old girl) always quietly disagrees, then when the video is replayed clearly showing no such foul, gently indicates as much and graciously allows Rice to move on to something else. What I can't stand is how repetitive they get. If I hear them say "points in the paint" one more time, I may scream. And lately Rice can't stop saying the word "faux-hawk" because if the Blazers get to the playoffs he will shave his hair into a faux-hawk, possibly because Sergio has one, possibly he made this decision before Sergio's haircut. I don't really know, and I don't really care; I just want him to stop saying faux-hawk sixteen times a game.

Rice is probably 65, but there are moments when he sounds like he's 80. And there are things he says that sound so borderline racist... I find myself saying, "Oh my God, can he hear what he's saying?" (The answer is no, because he's already moved on to the next thing.) It's clear that nothing could be farther from the truth - he seems like a super nice guy - but taken out of context, (or, if you will, in the context of my crazy racist Grandfather hypothetically saying them), and they sound pretty odd. Tonight he said something about how guys from Mississippi know how to hide in the weeds. Or maybe tall grasses? Whatever: he sounds exactly like someone's granddad giving a running commentary on the game in the middle of a family get-together. (I have to admit, that has its own appeal.) Actually, he sounds like the players' granddad giving a running commentary. Like he's just so proud of each of them, but especially Brandon Roy.

If the Mikes could just stop saying "points in the paint" (seriously! it haunts me!) and obsessing about Rice's potential future faux-hawk, it would be a great broadcast (for me). The thing is, I really like them. I like the running joke that Rice cheats at the Aflac trivia question each night. I loved when Oden joined them the other night and what they wanted to know about was the 32" sandwich he had for dinner the night before. I might hate having to watch basketball all the time, but I really like our team and it's nice to hear commentary from two guys who love our team.

Okay, I just saw Jay Leno make out with a brown bear of some sort in an ad for the Tonight Show. I have clearly gone insane. I need to go to sleep.

Popes!

Last night I had this crazy dream. I know you don't want to hear all the details, so I'll summarize. Note to Catholics: yes, this is probably a heretical dream. Except I'm not a Catholic, so I don't think it counts. Also, it's a dream. It probably means I was reading too many Pope-related comics before bed. (That is actually what I was doing before bed last night.)

Essentially I was staying with my good friend (who I haven't seen in like three years, but I'm sure she's still fantastic) Gretta and her parents (who weren't her parents; you know how dreams are) and they told me the Pope was in town and he was going to stay with them, so we all needed to wear appropriate humorous t-shirts (they were yellow). The Pope came to the house and was amused by our shirts. Gretta's dad (who may have actually been J. K. Simmons) took him to the garage to see his workshop. And the Pope died. Of old age! He just keeled over! But this did not surprise me because I've had this dream before. So I said to Gretta, "I've had this dream before. The Devil is coming. You have to get the Pope's miter and scepter out of his car." (The car was not the Popemobile, but like a big old '80s Lincoln.) She ran out and got them. I told her that she had to make herself the Pope so that we could defeat The Devil. "But how?" She asked. I said, "You'll make all of us Popes, and then we can take him from all sides." She said, "No, how do I make myself the Pope?" But it was too late: The Devil had arrived, and he was in Colin Farrel's body. That and a souped up old muscle car, like a Camaro or something. As Farrel (AKA The Devil) came up the front walk, it was like the intro to Mind Freak or something: his long hair all blowing in the wind, his silk shirt unbuttoned and billowing out behind him, his leather pants magically not making any weird leather noises as he walked. Then there was running around. Finally I remembered why Gretta had to make us all Popes: we had to bless the water and then throw it on him. (The Devil is like a cat, you see. Or maybe just Colin Farrel.) But it was too late and also we were bored and Gretta seemed tired (I mean, a gold miter and scepter must be heavy). So Colin Farrel just stalked around the house in his perpetual windstorm and I got a ride from Gretta's brother, Baird, to get some submarine sandwiches. (He was driving some kind of '60s Mustang with the top down. Why were there so many specific cars in my dream?) But I was still wearing my yellow t-shirt and that bothered me more than The Devil stalking around my friend's house.

Your guess is as good as mine as to what any of that means. But as Jung argued, you are everyone in your dream. So I am the Pope and The Devil? Huh. Maybe I just want to wear some leather pants but feel uncomfortable admitting it.

Live Blogging: The American Gladiators Experience

7:58pm - Pete and I have decided that we have to see the reborn American Gladiators to believe it. Or at least Pete has decided this, so I'm going to live blog.

8pm - The Hulkster just asked, "Where are my Gladiator Maniacs?" Um, I think you mean "hulkamaniacs."

8:01 - "And a tomboy goes against a lawyer..." Yes, truly it is the fight of the century.

8:02 - Wait, does the winner become a gladiator? During the Gladiator Roll Call, Pete just said, "Fury is a dude." That may well be true.

8:03 - First challenger - a 25-year old dude - is already crying over his mom dying of cancer. Can we have a game show these days without a back story?

8:04 - Pete says, "This is so close to Running Man." Except none of these douche bags dies. That'd be the main difference.

8:05 - "Big hit for Justice, the battle gladiator." Aren't all of them battle gladiators?
- I think the Hulkster and the first competitor were going to make out.

8:06 - The second competitor's back story involves children. Um, also, these guys are clearly actors. And isn't the scripting of this a violation of the writer's strike?

8:08 - The hulk only has one response to the competitors- "Unbelievable dude, unbelievable brother."
- Sob story... oh, I'm sorry, "back story" number 3: a Chinese tom boy whose father wanted a son and who's been petitioning to bring back American Gladiators since 2005. She clearly thinks she is the cutest thing since Teddy Ruxbin.

8:10 - Now Chinese Tom Boy is calling the Hulkster "brother."
- Competitor 4: A lawyer who is also a lady football player. She did not petition to bring the show back. I doubt her dedication and conviction.

8:12 - Chinese Tom Boy made it much higher up the rock-climbing wall because she weighs next to nothing. The gladiator is grabbing her around the waist to pull her off the wall. It's making a hilarious humping motion that I'm sure will end up on You-Tube to some '70s porn, wah-pedal heavy music.

8:13 - The Gladiator "Wolf" is pretty, um, awesome? He's got a little of The Nuge in him. And also golden locks that would make the three bears crave porridge.

8:16 - The Norse God Thor. That's what Wolf is going for. But Zaphod Beeblebrox from the movie of Hitchhiker's Guide is kind of what he achieved. They're on a pyramid of gym mats. Oh, about Gladiator Justice earlier, they said, "It's Hammer Time!" just in case you forgot that this dates to the early '90s.

8:18 - They're all wearing these neck braces that look like they're meant to pop your head off rather than protect you.

8:20 - Evidently kicking isn't allowed, but stepping on somone's head is. Semantics!

8:21 - I think Chinese Tom Boy and Gladiator Crush had a moment there. At the end they were mumbling through their mouth guards at each other and hugging. This is a weird show. I can't tell if it's intentionally homoerotic or if it's accidental.
- Militia ("Army of One") appears to have a bowling ball in his cup.

8:23 - "Son, you've gotta hulk it up, brother!" Cause the competitor's name is Son.

Wow, this is really long already. I say to Pete, "I hope this gets boringer soon." He says, "Well too bad, 'cause it's a non-stop thrill ride."

8:28 - Son is not very good at this.

8:30 - Oh, so much for semantics! Football Lawyer just got her points back for Gladiator Crush's illegal move.

8:31 - Wow, nice product placement, Nerf.

8:32 - I swear Chinese Tomboy got hit using the first weapon. Then she had to fire a crossbow but she didn't make it. I didn't remember there being a Nerf Crossbow.

8:33 - "I tried to shake and bake it, but it wasn't enough. Not enough shaking, I guess." Hrm, yes, that's what happened there.

8:35 - There is a commercial for Lipstick Jungle on. This looks like the worst, most anti-woman show since that Grey's Anatomy spinoff. "They're women, in a city, and they have sex sometimes," is Pete's analysis.

8:36 - I think Wolf just smelled Competitor 1's hair. Holy crap, he is hell of fast climbing that wall. The gladiators are acting like they won't get fed because they didn't catch these guys.

8:37 - Competitor 1's family gave the Hulkster goosebumps.

8:38 - There is a guy with a megaphone that says "GO CK" because those are Chinese Tom Boy's initials, but it totally looks like it said "GO FUCK" and was censored. Chinese Tom Boy just screamed something about the Gladiation, as in like Gladiator + Nation. Not the best portmanteau I've ever seen.

8:40 - You cannot look graceful on this show. I think Chinese Tom Boy thinks she's a boxer. She can't talk without bobbing and weaving. Of course Football Lawyer can't say a word without mentioning football some how.

Oh my God, how many commercials can there be? The answer: at least one more. Also, KGW thinks it's the #1 TV website or something. I guess other people aren't that bothered by their desire for your age, sex and zipcode every damn time you log on.

8:45 - Football Lawyer is not as good at this dodging-medicine-balls-on-a-plastic-bridge game as Chinese Tom Boy. I'm sure there's some joke there, somewhere.

8:47 - I think Competitor 1's cup is nobby. The lighting keeps highlighting it. Also, Competitor 2, Son, is not very good at this.

8:48 - Ha! Proof that they're actors! The ref just called Competitor 1 ("Evan") "Chad" and he nodded. Haha!

8:49 - Hey, they stole all these obstacles from Ninja Warrior!

8:50 - How you can celebrate "the fastest time ever" in a show this new?
- Pete just said, "Nagano could take all these guys." Yes, but so could Mr. Ninja Warrior, the guy who competes on that show in a diaper and never makes it past round 1. [Correction: Mr. Ninja Warrior isn't the diaper guy, but he did compete in short-shorts once.]

They made a new Rambo movie. I... But... It's... Just, why? Why was this necessary?

Oh my God, there's a new Guinness World Record's show and it has someone undoing bra straps. That is the most American thing I've ever heard of!

8:55 - Football Lawyer is a whiner. Chinese Tom Boy is over-confident. Whose obnoxious idiosyncrasy will reign supreme?
"Are the containers ready?" The ref is having some issues.

8:57 - There's no real penalty for not completing these events. Also, they both suck at this. If "Chad" could do it in 1:30...

8:58 - To the Hulkster, everything is "unbelievable!" He must be the biggest nihilist ever: he doesn't even believe in things he's seen with his own eyes.

8:59 - Ooh, next week a "47-year old single mother takes on a precocious cheerleader! It's a battle of the ages!" and a long-haired chiropractor takes on... eh, someone else. But this guy has hippie hair! That's gotta be good, right?

Sadly, I will never know who becomes the next gladiator. Because I don't care. I don't know if this show is worse the second time around, but it was bad enough the first time that it really doesn't matter. How did this get brought back and yet Firefly and Freaks and Geeks remain canceled? It's a strange world.

Now I don't need to see the movie!

What the hell is up with movie previews? I don't go to the movies very often, but that is partly because with movie previews the way they are, I don't need to. I swear to God, why do they feel they have to give away the whole movie in the trailer?

Voice Over Guy: Marty Beacon had the perfect life - two beautiful children, a husband who loved her, a house in the suburbs - until one day, all that changed. Now her husband doesn't know her, her children are terrified of her, and everyone tells her that Marty Beacon died two years ago.
Marty: Why is this happening to me? Why, God, why?!
VOG: Marty must investigate her own death under the guise of someone else, and all the while she feels she's being watched.
Marty: There's someone watching me. I know it...
VOG: Who is watching her? Why are they following her? Marty will have to openly face her nemesis in a fight for her life!
Marty: Show yourself!
VOG: Can she stop him? Will it get her family back? Or is it already too late...
[Marty is in hospital bed, lots of tubes and wires. The camera pans up to a doctor looking over her chart, then turning to her... husband and children, gathered around her bed!]
Husband: Doctor, how is she?
Doctor: I won't lie to you - it doesn't look good.
Husband: What's wrong with her?
Doctor: Nothing.
Husband: What? How can that be?
Doctor: We've done every test we have and they've all come back negative. No, I'm sorry sir, this is beyond our capabilities. Whatever is wrong with Marty, it's something she's got to battle out herself.
VOG: As Marty battles within herself, with her own secret demons, her family waits anxiously by her side. Will Marty ever wake up? Will she ever learn the truth? Find out, this summer, in "Beacon Hill."
[Final shot of Marty in hospital bed, eyelids fluttering, kids saying, happily, "Mom?"]

Who came up with this name?

Have you seen the product "Lectric Shave"? It's tagline is "Blade close. Lectric smooth." Who came up with this name? Was "Electric Shave" taken? And what does "lectric smooth" mean? That's not a thing! The new commercial has a guy with a face full of stubble that, upon closer inspection, all have his face. The stubble are all wilted and sad. And then he rubs on his shave lotion (or whatever it is) and they all stand up straight, grinning and surprised. "Lectric shave!" they shout. I have two questions.
1) How creepy is it that sentient facial hair look forward to the most obvious sign of their own demise?
2) Do all of the stubble faces have faces on their stubble?

His Dark Materials: Not So Dark

I didn't hear about "The Golden Compass" or the "His Dark Materials" series until the movie of the first book came out last year. And I wasn't really interested then either. I mean, come on: armored polar bears? Yes, very exotic. A+. Now sit down and shut up. But then I heard that these books were anti-religious and had angered the far right. I thought, "I bet they aren't either. I bet they're all like, 'Hey, it's Sunday, let's have an ice cream,' and the religicos are all like, 'Oh my G-... goodness, they hate God and want to kill him with an ice cream on his day of rest!' Stupid right wing nut jobs." (Just as an aside, have I ever mentioned how totally tolerant I am of other people's beliefs? I'm like a frickin' saint.) Armored bears? Twee exotic. Anti-religious themes? Ooh, count me in!

**SPOILER ALERT**
I will try not to give away plot points, but in so much as they are about the stance these books take vis-a-vis religion, it may be unavoidable.

CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED

So I read the first one as quickly as I could, getting very little sleep in the process. And it wasn't anti-religious, and certainly not anti-Christian. It was a great little adventure story about a bratty little girl, the world's awesomest pocket watch, some armored bears and a really evil monkey. It wasn't exactly what I'd consider a children's story, but it's themes regarding religion could be summed up as follows: "Religion is fine, whatever, and faith is really a good thing, but you know what sucks? The Spanish Inquisition. Yeah, religions should really avoid that Torquemada shit." Pete said that the real Anti stuff didn't occur until the second and third books, according to what he'd read about them, so of course I had to go on. The second book ("The Subtle Knife") did broaden the anti-religious sentiment. It's message was more: "Actually, now that I think about it, religion in general kind of sucks. Somaybeweshouldkillgodjustasuggestion. Or whatever." And I was left with the feeling that something had happened in the midst of writing the last quarter of the first book that had poisoned Pullman against the church as evinced by the second books more strident denunciation. Still, it wasn't exactly revolutionary. More like, "Well, if the church in this made up world is evil, maybe one should excise its black heart." It didn't imply, "The church in reality is evil. Seriously. Evil." And the story was still engaging - now there was a sullen boy character from our own world! and the world's awesomest knife! - so I forged ahead. (Actually, that makes it sound like work. I'll try again.) - so I excitedly started devouring the third book ("The Amber Spyglass"), anxious to see what would become of Lyra (bratty girl who is also inexplicably sympathetic) and Will (sullen boy who is necessarily sympathetic for putting up with Lyra).

The third book started out by pretty much shouting at the top of its voice: JUST IN CASE YOU MISSED IT BEFORE, UM, THIS IS AN ALLEGORY FOR HOW THE CHURCH IS EVIL AND NOW YOUR BELOVED CHARACTERS ARE GOING TO EMBARK ON A MISSION TO KILL GOD; TRY NOT TO STRESS OUT ABOUT IT TOO MUCH BECAUSE IT'S FOR THE BEST. And that was okay because up until that point they had primarily been adventure stories and that's what I was in them for anyway. Also, the baddest of the baddies (the one with the evil monkey) had yet to be dispatched, so I had that too look forward to. But then...

Wait, let me describe this book physically first, in case you haven't seen them. This is a 450 or so-page paperback in like 8pt type. It's not what I would call a long book, but I certainly wouldn't call it short. It's more like the book you take on vacation - it's good for 5 hours on a plane, half an hour to an hour every night before bed in your hotel room, and the 5 hours back home. In that size of an adventure/fantasy book I expect a main quest, one or two side quests, some kind of mystical destiny to be fulfilled, a Big Bad to be revealed, thwarted, reborn and then finally defeated, and then for either a family to be reunited or the protagonist to fall in love (it works if they just come to grips with the death of their parents or lover instead, if that's what's called for). Probably someone should make a noble sacrifice in there somewhere. If it's a book for adults, there will probably be some awkwardly written sex, but that's okay so long as no one's "manhood" throbs and no one feels "awash in womanly" anything. (PS: this is one of the primary reasons I prefer young adult sci-fi/fantasy as no one ever goes farther than kissing or virgin marriage.)

But what does "The Amber Spyglass" give you? Deus Ex Machina MacGuffin Quest 2008. It reads like a series of half-hour episode summaries for a British mini-series called Amber Spyglass. Every improbable idea works the first time, exactly as it's meant to. The magical items that propelled the plot of the first two books are suddenly MacGuffined for no clear reason. Why does it matter if so-and-so stole your awesome tool if you're never going to use it? Oh, because you needed a reason to go to this other place and steal this toy that for a while was also an awesome tool but now will also not be used. Even when they do use their magic items, one is given the impression by the ease with which they pick up these esoteric new skills that the item is itself irrelevant. And really, that would almost have been a more interesting story. What if Will didn't need a knife, subtle or otherwise, to cut his way into other parallel worlds? What if Lyra didn't need a golden symbol reader - or even a brass tack! - to understand the universe and answer impossible questions?

"The Amber Spyglass" is a little breathless at times. I think Pullman had enough ideas left over at the end of "The Subtle Knife" for about 10 books, but decided it had to be a trilogy because of God or Jesus or the Holy Ghost or someone, and so just crammed all the ideas he could into one book. The result is that the characters never have more than a moment for introspection or development and it is wearying. An example:
A: Hey, that's a neat watch.
B: Oh yeah? Thanks! Oh no, that man stole it!
A: Really? Well let's steal it back.
B: Oh no, it's not where we saw him leave it!
C: Hey kids, I'll make you a deal: I'll give you your watch if you get me a new spork.
B: Any spork?
C: No, a specific, magic spork, that makes everything taste like meatloaf and A-1.
A: K...
C: Oh, did I mention that it's in a parallel universe?
B: Hey, we're in the parallel universe. Thank god we just happened upon that door marked "Parallel Universe, In Here"
A: Oh no, some crazy guy has the spork!
B: Let's fight him.
D: Oh-you killed me! You're now the Spork Master!
A: Let's get my watch back.
B: Yeah, we have the watch and the Spork!
A: Let's go to Hades.
B: Okay!
A: Wow, Hades sucks.
B: Yeah, let's let all the dead out of it.
A: Good idea!
B: There you go, ghosts! Enjoy Not Hades!
A: Oh no, I'm captured!
B: I'll save you!
A: Safe - except for this new and even more random danger!
And it just goes on like that for 450+ pages.

Somewhere along the line Pullman just completely loses his authorial voice. I mean completely. In literary theory they talk about monovocality and polyvocality - all the characters having the author's voice and pushing forward his/her agenda versus all the characters having independent voices from the author's as well as independent agendas. The first truly polyvocal writers are said to be the 19th century Russians - Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, etc. - and when you compare them to say, Jane Austin, you can really see what a literary theorist is talking about. Normally I am irritated by monovocality, unless it is historically appropriate. For instance, George Sand's "Indiana" or Voltaire's "Candide" wouldn't be very good political statements if the characters could voice opinions that differed from the author's main purpose. But a good story, especially a good adventure, is always better when it's polyvocal. And that doesn't mean you can't hear the author: you can, it's just separate from the characters. An allegory kind of has to be monovocal, which is why complex adventure stories usually make poor allegories. Questing stories make excellent allegories; they're very linear. "The Golden Compass" was truly polyvocal, in my opinion. It was, at its heart, an adventure and Lyra had all the hallmarks of a great adventurer: brave, lucky, foolhardy, smart-assed, headstrong, loyal, clever, compassionate... The second book was pretty good that way too, although at times it seemed like the author was working a little too hard to force Lyra and Will into different voices every time they seemed to naturally align. The third book began the decent into allegory. And that's where Pullman really got lost. Rather than my usual complaints about a monovocality where polyvocality is warranted or vice versa, it was like Pullman himself didn't know what he was going for. There are whole sections of the book where I can almost hear him pacing behind me, fretting, "Oh dear oh dear oh dear," as he tries to stay true to his adventuring ideas (The world of the dead! Also: harpies!) and yet at the same time force it into an allegory-shaped box.

By the end, the dialog doesn't even sound like the same characters any more. They're completely washed out. And that is when you can really begin to see the author's philosophical struggle. On the one hand, he wants to make sure you understand that Religion Is Bad And Evil And The Source Of All Suffering, so he has to set his characters up for heartbreak so you'll want them to succeed. But he loves his characters: Will and Lyra are his children. So he wants them to be happy and then they are. But that seems to imply that all it takes to be happy in the world is to reject religion, and that becomes its own religion, so they have to continue to suffer so that you know that's just how the world is. But that shouldn't make up doubt that the world has the potential to be a nice and good place! So then he gets all hopeful again. The ending is so sugar-coatedly twee, so transparently uplifting and inspiring, that it even as it made my eyes tear up and my chest heavy with sadness for these two sweet-hearted little kids I'd been rooting for, it also made my eyes roll. Pete thinks there should be a word for that, crying and eye rolling. He suggested Crainge, like cry+cringe.

So what is the bottom line. The bottom line is that "The Amber Spyglass" was wholly unsatisfying. I'm sitting here right now wishing I knew what happened to Lyra and Will. Only I do know. What happened was so super saturated with adventure and doe-eyed adoration it read like fan fiction and therefore doesn't really feel like part of the story. Here is a summary of how "The Amber Spyglass" ultimately concludes its tail:**SPOILERS**

Two 12-year olds maybe have sex and that saves the world from pouring all of its consciousness into a great abyss. Religion is bullshit, but ESPECIALLY Christianity - one character actually says, "Christianity got it completely wrong" which lead me to say to myself, "Bone to pick much?" which when I type it doesn't look like it makes much sense but it did in my head - and God is a hobbled old man who just wants to die, except that he's not even the creator because no one knows how that happened, but maybe it was just science or something. ANYWAY, the real meaning of life, the universe and everything is a balance between altruism and sensual pleasures (of which I'm sure there are exactly 42) and that's why it's okay for two 12-year olds to have sex (maybe - it says "they lay together" - about as subtle as a knife that cuts through anything).

Sigh. The worst part is that I can't stop thinking about it because it was so unsatisfying. If you've read these books, I'd be interested to know what you think. Or if you haven't read them. Either way. I've been harassing Pete with it all evening. And he was like, "Oh my God this is a lengthy blog post so please type it up and stop asking me if I think a confused authorial voice and allegory that might just be a bad metaphor or analogy makes for poor reader satisfaction!" So I'm posting a lengthy blog post and asking you: what do you think?

Calling all Sociologists!

Calling all sociologists! We've got an 11-59!

If you are interested in the sociology of video gaming (or just the sociology of gender) you need to be watching the crap on the G4 video game channel. Their "Attack of the Show" is pretty much the worst thing on TV - they just interviewed David Caruso and managed to make him look like a professional - but even watching it on mute, you get a good sense of what I'm talking about. Some of the dudes are "cool" (or metro or at least well-dressed) or whatever, and some are just gamer nerds. But ALL of the ladies are hot. To a woman, they are all slender, boobied and long-haired. Now if you can stand to watch this show with sound, you'll find that the dynamic between the two hosts (a guy and a girl) is straight out of the '70s. It's vaguely anti-woman with a smiling nod to her inferior gaming knowledge/skillz. All of the jokes (which are universally terrible) are about sex (doin' chicks), poo or how nerds are not very physically active. It's such a perfect picture of what industry thinks of gamers - they want to be Rico Suave and hang out with attractive ladies, they like jokes about sex and poo, they can only understand things if presented as a videogame analogy - it borders on parody. In fact, they hosts are constantly shrieking at the viewer, "We know what you want! We know what you want!" Which begs the question: if you're presenting the viewer with what he wants, why do you have to tell him that?

Identity reinforcement is an interesting phenomenon in popular culture. I was recently trapped in a clinic lunch room for 8 hours doing patient interviews and forced to listen to country music all day. Prior to this time, I had never listened to much country - just whatever one crazy friend forced on my in high school. The first thing I noticed in the first two hours was that I can't tell the songs apart unless it changes from a male to a female singer. The second thing I noticed was that the lyrics are constantly describing (building?) and reinforcing the Country Identity. In talking about this with Joe, Lisa and Pete, Lisa pointed out that they also spring God on you at the end of the song. Here is what it's like:
I wear my jeans,
I drive my truck,
my life is just like yours.
I got this girl,
she's really cute,
but sometimes she's real trouble.
Now you understand
what I'm talking about
because we all got problems.
The pastor says
my girl means well
so I pray on it each Sunday.

This is not something I've ever noticed in rock music, or even in rap. Rap does a lot of identity work, but it's mostly: I'm awesome, I'm keepin' it real, my life kicks ass, here is a list of things that I do because I'm awesome. The identity construction available to listeners isn't aimed at them the way it is in country. Country music says, "Here's what you are, and so are we, and we should all be content with that, for better or worse." Rap music, on the other hand, offers a description of an great life and implies that if you were to achieve/do/own these things, your life would be great as well. Some rap concentrates on the "keepin' it real" vibe, but even then it's more like a personal justification of realness rather than an instruction to the listener.

Here are links to the lyrics for of the Top 10 Hot Country Songs from Billboard (1/19/08).
1. Taylor Swift, Our Song
2. Sugarland, Stay
3. Montgomery Gentry, What do ya think about that?
4. Rascal Flatts, Winner at a Losing Game
5. Keith Urban, Everybody
6. Brad Paisley, Letter to Me
7. Gary Allan, Watching Airplanes
8. Kenny Chesney, Don't Blink
9. Josh Turner, Firecracker
10. Billy Ray and Miley Cyrus, Ready, Set, Don't Go

I read through these lyrics and came up with 28 themes that seemed pretty common and then (because I'm a totally OCD nerd) made a little chart and counted up which songs had which themes/words. Here they are, from most common to least common:

• Love - 8
  
• Church/praying/God - 7
• Car/truck - 6
• Baby (word) - 5
• Time - 5
• Crying - 5
• Leaving - 4
• Pain - 4
• Mama/Daddy (words) - 3
• High school - 3
• Sex - 3
• Love lost - 3
• Looking back - 3
• Kids - 3
• Packing - 3
• Phone/calling - 2
• Beer/drunk/drugs - 2
• Farm - 2
• "Others" - 2
• Games/prize/win/lose - 2
• American holiday/event - 2
• Marriage - 2
• Town (word) - 2
• Loneliness - 2
• Truth/lies - 2
• Radio/music - 2
• Clothes - 1
• Cheating - 1

Okay, so it looks like (at least for this week's top 10) my sense that country songs are always telling you what the singer is wearing is maybe a little exaggerated. Two of the seven songs that talk about God/church in some way do so as an ambiguous reference (one to "faith" and one to "heaven"), so that count is debatable. But overall it looks like the sense that country music is all about love, God, one's "baby" and automobiles is pretty accurate. The two songs that didn't talk about love are the Montgomery Gentry song about how people gossip about you when you're white trash, but dagnabbit, you got a right to keep a rusted out ol' Ford in your front yard while you splash mud all over the town with your big 4-wheel drive; and the Keith Urban song, which is about depression and loneliness and having hope.

In terms of which song had the most of the 28 themes, that would be the Brad Paisley song, with 13 (car, god, daddy, high school, love, sex, American event, marriage, love lost, looking back, kids, pain, time). Sugarland was a close second with 12 (baby, god, phone, crying, cheating, love, leaving, sex, loneliness, truth/lies, pain, time), and the Cyruses were third with 11 (car, baby, god, crying-kind of implied, love, leaving, town, game, kids-implied, packing, pain). Gary Allen had 10. Taylor Swift, Rascal Flatts, and Kenny Chesney had 9. Montgomery Gentry had 8, Josh Turner had 5 and Keith Urban only had 3.

Of course, this is far from scientific (bordering on "pointless waste of time"), but I think it's interesting to note that the 8/10 of the Billboard top 10 hot country songs are about love in some way and that 7/10 involve God, prayer or christianity. Shouldn't there be more variety? I was going to do the same thing for the top 10 rock and top 10 rap songs, but now I'm bored, so I'm just going to assume that 8/10 of the songs on those lists would not share a single theme. What is the point? Hegemony. It's there on G4, too. My thesis statement is that while identity promotion (represented by rock, rap and tv stations not devoted to video games) can be thematically diverse, identity construction/reinforcement is thematically hegemonic and music/programming in hegemonic genres MUST pay homage to the hegemony or face expulsion/reclassification.

Sociologists, get on this! I want to see papers on my desk by week's end!

Weather, TV, Books - I have opinions!

Far be it from me to criticize the navigational abilities of weather, but I feel that we may need to stage an intervention. First, hurricane force winds and rain and flooding in NW Oregon. But okay, it's off the ocean, and the ocean is, if anything, powerfully unpredictable. Maybe even weather can't help that. But now a tornado? In VANCOUVER? I mean, that's just crazy talk! And it turns out there was an even more devastating tornado in Vancouver in 1972.

Momentary digression: I just saw an ad for the Portland Bridal Expo and it had some of the WORST film ever. The final images are of a "bride" traipsing down the runway and then a freeze frame right after she's turned. It's shot from below and at an angle, so imagine that her head is a straight vertical line at the center top of the shot; her body is a straight line from her neck to the bottom right corner of the screen, but turning in the middle so there's an almost nausiating sense of wrongness; her right arm is (if I remember correctly now) swinging out ahead of her from her far side, aimed towards the lower left corner; and her left arm is bent at the elbow, forming a triangle with her hip as the base and her elbow as the apex. The bouquet is in her left hand, looking stapled to her hip. And all of this is shot from below, so there are shadows under her chin and nose. It's a bridal expo, people: it's filled with people who know how to favorably photograph any bride in any light. But no: you picked the guy who usually shoots the car show because he knows the layout of the Expo Center already and will give you a discount if you buy him a hotdog.

Also, I've been reading a lot lately because... well, sadly, not because I love to read (which I do), but because of the writer's strike and Pete having Halo 3, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect and now The Orange Box. [Fox 12 Morning Show update: one of their on-the-spot reporters is in a rented tux, dancing with a woman at the Expo Center. I think it's a very stiff box-step foxtrot. Oh God: he's trying to rumba and is doing that little twirling your hands and then shaking one to the side on the final beat thing. ::shudder::] I've read a lot of PD James mysteries, which I highly recommend. They're smart, James Doesn't try to prove to you that her detective is smart through gimmickry (like one writer who made a point of telling you that her main character had a 180 IQ, a perfect size-8 body and connections to Mossad in the first chapter of every book), they don't encourage you to solve the mystery yourself -although you sometimes can- and they don't usually end in the detective squaring off against his foe in a mano a mano battle to the death. I would start with an early one, like "A Mind to Murder" or "Unnatural Causes" before reading some of the later ones, like "The Black Tower" or "Death of an Expert Witness." The best of all (in my opinion, and of the one's I've read) is "Original Sin." It's like a thick set of character studies and is ultimately a rumination on the nature of family, personal loss, cruelty, revenge and forgiveness. But it helps to understand the main detective (Dalgliesh), although it isn't necessary to follow the plot.

I also just read "Stardust," which is a very sweet fairytale for adults because it has some cusses and some sex - but tasteful sex! It took about four hours to read, so if you've got a flight to take, it's the kind of paperback you can read on the plane and leave for the next passenger.

Yesterday I finished "The Golden Compass" and now I'm on to the second in that series, "The Subtle Knife." They're really good - fantasy adventure stories starring children without ever being cloying or new-agey. I picked them up because I was told they made fundamentalist christians mad and I had to know what all the fuss was about. The first one is more, "Oh, and also, in this world the Church is more like the Spanish Inquisition Church than the Church of today, and that's bad." But the second one is proving to be more, "And religion in general is a bad thing, tearing apart the universe and sending jackbooted thugs to your door." But we'll see. Mostly they're just really fun to read without making me cry (::coHARRYPOTTERugh::).

My fears. Read about them.

I think the cat is eating my insoles (the ones in my shoes, not the ones on my feet). I'm not sure when, as I'm almost always wearing them and she isn't allowed in our bedroom at night. But there is a big chunk out of one heel that seems unlikely to be the result of normal wear and tear.

That's it. That's all I fear, right now. Okay, there's tons of other stuff I fear, but it's the same old stuff that everyone always fears: murderers, bears, spiders, republicans, vulpinocracy, Tony Romo, poison, Bret Favre's inevitable retirement... The list goes on and is boring so I'm just going to stick with the cat/insoles thing for now.