Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Life Software Updates

I just nearly pissed myself.  I just heard Ben Folds' cover of "Bitches Ain't Shit" by Dr. Dre.  It is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, and I feel really good about it.  But this note is entirely unrelated.

In my philosophy class last year, we had discussions about whether or not we live in the best of all possible worlds.  I'm not going into my opinion of it.  The best of all possible worlds may not be a perfect world, etc., etc.  But even if this is the best of all possible worlds, it could use some software updates:

1. No bad hair days.  As somebody with an unruly mass of curly, fine, easily tangled hair, bad hair days follow me like the smell of toilet disinfectant from someone who just used a train bathroom.  They detract from the quality of my life, and trying to figure out what to do about them slows down my movement to breakfast.

2. A seat always available in my favorite coffee shop.  Scenario: I purchase a delicious chai latte, reading to read my Dostoevsky and quietly contemplate the futile nature of my existence.  I turn, and all seats are filled with chatting groups and people hunched over their laptops, reading erotic stories, taking personality tests and occasionally actually working.  I am forced to take my chai to go and think about something more frivolous like the wildly ugly coat that girl across the street is wearing.

3. I will not watch somebody scoop out the last of the ice cream in the dining hall.  There's something disheartening about fighting your way into an ice cream line, only to watch the last of the mint chocolate chip go into the bowl of someone who will appreciate it far less than you would have.

4. A loud whooping noise or similar alert will go off when someone runs a red light while you're trying to jaywalk farther down the road.  I was nearly mowed down today.  There's only room for one lawbreaker at a time, buddy.

5. Laundry will teleport itself to the laundry room.  Currently my laundry options are both located in the basements of buildings that are not my dorm.  I am forced to lug my heavy (procrastination and serial clothing-changing is a harsh marriage) laundry bag down four flights of stairs and across the quad.  Even worse, however, is the trek back up, involving four flights UP.

6. MORE SPONTANEOUS DANCE PARTIES.  I just can't live like this anymore.  I turn on the music and start dancing.  People avoid eye contact and stay where they are, resisting the beat.  "But there aren't that many peope here."  I care nothing for your whims, only my own.  If you can't find the courage to dance without a horde of sweaty people pressed up against you, you don't deserve to enjoy dancing.  And I want you to enjoy dancing.

7. iTunes will stop trying to foil my attempts to own more music than I will ever listen to.  You may think you're safe, but when you've forgotten about this threat, when you're least suspecting it...

8. People will make decisions according to the Apple Jacks slogan, "We eat what we like."  If you're deciding between two things, do what you like.  If you chose something you know you'd hate, knowing the outcome, you don't get to whine about it.  I can't help that you chose Raisin Bran.  Being miserable for the right reasons isn't a way to live your life.

Installing Best of All Possible Worlds, Version 1.1...

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Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Some things never change

I'd forgotten something important about Thanksgiving break.  There are many things I forgot, actually.  For instance, if you're full, you shouldn't try to eat more.  If your father keeps heaping turkey on your plate, you should stop him before he gives you more than you want, therefore obliging you to eat a sickening amount of turkey for fear of wasting food.  It will make you lie on the couch in the fetal position and groan immediately after dinner.  I moaned and watched Jurassic Park as I recovered. 


The nightly news said that the average college student, due to a combination of missing home cooked meals and Thanksgiving being a gluttonous holiday, gain an average of two pounds over the vacation.  I'm entirely unsurprised, given my experience this year.

But there is a more important thing I forgot.  Boys come back from vacations with terrible haircuts.  I don't know it could have slipped from my attention.  I walked into a class today and had to keep myself from staring.  My shining light, the cute boy in the class, had gotten himself a hideous haircut.  A little piece of me dies every time a boy cuts off perfectly good hair.  Somehow I thought that going to college would change this, but apparently I was wrong.  After all, mothers, after not seeing their sons for months, are horrified at the length of their sons' hair until the men are middle-aged.  At that point, men start balding, and cutting hair short becomes a non-issue.

The cute boy had betrayed me with his haircut.  He was still attractive, but it wasn't the same knowing he let his mother cut his hair or send him to a $10 barber.  He should have been more considerate of my eye candy needs.  The look in his eyes told me he knew he looked like a pitifully shorn lamb.  But all across campus, men walk seemingly unaware that something is horribly awry.

Some things, like poor vacation haircut decisions, never change, but the nice haircuts of attractive men should not.

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Monday, November 27, 2006

Skinny Jeans

Well, I broke down.  I bought a pair of skinny jeans.  Two, actually.  I'd been eyeing other girls enviously as they walked past.  The jeans had several things going for them:

1. They are cute.

2. They look really good with the new coat I just bought.

3. Most importantly: even though, like all jeans nowadays, they are two inches too long, because they are tight around the ankle, I can just scrunch them up so that they don't drag on the ground.  The draggy pant hems won't get soaked when it's raining, leading to a slow upward invasion of pant wetness.  Or rip and get trampled on until the back part of the hem falls off from the consequence of their being designed for tall, Amazon women.

As is my fashion when purchasing new clothing, I eyed myself in the mirror, admiring particularly how nice my ass looked.  A certain amount of vanity is only appropriate when revamping a wardrobe.

I resisted for a long time because it seemed like an extension of the leggings trend.  I was done with leggings before they even started.  It's possibly the dumbest thing I've ever seen, aside from the shirtdress.  You don't get to hybridize shirts and dresses; you have to pick one.  Just like I will eat you if I see you wearing a skirt over pants, the shirtdress is unacceptable.  I tried the leggings under a mini-skirt once, to give it a fair try, and it did not bear repeating.

In short, I have a new love, and it keeps my ankles warm.

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Thursday, November 23, 2006

Where did you people learn to drive?

I saw two fender-benders in a thirty minute period today.  I thought that was noteworthy.  I was almost involved in an accident, too.  A car in front of me on the freeway decided, after coasting along in the exit-only left lane that it was time to merge back into traffic.  He figured that just sort of pushing his way in would be sufficient.  It wasn't.  A car honked at him as he almost plowed into its side, and I almost slammed into the back of the half of the car still left in my lane.  Balls!

The first fender-bender was on my way to go shopping.  I was on Wisconsin Ave. and this jackass who'd been tailgating me changed lanes.  He got ahead of me by a light and I thought it would be the end.  The best part of the story is that jackass isn't the one who hit someone.  He was rear-ended by a Mercedes SUV.  Jackass' car rocked, and I thought for sure, because they didn't move when the light turned green, that they were going to pull over to the side of the road and trade information.  Instead, they both drove away without getting out of their vehicles, and then jackass began following the Mercedes, who tried to shake him by wildly changing lanes.  I was glad to get away from that mess.

The second fender-bender was on the way back from shopping.  One car was turning, and the car behind him, eager to turn before the light turned red, initiated a bumper kiss.  Oy vey.  And here, too, they both drove on as though nothing had occurred.

Which brings up the important question: where did you people learn to drive? Because your skills are embarrassingly poor.

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Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Procrastination and Delusions, my cruel lovers

I've discovered something important.  Although I don't have time to talk to my friends while I'm writing a paper, but I do have the time to get a high score in Zuma.  I was talking to a bunch of people online last night, a la middle school, when I was supposed to be writing my paper on the ecological validity of infant cognition.  About four hours from when I knew I would pass out (falling asleep in the library is the opposite of fun: you always wake up to find someone staring at you raptly) I realized that I'd been dicking around for two hours.

I said goodbye to everyone and signed off.  After all, I didn't have time to be wasting.  Well, it turns out that I did.  Two hours after some vigorous writing and deep thoughts on how I could relate infant social cognition and violent conflict, I was distressed.  After days of writing, I had reached the saturation point where I wasn't even really reading the paper anymore, just staring blankly at the words as my eyes ran over them.

I went to that most awful of sites, addictinggames.com, and visited one of my first loves, Zuma.  I had isolated myself in a library full of hostile upperclassmen with who could sit in the same room as me for three hours and pretend that I don't exist.  But it was all for naught.  Zuma and I bonded.  It was just the thought that I was taking a break from work, that I would soon have brilliant insight and write an award-winning essay.  Pretending to be closer to working is comforting.

And now my much neglected favorite thing, a list.  I don't have time to...

...study properly for my Japanese test, but I have time to write a blog entry.

...pay attention to my editor while she's making my article better, but I have time to go get ice cream.

...sleep as much as I want, but I have time to watch the entire first season of House in a week.

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Tuesday, November 14, 2006

For the Longest Time

Dear Male A Capella Groups:

For the longest time I have hated the Billy Joel song "For the Longest Time." I know it is simple to sing, and that's why you chose it. But please strike it from your repertoire. Not all of you are talentless hacks, so I don't know why you insist on keeping that song around. It no longer makes me swoon, nor did it after the trillionth time a group started singing it. Those initial bumbumbums and snaps now fill me with dread, and I flinch.

It's not that I hate Billy Joel. Though I did for some time, I've come to accept my love of certain songs, such as the great step backward for meaningful relationships, "Only the Good Die Young." But, really, it's time to let the "For the Longest Time" legacy of Billy Joel go.

You're going to have to work a little harder to turn the female part of the audience turn to jelly from this point onward. Now you know: we're on to you.

-Meredith, Who Prefers the Song "Fuck You Gently" by Tenacious D

Monday, November 13, 2006

Old Man, Get Away

When I think about it, the story of my life is this: once upon a time a girl named Meredith was born.  It was really awesome, and she grew up a happy, loved child whom people often found to be of an ambiguous race.  For four years, including middle school, she went through the "ugly phase."  When it passed, she was intact, and went through high school.  But despite not having any abnormal growths (like a third foot) coming out of her forehead, the only males who seemed interested in her were middle-aged men and skeezy grocery store workers.

It is my great talent in life to attract middle-aged men.  Then are generally balding, usually encounter me in restaurants, and always overt in their passes.  Case in point: I innocently went to get Chinese food with my suitemate on Thursday.  We waited at the counter until our food was ready.  A balding, red haired man entered to pick up some food, probably on the way home from work.  "You've got beautiful hair," he said.  I took it as ordinary; people have a tendency to talk about my hair or touch it, asking if I'm okay with it as an afterthought.

We shoved over to give him room to order.  My suitemate went to the candy-for-a-quarter machine and bought some Runts, those little, hard fruit candies shaped like the fruit they represent.  I may be the only person on the planet who likes the banana-flavored ones, so I took them from her.  As is my fashion, I teased her for having inferior tastes in candy and declared my love for the banana candies.  The man, watching us from the other side, "Hot and with great taste? What a winning combination."

I exited the restaurant in distress.  There was the great possibility that he'd been hinting something about my love of bananas beyond the flavor.  And that was something I'd rather have not thought about.

It was certainly far from the most brazen manner in which I've been propositioned.  My favorite pick-up line of all time was when a drunk guy at a frat just pointed at his crotch and smiled.  But still, I had hoped to get dinner without being bothered.

So here's the question of the day: do I have a middle-aged man magnet hidden somewhere? Also, is there a linear relationship between hair loss and inclination to hit on teenage girls?

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Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Important Thoughts

Thoughts of the day:

I had sweet potato pie today, and it tasted like dish soap.

The garbage in my dorm hallway smelled like Kraft macaroni and cheese, but I'm sure no one threw it out there.

I know a man who can kick himself in the head, and I didn't realize it.

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Voting!

Today, I voted for the first time.  I called my parents so they could congratulate me.  I got a sweet "I voted today!" sticker.  It was pretty excellent.  Exercising constitutional rights is one of my favorite things.

And you know why I did it? Partly because I'm interested in how the country is run and want to have input in it.  But the perhaps more driving force was this: to complain.  I think that's actually pretty reflective of the driving force behind much of the youth.  We are constantly looking for more excuses to gripe.  While we're angry about harsher dress codes, being forced by parents to adhere to curfew, etc., we're also secretly delighted because it's another excuse to find fault with the world.  Being dissatisfied is one of our greatest pleasures.

You can't really change the fact that it's snowing.  But that's not so for politics.  When you complain about how America is run, you have to have at least done something  to try to make it better.  The Constitution offers you a way to have input for minimal effort.  If you're not willing to do even that, you don't have the right to be righteously indignant.  People just aren't going to care.  I'm tired of people whining about how bad Bush is and how their votes don't matter.  Or people only vote for the president.  I'd like to point out that there are other important things to vote for, like trying to regain majority in the Senate. 

And you don't know until the votes are counted whether or not you were making the difference or just adding to the majority vote.  Basing your action on the possibility of not making the difference in an election is foolish.  Less than 50% of the voting population voted in 2002.  It's outrageous that less than half the country decides something that important.

I must state for the record: we are going to take the Senate back, bitches.  As of right now, Republicans have 44 seats and Democrats have 43 seats; we only 8 more to get the majority.

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Monday, November 06, 2006

The Error Box

The monitor made the ominous whooping noise of an unexpected shutdown and went black.  I jabbed the power button on the CPU.  A string of white characters appeared on the screen.  For the past month my computer had been speaking to me in tongues, displaying random streams of symbols before starting up.  Today, however, the screen went black again.  I deployed my fix-all technique of whacking the computer.  Nothing happened.  Panic set in.  I pictured all my data being sucked into the black hole in the middle of the monitor into which my screen had flown.  A phone call and three visits from a computer professional later, I realized that both the paper I had been writing and my computer were gone.

Worse than losing my hard drive, though, was the computer expert’s reaction to its demise.  “How old’s your computer? Four years? That’s about right.”

About right? Her expression told me my indignation reflected my naiveté.  I had not bought my computer with the expectation that it would break.  Apparently I was the only one.  But in the two years since my hard drive’s abrupt end, I have come to accept it as inevitable that computers will commit seppuku at critical moments.  Unable to function optimally, stripped of privacy and dignity by spyware, the computer cuts its losses and exits from its mechanical coil.  But not before taking valuable information with it.  Within five years of your purchasing it, your computer is defunct. 

The computer expert made only a perfunctory attempt at resuscitating my computer.  She had come merely to break the news to me.  Rather than fixing our computers, at the smallest sign of significant trouble, we abandon them and purchase new ones. 

It is the same way with many commodities.  Radios, for example.  My father, a man stubbornly rooted in the New England tradition of wearing clothes until they rot of his body and using electronics until they are old enough to be considered retro (“But it still works fine!”), was shocked to discover that no one would repair his radio.  The radio had been built to last, through wear, tear and seemingly nuclear warfare.  My father recounts the tale with a sense of wonder, that the man at the electronics repair store told him it would cost more to repair the radio than to buy a new one.  The idea of fixing something is increasingly novel. 

Our products are built to be replaced.  This fact means increasingly short expiration dates.  Even those products that still function well have a limited period of use. The average printer, for example, has a life expectancy of one year.  Not because that is when it stops working, but because that is when the ink cartridges run out.  For many cheap printers, the cartridges are expensive enough that simply purchasing a new printer with included ink cartridges is more cost effective.  The same is true of some razors; the box of new blades is more expensive than the razor, so people simply buy a new razor.

At the time of my computer’s untimely departure, I was no stranger to reconciling myself to poor quality goods and services.  I grew up in the city that seems to have invented the shrug.  Washington, D.C. was one of the worst run cities in America during the 1990s.  Within two years of settling in the city, my parents grew accustomed to the idea that some weeks, the garbage men would leave our garbage to rot on the sidewalk.  It was unsurprising to us that pizza came faster than ambulances.  No part of the city, whatever class of neighborhood, was exempt.  The natives of the city simply shrug and flash the weary smile of the long suffering.  Our attitude towards public services can be described in one phrase: “Oh well.”

One month, we watched our block’s garbage pile up for three weeks.  It was the latest part of a strong tradition to let trash pile up; in 1400, garbage piled up so high in front of Paris gates that it interfered with the city’s defenses.  Only then did officials admit to a waste issue.  Similarly, only when the juicy, rotting garbage piles on the sidewalk interfered with access to the street did someone grow desperate enough to call and demand service.  At the end of the experience, no one suggested that there was something unusual or wrong about being taxed for a service we did not receive.

My computer would never have shrugged and let such poor service stand.  Before viruses weakened it, my computer always demanded good service.  In the computing world, Microsoft Word was my D.C. garbage man, finicky and prone to withholding service.  During my constant fights with Word, which often ended in the program quitting without warning, my computer always stepped up.  It would immediately send me a text box, “Microsoft Word closed unexpectedly.  Would you like to report this error?”  It was the sort of prompt response that comes from a single-minded expectation of service.  My computer was persistent in its demands until the week before we parted.

The lowering of expectation in humans is a more gradual process.  Within a few years of a new product or service being introduced, we expect the quality to decrease.  Righteous indignation fades quickly into quiescence.  It is simply easier to accept poor quality than fight for high quality, and we are not programmed to keep fighting.  In D.C., we made small, occasional concessions for convenience’s sake, but then came to accept them as commonplace.  My computer’s failure to send me error text boxes was due to sickness; our failure to demand high quality, sustained services and products is due to laziness.

I was in deep shock when I lost my computer.  I had the settings just right and my favorite games loaded.  The computer even greeted me at the start up with Humphrey Bogart’s voice saying, “Here’s looking at you, kid.”  It had never occurred to me that our relationship would be so fleeting.  The idea of having to construct another Rick Blaine was daunting.  

But after giving him up the first time, it was easier.  I came to believe that throwing out something almost as soon as I bought it was cool.  It was just as well I had to throw my computer out.  After all, the next one would have better interface, new programs, and maybe pump my gas.  Who knew? Personal computers seemed increasingly built to do almost anything (for about three years).  It was my right, my duty to experience the new technology and to make more garbage more quickly

In 1996, my family had owned the same computer for five years.  We purchased a new one because we wanted a new computer.  Eight years later, my highly advanced, shiny computer was falling apart after three years of use.  In the time between, computers developed a threshold of three or four years before shutting down permanently.  What initially horrified me almost instantly became a fact of life. Our almost instantaneous acceptance of accelerated product death is perhaps best expressed in the words of Billy Joe Armstrong, “A guy walks up to me and asks 'What's punk?' So I kick over a garbage can and say 'That's punk!' So he kicks over a garbage can and says 'That's punk?' and I say 'No that's trend’!”  There is a quick descent after the error box fails to show up for the first time.

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Friday, November 03, 2006

Dairy

For most of my childhood, I was afraid of dairy. I drank milk three times a day because, unlike asparagus, you can't mash it around on your plate and make it look like you've had more than you really have. It's much more difficult to fake having drunk an entire glass of milk, so I didn't even try. I let my mother force it upon me.

It's been a slow progression, getting over my fear of dairy. I was just weirded out by it. I could sense, even without anyone telling me, that there is something inherently fishy about yogurt. I mean, you let it to go bad on purpose. Does that sound like something good? And then finding out about bacteria pretty much confirmed everything I had suspected. You leave bacteria in milk and out comes a foul tasting, almost chunky concoction to which you add fruit? HELL NO.

Yogurt and I have a better relationship now. Cheese was actually the first thing I warmed up to. I struggled with the fact that I was supposed to enjoy a food that was aged 12 years. Usually if a food product has been around for 12 years, it's made the refrigerator toxic. But then you charge $50 for the product and people eat it with crackers. No one but me seemed to realize the absurdity. Worst yet, people seemed to actually enjoy it. And not enjoy like how adults fake laugh at each other's jokes that were told not with the intent to be legitimately funny, but to show that they understand what humor is. It seemed like a genuine feeling. Then I had pizza, and suddenly everything was clear.

But one thing I will never reconcile myself to is cottage cheese. On the water polo bus back from games in high school, someone decided we should have a tub of cottage cheese. She would bring the tub by and eat cottage cheese from it with a spoon. I wanted to cry. It looks to me now like yogurt tasted to me as a child: vile and suspicious. That's right, I could taste when things were suspicious. I mean, just look at cottage cheese:

Why would you eat that? I tried to once, but the texture was just too much.

When I learned that lactose-intolerant people are actually the "normal" ones, and the rest of us are freaks for being able to process cow milk, I was elated. There's legitimate proof that dairy is wrong. Osteoporosis be damned. There is an important lesson in all this that you may have missed: dairy could not fool me because I am equipped with magical powers.

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Thursday, November 02, 2006

One of the Masses

It occurred to me today that I am one of the masses.  We like to think of ourselves as independents who, faced with a moral crisis, would make the right decision.  For instance, slavery.  We all say, "Slavery is terrible.  Didn't people realize? Why didn't they do anything? If I were living in 1814, I would be absolutely outraged."  But the truth is that a lot of the people who owned slaves probably had at least a vague sense that it was wrong, too.  That's not the point.

I think if (in fact I would have been a slave, making this perhaps a bad comparison) I had lived in 1814, I wouldn't have done anything.  Had I been a white, affluent person in the South, I think I would have gone along with the flow, maybe even fought for my unjust way of life.  We are quietly aware of injustice in the world, but I don't think that most of us ever would have or will make a stand.  I don't think I will be a leader of the world, at the forefront showing others the error of their ways.  I'm aware of my error, but I rarely have the courage to stick my neck out.  I would follow rather than lead, no matter what I like to think when I'm reading history textbooks.

I embrace school spirit almost as quickly as anyone I know.  I get caught up in the war chants within days or weeks.  It is easy to ingrain in me the sense that my team is the best team in the universe, and the ref is not calling the game fairly to keep my team from winning and make the inferior team feel a little better.  "Get off your knees, ref.  You're blowin' the game!"  I like being a team player, and it doesn't bother me to be a lot like everyone else.

Political songs influence me.  I get swept up in the strength of the song "Fight the Power."  I love the songs that make me want to do battle, to march off into war against whatever the singer is protesting.  I like that they want more from me than I want from myself.  I'm to be one of the masses because I can't want that on my own, at least not in terms of being an activist.

I was sad at first, realizing this about myself.  I will probably end up the mild-mannered worker by day, slightly more obscene liver by night.  My destiny is probably not that of a superhero.  But I think it comes down to this: if you're not going to lead, it's still your responsibility to choose the right leader.  If you have to do some work to figure out who that is, do it.  Chosen ignorance is not an excuse for misdeeds.

seriously, step off

I've been a card-carrying Catholic since I was born.  I went through the phase where church meant an hour of monotone chanting which I would have preferred to spend watching Nickelodeon.  I hit Confirmation swore to resist my hateful 13-year-old urges or else chance burning in hell.  My parents spoke in hushed tones with other parents about a boy in my Sunday school class who had decided he was a *insert gasp of horror* atheist of all things.

Well anyway, I grew up for years without anyone openly questioning my beliefs.  Most of the people I went to school with didn't go to church, but they were vaguely some sort of Christian.  I was left alone.  But when I got to high school, suddenly saying I was Catholic was like saying I believed that the world was flat.  It was simply so unprogressive, so passe to believe in God.  People begrudged me my religious beliefs.  Someone I considered a friend asked me, "Well, you don't think that pro-choice is wrong do you?" as though it would make me some kind of monster.  For the record, I am pro-choice in principle, but probably pro-life in personal practice; it's none of my business what other people do with their bodies.

I wish people would leave me alone about my being Catholic.  Most people aren't even atheists, just agnostic or not thinking about it; atheism requires more force of will than many are willing to invest.  I like faith, and I like believing in something, and it's something better shared.  At best (or perhaps worst, depending on your view), God really exists.  At worst it's a powerful extension of collective imagination.  It's not the sort of thing that you should use as justification to kill others; it's inherently against the agreement you make with the Nonsecular Hand of Power.  And despite the Catholic church's bad track record, it does a lot of good things and has some good principles.  There's a lot of promotion of the spirit of giving, for instance. 

Here's the deal: when you have something better than blanket disdain for all things religious (or belief in a higher power, etc.), like, say, an actual opinion, come back and we'll talk.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

BLEH

Japanese test studying.  Not so much blogging.  Look for a double post tomorrow.