Write from Wrong

I have a bit of history with Gary Shteyngart. First I read Russian Debutante's Handbook and admired him. Then I read this interview in the Forward and despised him. Various people who have come in contact with him told me various unsavory stories that helped solidify my dislike, and I didn't read Absurdistan, which might have complicated it.

Now I read this interview with him and feel all conflicted. On one level, I can relate to an uncomfortable amount of what he says. Like this:

Before the book deal, while you were working those five years on the manuscript, did you identify yourself as a writer?

No, no, no! Are you kidding me? I’m always shocked by Americans and their self-confidence. They haven’t published anything, and you ask them what they do and they say: “I’m a writer.” I say, “Oh, who is your publisher?” And they say, “Oh, well…I’ve been working on this book for the past 87 years and it’s brilliant but…” I do have to say that takes a lot of chutzpah and that’s wonderful. It really means that you think of yourself as a writer. I didn’t think of myself as a writer until the book came out.

On the other hand, we diverge here:

What were you spending your money on at the time?

Beer. Wine. Vodka.

Oh, Russians. I got my hair cut by a Russian this weekend. Or, more succinctly, I got bobbed! The Russian in question, Leila, was excellent at what she did, and yet she still managed to rub me the wrong way.

ME: (looking in the mirror) I don't know. I'd like it to be a little ... more exciting?
RUSSIAN: (disapproving) Well, you are the boss. You tell me what to do and I do it. But how do I know what you think is more exciting? Maybe you think mohawk is exciting.
ME: There are a lot of mohawks about these days.
RUSSIAN: Tell me about it.

Eventually she gave me a great haircut. But how much do you have to pay a Russian to do a good job *and* be nice to you? A question for the ages.

Back to Gary, who is either more ballsy, more arrogant, or simply more determined to be a full-time writer than I am:

I always tell my students to find a non-profit job because non-profit means that there is no bottom line! Or some kind of municipal job. You want to work 9-5, so that when the day is over it’s over and the weekends are yours. And the best thing, which I had at a couple of jobs, is when you can lock yourself in your office and write. People would say, “Oh Shteyngart is not a team player, he is always locked in his office, God knows what he is doing in there!” I used to work at this non-profit that dealt with immigrant resettlement and I would help write directions for new Russian immigrants, like how to not get drunk, how to avoid AIDS, stuff like that. That took max a couple of days a month, really. And the rest of the time I would lock myself in my office and work on the draft of my first novel. Half of it was finished by my senior year in college and the other half was finished working that job. It wasn’t the kind of service job where I would come home exhausted. I would come home ready to write or would have accomplished the writing at the office. It was brilliant.

I didn’t work more than two years at any one given place because there’d be lay-offs or people would realize I wasn’t doing anything.

It is twisted, but I kind of admire that. Here I am trying to please my bosses at whatever 9-5 job I am currently working while also trying to ultimately do the author thing. I would never close my door and work on my novel. For shame! Also, until now I've never had a door. But perhaps Gary's willingness to piss off anyone who is ultimately unimportant *means* something. It can be freeing, I imagine, to stop caring about inessentials. Trouble is, the idea that someone could dislike me -- especially a boss -- has never been something I could shrug off.

I have to admit I've never worked more than a year and a half at any given place either. Not entirely by choice, though. Again, like Gary. Hrm.

On Friday, I met Mark Oppenheimer and we talked briefly about Gary Shteyngart. I mentioned the offensive article in the Forward. Turns out it was his piece -- he was doing the interviewing. I also met the adorable & fantastic Myla Goldberg, who went to Oberlin like Gary Shteyngart, and the adorable & fantastic Irina Reyn, who went out on dates with Gary Shteyngart back in the day. Holy lord, people, can a world with six billion people in it be so small and yet so full of Russians?

ETA: Jesus Christmas, as the children say: The man is everywhere! Here is another interview with him on Tablet.

So Sexual!

This article about church counselling for women who are addicted to porn goes off the rails so fast you don't even hear the squeal. All of a sudden, the train is lying on its side, smoking, its wheels spinning pitifully in the air.

The piece begins innocently enough:

Ms. Renaud, who is taking a DVD course in sexual addiction counseling from the American Association of Christian Counselors, said she started the group and the Web site based on her own experiences. She became interested in pornography at age 10 after finding a magazine in her brother’s bathroom. After that, she said, “I wasn’t able to get enough of it.”

“At school I wanted to go home and look at it more,” she said. “Then I went online. I’d stay late at the library to look at it. Eventually I got into masturbation, phone sex, cybersex.” She also cracked the code on the family’s satellite television service, she said. “That was my life for eight years.” Then, she said, she met a Christian woman who helped her stop.

Porn can be addictive; addictions can disrupt your life. Problem, meet Solution. Great!

Then the article gets wacky:

The programs at Ms. Renaud’s group and at XXX Church diverge from secular sexual theory by treating masturbation and arousal as sins rather than elements of healthy sexuality. Emphasis is on recovering “sexual purity,” in which thoughts of sex outside marriage are illicit.

There you are, Gentle Reader, meandering through the flowering meadows of NYT prose, and out of nowhere, a great white shark bites you on the leg. That is how strange & abrupt this twist is. "Arousal" is a sin? You know that's biological, right? As for "Thoughts of sex outside marriage," well, yikes. If you don't even think about it, how do you know you want it -- and what "it" even is in the first place, or what kind of "it" you think you may like when the time comes?

This piece purports to be about porn addiction. What it ends up saying is that there are churches out there -- whole faiths, even -- that are making biological truths into religious crimes. Maybe not a significant majority of women has a problem with porn, but surely a significant majority thinks about sex. Especially since we are, you know, wired to.

It goes on:

As an adult she needed pornography to be aroused with her husband, she said. “I’m learning the correct way of intimacy and bonds,” she said of the group. “It’s learning what your spouse wants, his needs.” In her first weeks, she recalled, she struggled to avoid masturbation.

I feel awful for that woman. She was using porn with her husband. Consensually! In the context of matrimony! Why does she need to be shamed for that? Why does "the correct way" to have sex have to eliminate the aids to her desire? If she's already married, why can't she masturbate? Is it okay if she promises to only think of him?

Presumably porn is titillating because it is forbidden, because it seems "wrong." It must seem even more so to people whose community norms are so extreme. Vilifying porn, even in the context of marriage -- and not just porn but, as the article lists, "Masturbation, Lustful Thinking, Cutting, Feeling Useless, Dad’s Bad Choices, Self-Gratification, Self-Mutilation, Unhealthy Thoughts" -- only adds to the cycle and makes those activities more enticing.

Also, part of me wonders whether there is a queer subtext to all of this. Are the women under discussion drawn to porn because they are attracted to women? I mean, of course there are lots of reasons to watch the stuff, but in my experience the men are as gross as the women are fake. Maybe the stigma against admitting an attraction towards the same gender is worse than the stigma of admitting an addiction to smut.

Arizona: the Police State

For days now I've been mulling over the new AZ immigration law and why it bothered me so much. Possibly it's because I was just recently a judge at a student Holocaust film festival, so I'm more sensitized to fascism than I am on a day-to-day basis. Which, by the way, is pretty effing sensitized. I grew up breathing the air of the Inside Room and learned the Devil's Arithmetic before I managed to Number the Stars. Every season was the Summer of my German Soldier, goddammit, to the point where if I heard German spoken in real life I jumped.

When I needed to cool down from YA Holocaust lit, I picked up on other kinds of injustice through biographies of Harriet Tubman and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.

Even my very first smutty smut book, Night Over Water, had fascism as a subplot. (Reading the description is fascinating now because all I remember is the sex [vividly] and the politics [hazily], and that only because at 10 or 11 years old, I was surprised to learn there were fascists in England, too. By contrast, my mother, who gave me the book to read, didn't remember the sex at all.)

Back to Arizona, the state that gave us John "Never Said I Was a Maverick" McCain. Bisbee is great! Try the killer bee honey. You can't argue with the Saguaros everywhere, which are evidence of God's prickly sense of humor. But why, WHY, does anyone think it's acceptable to force people to carry identification papers with them at all times because they could be stopped and asked for those papers by the police?

Linda Greenhouse does not think it is acceptable. In fact, Linda Greenhouse is smoldering with rage.

And good on her. Having to wear a badge on your sleeve is only five paces in that direction from having to carry ID papers with you everywhere. Knowing you could be stopped and frisked by cops simply for leaving your house in your darker skin is a kind of low-level terror no one should be exposed to: not illegal immigrants, not legal immigrants, not citizens of this country.

As May Day is almost upon us, it feels appropriate to quote Billy Bragg's excellent translation of the Internationale, which is unfortunately playing in my head to the tune of La Marseilleise, but never mind:

Stand up, all victims of oppression
For the tyrants fear your might
Don't cling so hard to your possessions
For you have nothing, if you have no rights
Let racist ignorance be ended
For respect makes the empires fall
Freedom is merely privilege extended
Unless enjoyed by one and all. ...

Internets FTW

The web is *on* today! Here's Dana Stevens at Slate reviewing the latest rom-com black cat to cross her path:

The Back-up Plan (CBS Films), with Jennifer Lopez as a would-be single mother surprised by love, is by any reasonable standard a bad movie: predictably scripted, sentimental, with laughs that rarely rise above a gentle sitcom chuckle. But at least it's not reprehensible, misogynistic, or cynical, and the lead couple isn't made up of a shrill female narcissist and a proudly slovenly male lug. I wouldn't go so far as to recommend this movie, but if you were tied down and forced to watch it, you wouldn't necessarily have to chew off your own leg to get away.

Damning with faint praise has become an internet art form.

And here's the Washington Post on the porn scandal rocking the SEC:

In one instance, a regional office staff account admitted viewing pornography on his office computer and on his SEC-issued laptop while on official government travel. Another staff account received nearly 1,800 access denials for pornography Web sites in a two-week period and had more than 600 images saved on her laptop’s hard drive, the report said.

A senior attorney at SEC headquarters in Washington admitted he sometimes spent as much as eight hours viewing pornography from his office computer, according to the report. The attorney’s computer ran out of space for the downloaded images, so he started storing them on CDs and DVDs that he stored in his office.

I do not envy the cleaning lady in that office. In fact: For the love of god! Will someone please think of the cleaning ladies?

Leaving aside the fact that these folks were fiddling with themselves while Rome burned, I just don't understand the appeal of porn in an office setting. Isn't the office the least titillating place on earth? I mean, we're talking about federal government buildings, not Sterling Cooper.* And did these lawyers signal to each other not to interrupt their marathon sessions of self-love? Did they put socks on doorknobs, or what?

Lastly, the Internets provide us with this self-glorifying thread at Shapely Prose, where Kate-fucking-Harding encourages everyone to brag about why they're awesome. The comments have been brightening my mood for an hour already like bloggy Windex. Thanks, folks!


*My friend Nomi suggests that offices are unsexy to me because I *don't* watch porn on my computer, which is a cause-and-effect I had not considered.

Feminist Readers Digest

• Have you ever wanted a set of colorful, informative slides to explain the persistent wage gap -- to what extent it exists, when, and why -- between men and women in America? {those "lesbian shitasses" at Jezebel.}
  
  
• Want to help start a Boobquake on Monday April 26? Wear your most office-unsuitable tops and draw the wrath of God down upon us.
  
  So, start here ...
  
  
  
  That's right! Just like that.
  
  Then, progress to Step Two.
  
  After that, take a drink -- you've earned it! -- and sit back and watch the tectonic plates start shifting.
  
  
• Wanna get self-conscious about what you wear? Check out this list of the 25 most "fattening" clothing items, featuring virtually every kind of pants (mom jeans, grandma pants, cargo pants, capri pants, white pants, hot pants, sweat pants, any pair of pants with an elastic waistband, acid washed jeans, and shorts of any kind), skirts on both extremes (frilly mini skirts and peasant skirts), and comfortable shoes (ballet flats, gladiator sandals, white sneakers).
  
  Also bad: patterned tights, baby doll dresses, and bikinis (!).
  
  By contrast, what is the #1 most universally flattering item of clothing? I'm so glad you asked.
  
  Spanx.
  
  Luckily the commenters have the right attitude:

  GIRDLES are on the non-fattening list? Well, yeah, but that doesn't really count as CLOTHES. Also, god, look how much more FUN the fattening list is: binkinis, colors, cute details, trends. The non-fattening list is basically just monotone-black underwear. I'd rather look fat and cute and non-girdled, thanks.

  I concur. Reject what my friend Lana calls "the tyranny of the flattering!" Trying on a daily basis to look your most tall, your most thin, your most non-threatening, professional but fun, sexy but not slutty, *and* age-appropriate is exhausting. And what's the point? Somewhere, at some point, the earth will shake, and you'll still get blamed for the rubble.

On marriage, flagging, and snooping

In responding to a "non-stereotypical-looking lesbian" who wants to know how to signal her availability, Dan Savage stumbles upon an idea I had about a decade ago.

... maybe all lesbians everywhere should start wearing a button. No words, just a solid color, something small and tasteful that could be pinned to the strap of a purse (popular with "not-stereotypical-looking" lesbians), the lapel of a jacket, or the belt loop on a pair of jeans. Thinking outside the lavender/pink/purple box, I think the button should be green—green for "go," green as in "Go ahead and hit on me, ladies. I’m a lesbian."

My version of this idea was not sexuality-specific, or gender-specific, for that matter. I just figured, at the time, that everyone should wear a button -- red, yellow, or green -- signaling their availability. Then I learned about flagging, which has the benefit of being uber-specific and the drawback of dying out, possibly for the same reason.

On the other hand, what's easier to interpret than red / yellow / green? Folks could even take the initiative to further decorate their buttons with the most vital specifics of their Match.com profiles.

Sadly, a flash-forward to a guy in a witness box protesting, "But she was wearing green!" and a lawyer retorting, "A button does not imply consent!" made me realize my idea had any number of flaws.

Still, Dan, if you're interested in sifting through my other youthful fancies, I once thought it would be brilliant to have marriage be a 7-year-long contract that could be extended. Sure, if a couple decided not to renew, they would have to figure out what to do with mutual children and property, but it could be a simpler and less vicious process than divorce.*

To the turn the tables for a second, though, Dan, I got kind of stuck on this, from your column a couple weeks ago:

A confession: I’ve looked through my boyfriend’s e-mail; I assume he’s looked through mine. I’ve scrolled through his text messages; I assume he’s scrolled through mine. Expecting your partner not to snoop is like expecting your partner not to fart or fantasize about other people. It’s a nice thought, JB, but knowing what we know about human nature—and knowing that we ourselves snoop, fart, and fantasize about other people—it’s a little unrealistic.

That's pretty strong language there. I would be upset if I found out Mr. Ben had gone through my email or my text messages. Dude, I don't even open letters that I know are intended for both of us if they're addressed only to him. To me, this is standard practice, because everyone is entitled both to privacy and to vent, whether in journals or by email or whatever. Also, the couple times in my life I have seen someone else's gchat conversation windows or text messages, I've had to deal with unwanted information, the kind I wished afterwards I could un-know.

Snooping is counter-productive: you think your curiosity will be slaked by just a little bit more information, but that's not usually the way curiosity works. If you feel like you're being lied to and can't trust the person you're with, the trust is probably gone and the relationship is probably over, no matter what exists in the other person's inbox. Right?

Or is there something here I'm not seeing? Has anyone ever had a positive snooping outcome?


*Turns out a German politician not only read my mind, she went public with the notion of a time-limited, renewable civil marriage. The only folks who took her seriously were the Catholics, who demanded that she be ejected from the Christian Social Union (CSU) party. Ah well.

True story

So, the other day, I was like, "Hi, Cynthia Nixon! This adorable person next to you, over whom I am leaning, must be your wife."

And Cynthia Nixon was like, "We're engaged but we haven't gotten married yet. Hi, though!"

(Note: this is all true, except the parts that aren't.)

Me: I remember us working together at the Very Important Talent Agency.

CN: That place must have been terrible for a sensitive, intelligent young woman like yourself.

Me: Thank you for feeling my pain, Cynthia. That means a lot. So what are you doing here at this random activist-y Jewish theater event at the Manhattan JCC, of all places?

CN: I like to do things outside my character profile.

Me: Me too! For example, I now run three miles three times a week. Isn't that crazy? I refuse to invest in running gear, because I don't want anyone to think I'm some kind of poser, but it still feels kind of amazing.

CN: While I starred in one of the most influential TV shows in the world as a straight, fashion-and-shoe-obsessed Manhattan lady, I left my boyfriend of fifteen years and the father of my children to move to Park Slope and become a lesbian.

Me: Okay, okay, you win. As a token of my appreciation, may I offer you this totebag? My best friend Charrow made it and she would be thrilled if I could tell her I gave it to you.

CN: Why, of course! Thank you. Oh my god, it's adorable.

Me: So are you. You were my favorite part of Sex and the City, and the screenwriters for the film were totally punishing you for being the most normal and most happy.

CN: At least they didn't make me shit myself.

Me: True, true. Well, let's watch this play! Which will, incidentally, send the message that caring too much about handbags is deranged. I hope you won't be offended.

CN: I will laugh as hard as anyone. I promise. For years, I've been laughing all the way to the bank.

Me: Oh my god, Cynthia. I heart you so much. And I'm so glad we (sort of) had this talk.

The purity of childhood

This NYT article showcases -- and, naturally, frets about -- the young, female star of a violent movie. Not because she is violent, but because she uses naughty words.

the filmmakers are bracing for the reception that the movie and Ms. Moretz may receive. In Britain, where the movie was released at the end of March, David Cox of The Guardian assailed its creative team and Ms. Moretz’s mother for allowing that swear word spoken by Chloë to become “acceptable parlance for children in mainstream movies,” adding, “We’ll be the poorer for it.”

Now, I don't know which bit of verbal raunch is being referenced here. Perhaps it's garden variety ("shit," "bitch"). Perhaps it's what Kurt Vonnegut in Mother Night called "the most offensive compound word in the English language."

(Speaking of Vonnegut, let's hear what he has to say on the impact of salty talk:

There is the word "motherfucker" one time in my Slaughterhouse-Five, as in, "Get out of the road, you dumb motherfucker." Ever since that word was published, way back in 1969, children have been attempting to have intercourse with their mothers. When it will stop no one knows.)

God bless you, Mr. Vonnegut. I hope that, when you got to Heaven, they gave you a perch with a good view of all the nonsense that goes on down here.

Regardless, is this really something to get all yelpy about? Me, I love "bad language." The more creatively vulgar, the better. Cursing features prominently in some of my favorite movies. And what makes me particularly disappointed in stuffy old Mr. David Cox of the Guardian is that British profanity is even more gleeful and entertaining than the American kind.

When I was thirteen, the same age as this tender young actress, I could turn the air around me so blue you would think Cookie Monster had exploded. I turned out okay and so did my friends, who were occasionally shocked but usually on board. "A word after a word after a word is power," says Margaret Atwood, who is one savvy lady, and who understands that for young girls especially saying what folks don't expect them to is an excellent way to be not just looked at but seen.

The article goes on:

Mr. Vaughn said this kind of condemnation was hypocritical because it attacked the movie’s language while essentially forgiving its violence. "I was like, ‘Does it not bother you that she killed about 53 people in this film?’" he said. "I’m like, ‘Would you rather your daughter swore, or became a masked vigilante killer?’ They’re going, ‘Yeah, I don’t know.’"

stumping dear abby

As a know-it-all (in my case, a genetic condition) I love being asked questions. At the second seder, a little boy asked me, "Why does the clock keep going?" I shot back, "Because time keeps going."

BOO YEAH. If you want to catch me without a reply, you're going to have to try harder than that, you three-toothed squirt.

Sometimes, though, even I can't come up with an answer, as in the situation below. See if you can do better.

[ex-coworker]: are you / have you been a dog owner?
also hi, how are you

me: i had a dog when i was a kid

[ex-coworker]: i may as well tell you why i asked: a friend's dog ate some condoms. her mom's visiting. she doesnt want the dog to poop out the condoms while mom's visiting. partly, apprently cause her mom will blame her for leaving condoms out for the dog to eat

me: ... wow.
well, that's definitely not a problem i had as a kid
were they wrapped?

[ex-coworker]: uh no

me: yikes.

++

It is perhaps worth mentioning that I did once use a condom as a bookmark of a book my mother then asked to borrow. I handed it over without any sense of impending doom, having completely forgotten. That's as close as I have ever come to playing Russian Roulette.

The red and the black

If you haven't ever sat bolt upright in a massage to say "Ow!" then, my friends, you haven't lived. Likewise if the massage doesn't leave you sore for the next couple of days and segue directly into a cold that keeps you from going into the office.

The woman who administered this stern treatment also scolded me, which is kind of fun. I liked her scolding better than that of the Stalinist relic who gave me my first ever massage, after I lost my job during the transit strike. "What did you major in?" barked the Cossack. Upon hearing my answer, she shook her head in disgust. "Oh no, you will never get job with that." She then advised me to find an older man to look out for me in my next office and not to trust other women, who will necessarily be back-stabby.

Anyway, this woman told me I wasn't taking good enough care of myself. My entire right side, she informed me, is screwed up. Her best efforts over 70 minutes hadn't really made a dent. (So she claimed. I felt dented all over.) She gave me a very disapproving look, to which I responded meekly. When I was leaving, I gave an elaborate tip.

It's always nice to be validated, even, or especially, in one's troubles. I didn't have time to explain, nor did she seem to care, *why* my body is dysfunctional. But I have a wild idea: It's because I don't know how to properly manage sadness and anger.

Over the past six months or so, I have been to four funerals / shiva calls and spent significant time at the bedside of dying people in two different hospice facilities. I've taken off work and traveled and helped bury the dead and eaten round things and listened to people cry. Where I should have felt sad, most of the time I was furious.

By contrast, a once-good friend has hurt me more deeply than I have been hurt in years. I should be justly enraged; I try to be. Thinking in strong words helps for a while ("How DARE you?"). Eventually, though, I keep sliding back into mystified whimpering ("how could she?").

Worst of all, there's nothing I can do about anything. I have had almost no agency in any of these situations. The stress of that might be worst of all.

Sadness is a liquid; anger is a solid. My poor body has been melting and freezing and melting again. Is there any wonder it's a mess?

This is not bragging

I'm just saying, publicly, that I feel I made the right decision in marrying the person I did.

Hey sweetie,

You now have an appointment for [time] tomorrow with Simone at the [place] on 5th Avenue in Brooklyn. It's Swedish massage, though she can do "deep work" if necessary. Just tell them that the class was purchased as part of a series under my name.

Does that work for you?

Love,
B

In a time when, apparently, people are spatting about their relationships on the You Face, it's got to be worth it to extend some gratitude on a blog. Right? Right.

Also, I love you and you and you and you and you. You, less so. (You know who you are.) And if any of you buy me an impromptu massage, I will bless you on the Internets too.

Contents are (marginally less) fragile

I knew Friday was going to be rough when I started off the morning by almost stepping on a cockroach in my bare feet.

Friday *was* rough, as expected. Even by the evening, when I abandoned all attempts to feign normalcy and instead went to the gym for an hour, I was faced with a Very Special Episode of "What Not to Wear" starring a cancer survivor who had lost both her breasts as well as ninety pounds. "Now that she has beaten cancer through sheer determination," said the voiceover, "she faces another challenge: how to dress her new body."

Luckily all my energy was going into propelling my body forward on the treadmill, so I had no strength with which to pummel the screen.

Yeah, Friday sucked, as did Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. There were bright spots! If you were with me on any of those days, you made them bearable, so thank you. Overall, though, I felt like a plucked chicken, and not even a tasty one.

Then, this morning, I woke up to a brilliant, sparkling sky. Suddenly I am sympathetic to all of God's children. I am nodding and smiling. I am identifying with everything I read, like this, via Finslippy:

I've been feeling ever since like I should wear a shirt that reads, "CONTENTS ARE FRAGILE," and actually that we should all wear that shirt, so that we can all remember to be kind to each other, because life can be so hard, and we're only here for a little while.

Yes, Alice, goddammit! Yes. I embrace you! Mwah!

And you, Morning News Tournament of Books! Come over here, you old so-and-so. You are almost making me weep with happiness. (At least so far. I cannot vouch for what will happen if Wolf Hall and other favorites of mine from 09 don't keep advancing.) Quotes like these made my morning:

Let's say that the standards that apply to people-—the basic character-defining requirements—=are that a person be funny, smart, and kind. This is my rubric and possibly yours. If a person is funny, smart, and kind (or two out of the three) any other flaw can be forgiven.

It has never occurred to me to apply the same standard to books, which have an aesthetic dimension not even touched in the funny-smart-kind paradigm. And yet ...

Yes, TOB! That is exactly right! Thank you.

You know what else is sublimely right? This chart matching famous writers with their day jobs. YES. I cheer for you, Lapham Quarterly. Hurrah!

Maybe Mr. Ben sprinkled MDMA on my Oatmeal Flakes this morning. After four days of Fester Gloom walking around (who has, to be honest, been making guest appearances in our apartment all month) I couldn't blame him.

Gen-dar

I just took an internet test to discover what gender my brain is. This test seemed reliable to me because a) it's British, and b) it's six parts.

Going in, my assumption was that my brain would be roughly 130% female because I'm told my body shape, baby-face, and negligible amounts of body hair correlate strongly with having more estrogen than a soybean field. There are other stereotypical reasons I would think so, too: I am hyper-verbal but scared of numbers; I am equally indifferent to cars and sports, unless there is a narrative to follow (or, failing that, something pretty to admire); and at times I hate myself, as female-type people are wont to do.

Speaking of which, I watched the Oscars Sunday night. The best parts of the ceremony, in order:

3) "George Clooney threw me into a pool."

2) The Horror montage, perfectly described by David Rees: "Kill Everyone with your Chainsaw … the Dolls are Alive … Dreaming of Murder … Blood and Gore Will Cleanse Your Soul … The Baby is Satan … I break your feet … eat a rat for dinner … big-ass freaky ears and eyes … Frankenstein wants a kiss … the Headless Horseman rides again … Alfred Hitchock’s “Too Many Birds” … screaming and yelling … people staring at each other …long hallways with kids in ‘em … I see dead people … bloody monsters that you have to kiss … blood coming out of elevators … rats and mucus … mouths and teeth … AND THAT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, IS HORROR."

1) The fact that Bigelow won for Best Director and then got to win again for Best Picture. The audience understood the moment Barbara "Liberal Jewish Feminist" Streisand walked out to present the first of those awards that Bigelow was going down in history, but the second win was still a happy shock. As Dana Stevens put it,

it's unbelievably gratifying to see a woman who does fine, small-scale work triumphing over a man who erects massive monuments to his own vanity. Bigelow's victory makes it seem like hard work is worthwhile, because someday someone will recognize it, no matter how loudly that asshole at the center table is talking about himself.

I quibble with the idea that the Hurt Locker is "small-scale." Um, it's a war movie. It's about men and guns and battle and heat and exhaustion and explosions. Did I mention men? I don't think there is a single speaking woman in the whole thing. We're not exactly talking about a well-mannered Jane Austen adaptation here.

I do love the fact, though, that in two speeches Bigelow got around to thanking "firemen" (!) and still didn't slip in a reference Cameron, her ex-husband and co-front runner. Didn't you expect her to mention him, at least? To say some cursory "thank you" for ... I don't know, something? At least I would assume that would be the gracious, self-effacing, feminine thing to do.

Back to the point: how did I fare at the gender test?

Part I was a look at spatial understanding, something about lines and angles. "If you scored 18 - 20: You have more of a male brain [emphasis added]. On average, men outperform women in this task and those with more mathematical knowledge tend to score quite high as well. In past studies, 60 per cent of the people in this range were men."

Well, that's a shocker! But it may be an outlier. How about Part II, which is more about objects changing position? "If you scored between 0 - 33%: You may have more of a male brain. Scientists say men tend to under perform in this task. The corpus callosum, the part of the brain that links the right and left hemispheres, is a fifth larger in women. This means women can process visual and other signals at the same time more easily than men. There is also a theory that oestrogen levels in women give them an added advantage in spatial memory."

Sorry, test. I scored low because I was afraid to make a mistake (points were deducted for incorrect answers as well as awarded for correct ones). All of the things I guessed, however, were right. I played it safe. What's more female than that?

Still, it was kind of exciting to be seen as male for two questions. Then the test took a turn for the physiognomical: It wanted to me actually gauge my hands, which betrayed me. My empathy & sensitivity to emotion results, which came next, were off the charts. Though I have a better-than-average appreciation for systems (for a girl), I suck at mentally rotating shapes. I must have been asleep the day they covered that in school. Oh wait! Just kidding -- they never taught us how to do that. Is this one of those "innate" IQ things?

I screwed myself by knowing significantly more synonyms for given words than either men or women are supposed to know. Come on! The word for that is not "female," it's "dorky."

To add insult to injury, the test insinuated that I am a lesbian by pointing out I like men with "feminine" faces. (Ha!)

And so I ultimately come in exactly as "female" as the average woman taking the test. Go skew their results, would you, please? Man, it sucks to be average.

PC / JC

On the way back from finally seeing Avatar, I hear a couple across the car from me discussing the Academy Awards and the meta-narrative of Cameron vs. Bigelow: Who Gets Custody of Oscar.

The conversation is very run-of-the-mill and I zone out, paying attention instead to the Daley article in the New Yorker. Then I hear the boy say something is "political." My antenna goes up.

GIRL: Really?
BOY: Of course it is. You remember that movie, Brokeback Mountain?
GIRL: Yeah.
BOY: That was nominated for Best Picture!
GIRL: Really?
BOY: Yes! And you know what it's about?
GIRL: Yeah.
BOY: And *that* was nominated for Best Picture! Even though it was about ... *that*! It's just 'cause it was politically correct. Now, if it was a good movie, I wouldn't mind ...
GIRL: I never saw it.
BOY: Me neither, but still ...

This reminds me of the time when I was about thirteen and my mother took me to the Algonquin hotel. I was a passionate devotee of Dorothy Parker's, and I sat where she had once held court soaking up the Vitamin D. At least, I did, until my reverie was broken by the sound of a man a couple tables away lecturing his female companion on my favorite author. And he was wrong! More wrong than a cat being thrown out into the snow.

My mother could tell how incensed I was. I glared and shook my head and snorted like a horse but the man kept talking in his pompous, Master of the Literary Universe kind of way. "Please can I go over there and correct him," I asked my mother. "He's pretending he knows all this stuff and he doesn't!"

In this case, I will content myself with saying to you, the Internets: that boy is a fool.

Of course, it is tempting to dismiss anything you find distasteful without feeling like you first have to sit through it. Especially in our digital age when we can easily access the proxy opinions of friends, or "Fox and Friends," why bother exposing yourself to something whose agenda you suspect you don't want to support?

A friend and I were recently discussing this in relation to, as it happens, Avatar: Is it fair to hate it without having seen it? Especially with an international blockbuster that seems to have been covered quite in depth by the media, it feels pretty easy to get a sense of whether you'll like it in advance. (Good questions to ask yourself: How did you feel about Titanic? Fern Gully? Cats? [The animal, not the Broadway show.] How do you feel about white male protagonists with one-syllable "J" names? Great. Lastly, mother-goddess worship. Is that a deal breaker for you?)

Well, I decided to take myself to see it, by myself, to decide in as much of a vacuum as possible how I felt about it. There are my primary reactions. *CAUTION: SPOILERS*

1) James Cameron can sure make movies. I found myself thinking like a film student a lot of the time: "Those two characters are going to kiss at this point. Wait, but will they? They're not human; why would they kiss? American audiences expect it even though it doesn't make sense in this context. I wonder what Cameron will -- oh, there they go! Well done."

Assuming that Titanic and Avatar are about equally long, I would give you excellent odds that the first kiss between the couples in both films happen at roughly the same time. Like, within five minutes of each other. Because there is a kind of science to this and Cameron knows how it works.

I also made mental notes of the characters who seemed marked as Dead Meat and, indeed, most of them bit it. In a couple of cases I was surprised, which is another Well Done for JC.

Overall, I enjoyed the experience. I was carried by the narrative. I was impressed with the visuals. At times I was moved and at times I laughed, though a couple of those chuckles came at the expense of particularly ham-handed lines of dialogue. The movie was long but I didn't get bored.

But:

2) the story -- specifically the politics of it. Oy. I don't need to get into this; others, more prestigious and better suited to the task than I have done it already (here, there, and everywhere).

It should be noted that right-wingers think "Avatar" is a tree-hugging, socialist fantasy:

Writing in the Weekly Standard, conservative commentator John Podhoretz called the movie's clash between heavily armed humans and an indigenous tribe of aliens as "anti-American, anti-human." In an upcoming piece in Commentary magazine, Stephen Hunter writes that "the movie essentially decodes into a 1960s pseudo-intellectual's power-trip dream." A headline on a piece by John Nolte, editor of Andrew Breitbart's conservative Big Hollywood site, declared the movie wasn't for Heartland America: "'Avatar' Is a Big, Dull, America-Hating, PC Revenge ..."

Hee! I love conservative outrage. For more from the left, here's Dan Savage on the film's sexual politics. He's not happy either.

To all of that, I will only add that the film's gender politics do get points from me. Most mainstream movies pass the Ms. Test only on a technicality. JC gives us several interesting, active female characters. Even the warrior princess kicks ass, and not just once, like, when a maternal instinct helps her save a baby rabbit. She hunts and flies and fights; her dad gives her his huge bow and arrow. She doesn't need saving. Well, once, a bit, but then she does some excellent saving of her own.

In short, the women are just as developed as the men (which is to say, not much, but this is not a deep, character-driven flick). For an action movie, that's not nothing.

Here, however, is where JC falls short:

3) the tails. WTF, JC? You give these 10-feet-tall blue-skinned cat-people *tails* and then do nothing with them? Think of the possibilities! Think of the children! (We barely see the children. What are the little Na'vi doing all day? Plugging their braids into everything they can find?) Many people, including one of my favorite high school teachers, would kill to have a tail. That showed a lack of imagination, Mr. Cameron. I am disappointed in you.

Overall? I liked it better than I thought I would. It helped to have expectations set to virtually zero. And now I can feel even more morally superior to that little blond idiot on the subway than I would have felt already.

Water fountain FAIL

Online here: http://cheezburger.com/View.aspx?aid=3232033792.

In a hospital, no less! The very one where my doctor told me again, "Life is not fair," because I confessed to being angry, still, that my father died and then my uncle immediately thereafter.

I *know* life is not fair, you sweet, well-meaning, occasionally ridiculous Russian! One of my best friends just got back from a work trip to eastern Congo, Somalia, and Rwanda, and other places where people SUFFER and DIE -- or, suffer and have to flash back to the horrors they faced for the rest of their lives. I can accept that life isn't fair rationally and still have emotional reactions. Can't I?

"Well," he said, considering. "How long ago now did your father die?"

October.

"Hmm. Well, two months is the standard mourning period ..."

Out of spite, as I left, I took this picture and submitted it to Failblog.

This evening, I finally geared up to go to the gym. On the way there, I stepped in a melted glacier, soaking one foot all the way up to the ankle. When I limped to the finish line, I discovered the Y had been closed since 4:00 PM.

Yup, still angry.

"But not at a person?" he asked.

No, just in general.

"Okay," he said. "So it is not pathological."

Phew!

I hope the rest of you had a more cheerful snow day.

Food, glorious food

The best pizza in NYC?
Originally uploaded by shorterstory.

It was an extremely food-happy weekend this weekend. No special occasion: Mr. Ben and I did turn nine years old on the 17th, but we weren't celebrating that. (I still want to hit up Good Fork in Red Hook, though, which was our original anni-day plan scrapped in favor of sitting on our new couch and watching old episodes of Mad Men.)

FRIDAY: Dinner at Motorino, the best pizzeria in New York, according to Sam Sifton. Like the intern who talks too much in staff meeting, Mr. Sifton, the new NYT restaurant critic, seems to be trying to make a name for himself right away as a kingmaker & all-around fearless guy. Bold choice, Mr. Sifton.

His gambit worked. Certainly I was enticed, with a small circle of friends, to squeeze into the space that once held another fantastic pizzeria, Una Pizza Napoletano. We split three pies, some less kosher than others. (I picked the sizzling bits of pig off of my slices but those who indulged seemed to enjoy it immensely.)

Even at 5:55 PM, there was a line for a table for four. We were seated almost an hour after we arrived. Still, the pizza really was terrific; the tiny pools of oil on the buffalo mozzarella were so good they would send your eyes flying upwards into your head while the sounds of angels filled your ears. Best pizza in New York, though? I can't say. To me, the best slice of pizza is whichever high-quality one I'm eating at the time. Bonus points if I'm hungry and if I've been waiting for a while in the cold.

Dessert at the cozy Italian bakery situated just close enough to Veneiro's that no one goes in, except skittish-looking loners and family clusters. I did not partake myself, since I can't do sugar, but I do love the smell of cappuccino.

SATURDAY: Undistinguished except by the excellent bittersweet hot chocolate Mr. Ben and I enjoyed during the Accomplice: the Village show that took us around NYU on an ambulatory, interactive theater experience / scavenger hunt.

SUNDAY: This is when we really got into gear. With a different circle of friends, I embarked on a Lower East Side eating tour. Because it was self-curated, we indulged in foods that were not exactly designed to complement each other: pickles straight from a room full of barrels, freshly baked hamentaschen & whole-wheat bread, crystallized-ginger donuts from the Donut Plant in honor of Chinese New Year, banh mi, and finally bubble tea. Everyone was fit to explode, though no one person tried everything.

Next up: Tour Dumpling! This, people, is why we live in NYC.

It's all in how you see it

I would think that flying a plane into a building is a pretty black-or-white act, especially in our post-9/11 world. What is terrorism if not an attempt to intimidate people into acting in a certain way because of violence or the threat of it? If I demonstrate that I am willing to kill people for what I believe politically, whether I believe in lower taxes or global jihad, I become a terrorist.

Or -- and here where it gets tricky; you might want to sit down -- a hero.

The daughter of a man who crashed his small plane into a building housing offices of the Internal Revenue Service called her father a hero for his anti-government views but said his actions, which killed an IRS employee, were "inappropriate."

Joe Stack's adult daughter, Samantha Bell, spoke to ABC's "Good Morning America" from her home in Norway. Asked during a phone interview broadcast Monday if she considered her father a hero, she said: "Yes. Because now maybe people will listen."

His actions, which included murder, arson, and the destruction of federal property, were "inappropriate." Because they were successful, however, and "now maybe people will listen," he's a hero.

The daughter went on to say, "'But if nobody comes out and speaks up on behalf of injustice, then nothing will ever be accomplished,' she told ABC. 'But I do not agree with his last action with what he did. But I do agree about the government.'"

That government workers deserve to be killed? That our taxes are so high (in Texas, mind you, where there is no state income tax) that we are entitled to resort to extremism and destruction? What exactly does she agree with? Or, in this age of Tea Partying populist anti-government paranoia, does it not even matter? "Injustice," she says. Injustice towards whom? About what? I am trying to stay calm, trying to understand what on earth she is talking about. I am not having an easy time.

I would like to knock on her door and ask to come in and have a nice quiet polite chat where I ask her whether she now identifies with the hypothetical daughter of a 9/11 hijacker who thinks her father is a hero. Because what's the difference? Are Muslims terrorists and white men who act out merely "inappropriate"?

And then I will put down my cup and look her in the eye. Very quietly, I will say, I have been to three funerals and four shiva calls in six months. I have traveled to Connecticut for death and to North Carolina and to DC and to Westchester. I am tired, and I am angry, so angry that I am probably clutching the table right now. Because how dare anyone think that he is entitled to kill people, to fly a plane into a federal building just because he believes something? My mother works in a federal building and my father used to. I don't care what you believe; you can die for your beliefs, if you feel that strongly about them. But how dare you take other people with you to prove a point?

GodHatesFigs.com

My favorite spam-fax from the Westboro Baptist Church is all about Figs. It's also a clear rip off of Jeff Foxworthy.

"You might be a good fig if you:

• confess that Jews killed Jesus, and repent and mourn that grievous sin;
  
• put away your lie that God will bless you for pretending to eat kosher;
  
• recognize that Israel is doomed because of the Jews' proud sin."

More likely you are an evil fig.

"You might be an evil fig if you:

• would rather starve than eat the Bread of Life, whom you proudly crucified;
  
• Loudly proclaim that you're entitled to land you stole in your disobedience;
  
• Are proud of the bloody butcher's apron known as the Israeli flag."

Until we got this sheet, I didn't know why the sensitive and intelligent folks at the WBC chose to send the company I work for faxes everyday. (One we get frequently mentions Matthew Shepard, who it says "has been in hell these eleven years.") Now I realize: it's because we're evil figs! Although I'm not sure we loudly proclaim we're entitled to anything, or that we would turn down any free food, even the Bread of Life. Still, we meet the general requirements.

Guess what, Westboro Baptist Church? I may be an evil fig but I've got one up on you. Hear that whooshing sound? That's me turning the other cheek.

Oh yes. That's right. I FORGIVE YOU. I have out-Christianed you, and on Ash Wednesday no less. So stuff that in your fax machine. And have a nice day.

True story!

My tiny little college roommate gave birth to a giant baby! Well, both my roommates were tiny, and Catholic, and had short straight hair and small breasts and adorable faces, now that I think on it. But here I'm referring to the second roommate of the two, the one who got married, oh, just about NINE MONTHS AGO.

Kaboom!, as the scientists say. Two math-majors meet, mingle, and as a result new life walks the earth. Their union has already produced something more substantive than the US Senate has managed to produce in years. (Using the life of One of God's Children to score political points? Is that below me? Should it be, *Sarah Palin*?)

I am in shock. She squeezed 9 lbs and 4 oz of something live and kicking out of her canoodle today. While I was doing what, browsing Facebook? Thinking about the worst possible first/early date movies? (My picks, aside from Slate's winner "Closer": "Quills," "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover," "the Dreamers," and "Belle du Jour." All movies that seem like they should either be sexy or fun or both and end up being horrifying.)

Oof. Well, regardless, happy life, little newborn baby! And congratulations all around.

100%?

I am baffled by the idea that there can be a 100% chance of anything. "Taxes," suggested a friend this morning. Okay, fine: death and taxes. But anything else? Even the fact of the sun rising, the earth continuing to spin, the sky being up and the ground being down, gravity, entropy, cereal ...

Surely the scientists at weather.com are rounding up? I would be much more comfortable with a percentage that allowed for the element of sheer randomness and chaos in our lives -- 99.8% even. Am I alone in this?