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Jan. 5th, 2010 @ 05:41 pm
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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) glimmergirl posted this earlier, but it's so awesome that I want everyone to have a chance to see it: online dating profiles for the men of Jane Austen novels! I think Mr. Collins and Mr. Elliot's profiles are the funniest, but I picked Captain Wentworth :)Current Mood:  amused |
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Well, hello there, Eljay. You know, it looks like i've been wasting time here for just shy of seven years. Seven years. The immortal They say that over the course of seven years, all of the cells in one's body die and are regenerated. If They are right, then i am, literally, a completely different person than the one who started writing here in late January 2003. For starters, i used to be more articulate. I am fairly certain that i have lost more brain cells than i've re-grown. This has been going on for some time; i think i am finally getting to be okay with it.
Good lord, this has been a helluva year. Not helped that i think of it as starting with events back in August 2008, and so, in internal logic land, there's 16 months' worth of Big Change compressed into the past year.
I shaved my head, and i carry it less well than ever. It still feels good to start counting a new chunk of time with a metaphorical clean slate, and so i'm perversely glad it's cold enough that i need a hat all the fucking time.
Resolutions, with a good deal of overlap from previous years:
~ Continue trying to be less of a judgmental anti-social asshole.
~ As a corollary to the above: act more like a grown up. Take more responsibility for my self, my actions, and my physical and emotional needs. (I've been working on this the past few months, and it is equal parts satisfying and cranky-making. Acting more like a grownup is hard.)
~ Admit that i'll never actually run away with the circus, and use the time i would otherwise spend angsting over how i'm not learning any new circus tricks to better appreciate other peoples' skills.
~ Get a better handle on personal finance. I don't think i'll ever be a model of responsibility, but i can be less of a stereotype.
~ All of these (even the thing with the circus) tie into this one: Don't let anyone tear me down and make me feel small so they can seem bigger and stronger in comparison. Not this year, not this decade, nor yet the next. Not ever again.
~ Another corollary: begin unlearning a lifetime of learned helplessness.
And for the record? Fuck winter. Fuck winter, fuck the horse it rode in on, fuck each and every one of its big stupid hats. I do not like this season, it does not suit, i would like to exchange it for a warmer one. Now. |
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As I sit in Maryland spending my days looking at help wanted ads that 10,000 other people are looking at, I am comforted by the notion that our habit of dicing periods of time into decades is an artificial convention. This comforts me because, finding myself unemployed and so broke I question the cost of little perks like buying new socks, this is not exactly the moment I'd like to use as my yardstick. Certainly when your income is 0$, the trajectory is not exactly ideal. (Though, as they say, the only direction to go is up.)
And yet, I am optimistic that as this decade rolls to an end, I am finally learned the basic life lessons that lead to happiness. Among the wisdom I've learned these past ten years:
* Having a job that pays well is not necessarily "evil"
* Leaving the state every time a relationship goes sour or becomes overly intense is a bad idea
* It is easy to pretend you're making career choices based on altruism that are also, in part, based on avoidance.
I am now officially at the level of maturity of your average 25 year old. With that being said, at the dawn of the new decade my life is not perfect-- but I am in a loving marriage and in a place surrounded by opportunity.
Without further ado, here is my quick review of my life from the past ten years:
2000: Lived in Easthampton, MA, and worked as a Special Education teacher. Had a part-time job as an assistant wrestling coach, the last time my body would see anything like cardiovascular exercise. Had the terrifying experience of hearing one of my students-- a girl with all sorts of problems--giggle and tell me that she watched me undress after practice once.
2001: Traveled to India, where I tested the limits of my gastrointestinal system. Returned to get "dumped" by a girl who I knew was only sleeping with me to get back at her unfaithful boyfriend-- and still sulked for a month. Decided almost on a whim to move to Philadelphia, where I lived on Phillywriter's couch for three months. Also began my Livejournal account, beginning with a post called Dildo Days? Dildo Dollars? An auspicious start.
2002: Lived in a studio apartment in Center City Philadelphia that had once been a hotel room. It was approximately the size of a prison cell. It was right smack dab in the middle of the gay neighborhood, and every now and then I'd awake to find my building had been surrounded by drag queens. Worked part-time at the Kimmel Center gift shop.
2003: Took a really crappy just-for-now job at a really crappy organization called The Arc of Philadelphia. We had a HR director who made employees give her jewelry and sleep with her and threatened to misuse their social security number-- she also talked a lot about Jesus. My boss, this snarling 300 pound power freak, told a fellow employee and I that we'd be fired if we made a mistake in the licensing process. I figured I'd be out in nine months.
2004: Still at that shitty organization, only they hired a new CEO-- a super-manic Mormon who would dream up astonishingly unfeasible ideas in the shower such as the time he bought a $25,000 used RV on a whim. Walked away from a deal on a house whose value would have doubled five years later. I'm sure other stuff happened, but for the life of me I can't remember.
2005: Met Yoko who, shockingly, seemed willing to put up with my bullshit. Later that year we crammed our stuff into a tiny one bedroom apartment by the art museum in Philadelphia. I remember this as a really good time. Maybe there is something to this steady girlfriend business thing after all.
2006: We bought a house in South Philly. Experienced some really good canoli. Got married in October. Had an absolutely wonderful honeymoon that began in a bed and breakfast on an island in the middle of Lake Champlain. More happiness, despite the fact that my crappy "nine month" job was now going on four years.
2007: Just when I think I'm out, they keep pulling me back in. That's right. Those jerks at the Arc of Philadelphia gave me a promotion to an actual position of real responsibility-- along with a 30% raise. Bastards. A bunch of angry and vicious people are fired; a bunch of crazy and unbalanced people are hired to take their place. Took a vacation to Amsterdam though. That was fun. Also, I started working towards an MA in Publishing.
2008: Work becomes unspeakably dreadful. But at least now I have a dog, making all of my life's problems irrelevant. The honeymoon between Yoko and I is officially over as she becomes jealous of my relationship with Buck. We begin having secret petting sessions when the wife's away.
2009 Lots of stuff: Yoko takes job in DC. We sell the house. She moves to DC and I stay in Philly. I quit my job and go to school full time. I finish my coursework. I get my unemployment cut off and will probably have to pay it back. Finally, in December, I officially move to DC. I now have one more course to take-- an independent study course-- and am considering getting another MA in International Relations.
2010: I anticipate that in the futuristic year of 2010 we will all have electronic chips implanted in our brains that allow us to become clairvoyant and custom-fit jetpacks will become readily available. |
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A recent survey has shown that Americans rate the past decade as the worst decade in 50 years. This survey isn't likely to surprise anyone with at least a passing interest in current events. The dreadfulness of the "aughts" has been astonishingly deep and wide--combining 60s style polarization, 70s style malaise and 80s style shallowness. The past ten years have been a collective belly flop into a pool of incompetence and drift.
The decade began with the fittingly unseemly election of George Bush in 2000. That election saw the candidate who lost the popular vote by over 500,000 votes win an election after a bizarre months-long spectacle of hanging chads and shamefully sui generis Supreme Court rulings. The events that followed--the dangerous foreign policy adventures, the ideologically-driven overturning of longstanding American principles and the financial meltdown--seem in retrospect to unfurl from this particularly noxious moment in our history.
What this decade has in common with all bad times is the sense that events have taken on a life of their own--a sense that each shock clears the way to something new and dreadful and unimaginable. Who could have imagined 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, Iraq, Afghanistan, legalized torture, Anthrax mailings, the London terrorist attacks, the financial meltdown, the tsunami in the Indian Ocean and the rise of the Real Housewives of Orange County in 2000? The bumbling and hapless Bush presidency did nothing to dispel the feeling that no there were no grownups in charge.
The conclusion is difficult to avoid: the past ten years has blown chunks.
There is a perverse side to me that has been riveted by the whole horrible spectacle. This is not to say I would in any way like to relive the decade. It has, if nothing else, been a time of awful suffering. Thousands in places like New York, New Orleans, Baghdad, Thailand were violently killed. The worldwide economic downturn has wrecked the lives of millions of others. For perhaps the first time since the late 60s--a similarly awful time idealized beyond all recognition--that we are living in interesting times.
"May you live in interesting times" is, of course, an ironic pseudo-Chinese curse (it mostly likely has American origins) that suggests it's better to live in moments when the news is boring. All my life I have wondered what it would be like to live in colorfully eventful times. The years between 1975 and 2000 did not exactly have a War and Peace-like historical sweep. As a teenager, I liked to read about World War II and the Great Depression-- moments in history that offered grand drama. I marveled at what it must have felt like to open up the newspaper in 1944 and read about gigantic armies sweeping across Europe and the Pacific. Similarly, the insufferable Boomer Shadow that has been cast upon everyone born after Woodstock comes from a sense of having collectively lived through tumultuous times.
Before the decade of the Bush disasters, three great events left an indelible impression on me: the Reagan assassination, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Challenger space shuttle disaster of 1986. I will never forget how the Challenger explosion absolutely stunned the country, seeming to become the sole topic of conversation for weeks on end. In the midst of the wars and terror attacks and economic free falls, it's easy to forget that another space shuttle-- the Columbia-- was torn to shreds over the southeast United States in 2003. It hardly even makes the top ten list for biggest calamities of the past ten years. It's been that kind of decade.
The 60s were the cultural pivot of post War America, just as I hope this past decade will turn out to be the pivot of post Cold War America. If you like history, it's hard not get a rush from from the swift succession of calamities we've witnessed. (It is worth noting that nothing says the next ten years won't be even more dire and shocking, but let's just hope for a certain regression to the mean.) If for nothing else, I give thanks to George Bush and the terrorists for making the newspaper such a fascinating read this past decade.
The last decade has not been a good one-- but it has certainly been memorable. I can at least now say that I've seen what it's like to live during an intense historical moment. And now that I've experienced it, I'm praying that the next ten years are as boring as an afternoon baseball game. |
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Dec. 31st, 2009 @ 02:28 pm
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Title: The Sky Is Filled with Question Marks (2/3)
Pairing: Sam/Jack
Setting/Category: Fireman!verse, angst, h/c
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate, just love its characters enough to want more of them. This was written for fun and with no prospect or desire for monetary gain.
Beta: The amazing hope_tang, who made this so much better than it would otherwise have been - and gave me the idea for this part.
Author's Notes: I'm not a doctor and have pretty much no medical knowledge. The small amount of medical info in this chapter came from late-night internet research, so I hope it's reasonably accurate, but can't promise. The parts in italics are flashbacks. Part 3 is forthcoming as soon as I can finish it.
( The Sky Is Filled with Question Marks )
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Dec. 31st, 2009 @ 02:21 pm
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Title: The Sky Is Filled with Question Marks (1/3)
Pairing: Sam/Jack
Setting/Category: Fireman!verse, angst, h/c
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate, just love it enough to want more of its characters. This was written for fun and with no prospect or desire for monetary gain.
Beta: The amazing hope_tang, who made this so much better than it would otherwise have been - and gave me the idea for Part 2.
Author's Note: Written for not_a_zatarc for the ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) sj_everyday Secret Santa. The title comes from Morphine's "Rope on Fire."
( The Sky Is Filled with Question Marks )
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Dec. 29th, 2009 @ 05:32 pm
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This is my current favorite set of statistics. Parakeets? Really?
This afternoon, Stella and i were out exploring some quasi-industrial wastelands out by the railroad tracks. It was cold, and windy, and i decided to take a short cut through some head-high weeds and across a vacant lot. Only, it turns out it wasn't exactly vacant. It was littered with dilapidated stock trailers and ancient mowers.
It was, in fact, the back end of someone's horse pasture.
The long brown faces hanging over the stall doors were not amused. The land owner (squatter?) -- tiny, and clad in a full-body snowsuit -- was all but jumping up and down in the effort to express his (her?) extreme lack of amusement. I decided it would be a bad idea to give Stella a chance to express her opinion, as she has some history with horses, as well as with vaguely threatening oddly-dressed people. We ducked under the gate as soon as funny-looking aggressive person got out of our path, and emerged exactly where i'd expected to.
In retrospect, i should have known about the horses; i've walked by dozens of times. They are even on the map.
Also in retrospect, i am very much amused: only in Philadelphia do you depart a trash-strewn access road, attempt to cut across a vacant lot only to encounter rusted-out farm equipment, horses, and a furious red goblinoid, and finally emerge on a very busy four-lane road across from a very posh major music venue. |
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Dec. 28th, 2009 @ 11:38 am
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Well, it's late and this isn't what I should be writing right now, but since it's been almost a week since I finished it, here are a few quick thoughts on Stardust.
The town of Wall lies on the border of Faerie, a magical land that the inhabitants of the world we know are allowed to enter only once every nine years, for a curious and wondrous market. Tristran Thorn, though born to a woman in Faerie, has grown up with his Wall(ian?) father and has no idea of his true ancestry. Trying to win favor with the girl he loves, Tristran ventures into Faerie to retrieve a fallen star and finds himself oddly at home there. But it turns out that the star is a beautiful young woman, and Tristran isn't the only one searching for her.
For some reason, I'd expected Stardust to be in comic format, but I love that it was actually an illustrated fairy tale for adults, complete with an ending that ventures past "happily ever after." It's a beautiful story, and Charles Vess' gorgeous art brings the world of Faerie to vivid life.
This is one of the rare instances where I saw the movie before reading the book, and I'm now very curious to know what Neil Gaiman thinks of the movie. I'll have to look that up on his blog someday.
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Dec. 25th, 2009 @ 09:59 pm
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Dec. 25th, 2009 @ 12:05 pm
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"We don’t need your Santa Claus
Cause we’ve got Uncle Ho
No three wise bourgeois gentlemen
Or sleigh bells in the snow
Santa may wear red, but don’t believe what you see
Cause Uncle Ho distributes presents equally
Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh
He comes down from the North
Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh
all the presents he brings forth
Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh
He’s a jolly man they say
Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh
Smash the state on Christmas day
That fat man he don’t understand
How his elves work
His laissez faire philosophies
Leave his workers short
Uncle Ho tunnels, when he brings your toys
And he lives with his workers in Hanoi oi! oi!
Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh
He comes down from the North
Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh
all the presents he brings forth
Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh
He’s a jolly man they say
Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh
Smash the state on Christmas day
Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh
He comes down from the North
Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh
all the presents he brings forth
Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh
He’s a jolly man they say
Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh
Smash the state on Christmas day"
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"I ruined all your Christmas joy
stomped all over your children's toys
saw your house with the lights ablaze
to crash your holiday’s the only way
I knocked that stupid virgin down
broke Joseph’s robes upon the ground
I saw his eyes from across the lawn
and oh-ho-ho, my heart was gone
Merry Christmas, I fucked your snowman
Merry Christmas, I slept with him
Merry Christmas, I fucked your snowman
Merry Christmas, I'll do it again
Your guests, they all were horrified
said the season I’d defiled
they can all just go straight to hell
I told them with one great big yell
Merry Christmas, I fucked your snowman
Merry Christmas, I slept with him
Merry Christmas, I fucked your snowman
Merry Christmas, I'll do it again
I burned down your tinseled evergreen
hit your old aunt across the knees
I’ve smashed up all your Christmas plates
for you and yours I’ve got only hate
I kissed him on his frosty mug
and he gave me a great big hug
now my heart is full of Christmas cheer
almost enough to last all the year
Merry Christmas, I fucked your snowman
Merry Christmas, I slept with him
Merry Christmas, I fucked your snowman
Merry Christmas, I'll do it again
Merry Christmas, I fucked your snowman
Merry Christmas, I slept with him
Merry Christmas, I fucked your snowman
Merry Christmas"
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Download the 7" here!Current Mood:  heeeeeeeeeeee |
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The most recent Esquire Magazine featured a series of quotes by the Kennedy brothers in a piece it called "the Meaning of Life." I select three JFK quotes I feel are highly suggestive of his evolution as a man. I certainly hope he eventually learned to spell "whorehouse" correctly.
JFK, 1936 (letter to Lem Billings)
I have just had an escapade. Got a f--- and a suck in a Mexican hoar-house for $.65, so am feeling very fit and clean. They say that one guy in four years has gotten away without just the biggest juiciest load of claps.
JFK, 1960
I suppose if I win—my poon days are over.
To Marlene Dietrich after they had sex in the White House, 1962
Did you ever make it with my father? ... Well, that's one place I'm in first. |
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