-
-
Learning! The ability to be in very close to people on whom you have raging intellectual crushes! Taking a break from your major concern being "work" in the "labor to live" sense!
Otherwise I'm not a huge fan, I wasn't very happy in college. But I think there were circumstances under which I could have been, and for me grad school is a rosy prospect. But I certainly wouldn't subscribe to the "college is right for everyone" school of thought. -
Nope. Based on empirical evidence, I can say this to a moral certainty. Well, at least no women that I've known.
But honestly, I don't think anybody's immutably anything. We're all creatures who respond to context. And hot people. -
Yeah, this is an occupational hazard of URLs, and I feel a little too livejournal-era using underscores... I try to put the properly punctuated version of the handle at the top of profile pages ("I, too, dislike it," -- first line of Marianne Moore's poem "Poetry") but it doesn't always happen. I do like hearing all the ways people read it though... one of my favorites reads my name as "Toodis," reversing the meaning such that I, Toodis, like it! Words are funny, and I am sort of in love with the throwback to oral culture that urls create... alphabets make us hyper-aware of the spaces between words, whereas oral culture doesn't really hear words as distinct entities. Anne Carson ties this in with radical solitude and the nature of desire in a beautiful way. Anyway, mazel tov on your reading victory!
-
-
Absolutely. Worked for Lincoln, it's gonna work for me.
Besides, I'd argue that depressive realism is a very Jewish worldview. Expect the worst, watch your own back because ain't nobody else gonna do it for you, plan for the worst case scenario. You can only be pleasantly surprised, and you're likely to see a lot of red flags that the optimists miss. -
ehhhh it's a little literal for my tastes, but that boy sure is cute.
-
I've got a weird thing for Puck. Maybe it's the hair, maybe it's the fact that he knows he's an asshole and that's three steps ahead of most assholes, maybe it's the fact that he seems to be mad all the time and I'm into that. Idina Menzel is a pretty close second.
-
Because... that's how small theater companies seem to work in New York. And Chicago. And, like, everywhere, unfortunately. People just transfer their college troupe to the big city and keep making the same general type of theater they've been making with the same general group of folks. This company's better than most, they didn't all graduate together, and there's some honest-to-Maude experimentation and collaboration going on, and I respect them for that. But I'm beginning to realize that if you're in the arts, it's very hard to form a community that's not based on learning together.
But that's ok, because there's always time for an MFA. And for doing hard things. -
-
Mmm this question is phrased astonishingly badly. Astrology is certainly "real" in that it "exists," people think about it and talk about it and write about it. You are born under a certain configuration of stars and planets.
If you meant, instead, is astrology worth the trouble? Or, is astrology an accurate predictor of personality traits, life paths, or daily horoscopes?
My recent answer to those has been: quite possibly. I've started keeping a chart next to my desk of all the people I interact with regularly, organized by sign. And I see patterns emerging. Sometimes these are patterns reinforced by the typical traits of the sign in question, sometimes not. But I know, for example, that I tend toward adversarial, power-struggle ridden relationships with Pisces, for example. And that I date an inordinate number of Scorpios.
I've also recently signed up for a service that sends me my daily horoscope and Tarot reading by email every morning. I find it's a nice way to start the day. Even if it's an email full of truisms and canned wisdom, I find it almost always strikes on something very resonant, and helps me think more clearly about how I should approach the day's relationships and challenges.
So basically, you should use it when it feels good and helpful to do so. And if anyone offers to give you any sort of reading for free, take them up on it. Can't hurt, right? -
That was very very kind of you. I found a copy of the article I needed, and if you're interested, ask me a question with your email address in it and I'll send it along. It is a very hopeful study indeed.
-
-
I'm going to answer this with two quotes, one from a science fiction author, one from a Congressperson who sees UFO's. Unfortunately they seem to be the clearest thinkers of their generation on this matter. Maybe that's not unfortunate, so much as indicative of the problem of how deeply ingrained the concept of war is in our psyches, that only the kooks and visionaries can see beyond it.
Ursula K. Le Guin, Four Ways to Forgiveness:
“What would that world be, a world without war? It would be the real world. Peace was true life, the life of working and learning and bringing up children to work and learn. War, which devoured work, learning, and children, was the denial of reality. But my people, she thought, know only how to deny. Born in the dark shadow of power misused, we set peace outside our world, a guiding unattainable light. All we know to do is fight. Any peace one of us can make in our life is only a denial that the war is going on, a shadow of the shadow, a double unbelief.”
Dennis Kucinich, "Response to President Obama's 'Just War' Doctrine":
“Yesterday, our president mused about the inevitability of war, war’s instrumentality in the pursuit of peace and just wars. It is important for us to reflect on his words, because once we believe in the inevitability of war, war becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once we are committed to war’s instrumentality in pursuit of peace, we begin the Orwellian journey to the semantic netherworld where War IS Peace, where the momentum of war overwhelms hopes for peace. And once we wrap doctrines perpetuating war in the arms of justice, we can easily legitimate the wholesale slaughter of innocents. The war against Iraq was based on lies. Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan are based on flawed doctrines of counter-insurgency. War is often not just; sometimes it is just war. And our ability to rethink the terms of our existence, to explore the possibility of peace without war, may well determine whether we end war, or war ends us.”
My case: I rest it. -
Yeah girl. But only if you wear some American Apparel sparkly bullshit and promise that we are allowed to make at least one scene/act of benevolent mischief. And we can't go to the Bryant Park ice rink, because I went on a blind date with one of the managers there and then never called her. But YES.
-
Untenable question. I can only speak from the context of my own experience and brain.
I don't think sports are stupid at all. I think a lot of negative (and several positive!) things about sports, but "sports are stupid" is nowhere on the brainsheet.
I think sports are important, especially for kids, because they promote teamwork and joyful exercise and discipline. There is always the danger that for any given kid or program, sports end up encouraging undue competitiveness, or the alienation of the uncoordinated and disabled, or scary in-group behavior. But I think ultimately you control for as much of the negative fallout as possible, assume the good will outweigh the bad, and get your kid on a soccer team.
Sports spectatorship is another issue entirely, and is the half of the equation that makes me much more uneasy. Again, spectatorship accomplishes some really positive things: it’s a catalyst to a lot of healthy social interaction among both friends and strangers. It provides uncomplicated emotional catharsis as spectators experience the fraught, up-and-down narrative of a good game. It can create communities.
But the several of the most frightening experiences of my life occurred in the stands at sporting events. The crazy group-think, thuggish behavior, absolute faith in the rightness of one's position that occur in large crowds rooting for their team in testosterone-filled, adrenaline-ridden environments absolutely terrify me. I'm a less-than-five-foot-tall female. I don't stand a chance in a mob or a riot, and every football game I've been to feels one bad call or one bad heckler away from catastrophe.
And then you get to all the research that's come out in the past few years, for example, about the demonstrated deleterious long-term effect of playing football: a direct correlation to Alzheimer and other brain disorders. Now, I understand that we all take on job-related risks, but high schools play by the same rules the pro's do, and I don't think 16 year-olds can make rational decisions about the consequences of taking hundreds of hits to the head per season, especially when scholarships and pride are on the line. So in that sense, professional sports are extremely, unarguably harmful. Also harmful that said football scholarship is likely to be many kids' only ticket to college. Unacceptable.
And another thing: let's look at male/female breakdowns of participation and funding, regardless of Title IX. Pro sports are complicit in our dumb, dumb relegation of all things into categories based on genitalia, which is most clearly harmful to someone like Caster Semenya, but is also harmful to all of us in reinforcing the gender binary that haunts every aspect of our lives. It's stupid that WNBA players don't earn enough, it's stupid that they don't have a viewership, and it's stupid that we still use the term Golf (gentlemen only ladies forbidden). Dumb dumb dumb.
So all told, I don't think pro-sports are stupid: they're very calculated and profitable. But I do think the way they function right now, in this country, does more harm than it does good. Which is not to say that it couldn't change! But my kids won't be watching much beyond the Olympics til they're old enough to work the clicker. -
I've been Roman around trying to find an answer to this question, but it seems I am up the proverbial Greek without a paddle. Pass.
-
Tots. Tots every single time. They've got the crunch, they've got the grease, they hold condiments exceptionally well, and they don't have "French" in their title. Fuck the French.
-
Would not know, have never read him. Kerouac only comes up for me when I am trying to defend the use of stimulants in the creation of art, since I know he wrote On the Road in like three days thanks to amphetamines.
-
Because I want to answer them! And I have drafts of several answers! Formspring is proving itself to be a very good prompt and opportunity for cathartic writing. I just got very, very busy. Will write more soon, you have my word.
-
I don't believe in guilty pleasures. Firstly, I'm Jewish, so any pleasurable experience makes me feel deeply guilty, existentially speaking. Secondly, I take everything way too seriously. Meaning: if I spend time doing/watching/reading/listening to something, I already have an explanation for why doing that thing is meaningful and important. Usually that explanation will have something to do with the value of "low art"/pop culture/keeping up with water-cooler talk, but I'm willing to go to bat for a lot of dumb things. That's the lawyer's kid in me, knowing all sides of every argument and refusing to admit "guilt" in the sense of culpable for an immoral action.
Anyway: Lady Gaga interviews, french fries dipped in everything, Diane Keaton movies, and blogging.
-
dinah’s Bio
Fighting the uphill battle at Not Being An Asshole Creek.
