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May 23, 2002
Great, it's not just mouse poop, it's CORPORATE mouse poop
I love my little sister. She's come up with the bestest, most cutting-edge advertising campaign *ever*.
Herbuveaux: hi
SolonsRoz: hey you wanna hear something gross?
SolonsRoz: MOUSE TURDS
Herbuveaux: mustard
SolonsRoz: ALL OVER MY DESK
Herbuveaux: ew!
Herbuveaux: at home or work?
SolonsRoz: HANTAVIRUS!
SolonsRoz: work
Herbuveaux: not good at all!
SolonsRoz: HANTA
SolonsRoz: VIRUS
Herbuveaux: well, goodness!
Herbuveaux: maybe it's stuart little?
Herbuveaux: some new advertising ploy?
SolonsRoz: stuart "HANTAVIRUS" little
SolonsRoz: LOL
SolonsRoz: we give you hantavirus!
SolonsRoz: come see our movie!
Herbuveaux: that'll be the fourth installment
Herbuveaux: once they've already done "stuart in space"
Herbuveaux: and "stuart goes to vegas"
SolonsRoz: and "stuart goes to hell"
SolonsRoz: oh wait, stuart goes to Vegas, right.
Herbuveaux: lol
Herbuveaux: right.
Posted by me at 5:54 PM | Comments (0)
May 19, 2002
The Horse In The Living Room
Last year the Kentucky Derby was won by a horse named Fusaichi Pegasus. A striking name, not so much on its own terms as it is for its inclusion of a Japanese neologism. (It doesn't really mean anything; it's the name of the owner, Fusao Sekiguchi, combined with the number one.) The ranks of Derby winners are swollen with horses named things like Spectacular Bid and Majestic Prince.
The usual crew of WASPy ABC sports announcers was so completely baffled by the name that they shortened it to Pegasus. The announcers' handling of their cultural illiteracy was less than graceful -- "You say 'Fusachi.' I say 'Fusichi.' Let's call the whole thing off," quipped one -- and the problem of Fusaichi Pegasus's name became the subject of a few articles itself.
The mispronunciation was really the tip of the iceberg, though. There was this subtle fascination with the idea of a Japanese horse winning the Derby which pervaded the sentimental pre-race bios of the horses and their owners and the announcers’ patter. And then, in the winner’s circle, the subtle jingoism surfaced: Jim McKay, an ABC announcer who was due to retire from Derby coverage that year and looked as if he was fighting off senility with every quip, made some kind of reference to payback and World War Two to Mr. Sekiguchi.
Fast forward to this year: War Emblem, a hotheaded black colt with a tendency to bite anything that comes near him, wins the Derby, and also the Preakness. Emblem is owned by a Saudi.
I expected similar treatment by the media in this case, but I’ve picked up surprisingly little racist static during this year’s Triple Crown coverage. (Disclaimer: I substantially cut back the amount of pre-race coverage I absorbed this year, so this observation may not hold much water.) Arab countries do send plenty of horses to American racetracks each year; making a fuss over it would make about as much sense as bringing up the Boston Tea Party if an English horse won (though I'm sure, by this point, Jim McKay would be happy to oblige).
Still, with the amount of jingoism in the atmosphere at the moment, I was surprised when there were only a few low-key references to the fact that Ahmed bin Salman is, in fact, a Saudi Arabian prince. Another explanation in the broader picture, I guess, is that Saudi Arabia is such a strong and constant ally of the States that it just doesn’t merit a mention. Same reason it rarely gets mentioned that many of the members of al Qaeda are Saudi nationals.
And when you look at it in that light, seeing the cameras lap up the image of a fat royal from an OPEC superpower and the silver-haired, Hollywood-caliber trainer of his horse giving each other bear hugs over the victory of their million-dollar athelete... then proceeding down to give more bear hugs to the very tiny Latino man sitting atop the sweaty beast... and who knows what's in store for the jock (a broken collarbone, someday, maybe?) but you know the horse has just secured his future as the producer of million-dollar semen rather than joining the ranks of the thirty thousand other racehorses who are sold for dogmeat each year... well, for those of us who tend to look dimly on the status quo of globalization, this sounds like a very familiar story.
And speaking of which, everyone needs to go read about how the Bush administration's debts to the oil industry may have kept us from knowing about September 11th before it happened. read up.
Posted by me at 11:54 PM | Comments (0)
May 18, 2002
Goings On About Town: On About Town Goings-On (Ongoing)
Had a press club today at work. This is one of the many things our ambitious little nonprofit does: arrange for speakers to come and talk to reporters from the minority, immigrant, and community newspapers in the city (we say "ethnic," but I'm getting exceedingly tired of how clumsy that word is. There are over 275 publications in this category, at present count, and we find more every day).
Sometimes the speakers are public figures who are eager to give their pet project or personal image a higher profile in these communities; the State Attorney General, representatives from the September 11th Fund, and Mark Green fell into this category. Sometimes, because the IPA has a mandate to promote social justice, we put together panels of experts who can put a fine point on big pressing issues. That's what we did today: got a bunch of local welfare and hunger experts together and had them talk to reporters about how seniors in their communities would lose Meals on Wheels programs, ESL classes, and senior centers as the Mayor cuts the budget for the elderly (it's among the only funds in the city budget which are at his discretion) and as Congress monkeys around with welfare, continuing to exclude immigrants -- who do, at the very least, pay sales taxes like everyone else, so don't tell me they're receiving without contributing -- from receiving benefits.
It was sort of a comical scene, as we ended up once again with more experts than reporters in the room. It's fantastically difficult to interest journalists, who tend to be middle-class, in the subject of welfare; it's doubly hard when you're trying to reach groups with "model-minority" complexes, like Asians, in a subject whose importance to their community you would rather not acknowledge. In light of this I'm not doing to criticize the turnout; I did some extra legwork, and we ended up with reporters from three major Chinese dailies and a very solid reporter from a prominent Indian paper.
Anyway, all of this is just background to clear up what I actually do all day, for those of you who keep asking (I get the space rented, put together a flyer, mail the flyer to the editors, fax the editors, email the editors, CALL the editors and make it clear that yes, this issue does in fact have DIRECT and IMMEDIATE bearing on residents of the Uzbeki Sephardic Jewish community and would they PLEASE send a reporter from their 2,000-circulation newspaper); all of this is just a frame for today's winning anecdote. In the course of the briefing, the director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger alluded a few times to the stigma on seeking assistance from food pantries in a way that really struck me.
"Enron wasn't ashamed to receive assistance from the government," he barked, at one point. And, later, when fielding a question about faith-based assistance centers stepping in to help: "When the airlines were in trouble after September 11th, the government didn't say, 'Let the churches do it.'"
You hear lefties talk about "corporate welfare" all the time, and it's a good way to underline the differences in our attitudes about the government giving money to the rich and to the poor. After a while, though, it becomes just another buzzword. Mr. Berg's example does more to unpack our presumptions about assistance. And I'm really tickled by the idea of the Jesuits bailing out American Airlines. Not only does it recall that people once took it as a given that the government was supposed to help those in need; it also alludes to the absurdity of the moral presumptuousness of faith-based initiatives. I just wanted to add these tools to everyone's rhetorical arsenals.
* * *
Three stops before mine on the 3 train on the way back, I was smacked by a wave of nostalgia as a man in a suit sat down next to me, smelling like something which I couldn't identify but which was certainly related to Southern California. I was in a more talkative mood than usual, so I asked him if he could explain why he smelled like the San Gabriel Mountains. Bay tree, or sage, or mustard, I said. Or honeysuckle. He laughed uncomfortably and said his chiropractor had rubbed him down with some kind of salve.
He had some kind of Germanic accent, so he probably knew even less about the San Gabriels than I had calculated. Oh well. At least I talked to a stranger today.
* * *
I applied for a credit card today. An application for a Yale University Platinum Visa came in the mail, and it had a $100,000 line of credit and frequent-flier miles, so I had these visions of playing up Ivy League connections to get better service from staff at some ritzy hotel while racking up astronomical bills for grapefruits or mescaline or Underwood typewriters in some fly-by-night Hunter S. Thompsonesque orgy... The woman in the phone bank on the other end of the line said the card came in two different designs, the Harkness Tower Platinum or the Woolsey Hall Platinum... "Which one of them two designs would you like?," she said, and I came thudding back to earth with this emphasized indication that of course neither of them two buildings meant anything to her or to me... this woman on the other end, who might have been in Massachusetts, or maybe Maine, plodded with great deliberation through her script, herding her words back into line when they strayed from it... and of course, in the end it turned out the $100,000 line of credit was not meant for us, either.
* * *
Did you know that if you want to look for antique typewriters, all you have to search for on Google is "typewriters"?
Posted by me at 12:51 AM | Comments (0)
May 16, 2002
Capture the Flag
Coming back from work today I walked by three lightly-thugged-out young men. A taxi passed flying a blue and white flag from the passenger side window. The young guys pointed at it and started making snide remarks. One of the guys, who had cafe-con-leche skin and was dressed in athletic gear the same blue as the flag, said, "I'm gonna do it, dude." One of his friends shouted a word in a language I didn't know as the kid in blue made a beeline for the cab, which had come to rest in gridlock.
The flag was Israeli.
The kid grabbed it. The cab's tires screeched, and the driver leapt out of the car, but the kid had sprinted all the way to the end of the block and stood looking triumphantly back over cars and crowds of pedestrians.
I had a momentary impulse to tell the kids off, and then a backwash of confusion as I realized I was relying on conflicting clues to decode the scene. Then a moment of guilt, as I remembered how many times in the past months I've been inclined to rip American flags off houses, trucks, and lapels...
Posted by me at 12:31 AM | Comments (0)
May 15, 2002
The Myth of the Uncommunicative Father
I read Sharon Olds and Joan Didion and Sylvia Plath, all these writers of recent rebellious generations, the ones of whom it was said you can never go home again -- people who dig out the viscera of their relationships with their parents and slap them into the pages of novels. I admire these women. I often think you can’t write well without doing it. At least there’s a certain caliber of honesty which is easier to achieve once you’ve practiced it on this difficult subject.
But I don’t do the gut-digging myself. I almost never post anything about my family here; certainly never anything sensitive, nothing I wouldn't want my parents to read. They read the blog before anyone else does. In a fit of frustration I posted something angry the other day, but I took it down. The fourth wall on the Internet is a piece of two-way glass, a very thin skin; it doesn’t afford the protection of a few hundred hardbound pages.
(cracks knuckles)
I am the one in the family who talks. I talk on paper, over the wires, on camera, and on stage, as well as face to face.
Maybe it’s not truthful for me to claim a monopoly on this skill; everyone in the family is good with puns and Scrabble, and Mom and Sly are also known for talent in foreign languages. I think it’s fair to say, though, that no-one in my immediate family is as obstreperous as I am.
(Obstreperous... gregarious? My thesis here is ultimately about failings of human connection, so it doesn’t matter that I’m loud or that I can put together a decent sentence; I’m just as big a failure as anyone I accuse when it comes to being a good friend or lover. And I’m trotting out the big obfuscatory words for this one, clearly. I want to say that singing in the mineshaft has its uses. One way or another:) Everyone else in the immediate family is more reticent; talking is my genetic recessive trait, my mutant ability.
For a while I thought my mutant ability was sheer emotion, summoned up like a ball of pure energy I could use for creativity or harm. I decided this after I failed my first driver’s test at age nineteen, when I broke down in furious sobs in the backseat. My fit evoked a new and startling kind of panic in my mother, who stopped the car and yelled at me to grow up. That was also the first day it was clear that adulthood was a slipcover thrown over unmanageable neuroses.
Let’s put the point on it thus: Everyone in the family’s got words. Mine just have the jo-jeezly electromagnetic mutant vigor in ‘em.
I have heard my mother describe the reasons for my parents’ divorce only twice, two years ago and again two weekends ago. The first time the metaphor she used was so strange I convinced myself she hadn’t actually said anything of substance at all. She said the marriage was like the two of them sitting back to back with a pillow, or something soft and squishy that represented their marriage, between them. Not talking. And she confronts Dad about not talking, and he whips around and stabs the pillow and hisses How could you?
The metaphor was weird, but to some extent it jived with what I had figured out at the time of the divorce. The period leading up to the divorce had been eerily silent; no yelling, no thrown dishes, no crying. The idea of the Noncommunicative Father fit into the crude protofeminist worldview I was beginning to fashion back then. My maternal grandfather was already estranged from the family. My paternal grandfather was very quiet. After moving out, Mom lived with another woman who was going through an ugly divorce from a man who was a truly devious person. Men were all clearly bad communicators, by nurture. I sided with mom.
During the summer after my parents announced the divorce, they dragged me to a shrink. How was I to know what I was supposed to say? I had been given no vocabulary for talking about feelings or relationships. I sat in sullen silence the entire time.
I knew a shrink was a doctor for your mind. Clearly they were telling me I was sick. That confused me and made me angry; the divorce was their problem, not mine. Why were they pathologizing a childhood I’d been happy with? In my view, it had only been marred by mild social isolation after our move across country when I was five. I tried to explain myself, but it all came out in pop-culture references.
I don’t ask why I was sent to the shrink. I did talk to my mom two weekends ago about the divorce, and she said the same thing she did before: Your father didn’t want to talk about the relationship. It still doesn’t make any sense to me: How is noncommunication a universe-ending problem, once you’ve identified it?
So much of my life has hung on the idea of the Noncommunicative Male. It has colored each of my relationships and a few of my courses with male teachers. It damaged my relationship with my father. I took it as gospel truth.
It didn’t occur to me for years that the silence might have been two-way, and that I’ve been trying to fit my life story into the wrong mold. Maybe I should have been trying to fit the story of my life into some other story -- the narrative of The Woman Who Had A Fantastic Secret Inner Life, But Never Told Anyone About It, maybe; or, more broadly, The Family Struggling Against Its Tight-Lipped, Prudish Heritage (subtitled One Hundred Years Of WASP Solitude).
I figured out five years ago that I needed to reconsider how I understood my own history and motives in light of the fact that I am depressive. I learned a few years later that my father, also, is depressive. I’m still mad at him for not giving me advance warning that I was at risk. I’m going through other troubles now -- ain’t doing right by my sweet, devoted, patient boyfriend -- and surprise, I’m starting to find out this whole thing was foretold, in a way, by curious patterns in my family history.
Goddamn it, all I want to know is what other timebombs you people have planted which you haven’t told me about. Am I at risk for Huntington’s Disease? Is there a family history of pedophilia which I’m suppressing?
I have no role models for good relationships. I’ve had to practice over and over, leaving any number of young men gnawed and scratched and battered. To whom is silence fair?
We are still not talking, now, even as I call you and ask you and you finally talk. Maybe our kids will understand better if they can see this written down.
Posted by me at 12:47 AM | Comments (0)
May 11, 2002
I give writing advice to Wil Wheaton! Eee hee hee hee hee hee!
After getting 150 accolades from adoring fans, Wil Wheaton wrote that he wanted to pitch this piece to This American Life. So I gave him a little advice on pitching to them. My comment was at 1:47 p.m., his response at 4:15 p.m. -- scroll waayyy wayyy down. I'm trying very hard not to let my twelve-year-old inner Trekkie overwhelm me at this point. I can't afford to spontaneously wet my pants.
Who knows how serious he actually was about pitching to TAL. His site does describe him as "actor and writer Wil Wheaton" nowadays. I was under the impression that his geekitude helped him earn his stripes (and ditch the alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die stigma) in the Slashdot-oriented community which probably makes up most of his site's hits nowadays -- why not "actor and programmer/hacker/code poet?" What does Wil want out of life -- does he secretly yearn to be a novelist? Or what does this tell us about the status of writing in the US today? Are blogs the sign and standard-bearer of a renaissance of American graphomania? Everyone wants to write the Great American Novel...
One more thought: Those 150 love-posts illustrate something I've been noticing, namely that the standard of "good writing" for many people of our generation is based on the presence of a whole lot of references to toys and products and candy and other consumables "we" remember from childhood. Ability to evoke a collective memory of the meaning of one doll or action figure within its own commercially-developed pantheon is at a premium.
I don't know whether to say that this is going to mean that the written record of our experiences is going to ultimately prove ephemeral or not. After all, in another twenty years there could be another mass-marketed Star Wars nostalgia push, and the kids who head out to see Attack of the Clones later this month could end up marveling at how well the bloggers of our generation captured their own experiences, 20 years earlier.
I'm going to go play with my cornhusk dolls and stick horse now. Or maybe some pebbles. I'll trade you the cluster bomb I just found for a spoiled food packet... enough, enough.
Posted by me at 2:22 PM | Comments (0)
May 10, 2002
From The Vaults: Summer Evening Dinner With Seismologists
July, 1998
It's berry season, so for once there was a lot I wanted to eat in this non-vegetarian house. There were few dishes not based on berries. Dried-cranberry challah. Deep-dish pie with blackberries, raspberries, and tiny champagne grapes. A salad with avocado, mesclun greens, raspberries, thick raspberry vinaigrette dressing, strawberries, blueberries, and the blackberries that are so common around here that they choke out native plants. (Conservation organizations up here try to eradicate their thorny vines. I see the tangles growing beside the train tracks as I make my way through the yellow hills on the way to Berkeley. It makes me crazy that I can't pick any. Last summer at this time I was visiting Evan in Arcata. There were so many blackberries up there that we picked enough for three pies, ate our fill, got tired of them, and still had plenty to use as ammunition in a family fight.)
The room has a low, yellow light to it. The white candlesticks and ceiling lamp give it off, and the blond wood table reflects. One of the things Ross had the five-year-old doing was putting a dishful of squished marbles on the table, the kind that have been heated and flattened. They look so much more valuable than they are in this light-- green, and clear, clear with a yellow flower in the center, cobalt. Now that dinner is over people are playing with them. The seismologist across from me has his arranged in a spiral, like a nova. His daughter and wife have worked theirs into complicated square mosaics. Another seismologist made his into a flower-- all blue, with a yellow center. I'm being more abstract with mine.
All the seismologists are tanned or ruddy-- you never see a pale seismologist. They spend too much time outdoors. Their hair tends to be a little disheveled; they wear polo shirts. Their faces are interesting, craggy. It's their turn to talk now; their wives have run out of party chatter about kids, schools, and relatives. The seismologists talk earnestly about publication of their colleagues' papers. One containing some now-doubted claims made it into Science Magazine. Some of the seismologists grumble with concern over this. The man who made his marbles into a flower shrugs, though. "I thought he had a good hypotheses," he says. Science is, after all, an inexact and plastic art.
The seismologists discuss, with some concern, a colleague by the name of Savage who saw fit to chew out one of his protegés. Apparently Savage finds the mores of modern conversation to be unnecessarily polite. In my experience, this is not a new theme. My father sits with some of the oldest professors at Caltech at lunch. Often over dinner he would shake his head, telling my stepmother about one mysogynist or antiquated tirade or another. I think I recognize the name Savage, and ask about him. Turns out this Savage is not the one I know. Yet the details of this part of the conversation still hold my attention. Sometimes the human dynamics of science are the most interesting part.
The topic turns to the recent catastrophe in New Guinea. Even scientists talk about current events. The daughter of the seismologist who shaped his marbles into a spiral points out with pride that her father was on the news because of the tsunami. "What they were saying was utterly false," the spiral-seismologist protests. The revival of the issue inspires in him as much worry as watching the news did; his brow clouds. Seismology never translates well to news broadcasts, and the seismologists seem to take each misunderstanding as a personal slight. With each press bungle, they become slower and more careful in how they release information. The media, in turn, sometimes choose to bite the hand that feeds them (who else is going to tell them how strong an earthquake was, and what fault it centered on?) and make the seismologists out to be haughty mad scientists hell-bent on keeping the public in the dark. In the Los Angeles area, hub of both Caltech seismology and Hollywood activity, this leads to uncomfortable detentes after earthquakes.
So the spiral-seismologist called the TV station and told them off, he recounts. The station called him back in a few hours, asking that he do an interview with them. The seismologist's daughter beams, proud of her dad. He shrugs. Being on TV does not matter as much to him as making sure people are given the best information available.
The hostess, sitting at the head of the table, makes a joke. She wants her husband to move the location of some upcoming family function. "Tell Ross that a tsunami could easily wipe out the roof of the Cliffside Hotel," she quips, winking at the flower-seismologist. He tilts his head back, calculating in invisible numbers on the ceiling the height of the cliff and the reach of a tsunami. The joke missed him. The other seismologists join in, all serious. They figure on a 75 foot wave, argue over fluke waves in Alaska. Their wives laugh at them.
The seismologists speculate about the likelihood of a tsunami as destructive as the one which hit New Guinea happening in the United States. If anyplace, they agree, it would hit Arcata. (I think of the blackberry bushes ripped out by the wave, Evan's house underwater.) The area is the most seismically active in the country. Still, nothing has been done to prepare for a tsunami there. Pulp mills and schools are built out on a spit just like the one destroyed in New Guinea. If there was any time to set up a government program, they speculate, it would be now. They look to each other appraisingly. "Ask Ross for some money," says the hostess to the flower-seismologist. He ducks his head, puts up his hand. It's not a matter of money, just the government listening.
I feel at home again in this atmosphere. It's better than most nights.
Posted by me at 1:32 AM | Comments (0)
May 6, 2002
Hardcore, No Others Need Apply
So I have this friend (let's say) who works in a nonprofit. Her org is in a position to hire an entry-level staffer, and she's the one in charge of the search. She's showing me resumes, because she values my opinion. I've seen a couple so far. The job description she has posted mentions that candidates should have a social justice background. Some of the applicants I've seen so far have been involved in real grassroots organizing; some were chapter heads of big, relatively low-maintenance organizations on the order of the Sierrra Club; and some have just had office jobs.
The other day we were looking at one of the latter type of applications. My friend asked me what I thought, and I said the applicant looked like a nice competent person, if lacking in activist background. Then again, I said, I think it's worth picking up someone like that and showing them the ropes -- a good way to increase their active commitment to social change.
My friend gave me a frustrated look that made me think my opinion on applicants was no longer of a high enough value to seek out. But we're a social justice organization, she said. This applicant doesn't have a social justice background.
Have you ever known a guy whose social repertoire relies heavily on clomping his huge headphones over your ears and insisting you listen to a song by his favorite band, usually one which has a great deal of meaning to him but which takes some explaining to anyone else? And he doesn't do the explaining... You try playing him some music you like, in a less invasive way, because he really is manic about this one band and, you know, you worry about a person like that... he gives you back your CD and says, Yeah, it's OK, but it's not My Favorite Band. And then you mention another band you like, and he says, Oh please, I don't think I can talk to you anymore.
And did that happen to you, and did you then think, My god, didn't I give this attitude up in high school when it was used against me one too many times?
Posted by me at 1:03 AM | Comments (0)