We'll die with our options open

Happy Valentine's Day

2010-02-11T22:34:00.000-08:00

Valentine's Day is coming up. I know it's a little bit off topic...well lets be honest I may have some themes but I don't really have a topic exactly, so this is fine.

You know I love Valentine's Day, but I do have some problems with it. I like Valentine's Day as a celebration of love in all forms whether I'm single or not. When I'm not single (though I've been single for many VDays now) I even like the celebration of romance. What I don't like is the mass bastardization of what romance means. I don't want to be that person that rails against the commercialization, but in this instance I do think commercialization is the problem.

They're trying to sell something and the only way you can sell something to a large number of people is to make it so generic that it doesn't appeal to anyone specifically but to everyone generally.

What do I mean by that? Well, what would you expect would be really bad Valentine's Day gifts for a woman? Kitchen appliances? Tickets to sporting events? Home improvement products? And what would you think would be great Valentine's Day gifts for a woman? Jewelry perhaps? Maybe flowers? Well, I'm a woman and I would far prefer any of the former to the latter. I don't really wear jewelry and one of my cats likes to eat flowers even though they make her sick so I can't have them in my house.

I'm not going to make a case against consumerism really. I'm all for putting as much money as you can into the economy just spend it on the right things. Real romance is paying attention, knowing someone so well that you know the specific things that appeal to them and don't need to fall back on the generalizations that are being sold on every corner. I'm sure lots of women like jewelry and flowers but I'm also sure that many of them would prefer something else (if you're observant enough to figure out what it is).

Men, of course, are a mystery to me, but I would imagine that the same holds true for them.

Anonymity

2010-02-02T21:08:00.000-08:00

I've discovered recently that if you mention Zachary Quinto on your blog many people will read it. The Sarmy is a force to be reckoned with. I've blogged about sports and entertainment both here and at my other blogs and never gotten the kind of traffic that I got when I wrote fan mail to Zachary Quinto.

I never really thought people would read my blogs. What I mean is not that I assumed I had any sort of privacy when I wrote about my personal life in intimate detail and posted it on the internet...it's just that I never really thought about it much. I have a meter and I look at it but it does count things like the google bot and doesn't count things like google reader so I never really paid much attention to the counts until the counter on one of my other blogs had a sudden jump (right after my fan letter to Zachary Quinto).

When I first started blogging (and this was my first) I thought a little about who might read my stuff (as I've mentioned) and specifically didn't tell my friends and family that I was doing it so that they wouldn't read it (strangers I was okay with though). I've gotten over that since and put the link to this and my other blog on facebook where people I actually know can find it, but I still have tried to maintain a sort of anonymity (never mentioning people by name, not having an e-mail address on my profile, etc). I'm giving up one more of those veils now. I put an e-mail address on my profile.

I'm still not sure anyone actually reads this stuff, but if you do and you want to contact me now there is a way to do that. If anything, I expect I will now be graced with e-mails pointing out my lax editing...maybe I should just go through the archives and correct a few spelling errors while I'm thinking of it.

Coincidence

2010-01-29T22:39:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite things in the Conan finale (aside from his admonishment against cynicism, which made me cry) was the montage set to Cheap Trick's Surrender. It's one of my favorite songs and the subtext it provided for sending Conan off was perfect. The next day I got in my car and plugged in my Zune (set to shuffle, as usual) and that very same song was the first thing I heard.

An interesting coincidence (if you believe in coincidence).

That week I was reading Fear of Flying (by Erica Jong). I wasn't really enjoying it but as a lit nerd and a woman I felt like I needed to read it. There is a remarkably peripheral mention of Carl Jung in the book (peripheral given that the book is primarily about psychoanalysis), and how he is viewed, by some as antisemitic for taking over Freud's post when he was deported.

When I finished Fear of Flying I started reading Craig Ferguson's Between the Bridge and the River which is by far a better book in almost every respect. It features Carl Jung much more prominently and his theory of the collective unconscious.

Around this same time I found myself suddenly and somewhat inexplicably in a Zachary Qunito fan bubble. I mean, not completely inexplicably, I like Heroes and I loved Star Trek (and yes, Spock was my favorite character but that probably has a lot to do with my love of logic), and yes the juxtaposition of the two characters (Sylar and Spock) does highlight Quinto's range as an actor very well...so yes, I am a fan of his, and have been, but the recent...fixation is somewhat surprising.

I have a new blogging venture. It's my compromise on a dream. I had once dreamed to have a platform, possibly a magazine or TV show but preferably an NPR radio show, where I (and my collaborators whomever they might be) would interview people we are fans of and do articles on things we are fans of and then the people we interviewed would tell us what they are a fan of and we would research that and do an article on that as well (companion pieces). I decided to compromise and start blogging the fan mail instead.

So, when my Zachary Quinto fixation arose a couple weeks ago I started reading everything I could about him (research you might say, for my fan mail, though I didn't use any of it really). I found this interview (from Playboy which, by the way, does often have pretty great articles and interviews) in which Zachary Quinto says that he is a fan of Carl Jung.

Also, as a result of my ZQ fixation, I started re-watching Heroes from the beginning. As I write this I am watching Season 3 Episode 4 in which Parkman is marooned somewhere in Africa with another guy who can paint the future. The future painter tells him he needs to look inside himself and find his "totem, a spirit guide that attaches itself to your subconscious". When Parkman asks him about if that's "some sort of African mystical mojo thing", he responds that it's from Carl Jung's theory of analytical psychology.

I don't think Carl Jung believed in coincidence, though I could be wrong since it's been over a decade since I studied about Jung (during my brief flirtation with majoring in Psychology). I believe that some things are pure coincidence but that many things which appear coincidental are something much larger. I think it's unlikely that I would stumble across four references to Carl Jung in two weeks by pure coincidence. It seems to me like something larger than coincidence but at this point I'm not entirely sure what. I guess I need to look into my subconscious for my totem to give me the answer. Or maybe I should pray about it. Or maybe prayer and analytic psychology are one and the same, maybe God and the Collective Unconscious are one and the same....

Faith

2009-12-11T21:45:00.000-08:00

I have a great URL, so great that I feel a little guilty not using it a) more and b) to discuss matters of faith. So, faith is the subject of the day.

I was raised mostly without religion. There were remnants of it. My mother had been raised Catholic but her entire family lapsed and later in life found out that they were part Jewish so we've adopted some of the traditions and ritual of both but not the daily practice of either religion. And my father wasn't really raised in any specific religion at all. So, as a child my only contact with religion was my friends. I used to go to church, Mormon church, with my friends families sometimes and I really liked it. I liked it for a lot of reasons, mostly because I had an abundance of faith and no other outlet for it, but there's something more specific I want to talk about now.

There were, of course, Sunday school classes at Mormon church, that involved among other things, reading and discussing a passage of either the bible or book of Mormon. I couldn't tell you anymore which passage this is (it's been years since I've read, much less studied, either the bible or book of Mormon), but I have a memory of one weekend when we discussed a passage about the concept of faith conquering fear. The gist being that if you find yourself being attacked by the forces of evil your faith will protect you. All you have to do is ask the Lord for help, for protection, and you will be protected. My seven year old brain didn't quite grasp that maybe the forces of evil weren't flesh and blood daemons but might be metaphorical and that the protection is for your soul not your body. I just liked the idea. I took it literally, and I liked the idea.

Later in life I came to a more broad understanding of that lesson. As with most things, there is a quote from Dawson's Creek that illustrates the jump I made from taking it all so literally to a more basic, general idea. [Yes, I do realize I'm writing about faith and religion and I'm about to quote Dawson's Creek to illustrate something but I couldn't quote the bible passage that illustrates the same concept. I'm okay with it]

"God. I've never really believed in God. In fact, I've spent a lot of time and energy trying to disprove that God exists. But I hope that you are able to believe in God, because the thing that I've come to realize, sweetheart... is that it just doesn't matter if God exists or not. The important thing is for you to believe in something, because I promise you that that belief will keep you warm at night, and I want you to feel safe always."

It's a wonderful thing thing to know that no matter what bad things might happen, they can't hurt you, not really. It actually comes full circle to the other primary principal of Faith. That's faith with a capital F because I think there are certain principals that cross over and belong to all faiths. One of those is forgiveness. If you keep holding on the the bad things that have happened to you then they are still hurting you, but if you let them go then you make it true that nothing can hurt you.

Those two things are the core of my faith, and I think all faith really. Be open, or in other words, don't live your life in fear of bad things, and if you should encounter bad things, let them go. I'm over simplifying, but...actually, maybe I'm not, maybe things just are that simple.

[Also, yes I am aware of the irony of my discussing letting things go on the first night of Chanukkah with the candles still burning in my window and I'm okay with that too. Chanukkah, not so much about letting go, but it does speak to the idea that bad things may happen but that with faith you can keep them from having the power to hurt you.]

My apologies to the 80s

2009-10-20T00:07:00.000-07:00

As someone who claims to be (or at least have been) a film buff there are a fair amount of holes in my film viewing history. For example, I have never seen Citizen Kane. It was on the syllabus for a film class I took but I missed that day. If only I could have been out sick the day we watched Zardoz instead (believe me I wish I could un-see that one), but alas it was Citizen Kane day that I missed.

I'm trying to make up for it now. I've been interspersing classics into my queue in between Entourage and Mad Men viewings at a rate of two per month. Last month it was Funny Face and A Star is Born (the original), this month Eight Men Out and The Natural...but I have a lot of catching up to do.

Some of these are of my own choosing, but many of them are recommendations from people. Someone will say, "You haven't seen _______! Oh my God, it's classic you have to see it" and so I will dutifully add it to my queue and watch it eventually (Yes, Goodfellas is still on there and I will get around to it some day).

For the most part, whether or not they were of my own choosing or recommendations, I've really liked all of the "classics" that have been part of my re-education in film. However, I have to admit, because it's on my mind (and on TV a lot in the run up to Halloween), and I know how unpopular this will be....I really didn't like The Goonies.

I know I should fit perfectly in to this film's demographic. I'm a child of the 80's and a fan of many of the cast members. I should love the The Goonies, but I just can't work up any enthusiasm for it. Maybe if I'd seen it as a kid (as most of my friends who've recommended it did) I'd feel differently, but I didn't. Maybe it just loses something in translation from kid to adult. I don't know, but I really didn't like it. Maybe it was just that it had been so hyped to me that it just couldn't live up to it, but I don't think so. It wasn't just that I didn't see what all the fuss was about, I actually disliked it.

So, my apologies to the 80's, I feel like I've betrayed you, but the heart wants what the heart wants, and mine does not want The Goonies.

Supreme Court

2009-10-09T22:38:00.000-07:00

I feel like I have to justify myself before I make the argument I'm about to make, because as much as I fully believe in this argument the reason for the argument hurts my heart more than almost anything else ever has.

There is a case currently before the supreme court regarding animal cruelty and whether or not it is okay to produce and sell films depicting actual acts of animal cruelty (actual as in not simulated, as in would not and could not have that disclaimer at the end stating that no animals were harmed in the making of the film). More accurately the case is about whether or not it is okay to ban the production and distribution of films depicting actual acts of animal cruelty. Now, here comes my own disclaimer. I am an animal lover. I have volunteered at an animal shelter and given money to the ASPCA and North Shore Animal League. Animal cruelty makes me sick. Hearing about this case, talking about this case, breaks my heart. I can't even bring myself to describe, as I heard described, the acts depicted in the videos that resulted in this case. Hearing the description of these videos made me want to believe in Hell. If there is a Hell, like Dante described, the lowest level of it would be reserved for people who harm the defenseless.

The case is a first amendment issue. The producers of these films are claiming that it isn't constitutional to ban the production and distribution of them.

The opposition is saying that some speech is already banned, namely child pornography, and that these types of films are just as bad and should also be banned federally, or at least be allowed to be banned by state and municipal governments. They also reference snuff films (saying that if there were snuff films that we were aware of we would and should absolutely ban them). Basically they are saying, yes we have free speech, but some types of speech are bad enough that it's okay to ban them.

I basically agree that some things are so bad that it's okay to ban them even though it infringes on free speech. I mean, I don't agree, but if it were up to me to pursue a case against the government for banning something like child pornography or animal cruelty videos, I wouldn't do it simply because my belief in free speech isn't a strong as my belief that it's wrong to hurt animals and children.

Having said all of that, the case has been brought, and I have heard about it and I have to make an argument because I have a compulsion to make arguments and because I do believe in free speech.

Banning the videos is unconstitutional. More importantly (to me anyway, and to other animal lovers) it's unnecessary. Animal cruelty is already illegal. The same holds true for snuff films and child pornography. Molesting children is already illegal. Rape and murder are already illegal. Filming illegal acts doesn't need to be illegal because the acts themselves are illegal. Filming these acts and selling those films (or otherwise distributing them) is actually remarkably ill advised since documenting your criminal behavior, if anything, creates a trail that might make it easier for the authorities to catch you. Regardless, given the constitutional protection of free speech, the animal cruelty videos can't be banned. Animal cruelty itself, however, can be (and has been in most, if not all, states and municipalities in the US).

Serendipity

2009-08-22T23:55:00.001-07:00

They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder and while I hope that's true of my rabid though minuscule fan base here at faith versus fear I suspect my absence has barely been noticed. I've wanted to write I simply haven't had anything to say. I know, I know, there have been primary elections locally, national political debate about health care, nearly the entire cycling and baseball seasons have past...normally all things that I would have something to say about, why not this year? It was the question. You may recall (and if you don't that's what archives are for) that in one of my last posts I spoke of my decision to go to law school and of a friend who asked me if I was happy with that to which my answer was mostly.

So, after much shock that this person knew me so well, I turned my highly honed debating sense on myself. Mostly happy meant partly unhappy and I had to ask myself why. That's what I've been doing and I'm not sure I have all the answers yet, nor am I at all sure that anyone cares to hear about my internal debate about what to do with my life (even if the original title of this blog was "we'll die with our options open").

If I haven't returned to write self-reflective posts, then why have I ended my hiatus? What prompted me to return to writing?

It was language, and a John Cusack movie (as is to be expected from me I suppose). Last night I got home from work, exhausted, for no good reason...okay a couple of good reasons (beer and whiskey are one, Happy Birthday again my perceptive friend if your reading this, and then staying up too late trying to work out wireless network issues)...the point remains that I was tired, too tired to be bothered even with surfing the channels looking for something good to watch on television. As luck would have it I turned on the TV and something decent happened to be on the channel it was already on.

Serendipity. Not Cusack's best film, sure, but one worth watching. So I did and I enjoyed, as always, the Piven/Cusack dynamic. I'm continually fascinated by these two actors as actors and people. They are, or so it is said, lifelong friends which I think is amazing, perhaps because I don't have many people I can count as lifelong friends. I have a couple (though I don't keep in touch with them as well as I should) and I have at least two that I've only met in the last few years but that I suspect will be lifelong friends, but Piven and Cusack have that history and I'm intrigued by it. Also, they grew up in the same Chicago suburb as my mother, a place that despite the infrequency of my visits to it has always seemed like a second home to me. In any event I'm captivated by them and they fact that they appear together in a film is really enough reason for me to watch it.

At the end of Serendipity Piven's character (Dean), an obit writer for the NY Times, gives Cusack's (Jonathan) the obituary that he wrote for him claiming he'd had writers block trying to come up with a best man speech for Jonathan's now canceled wedding. The mention of writer's block was the first thing that made me think maybe it was time for me to start writing again, but then (in voice over) Dean reads the obit and finally I had something to say.

The last line of that obit is, "Ultimately Jonathan concluded that if we are to live life in harmony with the universe, we must all possess a powerful faith in what the ancients used to call 'fatum', what we currently refer to as destiny". My first thought was that what the ancients called "fatum" and what we refer to as destiny are not the same concept, and my second thought was that it was a fitting topic for me to write about given the faith required to believe in either.

I realize the distinction is subtle but fate and destiny are not the same thing. Of course, being the language nerd I am I looked up both the definitions and the etymologies to confirm my theory and found that in reality (at least from a definition stand point) I am absolutely wrong, but I'm going to make my case anyway because a) I think the etymology backs me up and b) I think you'll agree I'm right.

The word "fate" does indeed come from the ancient Greek "fatum" which meant spoken (by the Gods) whereas the word "destiny" comes from Old French "destinée" meaning, to make firm or establish. I suppose whether or not you accept my argument will depend on whether or not you believe in free will. You might make the claim that it doesn't matter whether or not you or I believe in free will but whether or not the ancient Greeks did (but that's a whole other argument about etymology in general that I won't get into). If you do believe in free will then just because something is spoken by God (or the Gods) doesn't necessarily mean it will happen, it maybe means it should happen, that it probably will happen, but the ultimate outcome is dependent on the choices you make. In other words if something is fated to happen it is not made firm or established, but something that is destined to happen is established.

So, I say fate and destiny are two separate concepts and likely if you believe in one you don't believe in the other. Or rather, if you do believe in free will you might or might not believe in fate but you couldn't believe in destiny. There are probably a few people out there who believe that we have free will just not all the time, they believe in an interventionist God who lets us be as long as we don't stray too far from His plan, but I think they're a minority. Generally either you believe everything is determined already and, like actors in a play, we're just saying our lines, or you believe that we're improvising (to stick with the metaphor).

So, do I "posses a powerful faith"? In somethings for sure, but not in destiny. I think we are making it up as we go along and if God (or the Gods) has/have a plan it's a flexible one. Of course, I don't really posses a powerful faith in that either, I'm more than willing to accept that I might be wrong. He/They could be up there (wherever that is) laughing at me right now for living out their plan to the letter all the while thinking it was my own idea.

For the love of the game?

2009-05-20T10:10:00.000-07:00

I was reading this article on Huffington post in which Joseph Spinelli advocates a zero tolerance policy for steroid use in baseball. I know this always comes down to me not having kids. My own dreams of playing major league baseball were dashed at age seven when I learned that women don't play professional baseball, so I have no need for illusions about the purity of the sport, I have no one to protect, but lets make the argument anyway because we can.

The idea of a zero tolerance policy doesn't really track with, well, humanity. As human beings we have certain weaknesses and are prone to making mistakes and to not allow people a second chance is ludicrous. It's not that I'm necessarily opposed to harsher punishment...in cycling for example the punishment for positive doping tests is a two year suspension, granted they don't do 162 races in a season so they could go with a 50 race suspension and it might amount to the same thing, but that's a whole apples to oranges issue and the point is that two years is a long suspension (a harsher punishment than they have in baseball) that in some cases can mean the end of a career but not all cases. Two year suspensions still allow for second chances (look at Daivd Millar).

My other big issue with the article is that he holds up Manny Ramirez as the poster boy of doping in baseball. His zero tolerance policy is specifically directed at Manny. Granted Ramirez is the latest to fall and so he is the current poster boy of doping in baseball, but the irony is that he got caught, or so it seems, because he stopped taking steroids and started taking something else to heal the damage steroid use caused. So he realized the error of his ways, or I prefer to think the Dodgers are a team that won't put up with doping so he had to stop, and now he's trying to play the game clean and now is when we're going to hold him up as an example of someone who should be banned for life. Now he seems to be trying to do the right thing, whatever his reasons, now is when we should give him a second chance.

If you love something, like baseball, you have to accept that it has flaws and love it anyway.

Goodbye

2009-05-03T23:46:00.000-07:00

I went to a memorial service today for a friend who passed away last week. I found out that she'd passed from status messages on facebook and I wanted to be angry about that but I could really only be mad at myself because she'd been sick and I hadn't been to see her. At first I didn't go to see her because I had a sinus infection and her immune system was compromised by chemo therapy. When she decided to stop the treatment I still didn't go to see her though. The truth is that I was afraid to see her sick.

I know it's a cliche, that everyone says things like this when someone dies, but this woman was truly exceptional. She had a wicked (often dirty) sense of humor and the most amazing and infectious laugh. She was just so full of life that I couldn't imagine that life leaving her and I didn't want to see it.

Of course now I'm forced to face the fact that I didn't get to say goodbye to her because of my own stupid fear.

Chuck vs. The Upfronts

2009-04-29T22:49:00.000-07:00

I know it's baseball season and I should be writing about the changes in the Mariner's outfield, but in a couple of weeks the television upfronts will take place and at the moment I'm preoccupied with that. Lucky for me I don't have an editor telling me what I can and can't write about. While I had been holding out hope for all the major networks to abandon the "season" all together and alternate new programming throughout the year it seems unlikely (though the cable networks seem to be starting down that path). At the moment my concern about the season is secondary to my concern that my favorite show might get canceled.

This has become an annual ritual for me going back to 2001 when my all time favorite show (Sports Night) did get canceled. At the time I didn't know about the upfronts, but I learned about them quickly from reading every article I could find on the fate of my favorite show. That was just the first of many shows I've loved and lost. Firefly. Veronica Mars. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. The Loop. Every other year or so I find myself on upfront vigil, waiting to see if one of my favorite shows is going to be canceled.

This year I'm lighting candles for Chuck. I feel like I should make a case for keeping the show but I'll keep it short. It's smart and funny and combines drama, comedy, romance and action seamlessly. It has an entire ensemble cast of likable (and three dimensional) characters. The thing is that all the great things I can say about it don't really do it justice. There's an intangible factor that you have to watch the show to really understand. Since it had its season finale on Monday and may get canceled before next season I can only recommend, for now, that you rent (or buy) the DVDs and then pray along with me that it doesn't get canceled. This blog is all about faith after all and I have faith that this one time the universe won't let my favorite show get canceled.

Happiness is...?

2009-04-08T23:21:00.000-07:00

Only a lucky few are talented at something that they love doing and that makes them a decent living. I haven't found anything like that. When I was younger the one thing I was really good at seemed like such a long shot at making me a decent living that I quit and only now do I realize that I might not have really liked it either. It was just easier that anything else. In recent years I've tried to focus on finding things that I am good at and in the process have found that my two greatest skills, empathy and logic, don't really overlap in very many career paths.

Everyone who knew me in High School assumed I would pursue acting and at the time I thought they were right. I was certain I'd go to college and major in theater. Empathy being the primary skill of actors that might have made sense. I chose my (first) college based on the fact that it had a good theater department (well that and the fact that it was relatively small and didn't have a Greek system). I realized pretty quickly that acting, for me, was an escape and that I needed to face whatever it was I was trying to escape from. So I switched, first to psychology, then philosophy, then I thought I'd try business but the school I was at didn't offer a business degree at the time (they do now though, in fact a friend of mine is a Marketing professor there now). I decided to transfer to a bigger school.

I told everyone I was transferring and most people were happy for me. There was a guy I knew from high school, I'd been a little bit in love with him in high school but the timing was always off. When I told him that I was transferring and that I planned to get my degree in business administration he got really mad at me. He said that business wasn't me. Of course, I got mad too because at that point we'd barely seen each other in over a year despite being at the same school. We got into a screaming fight in the middle of campus about it, him yelling at me that I wasn't being true to myself and me yelling at him that he didn't know me well enough to say that. It turned out he was right. I applied for transfer and was accepted but instead I didn't go back to school for about seven more years and when I did I majored in English. I couldn't hear it from him at the time. I didn't want to believe that he knew me better than I knew myself.

Flash forward ten years. I recently decided to go to law school. As is the case with many of my decisions it may or may not take, but right now it's my plan. Everyone I know seems to think it's a great idea. People have been telling me since I was about five years old that I ought to go to law school. It's the logic, my argumentative nature, people see law as a natural outlet for that and they might right.

There's another guy now. I haven't known him very long but in the short time I have known him he's become the yard stick against which every other guy I meet and/or date is measured and usually falls short. A lot of that is because he's great...smart, funny, great taste in music, a talent for writing worthy of envy and adoration, and the type of brooding good looks that women since the time of Bronte (if not before) have been unable to resist...but part of it is because I like to believe I have some sort of intangible connection with him and the reason I like to believe that is because he seems to know me better than he should given the extent of our conversations. That is how he really ruined me for all other men. I told him I'd decided to go to law school and he asked if that was really my final decision and I said yes and he asked me if I was happy with that. I was doing something that seemed out of character and rather than tell me it was the wrong choice, or try to talk me out of, he asked me if I was happy with it.

The truth is I'm mostly happy with it, but I'm always mostly happy. I picked law school because I had to pick some kind of school or I was only ever going to be partially functional. I've thrown myself into house hunting instead of studying for the LSAT because the answer to the question, am I happy with it, wasn't simply yes. The truth is, I don't know what's going to make me happy. What makes me happy is knowing that the people I love are happy but I'm not sure how that translates into a career or life goal.

Tuesdays with Michael Jackson

2009-03-17T21:42:00.001-07:00

For the past several months I've been mostly listening to NPR talk radio in the car on my way to and from work. My commute to work now takes place at 10:30 though and on Tuesdays at 10:30 my NPR station has gardening chat on. So, one Tuesday I switched over to music. The first song I heard was the Alien Ant Farm cover of Smooth Criminal. I was sitting there, at a red light, car dancing, and several things came to mind.

First, of course, I was thinking about what a great cover that is, it might even be better than the original. Then I thought about a good friend of mine who is always saying that every guy she meets is either too young or too old for her. I've come to suspect that she sees an acceptable age difference to be plus or minus one year. I know if she met someone much older or younger than herself that she found she actually had feelings for she'd abandon all concept of what is an acceptable age difference, but I still wonder about what criteria go into determining what is or isn't an acceptable age difference.

Cultural reference points must factor highly. For my parents generation there was the Kennedy assassination factor, i.e. if someone was either not born yet or too young to remember where they were when Kennedy was assassinated they were too young. The moon landing was another. Is music one of those cultural reference points?

My first impulse would be to say yes, definitely. Music is important to me. You don't always have to agree with me about music but I have be able to talk about it using the same reference points. Smooth Criminal for example. Michael Jackson was at the height of his popularity when I was kid. Smooth Criminal was on the Bad album which came out in 1987 (when I was 9 years old). But would I assume that someone of a different generation, 10 years either older or younger than me, would not be able to engage in the argument with me about whether or not the Alien Ant Farm version was better, worse, or equal to the original Michael Jackson version? Bob Dylan's original version of Don't Think Twice, It's All Right came out in 1963 and the Johnny Cash cover was 1965, both long before I was born but I still have an opinion about them.

Then again, I have an opinion about everything.

Curiosity

2009-03-02T19:02:00.000-08:00

When I was in 10th grade I had a class that I loved called World Studies. Actually it was two classes, English and History, but they were linked. When we studied the ancients in history we read Aeschylus and Sophocles and Euripides, then we studied English colonization and read Heart of Darkness, then we transitioned to Asia by watching Apocalypse Now, on to Siddhartha and Survival in Auschwitz (and the attendant historical eras). It was a class that fed my natural curiosity and my appreciation of both fact and fiction.

It also had the added bonus of making me feel smart later on in life. I mean, I've always felt pretty confident about my intelligence in most venues with most people, but being a college dropout gave me a bit of an inferiority complex when I finally went back. Especially on the first day of the quiz section for a core class I had to take when I finally declared my English major. That day happened to be the 10 year anniversary of the day I first started college so I was feeling especially insecure, but the first question the prof asked was about Clytemnestra.

Lately I've been wondering what happened to all that intellectual curiosity I had when I was 15. I must still have it, but not being in school seems to have made it dormant.

Moving forward

2009-02-05T18:24:00.000-08:00

I've often thought that the main reason people have children is to one up their parents. As children we notice every tiny mistake our parents make and we promise ourselves that we will do better. Maybe I just think that because that's the reason I wanted to have children.

My mother worked my whole life. When I was in first grade she went back to school, law school, and she was around even less after that. For a long time I was angry and I resented her not being there. Children need their mothers, girls especially, is what I thought, and my mother would have been Donna freaking Reed if she'd been a stay at home mom. Cooking, cleaning, sewing costumes for dance recitals and Halloween...she excels at stuff like that. I guess she excels at most anything she does actually, but that didn't occur to me at the time.

Now that I look back on it I can hardly believe what an amazing mom she was. It was my dad who put me on the bus for my first day of school, and who drove me to dance classes and doctor appointments, and who picked me up from school when I got sick and my mom who came home late every night, but she did still manage to make it to every one of my dance recitals. In fact, as I said, she sewed my costumes for all of my dance recitals.

Still, I thought that when I had kids I would be there, day and night. I wanted nothing more than to be a housewife and mother so that I could show my mother how it's supposed to be done. But I've come to the realization that even if I did fulfill the fantasy of spending my days doing laundry and baking cookies for my husband and kids I'd still make mistakes, they might not be the ones my mom made, but even if they were, the mistakes my mom made weren't that bad. I turned out okay and now, even though I resented her 20 years ago, I love my mom now (she's my best friend)

From the time I was five years old everyone said that I should go to law school like my mom. At first it was just something people said because people like the idea of daughters following in their mother's footsteps. I swore though, that it was the one thing I would never do. As time went on the suggestion persisted and it became more and more about me. I mean, people started to say that I should be a lawyer because of my argumentative nature not just because of the symmetry of me following in my mother's footsteps. People started to tell me I was born to be a lawyer and I still insisted that it was something I'd never do. I said, I work to live not the other way around and I didn't want to put in the hours that law school, and the practice of law, require because it would take away from what's really important in life (i.e. the people you love).

Lately though, for months now, I've heard myself saying that I need to find a job that takes up all my time. To quote from Sports Night, because what would a post from me be without a quote from Sports Night, I want "a job that involves me, and stimulates me, and rewards me, and takes up a lot of my time". It took hearing myself say that repeatedly, maybe thirty times, before I started to really think about what kind of job that might be. And then I registered for the LSAT.

In all honesty I'm no longer someone who thinks the worst thing in life would be to become my mother. I can't think of many better things that turning out just like my mom. Maybe I'll find the fantasy someday...husband, kids, laundry, cookies, PTA meetings, t-ball games...but if I never find those things at least I'll be able to say that I did something with my life that "involves me, and stimulates me, and rewards me, and takes up a lot of my time".

For the love of cats (the animal not the musical)

2008-12-18T20:23:00.000-08:00

I grew up in the country but we lived on the main highway into town. We always had cats as pets, well once we had bunnies and another time chickens, but mostly cats and they didn't tend to last very long (neither did the bunnies or chickens). It was the country so some of them got eaten by coyotes or sometimes large predatory birds (hawks and eagles), but most of them got hit by cars on the highway. We knew the likelihood that our cats weren't long for the world so we didn't tend to get too attached to them.

We had one cat that had a litter of kittens just before she got hit on the highway. By the time we found them most of the kittens had died, all but one in fact. Our cats were random mixed breeds (barn cats really though we didn't have a barn), but this one was definitely part seal point Siamese (she had dark grey spots though instead of brown and the darker spots were tabby striped). She was super cute. My brother fed her milk with an eye dropper and he named her Nikki (we were both a little obsessed with the movie Who's that Girl at the time and before the kitten got big and developed some dark spots on her tail and ears her fur was sort of peroxide blond colored, like Madonna in that movie). Nikki was most attached to my brother but she was really affectionate with all of us. She was way more of a people cat than most cats.

She lasted a lot longer than most of our pets, probably because she kept closer to the house. My dad got attached to her to so maybe he let her inside the house more than some of our other pets too. Longer for her though was only a couple of years and while the loss was a little harder than the others we'd still always known, in the back of our minds, that Nikki would come to the same kind of end as the others. My dad took it harder, he didn't want to have pets for a long time after that, he still fed all the random cats that were around, but they were no longer our pets just stray cats we fed.

We had a cat at my mom's house too and that was a much less dangerous neighborhood for pets to be outside, but when I was 12 we moved to the city and had to give the cat to a friend because we couldn't bring her with us. That separation was a little traumatic because we'd had that cat for a long time, 6 years I think, but she didn't die...I mean eventually she did but by that time she was someone else's cat.

Now I have two cats. I got them shortly after I moved out on my own and I was in the city so They've always been indoor cats because I'm afraid of letting cats out anywhere near busy streets. I've had them for 9 years and like all good pets they are like a part of my family. I realized recently, for the first time, that these cats are going to get old, and possibly sick and then die, of natural causes. That prospect has me a little worried. I've never had a pet that lived a normal lifespan and died of natural causes. I don't know how I'll handle it.

They're really cute cats, one orange and one black. The black one has a meow that sounds like she's saying "me, me, me". I think she strained her voice by meowing non-stop for the entire hour and half drive home when I picked her up. I think her voice just never developed after that. The orange on the other hand slept the whole time when I brought her home but she's very vocal now. She likes ice cream, she won't touch any other people food but every time I eat ice cream she hovers around hoping to get to lick the bowl. I've had them both since they were tiny little kittens. The first night I brought home the orange kitten she kept following me into the bathroom and it's become a habit for her, she always wants to be in the same room as I am in and that includes the bathroom. I used to have a console television and the black kitten ran immediately under it when I brought her home and wouldn't come out. She still likes to hide under things, mostly whenever new people are around. She's afraid of new people. They have personalities and I've gotten to know their personalities.

I've always been an animal lover. I'm pretty sure I bent the axle on my old car because I swerved to avoid hitting a squirrel and hit the curb instead. The mechanic that looked at it that first time said it wasn't bent but the CV boots kept cracking. When their was an animal in the street that I couldn't avoid hitting (an opossum) I cried. I used to volunteer at the Seattle Animal Shelter (walking dogs and matchmaking cats). So, I've always loved animals but I've never been quite so attached to any as I am to these two. In fact, my relationship with these cats is longer than any other I've ever had (with the exception of my family). I'm not sure how I'll handle losing them.

So BA in English

2008-12-14T21:35:00.000-08:00

This is a fairly winding train of thought so I won't blame you if you don't follow it entirely.

A while back I read an interview in the New York Times with Lou Reed and he referred to one of his own comments as "so BA in English" which he has. This week's guest on Elvis Costello's new show Spectacle was Lou Reed and it brought back to mind the comment about his BA in English (which he mentioned in this interview as well).

Last night I went to a the Seattle Women's Chorus winter show at Meany Hall (which was great by the way). Lou Reed and Meany Hall made me think about my own BA in English.

Meany Hall was the scene of my graduation from the University of Washington English department. I mean my main graduation from UW was at Husky stadium (in the freezing, pouring rain), but I also went to my department graduation and that was at Meany Hall. Graduation ceremonies are more for the parents than the students and I went to both of mine for my parents like most student, of course, but the memory of my department graduation is a surprisingly fond one. It turned out that I had a professor or two in that department that had a significant impact on me.

I took a big chunk of time off between my sophomore and junior years in college, and changed majors a bunch, so by the time I declared my final major (English) the requirements had changed and I had to take a core requirement, a linked writing and literature class, that normally would come earlier in the degree progression.

At first it annoyed me to have to take the class. It reminded me of having to take Washington State History in night school because I transferred school districts twice between 8th and 12th grades. At my first school State history was a 9th grade requirement but I transferred to a new school for 9th grade, in my new school district it was an 8th grade requirement so I'd missed it and when I transferred again for 11th grade I'd missed it in that district as well so I had to take it in night school my senior year in order to graduate. The linked lit/writing course at UW was just like that at first. It was just the requirement I'd missed and had to take in order to graduate. Then...well...there's an idea that college is where people go to become independent thinkers and this class made me feel like they wanted me to think for myself only if I thought like them, like him (the professor) so it annoyed me on that level too.

Over time I started to like that class a lot. I suppose that was in small part, or possibly large part, to the huge crush I had on one of the guys in my discussion group. He was, undoubtedly a much greater influence on me than the class itself or the professor and at the time that completely overshadowed the fact that the class and the professor did have an influence on me. But Lou Reed and Meany Hall have got me thinking.

I don't know if reverse psychology was the plan, but that original annoyance I felt with the class translated into my becoming more antagonistic than normal, which is saying something since "for the sake of argument" is kind of my motto to begin with. I said all sorts of stuff in the discussion section of that class just to get people's ire up, just to get arguments going. That class reintroduced me to that part of myself that looks at things from all angles. If I'm honest about it that class did exactly what it was supposed to do. Maybe it didn't teach me to think for myself, because I had a pretty good handle on that already, but it helped me to get back to thinking for myself.

Television and the Gospel of Elvis Costello

2008-12-06T18:13:00.000-08:00

Elvis Costello recently joined the ranks of television personalities and said, of working in television, "For every frustration, for every idiotic suggestion that you get when you work in television, the great moments far outweigh the minor frustrations,". When you're Elvis Costello and your executive producer is Elton John and your show is airing on the Sundance Channel I would imagine you have a lot less idiotic suggestions and a lot more latitude when it comes to taking them than others, with less clout, might have, with shows airing on the major broadcast networks, but I want to believe that the sentiment will hold true for them as well.

You see, I think television is the best medium for storytelling. Costello's show, "Spectacle", is primarily a talk show, or you might call it a variety show since he interviews musicians and occasionally they play some songs. Maybe you wouldn't call that storytelling, and maybe there are plenty of great venues for interviewers (magazines definitely give television a run for its money when it comes to interviews), but he's making a statement that echos the complaints of all my favorite storytellers when it comes to working in television.

Joss Whedon was fed up with television after his experiences with "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Firefly" and who can blame him. Aaron Sorkin put his annoyance with network interference right back into his shows and, perhaps not coincidentally those two shows ("Sports Night" and "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip"), while just as good if not better than "The West Wing", didn't last very long. Sorkin does a wonderful job with stage and film projects as well, most recently with "Charlie Wilson's War", but even so, I can't help but miss his presence in the television landscape. Whedon too has done well in other mediums, "Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog" proved the viability of programing straight to the Internet, but his presence is also sorely missed on television.

Elvis Costello said that the good outweighs the bad though and if Elvis Costello said it I have to believe it's true. I only hope that Sorkin and Whedon (and others like them) take that to heart and keeping pitching television shows so they make it back to my airwaves as soon as possible.

A more perfect disillusion of unions

2008-11-21T22:51:00.000-08:00

With all my talk about how marriage and civil unions are (and ought to be) two separate things (for both gay and straight couples), I didn't really think about divorce until I read this article in the New York Times the other day. Divorce obtained through the courts of the land is a disillusion of a civil union but the spiritual union may be much more difficult to dissolve. The Catholic church, for example, doesn't acknowledge divorce at all. If you are Catholic and you want to dissolve your marriage you have to petition the church for annulment which is a lengthy process, often not coming to fruition until years after the civil union has ended. In the Times article they talk about how difficult it is it for a woman who wants to divorce her husband versus the relative ease with which a man can divorce his wife under Islamic (Shariah) law. It says that most of the rulings of these Shariah courts (made up of panels of Islamic scholars) are not binding under British civil law (i.e. just because the Shariah court grants you a divorce doesn't mean you are divorced under British law), but the Shariah courts are still relevant because civil divorce isn't good enough for the religious community, religious leaders have to approve of the reasons for divorce. Civil unions are a different thing than spiritual unions and civil divorces are a different thing than spiritual ones as well.

I was home sick a couple of weeks ago and I discovered that Bravo airs three re-runs per day of the West Wing. I find the frenetic pace of Aaron Sorkin's characters quite soothing so I watched a couple episodes that day and have been watching it every day since. There was an episode in season one where Sam was disturbed that some town in Alabama was trying to pass a law requiring adherence to the ten commandments. Sam and everyone he mentioned it to wondered how they planned on enforcing them since they have no way of knowing about (or proving) violations of some of the commandments. They were particularly obsessed with how someone might know if you coveted your neighbors wife, or if you didn't honor your father, for example. Of course, regardless of the enforceability of the ten commandments they were, and we should be, opposed to such a law because we live in a country that requires the separation of church and state.

My previous argument was based primarily on the separation of church and state (and equal protection), but there has been an argument made, which many people believe and endorse, that because the words "separation of church and state" don't appear anywhere in the founding documents that no such concept exists in our laws. I would argue, and did in my last post, that "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion" is pretty clear on the subject and it's intent, it seems to me, is to protect both the people (from having specific religions tenants imposed on them) but also the government (from being unduly influenced by any particular church).

I can't help but return to discussion of same sex marriage over and over because I think it's important. The only argument people have opposing same sex marriage is that the bible defines marriage as between a man and a woman (which isn't exactly true, but I can see the clear implication there since all married couples in the bible are male-female...although not always one man and one woman, sometimes one man and several women...but you don't see the people making this argument also advocating legalizing polygamy, but that's another argument). Since the constitution clearly prohibits the passing of any laws respecting the establishment of religion, this argument against gay marriage doesn't really hold water. Especially since the bible also says (explicitly), "Submit yourself to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake" (Peter 2:13, King James Version), and our constitution prohibits enacting religious rules into law. Is it possible to adhere to both civil and religious laws if civil law allows something religious law prohibits? Absolutely. If you're Jewish your religious law prohibits eating pork, that doesn't mean you would advocate making it illegal to eat pork would you? Just because something is legal doesn't mean you have to do it. You can refrain from eating pork even though it isn't illegal.

A more perfect union

2008-11-14T21:39:00.000-08:00

This week Dan Savage was on the Colbert Report talking about California's Prop 8. While I do enjoy seeing two of my favorite people together it's unfortunate that gay marriage had to be banned in California for to bring them together.

I want to talk about gay marriage but my opinion on the subject is a little unusual. I would absolutely vote in favor of legalizing gay marriage if it were on my ballot (but I live in Washington where it hasn't yet been on my ballot) and I'm horrified that it has been banned...well, anywhere, but especially in California.

It's just not okay to deny rights to any citizens that other citizens enjoy. Now some would say, in fact Elizabeth Hasslebeck did say, that the right to marry is not being denied to anyone under these types of bans, but I can't believe anyone is buying that. Yes, it is true that anyone can get married to anyone they chose of the opposite sex, but that denies a significant right from a large number of people (i.e. the right to chose a spouse that they love).

The religious fanatics that are opposed to gay marriage see "civil unions" as the answer. However, I'm pretty sure that would fall under the banner of "separate but equal" rights which I believe the supreme court frowns upon.

My solution to this problem would be if you want to ban gay marriage, you want the state not to recognize gay marriage, well then the state can't recognize straight marriage either. If you believe that the bible defines marriage as between one man and one woman, that's a religious union anyway and the state shouldn't be in the business of recognizing religious unions. The state should only recognize civil unions. If you want to get married, whether you are gay or straight that should be between you, your partner, your clergy member and your God. If, on the other hand, you want all of the legal rights and responsibilities of what has heretofore been referred to by the state as marriage, then that is between you, your partner, two witnesses and a court clerk. Two different things, one spiritual and one civil.

There are, in fact, a lot of gay people (and some straight ones as well), that are married in the eyes of their God but not their state (i.e. they've been joined in a religious ceremony but haven't filed a marriage license). There are also those (far more straight than gay since gay marriage is only legal in a few states right now) who have filed a marriage license but were joined in a civil ceremony (not a religious one).

I say, ban straight marriage too and institute civil unions across the board. That way, if you are opposed to gay marriage you can go to a church that supports that view, with a clergy member who refuses to marry homosexuals, and if you are in favor of it you can go to a church that supports that view and will marry homosexuals. That way, everyone has the same legal rights. That way, the state stays out of religious arguments about what does or doesn't constitute a marriage.

There was an interesting point of view on Huffington Post back when California first legalized gay marriage that talks about some of the same issues. It's title is "Why I'm not getting married again", and in it David Shneer discusses how he had a religious wedding ceremony and later he had a civil one as well (in Canada) and he didn't feel like he needed to get married again now that his home state had finally gotten with the program.

My own family has experience with this as well. My mom and step dad had two weddings. Their first wedding was in a little church in a remote coastal town and a lot of people (all the guests in fact) had traveled a fair distance to be there. When the clergyman gathered them and their witnesses together to get the paperwork done they realized they'd forgotten all about getting the license. So, they did the whole thing again a week later to make it legal.

As it stands now people who are married are (often) joined in both a spiritual union and a civil union. Don't you think it's confusing that those two separate things have the same name? Not just confusing but actively misleading. People like Sherri Shepherd say that they can understand the argument against gay marriage because the bible defines marriage as between a man and a woman. The bible says a lot of things that we don't allow to be written into our laws. In fact, I believe "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" is one of the first rules our founding father's adopted...the first (amendment) in fact, but people have a hard time distinguishing this civil law from religious law simply because they both go by the same name.

A lot of people argue against civil unions because they say it is important to them to be able to say they are "married", but find a clergy member to marry you and you can say that. I am a clergy member now and I am more than willing to marry anyone (gay or straight). I'm not advocating civil unions instead of marriage, I'm advocating them in addition to marriage.

Hope and Faith

2008-11-07T16:40:00.000-08:00

The election is finally over and our new president elect has brought hope to the world. As Stephen Colbert said, the people rejected the politics of fear and embraced faith, and that is, of course, rhetoric I understand.

I want to be really careful with my words hear because I don't want to give the impression that I support in any way the the type of fear mongering politics we've been putting up with for the last eight years. I have faith and hope. I believe that Obama will change a lot of things for the better.

The thing is, I'll consider him a resounding success if he gets more than two of the major items on his agenda accomplished. People get so disillusion with politicians because they promise a lot of things that they don't deliver on, but I think that shows a remarkable lack of understanding of governing (and the world for that matter). If you get two or more people together in a room, chances are they won't agree (at least not entirely) about everything. Passing legislation involves 435 congressmen and 100 senators (which is considerably more than two people) so, if you have an agenda to accomplish chances are that end result won't look exactly like you planned because you'll have to make compromises...or maybe someone else will make a convincing argument and you'll add something to your agenda, or take something off of it. To expect politicians to deliver exactly on all of their agenda items is beyond ridiculous.

I've always said that, despite my interest in politics, I'd never want to be a politician. I'm too idealistic, and too indecisive. I wouldn't want such important decisions to be my responsibility. I suppose I wouldn't mind being one of the zillions of people behind the scenes who makes the arguments that help the politician decide...arguments I'm good at, decisions not so much.

Anyhow my hope is that when we come to the end of Obama's term, which, God willing, will be eight years, I hope that people will let his accomplishments stand alone. I know he's going to do great things, but he's also going to have some really difficult decisions to make and I trust him more than anyone else to make the right ones or I wouldn't have voted for him. I really hope that other people feel the same way.

"Tell Spike Lee to sit down and shut up"

2008-10-31T21:31:00.001-07:00

I've been waiting for 10 years to hear Aaron Sorkin and Tommy Schlamme's commentary on Sports Night. A couple weeks ago the tenth anniversary edition DVDs came out and I finally got my wish.

Sports Night is, by far, my favorite television show ever. If you know me, you know that saying something is my favorite anything is a rarity. My favorite food, or movie, or band, or song, or book...if you ask me about any of these things I'm more likely to give you a top ten list...or top twenty. I love television and always have so I could probably give you a top fifty list of my favorite television shows. I could tell you what my favorite currently airing shows are (Chuck and How I Met Your Mother). I could tell you what, in order, what my favorite shows were every year of my childhood. First came Sesame Street which was my favorite for several years (more than most, in fact Sesame Street was my first and only guilty pleasure, the first and last time I ever cared enough to hide what I liked from people for fear of what they'd think). After Sesame Street came the Nick at Night years (Gilligan's Island and Get Smart were among my favorites then), then I got really into reruns of Taxi and Three's Company because my local station had them on every night, then came Family Ties, then Growing Pains, then for several years The Wonder Years (in fact, until Sports Night came along The Wonder Years was my all time favorite show), after that was Sea Quest DSV, then Dawson's Creek, then Sports Night...I've had other seasonal favorites since then (Veronica Mars actually gave Sports Night a run for its money). But ask me what my favorite show of all time is and the answer, without hesitation, is Sports Night.

I loved A Few Good Men, and The American President, and if, at the time, I were the type of person to notice the writing credits on movies and shows I liked I could have guessed I'd like Sports Night, but I don't think I could ever have guessed how much I would like it.

Wordy wouldn't be an inaccurate label for Aaron Sorkin's writing and, as such, my appreciation for his work is predictable. He's not just wordy though, he doesn't just use a lot of words, he uses better than anyone else and he manages to make each word drip with subtext so that, if possible, the things his characters don't say, say as much or more than the things they do say.

So, I've been waiting, for ten years, to hear him his commentary and it's finally here. I'm really hoping he explains his bizarre fascination with Zamfir (master of the Pan flute).

I'm done

2008-10-30T18:40:00.000-07:00

I am generally pretty interested in politics. I've written about it a few times. Right now though, I just can't watch it any more (or read about it, or listen to it).

I could say I'm disappointed in the level of discussion, and that's true, but really even if the level of discussion were great I think I'd still be sick of it. Although, the level of discussion is really pretty low.

I think my disillusionment hit a high last week when I heard someone saying that all Barack Obama has to be is adequate to win this election. It's not that I disagree with the idea that any democrat has a distinct advantage this election season. I've said that myself many times. People are really disappointed with the way things have gone for eight years and they put a lot of the blame for it on the republican party which makes it kind of hard for the democrats to lose this one. My problem was that the person said it in such a way that made it sound like Barack Obama is only adequate, as though he hasn't inspired millions of people, as though he doesn't have the ideas for how to get the country back on the right track.

That's just one example of the fluff reporting, but even the non-fluff, even the legitimate issues are starting to sound like empty noise. Luckily, I have already voted so I can kind of tune it out, but I can't escape it entirely. I can't wait for the whole thing to be over.

The Sun Also Rises

2008-10-12T17:51:00.000-07:00

This is the house where Ernest Hemingway was born (in Oak Park, IL). I've become quite a Hemingway fan lately so on my recent trip to Chicago I took a little westerly detour and visited the Hemingway house (and museum).

My love of Hemingway is somewhat new found. I, like most people, was first exposed to the writing of Ernest Hemingway in high school. I was required to read a couple of his short stories and, at the time, I hated them.

I make no apologies for the fact that I like happy endings and I didn't see them in Hemingway's stories. Not that I dislike all stories without happy endings, but Hemingway's stories often don't seem to have endings at all. When I was younger I hated open endings. I liked my stories tied up in nice tidy bows for me (preferably, happy bows).

My aversion to open ended stories started to diminish over time and was finally abandoned completely because of some really great short stories written by the very same person who inspired me to (among other things) change the title of this blog. He writes really great open endings, I think they're better than any I've read.

There is a real art to open endings. You have to give enough information that the reader feels satisfied, the story does still have to have some resolution, but also leave enough loose ends to that the reader is left thinking about it, wondering. I still don't think Hemingway gets it exactly right a lot of the time, at least not in his short stories.

The other problem I had with Hemingway was what I perceived as pessimism that seemed prevalent in his stories. It turns out there's quite a history of sever depression in the Hemingway family (a lot of suicides). Hemingway himself suffered from depression for much of his life so it stands to reason that his writing might be somewhat dark, but now I'm not so sure I'd call it pessimism.

I started reading his novels at recommendation of my friend who's writing I love so much. First I read Old Man and the Sea, then I re-read some of the short stories, then I read his memoir (A Moveable Feast), then I read The Sun Also Rises...and the more I read, the more I started to think that the pessimism is actually optimism in disguise. There's a sense, especially in The Sun Also Rises, that the current circumstances are unbearable (for the characters) but that they are, that everything is, temporary.

You might think that it is my own optimism that's changed my mind about Hemingway. I can't help thinking that things are just on the verge of getting better for these characters but maybe a pessimist would feel that things were only going to get worse. I don't think though that it's just my personal optimism, I think the optimism is inherent in the stories. The desperation is palpable in almost all Hemingway stories but the characters don't give up. It's especially clear in The Old Man and The Sea. After everything that character goes through in the story, he still gets up the next day and goes on. Right now, my favorite is The Sun Also Rises, it does this same thing but the suffering and desperation are dealt with a little more indirectly and are also more emotional. Even the title of, The Sun Also Rises, seems like it just teetered off the edge of the line between optimism and pessimism firmly onto the optimistic side. It's definitely become one of my favorite books.

Faith vs...Religion

2008-10-07T20:21:00.000-07:00

Bill Maher made a documentary about religion called Religulous (as in religion + ridiculous). The film attacks religion not faith (according to Maher in his press tour...I haven't actually seen the film), but the problem, on both sides of this argument, is that too many people confuse the two.

Do I believe in God...I don't know. That's what Bill Maher says too. The truly logical mind can't rule out the possibility because just as there is no empirical evidence of the existence of God there isn't any evidence to the contrary either. Okay, there are some who would say you don't need to prove the absence of something, that it's assumed a thing doesn't exist until there's proof that it does...like "innocent until proven guilty". I can't endorse that theory. If I have no proof that something doesn't exist than I can't be sure. Aliens, elves, vampires...I don't know...they could be out there somewhere. I don't want to equate God with aliens and vampires, except in that I don't know if either exist. Bill Maher sort of does (equate God with aliens), and I won't argue with it either, I just won't make that analogy myself because I think it's sort of sensationalistic

I make no secret of the fact that I don't believe there is any one true religion. One day, for the sake of argument, I said, maybe it isn't that they (religions) are all wrong, but that they're all, in a way, right. The first time I made this argument, it was something I said sort of off hand and I've come to call it the napkin holder analogy because, at the time, a napkin holder was the first thing I saw. I was sitting at a table with a friend and I couldn't think what to compare it to, but my point was that it's a matter of perception. If I look at that napkin holder and you ask me to describe it maybe I say that it's rectangular and that it holds and dispenses paper napkins, ask another person and they might say that it's red and made of aluminum. It's the same napkin holder but people describe it in different ways. Now take something without any tangible properties that can easily be described and ask a few people to try describe it anyway. You'll probably get an even greater number of different answers. "God" is such an intangible entity. The Judeo-Christian tradition is to anthropomorphize "God", many pagan traditions cast the divine as an animal (or several different animals), the Greeks went the anthropomorphizing way as well but for them it was many gods, another common image is of energy. What if those are all just attempts by people to describe the same thing? It's something that they can't see (or smell, or taste, or touch, or hear), so doesn't it stand to reason that they'd come up with different descriptions? And it also makes sense that they'd all insist that their description is the right one because otherwise they'd have to admit that they don't understand it fully and it's human nature to fear what you don't understand (which would be in direct oposition to faith).

My mother asked me a few months ago if I'd ever considered ministry (as a career choice), and she's not the first person to ask me that. I seem to have a quality that makes people think I have answers to any questions they have. I get asked for directions and for direction a lot.

My adamant refusal to endorse the idea that there's only on right religion means that, even if I had considered it, Christian ministry is not something I could ever do. I did, however, seriously consider going to rabbinical school a couple years ago. I don't know Hebrew, but I could learn it I think. However...I really like bacon and apparently the dietary rules for rabbinical students are even more strict than the regular Kosher rules.

I know several people who've been ordained as ministers of the Universal Life Church. Most of the time people get ordained (which is free and takes about 30 seconds) in order to officiate the wedding of a friend (or family member), but I thought "Universal" might be an indication of agreement with my theory about all religions being right...although "Catholic" also technically means universal and they definitely don't think anyone else is anything close to right so that's not necessarily an accurate indicator. In this case though, it turns out to be fairly accurate. So, I got myself ordained.

I'm no more qualified than I was before to offer advise on matters of faith, but since I am fairly vocal about faith, and since people have always and will always ask me for advice, I figured I might at least get credentialed.

Once upon a time

2008-08-25T20:41:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time in a land a lot like ours there lived a lot of little girls who wanted desperately to be princesses and princesses who just wanted to live normal lives. There were cats who wanted to be dogs and and dogs who wanted to be cats and plucky British couples who wanted nothing more than to fall out of canoes into shallow bodies of water. There were star crossed lovers and there were bitter rivalries. There were dreamers with single minded determination and there were those who never quite figured out what they wanted. There were those with stories to tell and others with the skill to tell them, and if they were lucky they story tellers were able to find the stories.

Once upon a time in this world I wanted to be a professional baseball player. In the first grade I was sure I was going to be a major league pitcher but then in the second grade someone told me that girls don't play professional baseball and now I throw like a girl. After that I took dance classes for seven years thinking, I suppose, of a future in musical theater, but I'm not such a good singer. For a brief period I wanted to be a model but, while I apparently had the poise for it, I was told I'd never be tall enough for runway modeling (though I did find myself on a catwalk once or twice, not in a professional capacity, strictly amateur, thanks to an aunt who's a designer).

One thing I always wanted to be through all of that was a writer. I've tried numerous types of writing. I won a short story contest in 5th grade and then promptly quit writing short stories forever. I wrote awful angsty poetry when I was in high school and then quit writing poetry forever when I got a C in my college poetry writing contest. After I dropped out of college I decided to try my hand at screenwriting. I studied screenwriting for a year and in the process, I found that I am not a story teller, at least I don't have a natural talent for it. I can do it, sort of, but it's hard for me. One of the professors of my screenwriting class was one of the most natural story tellers I have ever seen (or heard) and I couldn't believe how easy he made it seem (in comparison to how hard it actually is).

So, now I write this stuff instead, but I'm still always looking for a good story to tell. I can't stop trying.