Peachums

If this video were a T-shirt, Jessica M. would wear it (I think)

2008-06-17T09:49:00.000-05:00

The horror!

2007-12-01T21:31:00.001-05:00

Apparently Tori is not Knut's only fan. Here is Knut ... and Newt Gingrich. My eyes!

Kleiner Eisbar

2007-11-23T12:09:00.000-05:00

This is a great video (almost as good as this one). Be sure to turn the volume way up before you start it.

Remembering the Ram Party

2007-10-31T16:50:00.001-05:00

It's been a tough week. This photo made me miss the good old days.

How airbrushing rots your mind, again

2007-07-17T18:57:00.000-05:00

Here.

Abstract art

2007-07-03T08:59:00.000-05:00

From Garden July 2007

This photo represents a skirmish in the War of the Japanese Beetles. No, those shiny things are not iridescent jewels. They are Japanese beetles that Max and I drowned in a milk jug full of soapy water. They are beautiful insects, yes, but we prefer that they shimmer gently far, far away from our basil plants.

We performed a mass genocide of Japanese beetles on Saturday night. By Sunday morning, their comrades had arrived in huge numbers and were rapidly defoliating our plants. We decided that sterner measures were necessary. A neighboring gardener recommended blending together Japanese beetle bodies, rotten eggs, and cat litter ("It really works!") but - no. Instead, we ran to the nearest chain garden store.

We went to the store in search of an organic gardening tool only slightly less common than the hoe: the floating row cover, a thin mesh covering that lets water, air, and light pass through but not beetles. As we dashed by an aisle stocked floor to ceiling with bug toxins, we felt certain we were on our way to barrier method heaven. Too bad for us. The (b)Lowe's staff had never even heard of a floating row cover. Cue grouchy mutterings about a hand basket with our country inside it.

Meanwhile, the beetles kept munching. By the next morning, fortunately, Max got what we needed, irony of ironies, from the locally owned garden supply store. We gently swaddled our precious basil in the mesh last night. As for the beetles:

From Garden July 2007

The ghostly hand of poop

2007-07-02T08:58:00.001-05:00

Hilarious (click for bigger). From the amazing passive-aggressive notes from roommates, neighbors, coworkers and strangers.

All my children

2007-06-26T14:43:00.000-05:00

At this stage in life my "offspring" are leafy and green, but I do worry about them and at night, right before I go to sleep, I fantasize about how beautiful they are.*

From Garden June 2007

My garden is starting to produce mightily, especially lettuce, cucumbers and basil. I got about 10 cups of spinach off of it before the heat awoke its spinachy urges to reproduce. Now it's all seeds and miniaturized leaves.

More pictures of my babies are available by clicking "Garden June 2007."

From Garden June 2007

*On the other hand, I wasn't distraught when one of the potato plants got verticillium wilt and keeled over, so perhaps my instincts are more predatory than maternal.

I found my twin!

2007-06-08T14:10:00.001-05:00

Click for bigger.

Karma is...

2007-06-04T14:15:00.000-05:00

...snickering to yourself when you overhear a man who thinks he is alone emitting the loudest, most grotesque farts imaginable, only to be horrified a few days later when you realize there's a woman right behind you who must have heard those huge ones you just let rip.

Obligatory poop post

2007-05-28T13:36:00.000-05:00

Real quick, here are the headlines from the Poop News Ticker:

Bird Takes Dump on President Bush:

As President Bush took a question Thursday in the White House Rose Garden about scandals involving his Attorney General, he remarked, "I've got confidence in Al Gonzales doin' the job."

Simultaneously, a sparrow flew overhead and left a splash on the President's sleeve, which Bush tried several times to wipe off. Story.

Dog Poop is Free Speech

A former Democratic Party activist who left dog feces on the doorstep of U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave's office during last year's 4th Congressional District campaign was found not guilty of criminal use of a noxious substance. Story.

Wherein I continue to show my love for Stephen Jay Gould

2007-05-28T11:06:00.000-05:00

After a peculiar interlude of sparring with The Advice Goddess (for real!), I'm back for more hardcore Stephen Jay Gould action. One of the most interesting things that Gould brings up in The Mismeasure of Man is that the data in craniometry and IQ studies were often correct. That is, the scientists meticulously collected hard numbers that were actually quite accurate. These data were important, because as Gould says,

The mystique of science proclaims that numbers are the ultimate test of objectivity. Surely we can weigh a brain or score an intelligence test without recording our social preferences. If ranks are displayed in hard numbers obtained by rigorous and standardized procedures, then they must reflect reality, even if they confirm what we wanted to believe from the start (26).

But the devil is in the interpretation. In reviewing the research of Paul Broca, the big granddaddy of brain measurements, Gould writes, "I find the numbers sound but Broca's interpretation, to say the least, ill founded" (105). Broca was right that women, Incas, and other groups had smaller brains than Frenchmen. Yet his interpretation - White Dudes Rule! - was bunk (see the previous Elephant Overlord factor). Moreover, it was the kind of bunk that White Dudes wanted to believe anyway and was used to legitimize inequality and genocide.

I see the same phenomenon - Good Numbers, Bad Interpretation - operating today. A study* of six national surveys concluded that boys do slightly better on average than girls in tests of science and math. Lawrence Summers, then the president of Harvard, used similar studies to justify his 2005 remark that a lack of women in science was a result of "intrinsic aptitude." White Dudes rule again!

Without going into all of the ways in which Summers' interpretation was wrong (see Echidne of the Snakes for the details- scroll down) it's worth pointing out that the very same study that I mentioned above showed that girls do better than boys in reading and writing tests. So to follow the logic of Lawrence Summers and his ilk, all of the world's great writers should be women.** The fact that women do not dominate the writing world suggests that culture does play a role in the way boys and girls learn and navigate their lives.

What's almost more insidious than dudes like Summers is the mass consumption of pop evolutionary psychology. Take this guy, writing last week for MSNBC:

Women have breasts, of course, to feed babies. But why do human females cart around prominent breasts even if they are not pregnant or lactating? Most other
mammals don’t.

(snip)

“When we stood up,” he says, referring to our early ancestors, “the anatomy of the pelvis changed. The vagina oriented itself more toward the front.” But this was a problem because most mammals, including primates, have sex doggie style. Hence the big red butts advertising “Sexy girl here!” meant to appeal to our visual sense. (Primates do not smell as well as, say, dogs.) So, since males began facing females for sex, the rough equivalent of big red butts “were transposed to the front of a woman” and became the breasts we know and love.

This assertion is so freakish I hardly know what to say about it. Another interpretation, one that is at least as plausible, is proposed by a commenter at the blog Feministe: "My theory is that humans have protruding breasts (at least when we’re nursing) because our big frontal lobes give us flat faces. The breast has to curve back from the nipple so the baby won’t suffocate."

I don't know if either hypothesis is even testable. But the fact that the first interpretation is getting play in the media says less about human origins than about contemporary culture, which is dominated by the view that the female body was created for male pleasure.

The trouble with pop evolutionary psychology is that, under its difficult-to-test hypotheses, almost anything about our society can be called "natural." Inevitably, it will confirm what we most want to believe about ourselves, and its hypotheses will be adopted by people who want to diminish calls for social change.

Further reading:
Sex, evolution, plasticity and bluebirds

***

*Hedges, L.V.& Nowell, A., 1995. Sex differences in mental test scores, variability, and numbers of high-scoring individuals. Science, 269, pages 41-45.

**Echidne of the Snakes has made the same argument many times before.

Evolutionary Psychology is the 21st Century's Craniology

2007-05-26T14:16:00.000-05:00

I've been reading The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould. It's a detailed smackdown of the mad scientists of yesteryear, those men of the 19th and 20th centuries whose social prejudices infested their ostensibly objective research in craniometry and IQ testing. What strikes me as I read it, though, is that the same phenomenon is operating in our own century. This time it's called pop evolutionary psychology, and from advice columns to universities, people are still using it to excuse social inequality.

To see what I mean, check out this recent offering from The Advice Goddess, explaining that men are physically incapable of cleaning up after themselves:

The truth is, as you suspected, straight guys just don’t have the filth and disarray vision that women and gay men do. Studies show gay men’s attention to environmental detail is similar to that of straight women, but in general, “the female brain takes in more sensory data than does the male,” writes brain researcher Michael Gurian in “What Could He Be Thinking?”

(snip)

According to Silverman, Eals, and other researchers, a guy’s tendency to let his home become a pizza crust wilderness refuge probably traces back to our hunter-gatherer past. Men’s current visual and attentional strengths correspond to what would’ve made them successful hunters: the distance vision and mental focus needed to track and bring home dinner -- instead of being eaten by what was supposed to be dinner. Women’s superior peripheral vision and ability to process detail would’ve helped them spot the family’s favorite edible plants in a big tangle of vegetation -- while making sure the children weren’t playing in wildebeest traffic.

Just chew on that for a minute. So men don't have the same type of vision as women, unless they've been mysteriously refashioned into gay men? Is she saying that women should never have started cleaning caves because that rendered men evolutionarily unable to wield a vacuum? And that none of this has anything to do with culture?

Gould argues that it's no coincidence when scientific studies confirm cultural rules. He points out that, after all, scientists are part of their cultures, not impartial space aliens peering through the window of planet Earth. "I believe that science must be understood as a social phenomenon, a gutsy, human enterprise, not the work of robots programmed to collect pure information," he writes in the introduction. Since scientists are products of their culture, their work often provides a veneer of Truth that reinforces existing social hierarchies. When it comes to political issues, writes Gould (quoting Condorcet), biological determinism in particular has made "nature herself an accomplice in the crime of political inequality."

The first section of The Mismeasure of Man describes the work of craniometrists like Broca and Galton who tried to determine which groups of people had the biggest heads. In their thinking, superior intelligence could be determined by head size, which would in turn determine which group of people was most fit to rule the world. They performed many detailed calculations of brains and skulls and ba ding! surprise! their answer was: white men.

Unfortunately for them (and us), they were completely wrong. Their interpretations of the data were heavily influenced by (as Gould says) unconscious social assumptions. When embarassing data point turned up - for instance, that the brain of the famous mathematician Gauss was only slightly larger than average - they explained it away. But when other data favored their theories they inflated and promoted it. Worst of all, their premise was flat-out incorrect. The size of the brain correlates much more closely with stature than with intelligence, so for instance, women tend to have smaller brains than men because their bodies are smaller overall. That does not mean that women are less smart than men. After all, if intelligence were determined only by brain size, we would probably have elephant overlords.

In the second part of the book, Gould deconstructs IQ tests, which are famous for being administered to poor, non-English-speaking immigrants at Ellis Island. Early psychologists used IQ tests to defend the innate inferiority of certain groups of immigrants, despite obvious environmental influences. Alas, the descendents of IQ tests are still alive as the GRE, SAT, and other standardized tests, and as recently as The Bell Curve (1996) were still being used to label groups (such as African-Americans) as inherently inferior and deserving of their social standing.

Although we still are dealing with the evil tentacles of the IQ tests, I believe that the science of social prejudice has been largely transformed into pop evolutionary psychology. How this happens in a country where a large percentage of the population does not accept the evolutionary theory is beyond me, but that is the subject of another post.

I have more to say, but I'm about to get kicked out of the library. Shoot.

Recipe for the GRE (for Tori)

2007-05-11T17:31:00.000-05:00

My friend Tori wants to extract my GRE tricks from my brain before I move away to North Carolina. So here it is, my Recipe for the GRE.

The first trick to scoring high is to have basic, solid vocabulary and math skills. I feel gross reporting my standardized test scores from high school, so I won't. Suffice it to say, I did quite well on the SAT, without any particular effort. So I had a good base to work from as I studied intensely for the GRE.

I had at least three huge advantages growing up that prepared me for taking soul-sucking tests. The first is that I read a great deal as a child. I was extremely shy and had very few friends before sixth grade. I occupied most of my free time - other than the hours spent in my backyard dog poop factory - reading. I absorbed a lot of vocabulary this way.

I also had the privilege of parents with excellent vocabularies. Here's a true story: every spring, birds made nests in attic of my family's house in Boston. I could hear the baby birds peeping, sometimes quite loudly, in the mornings from my bedroom. On the day that I took the SAT, my mother remarked, "The baby birds are vociferous today!" I asked her the meaning of the word. It was my lucky day: "vociferous" appeared in one of the questions on the test a few hours later!

Oh, yes, did I mention that my father is a mathematician? Compared to him, I have never felt that my math skills were anything special. It was an extraordinary asset, though, to be able to sit down countless times with "Dr. Math" for personalized, one-on-one tutoring.

I mention this background information not to discourage others about their chances of scoring well on the GRE, but to point out that my road has been remarkably smooth. I can't claim honestly that I scored high simply because of my own sweat or innate intelligence. I had quite a bit of help and privilege along the way.

Now, the Peachums Recipe for the GRE.

1. Start with a sudden, massive feeling of panic three weeks before the test (or, if you're more sensible, start studying earlier).

2. Add one GRE prep book published by The Princeton Review. This book is enormously helpful because it contains a list of the most common words that appear on the GRE. It also has a decent math prep section and useful information about the essay portions of the test.

3. Each night, read through the vocabulary lists. Obsessively write down the definition of every word you do not already know.

4. Review math, taking it a manageable chunk at a time. There is no upper-level math on the test, only arithmetic, algebra and geometry, plus weirdo chart-reading questions.* Going over it is critical, because if you're like me, you haven't really grappled with this kind of math in 10 years.

5. Stir in massive cramming. I carried my vocabulary words with me wherever I went, studying them in the backseat of the carpool, during my lunch break and in the evenings. Where appropriate, I used amusing, vaguely scandalous memory tricks to remember definitions. For instance, I associated the word "nugatory," which means trifling or worthless, with the sentence, "A NUDE has a NUGATORY amount of clothes on." The moral of the story: if you can connect the words with butts or sex (or buttsex, if that suits you), you will find them much easier and more fun to remember.

6. Add another cheap vocabulary trick. I engaged in a practice of my own invention that I call the Vocabulary March. This consists of stiffly walking around the house in the most ridiculous fashion possible, muttering words and their definitions in rhythm with marching. This trick almost drove Max to throw me out of the house, BUT GUESS WHO GOT A PERFECT SCORE ON THE VOCAB SECTION AND IS NOW AND FOREVERMORE COMPLETELY VINDICATED?!

7. For the math portions, I didn't do anything special. I took a lot of practice quizzes in the Princeton Review book and at www.number2.com. I can only equivocally recommend number2.com because I did terribly on the site's math quizzes, and just fine on the real test.

8. About two weeks before the real test, I started taking full-lenth timed practice tests. This is important because you need to have the stamina to maintain concentration for several hours. Practice helps.

9. Practice with the computer-based tests that you can download for free from the Educational Testing Service. The real test is on a computer, so taking the practice ones will help you figure out your strategy. Unlike paper-based tests, you can't skip around on the questions. The questions appear on the screen one at a time, and once you've answered, you can't take it back. Even scarier, the computer alters the test based on the answers you've gotten correct. Basically, if you get a bunch wrong in the beginning, the computer starts feeding you easier questions that aren't worth as many points. Thus it is critical to get the first few answers correct, which probably means you'll want to allot more time for them.

10. For the essay section, I didn't prepare much because I felt this area would be my strong suit. I did make sure that I could write an essay that I felt good about in the time available.

11. The night before the test: have a sleepless night. Feel nauseous and overwhelmed by your utter doom. Don't forget that this test determines YOUR WHOLE LIFE. Panic repeatedly.

12. Walk into the testing room high on adrenaline. Feel oppressed by the rules of the Educational Testing Service, for example, that you are videotaped the entire time and that you are not allowed to bring your own pencil. Take the test. Wait for two seconds at the end as the computer processes your score. Nearly pass out from shock when you learn you've done well.

THE END

*The makers of the GRE are introducing a new version this fall, so check on what you will need to know.

Chicks and ducks and geese better scurry

2007-05-11T15:10:00.000-05:00

I have not seen the geese in five days. All that is left of them is a neat roll of chicken wire, an empty wading pool and fading memories of a distant quacking. In the yard where they blissfully swam together, an empty stillness suggests that their absence is permanent. Perhaps they have gone to live on a peaceful farm for grown-up geese. Yet the phrases "fattened goose" and "foie gras" turn round and round in my mind...

Deep thought, in poetic form

2007-05-03T21:59:00.000-05:00

Substantially, I suppose,
There ain't much difference 'twixt butt and nose
After all, what's' good for pickin'
Is equally as good for lickin'.

You baldhead!

2007-05-02T07:48:00.000-05:00

2 Kings 2:23-24 - From there ~~Elisha~~ Dick went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they said. "Go on up, you baldhead!" He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.

Nerd Challenge! contest

2007-04-29T16:01:00.000-05:00

My friend Autumn (I think, she didn't sign her name) has left a challenge in the comments:

Alrighty Peachums, here's a test of your nerdiness (and GRE-type skills):

Distinguish between: nerd, weirdo, dork, geek, and trypanosome.

Also, please rank them in terms of worst insults to a nerd. Feel free to add terms of your own.

Thank you for participating in this week's Nerd Challenge! contest. We will contact you if you have won our top prize.

OK, here goes:

4. Weirdo. This word, meaning odd or eccentric, is hardly an insult at all. Most nerds pride themselves on being - to say the least - different than your average person. My father, the consummate nerd, is offended when no one calls him a weirdo before lunch.

3. Tie between nerd and geek. It's easy to rationalize these words to mean "having a single minded pursuit." Activities include: sorting mail obsessively (and enjoying it), collecting kitchen gadgets, eating only pasta, doing recreational math problems, and obtaining orgasm during database administration. However, "geek" has an oft-quoted slightly more insulting archaic meaning, "a carnival performer who performs sensationally morbid or disgusting acts, as biting off the head of a live chicken." So tact is of the essence when using this word.

2. Dork. With this insult, you start to fight dirty. The word implies that the person thus insulted has strange clothes and stranger ideas. Nerds hate being called "dorks" because they know it's true. The only possible comeback, "Haha, dontchaknow that 'dork' means 'penis'?!" only heightens the dorkiness of the speaker.

1. Trypanosome. This is the insult's insult, although possibly only among fellow nerds. It's the name of one of several species of parasite found in Africa and South America, where it causes, respectively, sleeping sickness and Chagas disease.

Oh, yeah, here we go. Oooh, baby!

FYI, you get Chagas disease when an assassin bug carrying the trypanosome bites you and then takes a crap in the wound. Chagas disease can cause a problem called megacolon. I trust my readers understand why that is a bad thing.

Feel free to argue and add items in the comments.

Waterfowl update

2007-04-29T14:54:00.000-05:00

MACBETH

Bring me no more reports; let them fly all:
Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane,
I cannot taint with fear. What's the boy Malcolm?
Was he not born of woman? The spirits that know
All mortal consequences have pronounced me thus:
'Fear not, Macbeth; no man that's born of woman
Shall e'er have power upon thee.' Then fly,
false thanes,
And mingle with the English epicures:
The mind I sway by and the heart I bear
Shall never sag with doubt nor shake with fear.
Enter a Servant
The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon!
Where got'st thou that goose look?

Servant

There is ten thousand--

MACBETH

Geese, villain!

Servant Soldiers, sir.

- Macbeth, Act V, Scene 3

a current photo of the questionable waterfowl

In a previous post, this intrepid journalist reported on the appearance of ducks in the most Beaverly Cleaverly neighborhood of Athens. Alas, mistakes were made. It now appears that the waterfowl are not ducks but geese; the principal clue is that the bastards have grown fucking enormous.

Peachums regrets the error.

My Pride and Joy, Or: Why I Love Being a Nerd

2007-04-27T18:35:00.000-05:00

The first rule of nerdiness is that nerds date other nerds. Thus I keep the company of one Maxwell, which leads to conversations such as this one:

ME: I found out that at my office we keep the thermostat set to 70 degrees all winter, even overnight and on weekends!

MAX (horrified): Why?!

ME: The building is so old that it takes two hours to warm up to a proper temperature. No one wants to be freezing on Monday mornings, so the policy is to leave the thermostat up all the time.

MAX: Why not just install a programmable thermostat?

ME: Oh. Duh.

The next Monday I spent two hours reveling in nerdy, orgasmic bliss as I used the Department of Energy's Programmable Thermostat Calculator (Excel spreadsheet) as a basis to estimate how much we could save by installing one. I can't begin to express how much fun I had reviewing my office's utility bills, looking up climate information for our region, and messing around with numbers. The upshot was that with the installation of a $100 thermostat, we could save approximately $700 every year. The thermostat will automatically turn down the temperature on nights and weekends, and since it will start heating the building at 7:30 on Monday mornings, no one will ever have to suffer from numb toes at the office.

The best part of this whole nerdy escapade was that I had the opportunity to write a MEMO summarizing my findings to submit to the appropriate authorities. Hooray for bulleted outlines!

Oh, yeah. And then, in a remarkably quick time period, our new thermostat was installed. I presume this is the first of many victories for the NERD ARMY.

Weird Bible Verse (Part I of a series?)

2007-04-26T18:54:00.000-05:00

Deuteronomy 23:1 - No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the LORD.

If that isn't strange enough, consider this verse's relevance to a current event. (See the news story, "A new meaning to 'extra slice'." ) IS THIS THE HAND OF SATAN?

Quote

2007-04-09T19:03:00.000-05:00

Over the weekend I sent an e-mail to the department head at Rejected University (RU) to let him know I've decided to go to UNC. An hour later, I got this reply:

"Sara, I anticipated this note, but I actually think you are making the right decision."

His answer made me feel more confident about my choice, but really, isn't that a weird thing to say? How about, "Sorry you won't be joining us. You would have fit in well with our stellar class of incoming students, but we know that you will do well at your school of choice." Or something else that indicates the department head has some confidence in RU's program?

Donkey Basketball

2007-04-07T14:18:00.000-05:00

The Posse and I attended a Donkey Basketball game last night in Jacksonville, Ohio. As you can see from the photo, the game involves two teams of humans attempting to shoot baskets while riding donkeys. We were thrilled beforehand because:

Hoofed animals are funny
It was supposed to be a uniquely local cultural event
Pre-game propagandists asserted that the donkeys would be wearing special scuff-proof shoes
The donkey poop was supposed to be involved in the scoring system

Sadly, this crack(ed) investigative reporter found none of these conditions to be true.

First of all, if the donkeys were wearing special shoes, I couldn't see them. I don't know what I was expecting. Bright red booties, I guess. Something that I could point and laugh about.

The lack of obvious shoes was a downer, and so was the fact that donkey basketball is not unique to Southeast Ohio. In fact, research reveals that it's played in at least 15 states, and according to PETA (pdf) it's boycotted by school districts in two other states.

I was also unhappy about misery of the donkeys.

Not surprisingly, they seemed ill tempered and eager to make the riders fall off. Donkeys are stubborn by nature, but they seemed very stressed about being dragged around a court by loud people who didn't know what they were doing. The donkeys' handler repeatedly slapped them on the hindquarters to get them to run. This is not something I'd want to see or contribute to again.

On the plus side, I was gratified to see the donkeys poop since I'm constantly in need of a poop humor break from the rest of my (highly intellectual) life. I also enjoyed the subsequent poop time-out that brought the donkeys to a halt. So much better than a TV time-out!

Alas, the poop was not figured into the score for either side.

GoodGreat Friday!

2007-04-06T13:41:00.000-05:00

More soon...

A Tragedy Is

2007-04-03T19:06:00.000-05:00

When you belch grotesquely at work, exclaim, "Mmmm, cheesy!" and NO ONE NOTICES.

Duck-arazzi

2007-04-03T08:34:00.000-05:00

The people who live behind my house are keeping ducks. I am not sure this practice is legal in my neighborhood. However, I am not going to report them, I am just taking sinister photos of the ducks with the digital zoom on my camera.

Below, please observe the contraband waterfowl. You will notice that my neighbors have installed a kiddie wading pool and that the duck on the left is enjoying a swim.

Contest!

2007-04-02T10:06:00.000-05:00

This is a guessing contest with a big prize. Try to guess which of the following images was slipped onto my doorstep and which is a cruel mockery of Jehovah's Witnesses/Mormons. Leave your guesses in the comments.

Cat-arazzi

2007-03-31T14:20:00.000-05:00

Max hung up the phone. "Oh, my god." He sounded serious. I wondered who had died until I saw that he was gazing out the window. I joined him, and saw this charming neighborhood scene:

The uppermost red circle denotes a terrified squirrel, perched in the lovely silver maple on our front lawn. The middle circle is Simba, our downstairs neighbor's cat. He packs a fierce attitude, but he is declawed. How emasculating!

And circle three, my friends, is a dead squirrel.

At the moment when Max exclaimed, "Oh, my god," the live squirrel was climbing down the tree trunk to investigate the dead squirrel, and Simba made a heroic leap at it.

The squirrel ran for safety.

At first, I assumed that Simba had killed the squirrel on the ground.

But it became clear that rigor mortis had set in long before Simba roamed the prairies of the Athens East Side. Soon, Simba gave up on boring Mr. Stiffy and began circling the tree.

Then, a momemt of drama: with Simba on the far side of the tree, the squirrel made a break for it!

With a flash Simba, proud sovereign of sunny patches, zoomed after the squirrel!

In the next yard, the stalking game began anew.

But the squirrel ran free, free, FREE! Simba shook his accursed clawless paws in loathing.

Satisfied that the neighborhood was again at peace, I returned to our yard to pay my respects to Mr. Stiffy, who seemed like a nice fellow (although if I were him I would have tried a tooth whitening agent).

THE END

P.S. More pics available here.

Retouched photos: from intriguing to scary

2007-03-16T18:37:00.000-05:00

Lately I've acquired a People Magazine dealer who provides the magazines to me for free, which means that lately I've picked up a People Magazine habit. Long ago I felt guilty about feeding my brain on the sparkly candy of such magazines, but I gave up that attitude. First, because as an heir of the Puritans, I have to remind myself that pleasurable activities are not necessarily bad. Second, an acquaintance of mine who adored celeb magazines in college went on to become a Rhodes scholar. So there you have it.

Reading People, alas, is not a purely escapist act. Paging through, I'm aware that most of the images are retouched, but it's still hard to avoid incorporating them into my brain's conception of "what women look like." Enter a refresher course on photo retouching (via Alas, A Blog), which I spent most of this afternoon doing. Here are some of the images I've been looking at - take a look and see how much retouching has been incorporated into your visual vocabulary.

This model is naturally beautiful, but apparently not beautiful enough to meet industry standards (click for bigger). Take a look at this site for an astonishing touch-up of a swimsuit model. The retouching artist made the model's waist more slender and her breasts bigger, because even swimsuit models are not attractive enough on their own to be portrayed as they come.

When I looked at the retouching job shown above, I realized that every single advertisement in People has the same smooth, glossy characteristic to it (even the pictures of food). But the woman on the right isn't real; she's a fantasy. More retouched photos from the same artist.

Finally, just for fun, here are some scary, less-than-skillfully-retouched childrens' pageant photos. Be afraid.

More retouched pageant photos.

On chick flicks

2007-03-10T16:26:00.000-05:00

I do not like this term "chick flick." A chick flick, by definition, is a film designed to be appealing to women. It is also one of the few genres that portrays stories about women. Any film that 1) includes women with names; 2) a female having a conversation with another female; or 3) women having a conversation that does not involve a man, are labeled "chick flicks."* That is, women's ideas, emotional lives, and adventures are "chick flicks," whether the film is Thelma and Louise or Bridget Jones' Diary.

Men, usually those who are anxious about their masculinity, are eager to proclaim their disdain for said films. Women participate in the denigration, too. And when we mock chick flicks, we're really mocking women's stories.

*Movies that meet all of these criteria are rare. See the Mo Movie Measure.

This blog=not dead!

2007-03-09T17:31:00.000-05:00

My friend Tori keeps asking me if this blog is dead, and I keep telling her NO! NO! I have lots of wonderful ideas for posts. It's just been...paralyzed.

I realized last week that I have been trying to make perfect blog posts. I wait to make a post until I have an insight that has never been made before in all of the vast chattering of the Internet. Since I am a genius, I am gifted with such an insight at least once a month, but even so I can't write about it until I have come up with perfect, crisply eloquent prose to describe it. Well, that's bunk. It's not a good mental environment for blogging. And it's no fun, either.

My friend Katie inspired my new thinking. She told me about an academic article on smart women who feel "fradulent," or like imposters. Here's an excerpt from the article:

Orenstein's (1994) self-portrait in SchoolGirls describes two lenses for seeing her own [behavior]: "There was the lens of success, through which I see the perfect daughter, who always obeyed her parents, was always a leader at school, pulled good grades" (p. xxvii). Orenstein then looks through another lens, "the superficial ideal of woman":
I wouldn't look through [that lens] at thirteen, when I lowered
my hand in math class, never to raise it again, out of a sudden
fear that I might answer incorrectly and be humiliated.... I
wouldn't see it when I declined to try out for my college
newspaper, even though I dreamed of becoming a journalist. Nor
would I see it at twenty-one, when I became paralyzed during the
writing of my senior thesis, convinced that my fraudulence was
about to be unmasked. (p. xxvii)
"You feel like an imposter?" Orenstein's advisor asked. "Don't worry about it. All smart women feel that way"

I was shocked to read that other people feel like imposters, because in recent months I have literally spoken the words, "I feel like an imposter!" and "X grad school will never accept me because they'll figure out that I am a fraud!" Even now that I've been accepted at two prestigious graduate schools, and offered handsome scholarships to attend each one, I still have this vague feeling that I've tricked someone. After my interviews with one graduate school last week, I had the sensation that I'd pulled the wool over the eyes of the admissions committee - despite the fact that I spoke the absolute truth about everything I've done.

If you've never had this feeling before, it can be hard to understand. I often feel like I don't know as much as I should, or as much as other people do, even though I have an official-looking diploma. Sure, I have a degree in Environmental Studies, but I hardly know any chemistry! I must be an imposter! Someone will figure me out!

Reading that article helped me finally realize that plenty of people feel this way. It's not, as I thought, a deep, dark secret unique to me. I realized that when I'm in stressful situations (job interviews, grad school applications), I don't compare my relative competetiveness to my colleagues or the other applicants, but to a perfect vision of myself. That sets up a train of thinking where inevitably, I am not perfect and I assume that I will not succeed. Then, I am surprised when I do well and I suspect I've accidentally tricked someone.

In any case, I have decided to try to gradually dump that mode of thought, starting right here on this blog. In honor of Women's History Month, I would like to do a series of feminist blog posts. I will try not to make them perfect.

Reference:
Voices and silences in our classrooms: strategies for mapping trails among sex/gender, race, and class. Elizabeth Bell and Kim Golombisky. Women's Studies in Communication 27.3 (Fall 2004): p294(36).

Write this story

2007-02-15T19:12:00.000-05:00

The following story used to be written on a wall in my kitchen. It was created one sentence at a time by various authors. Max and I had to erase it because our landlord was coming over, but here in Internet land it can grow and expand in all of its glory. So, it's up to you to continue the story. Add your sentences in the comments.

Once there was an earplug named Ebeneezer. He was young; his skin was firm and rubbery. But Ebeneezer's body was about to go through many wondrous changes. One day, he noticed a strange, waxy, orange discharge oozing onto the floor behind him. "Mom! Mom!" screamed Ebeneezer, forgetting that earplugs don't have mothers.

Bathroom Emergency

2007-01-10T18:45:00.000-05:00

A fond childhood memory of mine is the first time I clogged the toilet.

One summer when I was about 12 I became extremely constipated because I didn't drink enough water. A huge log of shit built up in my colon, eventually reaching the proportions of an oak trunk. As you can imagine, passing the oak trunk was an extremely painful process (think "ring of fire").

When I was done, I was thrilled to see the entity that I had birthed. It was huge! At least four inches in diameter! No joke! I have no idea how such a thing came out of me.

Anyway, the thing clogged the toilet, of course. As the waters rose I screamed for my mother, who rushed in and shut off the water. Then she taught me the art of plunging.

Below is a dramatic reconstruction of this event. Just click the "play" button.

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New Year's Resolutions

2007-01-02T07:29:00.000-05:00

In the new year, I resolve to:

*Bathe at least once a month

*Be less of a kleptomaniac

A story everyone already knows

2006-12-13T20:30:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time, a sweet, innocent young woman with bouncing brown curls went to work. She had been to the office where she worked many times before, but on this day she discovered something strange and wondrous on her computer.

She had been minding her own business, as usual, when she decided to visit the Web site of the Athens Public Library to look up some Important Fact or other. To her surprise, she noticed that a user name and password were saved on the Web site.

-Ho, hum, she thought to herself. This must be Stephanie's library card information, which this computer has graciously saved for her.

Stephanie had used the young woman's computer for a year before our heroine acquired it, and apparently had forgotten to erase saved passwords when she left.

Well, this sweet young woman could not pass up an opportunity to bring some holiday cheer to Stephanie's life. It was almost Thanksgiving, after all. She would give Stephanie something to be thankful for, all right.

***

A few days later, the young woman came home to find an extremely rude message from Stephanie on her answering machine (actual transcript follows):

"Um, you little Miss Stalker, did you happen to reserve a book for me, um, ever through the Athens Public Library? If so, I got the call from Athens Public Library saying my book is in. So, um, give me a call back, I want to know if it was you. If not, that was just a really weird, WEIRD, um...happening. Anyway, um, well I have a feeling - it’s got your name written all over it."

The young woman was outraged by these unfounded aspersions on her character. "Little Miss Stalker"?!

Actually, she wasn't outraged. She just pretended to be outraged.

Actually, she didn't even pretend to be outraged. What really happened was that she fell on the floor laughing. Then she called Stephanie back.

Stephanie told her what had happened. "The librarian called, and she said, 'The book you reserved is in.' I said, 'What book?' and she said, 'What to Expect When You're Expecting.' I didn't know what to think and I was like, 'Ummm...I didn't reserve that book. I don't have any...um...reason to reserve that book.' Then the librarian said, 'Well, it's under your name.' Then, I figured it out. I said, 'OK. You didn't do anything wrong, but I didn't reserve that book. I KNOW WHO'S BEHIND THIS!'"

At this, the sweet, innocent young woman fell on the floor laughing again, until Stephanie stopped her short with vague threats of revenge. That made the young woman shiver a little. Would she ever be safe again?

TO BE CONTINUED...?

Strange things happen when I get bored

2006-12-12T20:14:00.000-05:00

Capitalism v. Flatulence

2006-12-06T08:19:00.000-05:00

The scene: It's morning. A vulgar "ppbbbbbbbbbbb" sound emanates from the bedroom as Sara, in the bathroom, is washing her face.

Sara: Max! Shame! That's not allowed!

Max: It's my right!

Sara: There's no right to farting in the Constitution!

Max: It's my divine Right of Max!

Sara: Hahahaha!

Max: Besides, the Supreme Court would probably say it's a form of free speech.

Sara: Hmm...you're right. After all, if money is speech, then farting certainly should be speech.

Max: At least for corporations.

2006-12-01T20:36:00.000-05:00

December 1, 2006: A leaf emerges on a tree in Trimble, Ohio. Daytime temperatures have been near 70 degrees for the past week.

"I don't want to have to deal with global warming, to tell you the truth." - Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, during hearings this week to determine if carbon dioxide - a major greenhouse gas - is a "pollutant," and therefore eligible to be regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency.

"We are not all doomed. An awful lot of people will die, but I don't see the species dying out." - Climate scientist James Lovelock, speaking this week before a lecture to the Institution of Chemical Engineers.

2006-11-29T18:36:00.000-05:00

Cold season has returned. That means it's time to resurrect this poem:

My sweetheart is a giant nose
He got no eardrums, got no toes.
Morning finds me in a doze,
Awakening to my darling nose:
He huffs
And puffs
And sniffs
And snuffs
He snorts
And snoozles
Drips and woozles
Until I feel in such bad cheer
I ask, Have you a tissue, dear?

2006-11-27T18:29:00.000-05:00

A momentous event has occured: my mother and Max's mother have discovered that they can talk to each other! For years they have been relying on the switchboard in Athens, Ohio, despite the fact that they live in the same town.

My mother to me on the phone, shortly before a trip to visit me: "Do Max's parents have anything that they'd like us to bring to you?"

Me, to Max (dutifully): "Do your parents want my parents to bring anything from your parents' house?"

Max, on the phone to his mother: "Do you have anything the Peaches could bring to me when they come to Ohio?"

Max's mother: "No."

Max, to me: "No."

Me, to my mother: "No."

This sort of exchange can stretch out over weeks.

But now Fate, like a bolt of lightening, has changed everything, because our mothers encountered each other at a yard sale and held a lengthy conversation.

Although this revolutionary event may save us money on our phone bills, it's horrifying to contemplate the two of them taking up a regular correspondence. In this first conversation, they leapt immediately into a lengthy analysis of our relationship. ("And what qualities does Sara brings to the relationship?")

Then Max and I each got to hear, separately, what they each thought of the conversation. (They were both delighted.) Excuse me while I go cringe in a closet for the next three years.

An encounter in the style of Annie Proulx

2006-11-24T15:55:00.000-05:00

(I found this in my notebook, something I wrote last May.)

They say a person's peripheral vision is sharper than the direct, straight ahead kind. She watched everything sideways. Him, coyote-eyed. Clothes ink-stained. Coal dark hair, slippery like he'd run it through that morning with canola oil. A slip of a crinkled half grin, absorbing tits, ankles, waist.

He hefted boxes into the trunk. "Thank you for your help," she mustered awkwardly, showing teeth, still trying to please. Stumbled on the edge of her high heel. Her co-worker Phil, bending his elbows stiffly, chickenlike, looked away. Isn't this what she intended that morning, ironing pleats into a skirt that billowed above her knees, banishing prickly pear leg hair, bobby pinning a coil of swamp-thick coffee hair?

Earlier, inside the printing shop, he'd remarked twice that his job cutting the business cards was dangerous. She saw what he meant by that, clear as a ship nosing into a calm harbor. Still she kept her eye on the log of the machine's blade as he whirled the cards in and out of its mouth. Faster than a summer park magician, building animals out of latex and air. Dangerous yes, something to brag about.

Slamming the trunk door on the cards, they left him, his sticky thoughts. Inside the car, Phil turned the steering wheel against the silence of air conditioning. She was just choosing to accept that printer's staring as a compliment, but was interrupted by Phil. "A lot of the women at the office don't get along with him."

"Yeah?"

"One day he bumped Cynthia's butt, she was sure it was intentional." She is certain now she recognized him as a creep, instantly.

Home at last. Heels off, boyfriend kissed. He doesn't listen, absorbed in washing dishes, knows it's his right, too, to leer.

2006-11-22T16:28:00.000-05:00

In the comments of my last post, Autumn writes:

Sara! I want a real post! I'm dying from lack of peachums posts. This was more of a taunt to your loyal readers than a post. And to that I say, bleh!

It's true that my last post was a taunt, made with Autumn in mind. Nevertheless, I'm working on a new genre of Boring Stories and I did want to test out the Boring Story blog format. I've decided Boring Stories are much better in oral form, especially whispered late at night as the listener is about to fall to sleep:

(hissing): "Max! Are you awake?"

"Bleh..whah?"

"Guess what? I felt an itch yesterday on my nose. I scratched it and it didn't come back."

"OK..."

(dramatic pause)

"THE. END!"

(horrifyingly traumatic tickle attack ensues)

***
I've been thinking about this blog and about new types of posts that I could introduce. So readers, it's time for you to vote. Would you rather see:

1) Boring Blog Stories
2) Frequent updates on the state of my bowels, written in the style of a nautical journal ("Heavy winds today. The journey is rough; the sea is chunky.")
3) Careful, academic deconstructions of the right wing
4) A mixture of the above

Discuss.

2006-11-21T17:53:00.000-05:00

This afternoon I felt hungry, so I peeled an orange and ate it. THE END.

2006-11-08T08:05:00.000-05:00

What is this feeling I have...is it PRIDE IN MY COUNTRY? My ears are splitting open with the alien voices on the radio that are saying sensible things. It's a fairy tale world that I never hoped to see coming. Santorum FLUSHED. A powerful Southern white man damaged by his racism. A majority for protecting women in South Dakota. An anti-global warming governor for Massachusetts, an anti-war senator for Ohio. IS THIS MY HOME?

Recycled post

2006-10-31T18:53:00.000-05:00

Longtime readers are already familiar with this post, but since it's nearly the first anniversary of this event, I thought I'd put it up again.

So I realized today that I really repress myself at work. My co-workers never see my true, outrageous self. They’d be shocked to hear me claim that – they’d say, “But Sara, what about the parasite incident?” – but honestly, it’s true.

I never, ever talk about poop at work.

I was even a model of restraint after I ate an entire pizza for lunch (my co-workers egged me on; it’s so not my fault). The next day, my output was…shall we say…astounding? prodigious? It was that, and more. In any case, I said not a word. No, no, I kept my little good-girl mouth shut, even though I wanted to describe my epic feats in great detail. Aren’t you proud?

I’ve been thinking about poop more and more lately because I’ve been taking care of my roommate’s dog Marley, aka “Mardawg.”

On tonight’s walk, Mardawg pooped right in the middle of the sidewalk, just as I had been thinking, “Dogs always like to poop on the grass. Maybe it feels softer on their butts than the scratchy cement.” Hers was the poop that proved me wrong.

The story about why I’m taking care of Marley is long, and it goes like this.

My roommate, “Lusa,” has been living with me and Max since early September. She’s a 40-ish undergraduate student at the nearby university, and she helps us pay the rent.

Last Friday when I came back from work, I didn’t think Lusa was home. The dog was DEFINITELY home, though. She proceeded to bark for the next four hours straight. Not just any barks, either. Head-splitting, volcanic barks, interspersed with moans and high-pitched whines and endless pacing between rooms.

I don’t think it’s right to yell at animals, but Marley’s barking became so obnoxious that I lost control, screeching “No, Marley!” right in her face. She kept barking.

Finally, I took her outside, even though before that day she’d never gone to the bathroom for me. This time, though, she relieved herself. I just felt relieved.

But the barking didn’t stop. By this point, Max and I were both having violent fantasies. I went upstairs and peeked into Lusa’s room, and I saw that she WAS home. She seemed to be sleeping, or at least lying in bed with her eyes closed, and she was laughing.

Hmm, weird, is what I thought. Then Lusa’s mother called. “Can I talk to her? She was supposed to call me today.” I told her that Lusa was napping. The dog kept barking.

Max and I started freaking out a little bit then. He went upstairs and knocked on Lusa’s door. “Your mom called,” he said.

“So?”

“I just wanted to let you know.”

“OK. Can you put the dog out? Just put her out in the middle of the street.”

At this point, Max and I got really worried. It was one thing for the two of us to have violent fantasies about the dog. But until that day, Lusa had appeared completely devoted to Marley. I’d even heard her greeting the dog with coos and baby talk when she came home between classes.

Max put Marley’s leash on her and took her outside.

Was Lusa upset about something that had happened that day? Was she on drugs? Having a nervous breakdown?

I decided we needed more information, so I found Lusa’s cell phone and got her mom’s phone number. When her mom answered, she asked to speak to Lusa.

“Your mom is on the phone for you, Lusa,” I said.

“I don’t want to talk to her. Tell her I’m napping.”

“She really wants to talk to you, Lusa. She’s worried about you.”

“Tell her to go to hell. Yeah, that’s a good idea, tell her to go to hell!”

After some more insisting, Lusa came to the door and took the phone. But a few minutes later, she went out the front door and threw the phone across the street.

The phone, fortunately, was undamaged. The next number I tried was the only other one in Lusa’s electronic phone book. It turned out to be the number for Lusa’s sister-in-law. I told her, “My name is Sara, and I’m Lusa’s roommate. She seems to be having some emotional trouble.”

But when I handed the phone to Lusa, she adopted a cheery tone of voice. “What’s wrong? Oh, nothing. School’s great. Yep, it’s fine. Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know why she’d be worried.” And she hung up.

I went out to the porch, where Max was holding the dog. “I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do,” I said. We dithered a while longer, and then decided we needed to confront Lusa directly.

When I went back into the dining room, I wasn’t sure how to talk to her. Even though I’ve lived with Lusa for nearly two months, I don’t know much more about her than her hometown and her major. She’d struck me as an extremely shy person, a bit of a loner, but certainly competent and able to care for herself.

“Can you tell me about what’s going on with you?” I asked.

“I’m in trouble.” I was relieved that she wasn’t pretending that everything was fine. What would I have done if she’d said, “Oh, ha ha! Everything’s great”?

“What can we do?”

“Call someone to help me.” Then she pointed to a piece of paper on the table. “Maybe they can help me.” I looked at the paper. It said “Wyndham Hotels & Resorts.”

After I called 911 but before the police arrived, Lusa’s brother called. He told me that once, five years ago, Lusa had a bi-polar episode. But since he lives outside of Washington, D.C., he couldn’t provide much help.

When the two cops came, Lusa told them she was thinking “evil things” and that her last name was “Christ,” first name, “Jesus.” The cops talked her into going with them to be evaluated by a mental health expert. So she went to the bathroom, put on her shoes, and climbed into the squad car.

The dog went to sleep immediately. We haven't heard from Lusa since.

Note: after this writing, "Lusa" returned to our home, but soon ended up in a mental health rehabilitation center again. Eventually, at our request, she moved out permanently.

Our Lady of the Cheese, Part III

2006-10-27T18:36:00.000-05:00

When she woke up, the stars were out. Mary felt disoriented and restless.

Outside, walking along the street, the air had a chill. She had disliked cold weather – before. As she walked along the lane past where the streetlights ended, the stars got brighter and colder. Mary shivered.

“Hail Mary, full of woe!” called a voice. Mary whirled around, nearly twisting her ankle. She couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from. “Sweaty are you among women, and cheesy is the fruit of your skin!”

“God?” she ventured on a hunch. God has a strange sense of humor, she thought.

“Yes.” The voice was neither male nor female, high nor low. It sounded like thunder, whirlwinds, train whistles, an avalanche of boulders, and Dixieland jazz. “How are you, Mary?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking.” Mary felt awkward. “We have a lot of hungry people down here. They would be grateful for a regular source of beef.”

“They’d also get pretty thirsty,” God replied, not unkindly. “And a perpetual rain of beef would disrupt the web of life in ways that you would not like.” Mary sighed. “But cheer up, Mary! There are plenty of opportunities for you. You could join the circus! Or open a chili cheese fry stand!” Mary tried very hard not to groan, but a small “Yrrrk!” escaped.

“It’s true though, you have the talent to run a small business,” God added.

“I do? In what?” Mary’s brain felt stunned and empty. She had no idea what sort of business she could get into, or how that would help her.

“Did you know, Mary,” said God slyly, “that one of Queen Victoria’s wedding presents was a cheddar cheese that weighed over 1,000 pounds? Someone paid a pretty penny for a cheese that big.”

“Are you suggesting that I get into the wedding cheese business? For couples who don’t like cake?” Now that she thought about it, it wasn’t a bad idea.

“That is an excellent plan, Mary. In fact, more couples than you might think privately dislike cake. I predict that your business will be extremely successful.” Mary grinned to herself. She was about to ask God where she should begin when she realized the voice was gone.

There was nothing to do but go home. As she walked back down the lane, her head turning with visions of business cards and stainless steel vats, Mary felt more hopeful than she had in a long time.

THE END

2006-10-26T07:04:00.000-05:00

"Guess what my mom told me?"

"I don't know."

"You'll never guess."

"OK."

"You'll really never guess."

"OK, fine!"

"She told me that one time, my dad got a yeast infection in his ear!"

"Auugggghhh! How did that happen?"

"I dunno, but his ear was clogged up with a bunch of ear wax."

"So it kinda grew behind there?"

"Yeah. My dad has massive ear wax production capabilities."

"I could have died without knowing that."

Our Lady of the Cheese, Part II

2006-10-25T07:30:00.000-05:00

Mary was making herself an omelet for breakfast. After an extensive session in the shower, she had reported in as sick to the gym where she worked. “No, I’m OK,” she had said on the phone to her overbearing boss. “You don’t have to bring me any soup.”

Mary grumbled to herself as she cracked three eggs against the counter and whisked them in a bowl. There had been a repulsive quantity of the pungent cheese in her bed, in the shower, and even in stinky cheeseprints along the hallway between her bedroom and the bathroom. Thank God that her roommate, who had dusted the baseboards and the lamp shades in their apartment twice a week, had finally moved out. She would have had an aneurysm seeing all that gorgonzola, Mary thought ruefully.

Most of the gorgonzola had oozed from her feet. Mary supposed it was God’s idea of a joke, since she’d always thought the cheese tasted just as bad as feet. The rest of her body was clean, although she had noticed an ominous tracing of cream cheese in her armpits as she emerged from the steamy shower. Damn her feet! They had always perspired much more than the rest of her body.

Turning on the burner and greasing a skillet, Mary contemplated her options. She felt frighteningly calm, as if her emotions had shrunk to a cold, small rock in the center of a chicken gizzard. There was no way should could return to her job as a fitness instructor. She could not, would not teach the town’s 40-something socialites how to kick box if limburger cheese was falling out of her athletic shorts with every “ki-yah!”

Should she move to an igloo in Alaska? Would she ever be able to go running again? Watch fireworks outdoors on the Fourth of July? Get through a nerve-wracking interview?

By now Mary’s omelet was glowing a delicious golden brown. She opened the door of the fridge and grabbed a block of mozzarella cheese to grate. She hesitated with the refrigerator door open, taking in the irony of the situation. Yes, store-bought was best for today.

After breakfast, Mary put on her lightest weight clothing and left her apartment for a research blitz. First stop was the public library, where she noticed with interest the following news item: “Belinda ‘Granny Cheeslums’ MacPherson, beloved by many as the world’s greatest specialty cheese maker, died last night. She was 93.”

After departing the blessedly well-air conditioned library, Mary walked at a non-exerting pace to the pharmacy down the street. She bought six kinds of anti-perspirant, then walked at a studiously moderate speed to Arby’s Gym, her employer’s local competitor. She booked a private sauna room, disrobed behind a curtain in the locker room, and smeared a thick sheen of anti-perspirant over every part of her body. If the deodorant worked, it would be an easy fix for her problem.

In the sauna, she shut the door firmly. The heat swallowed her up, a moist, gasping mouth. Mary examined her skin. Aside from the greasy film of the anti-perspirant, it looked normal.

Then, with a force that shuddered her body, white geysers of cheese erupted. It was though a pimple was popping at each of her trillion pores. Mozzarella and cheddar oozed down her back and stomach; feta from her neck; Camembert, Muenster, and provolone from her knees, elbows, and forehead, respectively; ricotta from her thighs; Brie from unmentionable zones; Swiss from her ankles; bright orange American cheese from behind her ears; Monterey Jack from her palms and the webbing of skin between her fingers; Havarti from her scalp; paneer from her navel. Suppressing a fit of rage, Mary dashed out of the sauna for her second shower of the day.

As the water streamed down her body, Mary wept, silently, for a long time. When she was done, she wrapped her body gently in a thick white towel.

Stepping back out onto the street, she saw her boss facing her on the sidewalk. The woman’s large frame and furious eyes loomed toward her in a formidable profile. Mary’s stomach attempted what felt like an effort to fall out of her body and crawl into a crack in the sidewalk.

“Well, Mary,” her boss said evenly. “What brings you to this establishment?”

Thinking quickly, she blurted, “I’ve just had an interview. I won’t be working for you any more.” Then she turned her back on her now ex-boss and swooped away. “Crap, crap, CRAP!” Mary muttered all the way home.

Inside her apartment, the phone was ringing. It was Michael, a man she’d been dating here and there for a few months. “I can’t see you anymore,” Mary told him abruptly. She felt at a loss to explain more.

“Is it something I said?” Michael begged.

Guiltily, Mary stammered, “No, it’s just that – I, well – I’m having some body issues that I need to work out on my own.”

“Is it something to do with food?” Now Michael sounded concerned.

“Yes!” said Mary, perhaps too eagerly.

“But you’re beautiful just like you are!”

“I know,” said Mary. “I’m sorry.”

A short while later Mary hung up the phone and retreated to her bed. No job, no boyfriend: her life was in shambles. Mary wondered vaguely what would happen if something terrible befell her, like falling off a bridge. Someone else would be chosen to sweat cheese, she supposed.

Soon Mary realized that there wasn’t much point in getting up. Lunch hour crept by, but Mary only shifted to her side. Too tired to get up. She stared at the paint on the wall, faintly noticing its imperfections, and despaired.

Deep Thoughts of the Day

2006-10-24T19:22:00.000-05:00

In tests in Canada, women who were told that men and women do math equally well did much better than those who were told there is a genetic difference in math ability.

And women who heard there were differences caused by environment -- such as math teachers giving more attention to boys -- outperformed those who were simply reminded they were females.

The women who did better in the tests got nearly twice as many right answers as those in the other groups, explained Steven J. Heine, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

Expectations, it turns out, really do make a difference.

"The findings suggest that people tend to accept genetic explanations as if they're more powerful or irrevocable, which can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies," said Heine.

The math study is the latest since Harvard University's president ignited controversy last year by suggesting that innate gender differences may partly explain why fewer women than men reach top university science jobs. The comment eventually cost him his job.

Story here.

Our Lady of the Cheese, Part I

2006-10-23T22:08:00.000-05:00

The angel that came to Mary in the night looked less like an angel than a gnome. With dog-like toenails that clicked on the bedroom floor, oversize hairy ears like a Siamese cat, and a scrabbling, hobbled gait, the angel was a hideous cross between Yoda and Gollum.

“Ahem,” the angel rasped. “Do not be afraid.” True to his resemblance of Gollum, the whites of his bulbous eyes glowed faintly in the stillness of the room. Mary was already awake. She kept silent and absolutely still.

“Favored one,” announced the angel. “I am the angel Pasquale.” Without breathing, Mary carefully edged her arm between her bed and the wall. Amidst the rubble under her bed, she grasped the weapon she was seeking. In less time than it took Pasquale to emit a phlegmy gasp, Mary was standing upright, swaying slightly on the cushion of the mattress, with the pointy tip of her long umbrella aimed at the angel’s thorax.

“Wanna be a shish kebab?” she demanded menacingly in a low tone.

“Ahem, no.” Pasquale cleared his throat calmly. He ignored the umbrella. “I have been dispatched to inform you that you have been chosen as Protector of your generation.”

“What?” said Mary, shrieking a bit more than she would have liked. She leaned forward slightly on the umbrella.

“Oh, stop,” said Pasquale, batting the umbrella away. “Listen, I have certain things you need to know. Five hundred generations ago, God lost a bet to Satan.”

Despite herself, Mary was curious. “How can God lose a bet? Couldn’t he see that he would lose?”

“How many Pasquales can dance on the head of a pin?” the angel replied, and belched. “Moving on. The end result was that the Earth was condemned to have ground beef rain down on it, forever. Naturally, God was concerned about sanitation – and the stink! and so with a bit of flim-flamming, God was able to strike a compromise with Satan.”

“And what was that?” asked Mary suspiciously.

“One person in every generation must be selected from amongst the Earth’s populace to be the Protector.” Pasquale waved his hands dramatically.

“No, I decline,” said Mary quickly. “Whatever it means to be the Protector, I’m too busy.”

“YOU WILL SWEAT CHEESE!” Pasquale boomed. “There, I’ve told you.”

“What are you talking about?” Mary screamed back.

“Calm down. The deal God made was that either one person had to sweat cheese or it would rain ground beef until the Rapture. Raw ground beef, mind you.”

“Don’t I get a choice?” demanded Mary, still screaming.

“Unfortunately, no.” Pasquale yawned. “If you’ll forgive me, I’ve explained this all about 500 times and I’m rather bored with it.” And with just the slightest pop, a small wheeze, and the hiss of a trailing toenail, the angel disappeared.

In the morning, Mary’s sheets were full of gorgonzola cheese.

Quote of the year

2006-10-19T21:03:00.000-05:00

Here is a great quote from my second-favorite senator, Rick Santorum.*

In an interview with the editorial board of the Bucks County Courier Times, embattled Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has equated the war in Iraq with J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings." According to the paper, Santorum said that the United States has avoided terrorist attacks at home over the past five years because the "Eye of Mordor" has been focused on Iraq instead.

"As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else," Santorum said. "It's being drawn to Iraq and it's not being drawn to the U.S. You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the Eye to come back here to the United States."

*All-time fav senator: James Inhofe, of "global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" fame.

I, for one, welcome our new stingray overlords

2006-10-19T07:55:00.000-05:00

I don't know about you, but this story makes me suspect that a new world order is emerging:

MIAMI, Florida (Reuters) -- A leaping stingray stabbed an 81-year-old Florida boater in the chest, authorities said Wednesday, leaving its poisonous stinger lodged close to his heart in an incident recalling the one that killed Australian TV naturalist Steve Irwin last month.

Fire Department officials in Lighthouse Point, about 30 miles north of Miami, said James Bertakis was in a small recreational boat with two grandchildren Tuesday when the spotted eagle ray leaped aboard and struck him.

"It's just a real freak thing," Lt. Mike Sullivan told Reuters, saying the incident occurred on Florida's Intracoastal Waterway, where stingrays are rarely seen leaping in the air.

An Argument

2006-10-18T21:00:00.000-05:00

Crazy Reactionary: For me [sodomy is] unnatural sex. You know, the kind that you can't make a baby with.

Peachums: The bonobo, a relative of the chimpanzee, is indisputably a natural animal. And guess what?! Bonobos engage in non-procreative sex ALL THE TIME!

Sexual intercourse plays a major role in Bonobo society, being used as a greeting, a means of conflict resolution and post-conflict reconciliation, and as favors traded by the females in exchange for food. Bonobos are the only non-human apes to have been observed engaging in all of the following sexual activities: face-to-face genital sex (most frequently female-female, then male-female and male-male), tongue kissing, and oral sex. This happens within the immediate family as well as outside of it. Bonobos do not form permanent relationships with individual partners.

Source.

CR: Well aren't you a wise one? Obviously we should engage in activities when animals do them. Shall we add eating one's young to the list, since this is something animals also do?

Nice to see you've justified sodomy by pointing to a lower order of existence, the bonobo. What does that say about how civilized this is?

P: Tch, tch. Now you're avoiding the question by asking another question, namely, "Is sodomy civilized?" This question, my friend, has nothing to do with "Is sodomy natural?" - which it patently is.

Need I get into the vast wonders of the natural world? Have you been exposed to the indecency of hermaphroditic earthworms? Or the female insect who reproduces without the intercession of a male, whose female offspring are born as they eat their way out of her body? The metrosexual fish of the Chesapeake?

My dear, my point is this: the natural world of reproduction is both vast and bizarre. There's no sense to be had in moralizing about "natural" behavior, because the term is so broad to be almost meaningless.

CR: So anything that is done in nature is by definition natural? Even though the purpose of sex is reproduction, you're saying that non-reproductive sex is natural? That's an interesting - and broad - definition.

My dear, my point is this: the natural world of reproduction is both vast and bizarre. There's no sense to be had in moralizing about "natural" behavior, because the term is so broad to be almost meaningless.

Well thanks for avoiding MY point about other natural things like eating one's offpring. That happens in nature, so I guess we shouldn't "moralize" about that either. If a parent wants to eat her child, well hey, it happens in nature, so it's justified, right?

Other things that occur in nature: killing other animals (which we foolish moralizers term "murder" when applied to a human context); violence (silly moralizers call that "assault" in terms of humans)....need I continue?

P: Uh...no. You just shouldn't whine about sodomy not being "natural," because it is.

So anything that is done in nature is by definition natural? Even though the purpose of sex is reproduction, you're saying that non-reproductive sex is natural? That's an interesting - and broad - definition.

Yes! You've stated the concept exactly right. Isn't biology interesting?

CR: So if I go out in nature and, I dunno, dump toxic waste in the river - perfectly natural right? Because ANYTHING done IN NATURE is NATURAL.

P: In a certain sense, yes. Everything on this planet, including humans and toxic waste, is natural. Your house, your clothes, and the air you breathe are all made up of atoms derived from Earth and the stars.

Now, we humans have created a category, "manmade," that we say is different from "natural." This distinction is useful for certain purposes (such as classifying fibers, say), but ultimately, everything comes from the same place. Right? The oil in your polyester shirt came from compressed tissues of living things. Agent Orange is synthesized from natural chemicals in the environment.

There is no value judgement attached to "natural." Nature is inherently amoral. Thus, sodomy exists in nature, cannibalism exists in nature, and toxic waste is created by natural human beings, just like sunshine and monarch butterflies are natural. "Naturalness," being everything, has absolutely nothing to do with human cultural judgements, positive or negative.

Humans may label toxic waste "good" and sodomy "great!" but this labeling operates independently from naturalness. That is why it doesn't make sense to object to sodomy based on "naturalness" or "unnaturalness."

***

At this point, alas, our friend the Crazy Reactionary realized he'd been vanquished and he ceased to reply.

Originally argued February, 2006.

Mortified

2006-10-17T22:42:00.000-05:00

How to tell that your facade of professionalism has failed to fool the visitor to the office:

She asks you, "Have you been to the Butt Conference?"

Prepare to be disgusted

2006-10-17T20:35:00.000-05:00

I present you with a short collection of gross stories from around the Internet:

Heather Armstrong, over at Dooce.com, had the generosity to share the tales of a marble-sized cyst with the Internet. The exposition is here; for the infinitely grosser Part II, click here.
Via One Good Thing, there is this charming interview with Karen Greenlee. You may remember Ms. Greenlee, a former morgue worker, as the woman who caused a media frenzy when she failed to deliver a body to a cemetery.

Update: Amazingly, I forgot to include www.365dumps.blogspot.com. (Was I subconsciously trying to protect my last shred of maturity?) In any case, just start at the beginning and read through to the current entry.

Originally written April 3, 2005.

2006-10-11T08:12:00.000-05:00

"You were snoring."

"I couldn't have been! I don't snore!"

"Yes, you were!"

"Was it loud?"

"Yes. It was like 'squaea squaaaaaaaa'!"

"I really don't believe you. I don't snore!"

"What makes you so sure you don't?"

"It would be far too indelicate!"

"Yes, because you are the epitome of all delicacy."

"It's true, in some countries I am considered a delicacy."

Socially Sanctioned Stalking

2006-10-06T06:36:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite childhood memories is this one:

I'm lurking in my younger brother's bedroom, behind the closet door. It's pitch dark. The lightbulb in this room is burnt out, the shades are drawn. I am completely quiet, trying not to even sniffle my nose.

I can hear floorboards creaking and taps running in other rooms as my family members perform their end-of-day rituals. Then, my brother's voice, pleading: "I can't go to bed until I know where Sara is! She might be in my room!"

My dad's voice is stern. "Sara's not in your room. Just go to bed!" I cover my face with my hand to hold back a snort.

My brother must have appealed to my mother's better judgement, though, because a minute later, I hear her calling my name. I know my prank is over now, I'll have to turn myself in, so I start cackling hysterically. Hearing my laughter, my brother realizes the truth: I really had been lying in wait for him. He sobs. I feel so guilty that after five minutes or so, I am able to stop laughing.

I don't want you to think that I'm too cruel of an older sister, so I should say at this point that my brother and I still make fond allusions to this event, even though it's been years since it happened.

2006-10-03T19:16:00.000-05:00

You're on notice!

2006-10-02T15:17:00.000-05:00

2006-09-27T23:23:00.000-05:00

This is Bikram:

Bikram is a yoga teacher. He's developed a sequence of yoga, cunningly called "Bikram Yoga," involving series of hatha yoga postures performed in a hot room.

A few years ago, Bikram got into trouble when he filed for copyright of his yoga sequence. Quoth Wikipedia:

Over the last several years, Choudhury has notified yoga instructors that they must obtain a license from him in order to teach Bikram yoga, which he asserts includes not only the exact 26 asanas and two breathing exercises, but all "substantially similar" derivative forms of the sequence as well. Choudhury also demanded that yoga teachers teaching his sequence of asanas obtain a license to use the term BIKRAM YOGA.

Bikram's actions caused animosity in the yoga community because, many yoga practitioners argue, Bikram's yoga sequence is derived from postures developed over thousands of years by countless numbers of people. Thus, it is part of the public domain.

I believe these yoga practitioners are wrong. And selfish. Happily, a judge recently dismissed their motion for a declaratory judgement against Bikram. I feel emboldened by this judge's action, so at this time, I am putting all of you on notice that the posture exhibited below is copyrighted, by me, and you cannot use it without paying royalties to me.

This posture is excellent for regaining balancing in the four humors and for relieving intestinal pressure. It can be yours for $15 per use, or $45 for a day pass.

2006-09-26T10:23:00.000-05:00

Variation on a theme: Our Lady of the Butt

2006-09-25T22:06:00.000-05:00

In 2002, a statue of the Virgin Mary in a suburban church in Western Australia began to weep. The statue cried rose-scented tears during the feast of St. Joseph, and then for four days over Easter. From August 15, the feast of the Assumption, until January, when it was removed from the church, the Madonna wept continuously. The spectacle drew thousands of worshippers.

In Clearwater, Florida, an image of the Virgin Mary appeared in the windows of an office building. A vandal damaged the image by tossing corrosive liquid on it, but according to this site, the the Mary later returned. As this photograph of the Clearwater building shows, the sighting attracted much attention.

I wasn't thinking of Mary last summer when, after a vigorous round of stalking my brother with squirt gun, I squished my sweaty profile against a window pane. The result was an astounding likeness, with my nose, cheeks, and jaw line visible in clear detail.

My parents didn't discover my contribution to household decor until one night in October, long after I had returned to school. That night, the lights from the Catholic church across the street illuminated the image, like a lamp shining behind a tissue paper drawing. Suspended in a dark frame, the cream-colored silhouette had a ghostly, other-worldly appearance.

The next day, I got a phone call. "Your dad and I had the same thought!" said my mom excitedly. My parents had cooked up a get-rich-quick scheme to market the oily image as an apparition of the Madonna. Selling tickets, t-shirts, and buttons would make my parents rich, RICH, RICH! beyond their wildest imaginings.

So it was with some chagrin that we learned of the salt runoff Mary that appeared under an overpass in Chicago. Suddenly, all of my parent's potential customers were headed to Illinois.

Until today.

According to CNN, the underpass Virgin was vandalized by a man who scrawled "Big lie" over the image. Illinois officials then painted over the stain.

A few mourners gathered today on the highway to pay their last respects. Says my dad, gleefully, "The competition has just been eliminated!"

Originally written May 6, 2005.