Stupid Girls

What happened to the dream of a girl president?
She's dancing in the video next to 50 Cent
...
Pretty will you fuck me girl
Silly I'm so lucky girl
Pull my hair I'll suck it girl
Stupid girl!

[P!nk]

It's bad enough that these stupid girls are all over the media, but when your 30-something, college-educated, self-proclaimed "feminist" friends act this way, it's just infuriating!

Finally, A Voice of Reason

This was refreshing to watch, although the two guys were complete yahoos.

Accomplishments

I have been working like crazy all month and this week I'm starting to see some concrete results. In particular, I've been writing a lot (which is exactly what I need to be doing right now) and manuscripts are starting to shape up. Yesterday I even had one of those moments where right in the middle of writing, I stopped to realize that I truly love what I do. I decided to blog about my sense of accomplishment for two reasons: (1) I'm more inclined to talk about what's not going well as opposed to what is, so how's this post for a breath of fresh air? (2) When August rolls around and I start panicking about all of the work that I need to finish before the new semester begins, I can look back on this post and remember the things that I actually did get done.

Thou Shalt Not Deface Library Books

Since making up new commandments is currently in vogue, I would add this one to the list. Last year I lamented over a borrowed library book that was missing 20 pages toward the end of the 900+ page tome. I thought I could figure out what had happened in those missing pages, but I was bothered by the fact that I might not get it right. Needless to say, I did not. I just finished reading the next book in the Outlander series and I was, in fact, wrong in my best guess as to what happened in those pages. Luckily for me, Gabaldon is very good about reminding readers what happened in previous volumes. Still, it bugs me.

I'm also reading an academic book from the 1970s about inequality in communist Russia. The book is filled with someone else's underlines and margin notes. This drives me crazy! It's still defilement even if you do it with pencil!

Snakes in Dreams

I rarely remember my dreams, but twice this week I woke up vividly remembering dreams about snakes -- lots of them, of different types, just slithering all over the place. Today I decided to do some "research" on the meaning of snakes in dreams and the pseudo-science of dream interpretation has offered several contradictory opinions:

1.) In Asian and Native American cultures the snake is a sign of wisdom and dreaming about snakes means "renewal, problem-solving, and good tidings." (http://predictions.astrology.com/dd/snake.html)

2.) In Judeo-Christian cultures, "the snake is a symbol of temptation or spiritual opposition against reaching one's goals" (http://predictions.astrology.com/dd/snake.html)

3.) It may also be a sign of betrayal and "refer to a person around you who is callous, ruthless, and can't be trusted" (http://dreammoods.com/cgibin/searchcsv.pl?method=exact&header=dreamsymbol&search=snake)

There's also a Freudian option, but let's not go there, or else I would feel compelled to go on a rant about Freudian reductionism and I don't have time for that right now.

Interpretation #1 is certainly the most positive. #2 is very "Adam and Eve" and I can't think of anything that fits that description. Thinking about #3 would be depressing.

I Guess I'm Just Not That Hip

The t.v. show for my generation of women is unquestionably Sex and the City, but I have still not managed to get on that bandwagon. I tried to watch the show when it was in its prime, but I was turned off by the superficiality of the characters (Who wears those clothes? Who has money for all of those shoes?) and their over-the-top attempts to shock me. Recently I gave the show another chance. Mainly out of boredom I would catch an occasional episode on TBS and I started to understand why it was so popular. There are some endearing qualities of the characters, their friendships are admirable, and the drama of the dating scene can be entertaining.

And then I made a big mistake. I started watching some of the episodes on HBO. I do not need the clean versions of TBS because I am shocked and appalled by the sex talk or the sex scenes. No, I need the clean versions because the regular ones are so crass. I have been completely disgusted by some of the episodes. I appreciate the way the show pushed boundaries about what could be discussed or seen on t.v., but at the end of the day, t.v. is either for entertainment or education, and Sex and the City certainly doesn't qualify for the latter. Some of the things I have seen recently don't qualify as entertainment either. There is a reason why these things aren't shown on t.v. regularly -- they are not enjoyable to watch!

And I Thought I Had Problems

My unresolved computer problems pale in comparison to what's going on at the International Space Station. It's funny how it seems almost mundane to have people living in space and then the computer crashes and you remember just how tenuous and amazing that feat really is. I have been following this story with more interest than the Sopranos finale. As a result I have discovered NASA TV, which could be very dangerous for me.

Everyone Else is Doing It

Blogging about the Sopranos, that is. Since I no longer have a literal watercooler, I have to substitute it with a virtual one. I have to say that I loved the finale. I thought it was clever and very appropriate. Despite my usual need for closure, I didn't mind being left hanging because a neat ending would have been too inconsistent with the spirit of this show. As opposed to a Godfather-like, glorified mafia boss, Tony Soprano was a very ordinary thug and the ending epitomized that very quality. I also thought that the director played on our expectations beautifully and built up a lot of tension and drama at the end using very simple techniques. Again, quite clever. Like most of the tv-viewing audience, our household was split on our opinions of the show. Eddie was disappointed. He thought Tony should have been whacked, or at least arrested.

Nostalgia

I recently finished reading Prague, a book about five expatriates living in Budapest in the early 1990s, just after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. Prague was the ultra-hip, bohemian city where most expats at that time gravitated, while Budapest and Krakow (my choice) were runners-up. The characters feel cheated that they are not in the center of the post-communist experience and compare their lives to imagined ones in Prague; hence the book's title. It's pretty obvious why I was drawn to this book, but it was quite a disappointment for me. I found the writing obtuse and the characters uninteresting. Each of the five expats was supposed to represent a particular view of Budapest at this historical moment, but I just didn't find their stories, or perspectives on post-communism, as compelling as others have. In fact, the only reason that I barely finished this book was because I took it with me to D.C. last weekend and it was the only thing I had to read at the airport.

Althought the book wasn't as enjoyable to read as I had aniticpated, it still brought back fabulous memories of my time in Krakow -- walking cobblestone streets where history just oozes from the cracks; spending hours at outdoor cafes discussing philosophy, politics, music, etc. with a hodgepodge of other young travelers in a cacophony of languages; traveling the rickety trains to see forgotten villages and dilapidated castles just because you could; witnessing the controversy as the first McDonald's was built in the city; mastering a language that most Americans find impossible to learn, and so on. It was the most carefree, spontaneous, and adventuresome time of my life. I was fortunate to understand at that time that it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and I fully embraced it.

I've been aching to go back for a while now, and I think I may do it next summer. Of course, you can never regain that twenty-something perspective and a recent NYTimes article convinced me that the thirty-something experience would be quite different, for me personally as well as for the city that I once called home.

Weekend in Washington

Last week I was busily plugging away on a manuscript that should have been done last month. By Friday I thought things were coming together nicely until ... I found I had made a big data error (checking pays off!) and then I ran into a new series of technical difficulties, completely unrelated to the last post along those lines. (sigh)

Luckily I was able to put that projest aside for the weekend while I went to D.C. to hang out with some great friends from college. Here's the overview of the trip:

• No matter how long it's been since I've seen my college friends, it's always effortless to reconnect with them.
• Humidity in DC sucks.
• The Smithsonian museums never fail to amaze me. This trip we did the Air & Space museum and the American Indian museum. Both were very cool, but for different reasons.
• Motion sickness sucks even more than humidity. It prevented me from seeing an IMAX movie at the Air & Space museum and then it caught up with me again on a very bumpy plane ride to Albany through "severe weather."
• We went to see Shrek 3 and I'm still laughing about certain scenes, but I won't put any spoilers here.
• It took three people with college degrees a half hour to put together the pieces for a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos (for the four-year-old escorting us for the weekend). It really shouldn't be that difficult!
• I'm completely spoiled by the few traffic problems we have in Albany.