Something there is that doesn't love a wall

Hello, Readers!  Let's talk about boundaries!  Or specifically: the hardest part about boundaries, are, hey, I am already destroyed, MAYBE I SHOULD HAVE HAD SOME BOUNDARIES THERE.

Basically, I am crap at figuring out when I need boundaries.  Maybe you are like this, too.  I will let people that are toxic and abusive get way too far before any self-preservation instinct kicks in.

I think it goes something like this - or, specifically, this is how it went with my last emotionally abusive partner.  So, someone is abusive - they do something hurtful, or manipulative, or just generally pull some Bad Person shit on you.  And it happens and you . . . don't really know what to do.  Because, like, there is no manual for this thing; there is no equation where if X happens, that means Y.  And most of us are loathe to imagine anyone we care about is a Bad Person.  EVEN if they just did some serious Bad Person acts.  So, the abuser apologizes, and maybe you stick up for yourself, and maybe you fight back, and then when everything smooths over, you feel proud.  You fought back!  You stuck up for yourseslf!  Good for you!

The thing is, you take each event as a separate incident.  So again, the abusive person pulls some Bad Person shit on you.  And maybe you stand up for yourself again!  And maybe you win!  Yay!  You are proud!  But you are not seeing the pattern.  You are just taking each episode as it comes, because, I mean, look, life is busy, and shit keeps coming up, and holy shit you are almost out of cat food.  Who has time for long-term reflection?  Besides, the person you care about/are very close friends with/are in love with, they can't possibly be a Bad Person.  You are, in fact, invested in them NOT being a Bad Person.

And of course, if you're most ladies, I mean: you swallow down abuse almost EVERY.  DAMN.  DAY.  You do not get angry.  You do not react.  When someone brushes against you on the subway, you shut down and try to pretend it isn't happening.  When you get catcalled on the street, you just refuse to acknowledge it and walk faster.  We ladies have been trained to be passive, not react, not get angry, try to excuse, try to understand the other person's feelings, question ourselves.  Really, how can we expect ourselves to react any other way?  It's really not that surprising we don't love a wall.  We are so ill-equipped to build them.

So, you know.  There is an abusive incident.  And then another.  And then another.  And maybe you stuck up for yourself each time!  Yay for you!  But the thing about sticking up for yourself is: it is exhausting.  And no one wants to keep fighting.  And so you, as the non-Bad Person, start trying to avoid the fights.  You start holding you tongue.  Curtailing your behavior.  You try to avoid instigating abusive episodes.  And maybe you're successful for a while, but ultimately you're not.  Because, even though you don't want to believe it, you are dealing with a Bad Person.  And you can't fix them.  Not by whittling away yourself.

And what happens is that eventually, after the abuser does something terrible to you for the umpteenth time, you will go to fight back and suddenly realize you have so neutered yourself, silenced yourself, cut yourself down to try to avoid all the fights, you're nearly silent, you don't know how to yell anymore, and there is not enough of you to fight back.  And this is when you realize there is something very wrong here.  Then maybe, you are like, uhhhh, hey.  How did I get here?

The hardest part for me is seeing the pattern.  It's taking a step back and seeing the repeated behaviors, the continuing abuse, the way the abusive cycle works, so that even though there are good moments, those are only to make up for the terrible ones, to keep me around until the next terrible ones.  It's that perspective I have the hardest time with.  I mean, once I'm out of a fucked up relationship, I can look back and be like, oh WOW, LOOK HOW FUCKED UP THAT WAS.  But when you're in it, in the middle of it, just getting through the daily difficulties of it, it's hard to see anything at all.

My therapist used to ask me all the time, "Does this fit into a pattern?  Think back."  And I am trying to do this now.  I am trying to stop after a Bad Person act, and think, wait: is this a clue?  Is this bad act another piece of a puzzle that will eventually create the picture of a Bad Person?  I recently cut someone out of my life completely, because after three days, I was like, uh, WAIT.  And granted, by the time I realized there was a pattern, a great deal of damage had already been done.  But still!  Three days!  I started looking for patterns!  I saw them by the end of those three days!  I was able to minimize the harm, and start fighting back.  Small victories, people; I will take them.

So, boundaries.  I wish there were angels that swooped down to alert us with blinking neon signs and possibly megaphones and those giant inflatable boxing gloves to punch some sense into us when we need to create some.  But walls are hard to build - we don't have the skills to build them, especially if we are ladies, or we come from families where we have already been worn down from abuse, or we are too tired, or feel too small, or are too wrapped up in someone to see them as a Bad Person who maybe needs to be behind a boundary wall like no smaller than the Great Wall of China.  Robert Frost is really anti-wall in his poem, and he disbelieves his neighbor's statement that "Good walls make good neighbors."  Yeah, maybe they don't.   But I am not so worried about my neighbors.  It's when it comes to the people with whom we've been most intimate that walls make us safer, they make us saner, and let me tell you, after you have escaped and erected your boundaries and now can finally start to heal, something there is that REALLY LOVES a good wall.

Gayle has a fucking conniption, or: GOD THE U.S. SUCKS

Ok, so for International Human Rights Lawyering class, Gayle's class is up to the section where we learn about reporting mechanisms to international human rights bodies, wherein every so many years, countries have to prepare a report as to the status of human rights within their borders.   I am currently reading the report the U.S. turned in to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights for 2010.  It is possibly the most infuriating yet also the most hilarious thing I have read lately.

Do you think you have seen the United States at its most hysterically hypocritical already?  My friends, prepare yourselves.  My comments are in brackets and bold.

I.1 A more perfect union, a more perfect world

1. The story of the United States of America is one guided by universal values shared the world over [enslavement of people of color and the genocide of indigenous peoples?]—that all are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights [unless they are currently Muslim]. In the United States, these values have grounded our institutions and motivated the determination of our citizens to come ever closer to realizing these ideals [yeah, the Tea Crackers with their "anchor babies" and their racism . . . oh, wait, considering the universal values I mentioned up there . . . ]. Our Founders, who proclaimed their ambition “to form a more perfect Union,” bequeathed to us not a static condition but a perpetual aspiration and mission [Justice Scalia would like to make a rude hand gesture at you].

2. We present our first Universal Periodic Review (UPR) report in the context of our commitment to help to build a world in which universal rights give strength and direction to the nations, partnerships, and institutions [Guantanamo!] that can usher us toward a more perfect world [have these people never seen the movie Serenity?], a world characterized by, as President Obama has said, “a just peace based on the inherent rights and dignity of every individual.” [First, that is a terrible run-on sentence.][But right afterwards, Obama said, "But I get to kill whomever I want with no due process or judicial review! BWAHAHAHA"].

3. The U.S. has long been a cornerstone of the global economy and the global order [Yeah, and look at how well THAT turned out]. However, the most enduring contribution of the United States has been as a political experiment [We did some cool shit over 200 years ago, WE'RE DONE NOW]. The principles that all are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights were translated into promises [huh?] and, with [far too much] time, encoded into law [unless you're gay]. These simple but powerful principles have been the foundation upon which we have built the institutions [Guantanamo!] of a modern state that is accountable to its citizens [Except when it's not!] and whose laws are both legitimated by and limited by an enduring commitment to respect the rights of individuals. It is our political system that enables our economy and undergirds our global influence [Are they aware James Inhofe is a senator?]. As President Obama wrote in the preface to the recently published National Security Strategy, “democracy does not merely represent our better angels, it stands in opposition to aggression and injustice, and our support for universal rights is both fundamental to American leadership and a source of our strength in the world.” ["Now watch me detain people indefinitely!  And prosecute a child soldier in violation of international law! BWAHAHAHA"] Part of that strength derives from our democracy’s capacity to adopt improvements based upon the firm foundation of our principled commitments [Ha!]. Our democracy is what allows us to acknowledge the realities of the world we live in, to recognize the opportunities to progress toward the fulfillment of an ideal, and to look to the future with pride and hope. [You guys, I do not even know what this sentence means]

4. The ideas that informed and inform the American experiment can be found all over the world, and the people who have built it [What do we think "it" refers to here?  "Ideas" is the subject of the sentence.  Who wrote this shit?] over centuries have come [sometimes forcibly] from every continent. The American experiment is a human experiment [literally, we do this]; the values on which it is based, including a commitment to human rights, are clearly engrained in our own national conscience, but they are also universal. [I think they employed middle schoolers to write this]

5. Echoing Eleanor Roosevelt [reference WIN], whose leadership was crucial to the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has reaffirmed that “[h]uman rights are universal, but their experience is local. This is why we are committed to holding everyone to the same standard, including [EXCEPT] ourselves.” From the UDHR to the ensuing Covenants and beyond, the United States has played a central role in the internationalization of human rights law and institutions [Guantanamo!]. We associate ourselves with the many countries on all continents that are sincerely committed to advancing human rights [Saudi Arabia?  Pakistan?], and we hope this UPR process will help us to strengthen our own system of human rights protections and encourage others to strengthen their commitments to human rights. [I BET IT WILL]

Shhhh.

For all intents and purposes, I have shuttered my twitter account.  I kept an account alive just so I could follow politics and news and feminist and legal stuff.

There's too much noise in my life; I am awfully busy, and it is feeling overwhelming.  So I've quieted this little bit.  If you were worried (and I don't presume!), Unnatural Forces is safe.  Posting should resume here in a fashion (we are not yet done with Kiobel!) shortly . . . and should continue until we find out if the Supreme Court has taken the case I am working on, which, well, that could be any day now.  I'll keep you updated.

Also!  Twitter had become a little unsafe for me, a little painful.  So please, don't take it personally if I unfollowed you or some such - it's not you.  Unless you it was you, but then you'd already know that.  But as I was recently asked about making boundaries, I feel like this is a fine example of Gayle making a boundary.  Perhaps over time Twitter could have resumed being a fun place for me, but I cannot put that time or emotional forbearance in now.  I have larger battles to which I need to devote everything I've got.

Everyone pray to whatever gods or non-gods or non-pray or whatever I DON'T CARE JUST SOMETHING that we can stop corporate impunity for gross human rights abuses.  We've got a one sentence statute, blood, and justice on our side.  Let's hope that will be enough.

Mad Men Season 4, Episode 9: Being a woman, it is hard.

Hey!  I am finally getting a Mad Men post up!  And soon I will try to explain exactly where I went and what I am doing and the prospects of bringing human rights cases against corporations, BUT.

That last scene in Mad Men, with Peggy, Faye, and Joan all not speaking in the elevator?  Woo.

I have to wonder if they weren't all wishing they could throw a temper tantrum like Sally Draper.

Here are three women who feel constrained by their roles all the time.  Joan has had to only be a glorified secretary her whole life, when she is clearly more capable than everyone around her.  After she plays by the rules and gets married like she's supposed to, she sees her husband shipped off to Vietnam.  Peggy plays the Oppression Olympics, being able to see her own oppression without being able to understand her white privilege, but we've seen in previous episodes how frustrated she feels that she doesn't like what she's supposed to like.  And then Abe, her closet smoocher, comes around and says things which devalue how hard she has had to work to make it in an industry which looks down on her, and patronizingly tells her she shouldn't want the job she's worked to succeed in.

And I really sympathize with Faye.  Women, especially then, were defined by their ability to be mothers and nurturers; Don just assumes Faye will be good with Sally and deal with her properly.  But Faye doesn't like kids, she is awkward with them, and she has made a choice to be successful and follow her career rather than become a wife and mother.  That leaves her feeling like a freak, like she has failed.  As someone who is 99% of the time happily wedded to her cause (namely: saving the world), there is still that 1% of the time when I feel like a freak, like I too have somehow failed at life.  It's hard to leave the narratives of what you are supposed to be behind, and this is so true for Faye in the 60's, when she sees no other narratives, has no idea what her storyline could be because she is offered no others than the one she is sure she doesn't want.

It was funny (only because now we have hindsight) when Abe (who essentially is kinda a silly git) laughed about a civil rights march for women.  But it's easy to laugh at - look at those three women in the elevator, silent, staring ahead.  They have all had to fight so hard for what they have achieved, but have never been allowed to throw Sally's tantrum; they've had to suffer silently and alone.  And they are still suffering silently and alone.  If they turned to each other and spoke, think how much they could connect on, how much they could encourage each other, find commonalities, realize it's not just each of them but all of them that sexism is hurting.

And eventually, women will turn to each other, and tell their stories, and find common threads.  Consciousness raising will begin, and the Second Wave will crash over even SCDP.  But until then, it's just Peggy, Joan, and Faye, a little shocked at having seen Sally Draper fight for what she wants, but maybe wishing they could scream and run away and hit back, too.

I'll be back eventually, folks.

Gayle is trying to fix this.

Yeeeeaaaah, I know. There's no Mad Men post yet.

It's coming.  I have so much work to do tonight and the next couple of days that I actually almost burst into tears on my way home this evening.

And I'll write a post on THAT sometime.  Whenever I have time.  Which might be, like, December.

Sigh.  At least I'm trying to save the world, you know?  Back to work.

Love,
Gayle

Look.

She's home.

I've spoken briefly about my drawings here before, but never the muse who graces my banner here at Unnatural Forces.

She was a birthday gift for someone whom I loved dearly; Readers, I cannot tell you how much love and care and hope were poured into her creation.  That someone was actually the former friend who became abusive, and whom I've written about here before.  This drawing was for the man who, after I told him I was raped, became meaner and more careless with me, over and over, than I could have ever, ever believed was even possible.  And I let it go on for so long, because I couldn't even believe it then, when it was happening. 

I see this man around law school now, and when I do, a fear grips my belly and pours down my legs such that I think I may collapse.  There is so much hurt and destroyed trust and betrayal and pain wrapped up in him for me; and I remember the rape, and my desperate attempts to survive it, and the points where I nearly gave up, because that is all inextricably intertwined with our friendship's descent into abuse. And when I get afraid after seeing him I get so angry at myself, because I am supposed to be strong, I am supposed to be powerful, but with him, there is no armor, no shield; everything that is most soft and vulnerable on me turns fragile and rice-paper-thin when it comes to him.

I was getting ready for bed just now when my roommate came upstairs and asked, "Have you seen your package?"  No, I hadn't, but when she said it was huge, I went downstairs with her, intrigued.  I saw his handwriting on the address label and knew exactly what was in the box.

She was carefully wrapped - he'd obviously handed her over to the shipping people to manage.  I do in fact thank him for this.  I had wondered what he'd do with her now.  I didn't really care, not really, although it made me sad to think that he might just throw her into the garbage.  I thought about writing him a note, something like, you know, if you're going to destroy her, please don't, just hand her back, but I didn't, because I also didn't want to imply that he had to return her.  She was a gift.  I gave her, and everything I wove into her, fully.

And now she's been returned.  I don't really know how to feel about this.  I am not feeling much.  But I do know one emotion, and that is relief.  I am glad she is home.  It feels good to have her back.  I may never sort all of my feelings out about this ex-friend, but with my muse, there is nothing but love.

It's nice to have that love returned.  Maybe someday I will either be able to reclaim all the pieces of me that I'd tied to him, pull back all the parts of me that I'd handed him, or completely let them go, sever their connections, and let those spaces in me eventually regrow.   So while returning a gift I made him may say something profound about him, or about our relationship, or the end of a great love affair, mostly, I am just feeling like a little piece of me has been put right back into place.

I don't think I'll sleep much tonight.  But I think the bad dreams will stay away.  Isn't that part of what muses are for, after all?

Gayle's crap roommates

So, I desperately need to be working right now, but Readers, I ask you: is this pan "washed"?  Does it strike you as "clean"?

Because this is what I encounter every time I go to cook now.  I have the worst luck with roommates, I tell you WHAT.

My last batch of roommates moved out at the beginning of the summer, having all completed their master's programs.  Of the three, two were lovely, and one was completely off her nutter.  She was constantly trying to pay less rent in the house.  First she argued that her bedroom was the "least safe" because she was on the second floor facing the backyard.  That argument failed when the roommate who lived on that floor with her pointed out that if she was so unsafe, maybe she shouldn't go away for long periods of time and leave her windows unlocked and open, thereby making the rest of us unsafe (and how did we know she left her window open like that?  We had a torrential downpour one day and the water coming in killed our wireless router, which was sitting right under her open window).

Then she tried to stop paying me for utilities.  I threatened to sue her.

Next came the reasoning that because she was almost never in the house and stayed with her boyfriend so much, she shouldn't have to pay as much for the common spaces.  She had a mathematical equation all worked up based on the square footage of common space we had and how often she used it and how much she should have to pay for it based on usage.  I pointed out this was COMPLETELY daft, because it's not like when nobody is sitting in the living room, no one has to pay for it.  If we all paid based on usage, we'd never pay the full monthly rent.  So unless and until we can all be all over the house in all the common rooms all the time, her reasoning failed.

At some point, she started getting strange and paranoid and making threats and telling us if we made her uncomfortable IN HER! OWN! HOME! she was going to call the police on us and get us arrested.  On the charge of what I do not know, although I like to imagine, because it's funny.  Like, if rolling eyes were a crime, I know several people who would never get out from behind bars.  But ANYWAY, at this point, I started saving all her correspondences with us, in case we needed a lawyer.  Because she started getting aggressively weird.  Like just standing and waiting in the hallway for over an hour to tell her floormate that the floormate was the most selfish, egocentric person on earth, and she better not go into her (the evil roommate's) room and "touch her things."  This coming from a lady who never, ever once, in two years, cleaned the bathroom they shared.  And then we got an email that if we went into her room and took her things, "she'd know," and she'd have us arrested.

Fun times, right?!?!  I know.  Then very suddenly in the middle of finals last semester, my landlord died (I was really upset about this - he was a really, really good man) (Example: he was kinder and gentler and more loving with my cats than any other human being on earth.  Me included, I think.  I miss him still).  But because of this, appraisers had to be brought in to determine the value the house for the will and the executor of the estate.  They showed up with my property manager while I was home studying, and my property manager came into my room and said, "Sooooo, do you know you're being videotaped?"

"Ummmm, what?"  I asked him.  "You're being videotaped," he said.  "I don't understand what you are telling me," I responded.

He had walked into the roommate's room with the appraisers (the door had been shut, as she had been away), and there was a note on the wall that said, "SMILE!  You're on camera!"  And then there was a video camera attached to the top of her computer, taping.  Which we didn't know about, because, you know, WE NEVER WENT INTO HER ROOM.

When those roommates left, I was praising the lord and shouting Hallelujah.  Ahahahahaha.

Now I have these new roommates.  They really are . . . not so bright, these roommates.  The one who is a nurse, however, has proven herself a genuinely kindhearted human being, and thus I enjoy talking with her immensely, so it's not all terrible.  That said, the roommate on my floor once told me about how it was true that an area of D.C. was not yet gentrified because she went there and there were "these crazy black people hanging around one of those crazy chicken places."  And the roommate who left the bad chicken in the microwave - hey, remember that story? - is STILL an asshole, and when I got REALLY MAD AT HER last week for leaving the front door wide open ALL NIGHT so anyone could just walk into our home off of the busy street we live on (AGAIN)(!), she responded with an email that said, "Well I don't want to have to hear you having sex."

PLUS she cannot clean a pan.

Seriously, I do not care if I cannot afford to feed myself, I am living on my own after this year.

An update on the sex post! Or, Gayle has no fucking idea what she's talking about

Hey, Readers, remember this post?  Yeeeeeaaaaaaah.

Ok, so, I mentioned in that post that there was a possibility I would take a lover.  And I did!  And he is great!  Also, he reads here, so: hey, dude.  THANKS.  Because he is a stellar partner; really, I could not ask for better.  Yet somehow, after having sex, I haven't magically gotten over all my issues like I supposed I might!  The past didn't just fall away and everything was smooth sailing from getting laid on out!  Surprise! 

Seriously, I don't know what I was thinking.  It worries me that I am the primary decision maker in my life, given that I am so clearly full of shit.

Sex is great; but holy shit, it's hard.  I have weird anxiety and panic attacks if I think about having sex.  I get upset contemplating the sex I will have, or the sex I did have.  Usually at some point after I have sex, I have to take a couple deep breaths and calm myself down, because some weird fear will grip me in the belly and I have to ease myself out of its hold.  I am more easily triggered of late, and reading about abuse or rape has been harder. 

And, you know, this is ok.  I am working through it, I keep breathing, and I talk myself through declenching after I have seized up with panic.  I wasn't really prepared for how hard this would be; I went right back to sex after I was raped, after all.  But of course then, I had already begun forgetting the incident, and the boy who had caused it; every memory I ever had of him or us together was already being erased from my brain.  I put that night into a nice, neat box and shoved it into the back of my head, hoping it would remain there forever.  Now that that box has been burst open, well, sex is a lot more difficult to negotiate. 

So, you know, there have been panic attacks.  There have been nightmares.  There have been flashbacks.  These will undoubtedly get better.  And I may not feel this, but I know this, because if there is one thing people do, it is heal.

There are ways that I am mitigating all of this, though, and that's through exerting as much control over sex and the place it has in my life as I can.  So, when I plan a night with my lover, it is far in advance.  I pick the time.  It's in my house, my space.  I dictate the agenda.  I keep it in this little cordoned off area in my life, and I can deal with that.  It has boundaries and walls, and as long as sex feels contained, I can deal.  It is safe in that little walled-off place in my life.  And I didn't realize how necessary this was, this need for me to control sex in order to feel safe, until two things happened.

The first is, I got a text from my lover on a random day, sexual in nature, and I freaked.  I was all WHAT I CANNOT DEAL WHAT IS THIS HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME.  And it was not even explicit, this text - it merely REMINDED me that we were going to have sex at some future date.  But I couldn't handle it.  I couldn't deal with a reminder that I have sex and I was going to get fucked, because it felt like sex was INVADING MY LIFE.  Sex had showed up outside of its little walled off space and this felt like a betrayal, a surprise attack.  Sex needs to behave; it needs to sit and STAY for me to continue having it right now.  It must remain in it's little roped off corner for now and show me it will not hurt me before I let it out to play in another room.  If sex is really good, I might give it reign of the whole house.  Eventually.  But right now: back behind the baby gate for sex.

The second thing that happened involved the opposite reaction.  Someone with whom I have never had sex and have no future plans to have sex said something sexual to me.  We were talking about politics, or some such, and then all of a sudden, he made a sexual comment.  It wasn't rude, or obnoxious, or any of these things; it was a joke, and I recognized from an objective standpoint that were I not suffering from the rapebrain, I would have laughed and gone right along with it.  It would have been fun and flirty.  But the way this comment went down, the person might have said something in Pashtun.  I responded, with, "Uhhhh, what?"  Like, I couldn't get it.  Because the person had brought up sex outside of the little area in which I have decided sex can play in my life, I couldn't understand what was being said to me.  I couldn't switch gears.  There is either sex, or not-sex in my life.  There is no in between.  These are not fluid categories right now. 

The thing is, I can talk about sex.  As an academic exercise.  And also as an exercise on autopilot; I mean, jesus, I taught middle school for six years, I can talk about sex in any number of ways in my fucking sleep.  But I don't understand it as applying to me in any real way in the rest of my life, nor can I handle any real encounters with sex outside of the controlled place I have allowed sex to inhabit. 

It's weird, the way I am experiencing and managing sex, but I understand why this control is necessary right now.  I understand why I am so protective of myself, and I think slowly, I will eventually be able to take down the walls, remove the gates, let sex start taking more forays out.  Pretty soon, sex will be all over the house, and I will not be able to stop it from climbing the stairs or getting into all the closets, but that will be ok.  And then maybe, when I don't feel the need to watch sex every minute to make sure it's not breaking something, maybe I can address the newest infant that's been banished to its playpen: INTIMACY. 

But that's for another post.

Mad Man Season 4, Episode 8: It ain't easy being a working girl

Yeah, Don is cleaning up, Betty gets called out for being a child, there's stuff there, but I want to mostly talk about Peggy and Joan.

Joan's line, that now Peggy has made Joan just a meaningless secretary and Peggy seem like a humorless bitch, were pretty much the only options seemingly for women in the workplace.  You could be non-threatening and cajole and use the fact that you are a woman to wheedle things out of men or scold them like children, and Joan has this perfected; the problem is, at the end of the day, she doesn't have any real power.  She can't fire Joey for sexual harassment (Note: FUCK YOU, JOEY.  That "walking around like you're trying to get raped," comment makes me hope that right after you left the office with your things you got run over by a bus), and she can't control him, because that's the thing - any guy can always cut a woman down just for being female.  Joan can never really get the upper-hand, because some asshole can always just tape a drawing to her window to remind her of her place.  As a woman, you are ONE COMMENT AWAY from being cut down, from being made smaller, lesser than, powerless. 

Joan's comment to Peggy was because she was mad.  She has every right to be - she can't make the sexual harassment stop.  But it was unfair, what she said to Peggy, because there was no win there - if Don had fired Joey, then it would have been a man defending a lady's character and preciousness, and that would have been business as usual.  Joan's comment that Peggy fired Joey for herself is true, but not something bad - every woman who has to be in an atmosphere of sexual harassment, whether it is directed at them or not, is unsafe, and devalued.  But Peggy DOES value Joan, and I hope at some point Joan sees that.  Joan has never been one for sisterhood, but Peggy has. I wonder what will happen between them later - will Joan get over her jealousy?  As the feminist movement grows, will she be able to join?  I wonder.

Peggy is still awesome.  I love that Don tells her to just go fire Joey - she hesitates for a moment, realizing she has real power, and then she embraces it.  Also, when she is watching the dudes fuck with the vending machine, her comment, "I feel like Margaret Mead," made me laugh SO HARD.  But with Joey being gone - I mean, the art guy knows Peggy is not a humorless bitch and a prude - she's already shown him up.  And now that the guys know who is pulling the strings and that there is no culture of impunity, I am hoping they shape up.  That homosocial environment where guys try to see who can be the most childish and misogynist as a "joke" is a really sick, stuck place for everyone, and neither Peggy nor Joan have to put up with it anymore.

And apropos of nothing, I want Peggy's navy and red dress, the end.

Ok, guys, thoughts?  About Betty and how she can only interact with Don if she can feel smug and superior to him?  And the fact she is such a child?  And I really enjoyed watching Don on that date with the woman at the office whose name I forget, but that was nice, right?  And Don actually knowing enough about himself to onyl take her to her door, because that's as far as he could go?  And his attempting to quit drinking, with ALL THOSE SHOTS of alcohol all episode?

Have at it - what did you think?

I have an awful case of rapebrain tonight.

Also, guess whose rapist has disappeared off Facebook?  Why does this bother me?  Because I think NOT knowing about him or what he is up to means he could be ANYWHERE, doing ANYTHING, and that is far scarier.  Also: it might mean he is in a bad place, and doing some bad shit again, with the no Facebook page.  And for some reason I got onto replaying this, like, imagined scenario,  in my head today, of what if he dies: do I cry?  Do I go to the funeral for closure?  Do I just get furious, or finally tell all the people who mutually know us what happened?  I DON'T KNOW.  And I don't know how I got there, with that particular fantasy, or like what the fuck my brain is up to.  But I am struggling with issues around sex and intimacy and relationships (like apparently, if you like me, and you express wanting to be with me, I might freak out!  Because I was raped by a kid with whom I was involved on and off for ten years and also did indeed consider My Greatest Love!  And hey, that makes me a little weird about anyone asserting they like me, apparently!  Or getting too close or intimate!  Who knew!) tonight, and so, yeah.  I am also trying to get work done.  So, fuck it, I am leaving you possibly my favorite poem I have ever written about myself.  It is especially true tonight.

Extraneous Metaphors

words of snide courtesy fit me to a "t."

a thing is nothing until it is named.
we pick up cups by their verbal handles
and know to drink from them.
you could crack me like an egg -
with pressure from all sides evenly
then i may stay whole -
but one swift hit and i
am pure gold yolk dripping through
your fingers.
i would be called Delicate,
you would be afraid to touch me.
i would move into the china
cabinet and wait for dust to
line my edges like the teacups
at my elbows.

or i would be called Weak.
i would grow old then,
but more quickly growing
thin.
(you would see then, i am nothing
but waiting soul and
skin.)

I give you a links post! That I didn't have to put together!

So my friend Punning Pundit, who is brilliant and wonderful and terribly endearing (although I may disagree with him on perhaps some political things)(but, you know, Gayle is fucking RADICAL; if she were to tell you one thing she is proud of, it is that she HOLDS the margin, and will defend it to the death, and will singlehandedly maintain that lefty-left position to keep the Overton window from moving any far fucking rightward)(someone has to do it, yo) writes a link round-up every Sunday.

And he very, very kindly links to your blogmistress every week.  Even when she doesn't agree with him (see above).

He always has a really great list of things to go read, and since I am crap at link round-ups, I am sending you there for your Sunday reading.

Make some coffee, grab a cat (or, alternatively, ogle his cute cat at the top of the links), and enjoy enriching your brain.

Energy vampires and escaping the negativity spiral

True story: Law school is institutionally perfect for learning how to always berate and belittle yourself, always feel like a failure, always feel like you made a terrible decision in going at all.  I felt this for maybe a month, and then I got over it; some people feel this all three years.  They get EXTREMELY anxious and nutty about everything.  I stay away from those people.

Here's the story bit: The first year in law school is especially bad, but as I only fretted for maybe a month, I got a reputation for being calm, composed, and able to keep everything in perspective (this was in fact true).   Right before an exam at the end of the year, a fellow student came up to me, obviously freaking out.  "Gayle, you're good at this," she said.  "Tell me something that will calm me down.  I am bugging out right now."

And I looked at her, and said, "Uhhhh, you're not a rape victim in war-torn Congo, you're just taking a test, so fucking get over yourself?"

She looked at me and said, "You're RIGHT.  Ok.  Good.  Thank you.  I am calmer now."  And walked off.

I say this, because it has been particularly grating hearing everyone around me whinge and complain and be so fucking negative.  You would not BELIEVE the anxiety around people who are worried about jobs after they graduate, fully assume the worst, and then act like the real victims of their imaginary assumptions.  I hear from someone EVERY DAY how they wish they had done something differently, how they are beating themselves up, how they find they are lacking.  This includes lately folks not in law school, too.  My roommate walked in last night, and when I asked how she was, she IMMEDIATELY launched into, "Oh my god, I hate my life, I like don't have one," and continued on to list all the ways everything sucked.

It makes me not want to speak to anyone right now.  And note: my roommate did not ask once how I was.

Now, I am the LAST person to say there should never be complaining.  I think complaining sometimes can be really healthy and helpful - you get it all out there, and then you're over it, and then you move on.  This is how I try to complain.  I usually start with, "Ok, can I just whine for 5 minutes?" and then I whine and then I feel better, the end.  But I am not talking about that kind of complaining.  I am talking about the stewing on negativity that can come with professional complaining.  Like, you get stuck in complaining mode, and instead of purging everything, you just feed off that negativity, and then that negativity infects everything else. 

I am also not talking about people who are going through real-life, very-hard, completely understandably hellish shit.  Those people aren't being negative; those people are trying to just survive.  And often, they need to process that, and I really want to be there for those friends who need me for that.  I am more than happy to listen. 

It's the people who just don't have a single damn good thing to say and whinge for no reason and fixate on everything bad possible that are like energy vampires and make me want to hide in my room so they don't drain all of my goodwill out. 

Because a couple things happen when I speak to these people: 1) I get erased.  These people are TOTALLY into their own misery.  And while misery may love company, it really doesn't - misery wants to talk AT other people, not WITH them, and it REALLY doesn't want to listen.  And as I am not willing to play the complainy game so we can both just whinge AT each other, I disappear.  2) All of that negativity gets heaped on me, which I really don't need.  I have SO MUCH WORK TO DO!  In HUMAN RIGHTS!  Like, I read about human trafficking a lot!  Maybe I can't hear you complain about your day right now, because you are SO PRIVILEGED IT IS RIDICULOUS and it MAKES ME STABBY you are SO NEGATIVE ABOUT EVERYTHING.

I have been very careful about taking care of myself lately, because I know I will be working constantly, and it will be hard.  I eat right.  I run.  I try to get myself in bed on time (this is only sometimes successful).  I pay attention to little things, make mental notes all day about the little joys of just being alive.  Like, today, on my run, I saw a baby squirrel!  It was so tiny, and instead of running away, it threw it's tail over its head like if it couldn't see me, I couldn't see it.  And I got really close and spoke to it until it looked at me from under its tail and stopped shaking.  A bike ultimately scared it away, but is that not just fucking so cute and awesome?!?!  It is.  Life is awesome.  I have overbooked my weekend, and I am sorta worried about getting work done, but I communed with a baby squirrel.  Fuck yeah.

I just wish we could all be a little more mindful of our privilege, a little more grateful - and not ALL the time, obviously; I know we all have bad days or get depressed about the state of the world or generally can't be happy all the time.  I just am really over all the negativity for negativity's sake.  I want some space from it.  So I guess I'll start making some myself:  I have had some very intense, very lovely internet conversations and connections this week, and that has been incredible.  I got internet hit on today, and it was very sweet, and I BLUSHED SO HARD.  There was the baby squirrel!  And also 8 frogs on the run today!  And then there are big things to I am so happy about too, like: I get to do things that will help people every damn day.  Isn't that an amazing opportunity???? 

Feel free to share what you are grateful or happy about in comments, but I just wanted to inject some positivity into the world.  I am going to fight back with joy, damnit, because I refuse to end up in the negativity spiral right now.  And if you are having a bad day, I am sending you love, and happiness, because I have extra to spare, and maybe when you are ready, you can pass that on, too.  Love fest, people.  I want to be in one.  I know we could all use it.  So let's work on that.

Fuck America, seriously.

I am SO! OVER! MY COUNTRY! TODAY!

I am too tired and depressed to write a post, so, since misery loves company, here's why:

- The Jeppesen decision is a disgusting show of injustice, and reminds me again why I have REALLY MASSIVE ANGER at Obama.  And why if the Democratic strategy for the November elections really is, "They suck worse, " Democrats will lose massively, because Obama is the "they," and there is no "worse."

- More on why I'm disgusted with Obama - he orders more troops to the border!  All so they can rape and torture!

- Everyone who wants to ding General Petraeus for his comments on how the Qu'ran burning priest might endanger American lives, SHUT THE FUCK UP.  Because WHERE WERE YOU when the generals said that releasing the Abu Ghraib photos, which it turns out are indeed AS BAD AS WE THOUGHT, would kill American lives?  Were you dinging the generals then, for infringing on free speech?  Huh?  *crickets*  And ONE OF THESE THINGS would maybe have at least shed some light on abuses, brought SOME justice, vindicated some of the victims' stories, but funny how I didn't hear anyone complaining about generals infringing on our First Amendment rights then.

Also, I am tired of Americans acting like our exceptionalism means we can do whatever we want over here and there will be no consequences anywhere.  Petraeus wasn't WRONG, and he didn't say it should not be allowed to occur, he pointed out that there is cause and effect in the world.  I know we as Americans don't LIKE that natural law concept, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

- This is what happens in war: war crimes.  Really awful, inhumane war crimes.

I am currently poking around on the internet looking for jobs abroad after I graduate.  Anyone outside the U.S. want to hire an international human rights lawyer?  Or at least let me sleep on your couch for a bit?

"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you."

Infinite Jest was a gift.

It was a gift from the first page to the last, every footnote, every storyline, every character in its complicated, tumbling, labyrinthine plot.  It made me laugh aloud like nothing I'd ever encountered.  It made me cry.

I have said, elsewhere, I think the book saved me.  And I have thought more on that recently, and I do not think it saved me.  It did.

There's a simple story here, and a longer one.

The simple story is: I took IJ with me to South Africa - it was my reading project, while I worked for three months at an international human rights and constitutional law organization.  I've written about this before; my second week in Cape Town, my supervisor began to sexually harass me (the very first time, he cornered me in the office and tried to kiss me after we had a late meeting with clients and everyone else had left).  He kept pressuring me.  I said NO, and I set firm boundaries I thought he would respect, and seemingly did, for a time.  But mostly, he was waiting until he could put me in a vulnerable position again - getting me alone with him in a car, where he drove us out to the middle of nowhere to assault me.

This brought up all these memories of a rape I had successfully repressed.  They flooded me, threatened to drown me, and I shut myself away for a week, refusing to go out, or eat much, or do anything but read IJ.  At the end of the week, I finished the book.  I closed it, cried for a long time, and then said, "Ok, I am going to face this now."  And I did.

It was messy along the way.  But here I am.

The longer story is not something I'll ever get down in words.  It's about how ten years of loving someone, which also became 7 years of loving someone with a substance addiction (and who was the person who ended up raping me), made a lot more fucking sense after reading IJ.  And how I was able to forgive myself for many of my choices in those ten years.  And him, too.  It's about how I could read this story about a character who was the PGOAT, the Prettiest Girl of All Time, and hate her, because of her beauty, and know what she was saying about me, and know she was me, too - she was everything that was ill and disturbed in my thinking about beauty and appearance after being raised in this patriarchy.  She was my body dysmorphic disorder, while also my reminder to grant humanity to and empathy for all women, because we all suffer here, no matter our relative attractiveness.  It was about being an athlete, and being smart, and those friendships that spring up from shared purpose and competition and just being together every damn day.  It was about laughing at our society, our ridiculous, hyperbolic American culture, and being patient with us, too.  There was depression in that book that I recognized as mine, or else it managed to recognize depression in a way I have never found captured in words before or ever will hence.  The book made me feel seen, it made me feel loved, it made my memories suddenly click into place so they were clearer and more revealing.  

There is an earnestness to IJ that I think many people miss, a calling for patience, kindness, not judging anyone or writing people off; those who discuss the book's irony don't seem to get how it's really not being ironic at all.  I came across a quote from DFW the other night, where he said:

If you can think of times in your life that you’ve treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we would treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely loved more than life itself. And I think it’s probably possible to achieve that. I think part of the job we’re here for is to learn how to do it. I know that sounds a little pious.

The  post from whence this quote came goes on to ascribe this to some kind of pop psychology love-your-inner child thing, but I think that's ridiculous.  It's pretty clear DFW was damn suspicious of such easy fixes and surface cures and cultural trends.  But coming from someone who suffered severe depression, and who was not able to survive it, the quote means a lot; I mean, I know those depressions.  I understand what he is saying.  I know that that piety is the most revolutionary thing I will ever learn to do.  It won't be saving the world, which I fully intend to do, which will be the revelation; loving myself, granting myself the kindness I do for others, will be.  That is the far harder task.  This gentleness, this generosity, suffuses all of IJ.  And I think that kindness, for everything, even myself, is the reason I did not give up right then.  I think that's why I gave myself time and space to breathe through it.  And why I am still here, still having to remind myself to just keep breathing, but breathing nonetheless.

Look, some of this is not ONLY the powers of IJ: sometimes books resonate with us, sometimes they don't, and we all know that may have more to do with us as readers, the state we are in, where we are physically, emotionally, in terms of maturity, or even geography, rather than with the book.  I have started books where I just couldn't get into them, put them down, picked them up years later, and loved them.  There are books I have loved more because I read them in a foreign country, books I have hated because I did not read them in the U.S., books that hurt too much, were too depressing, were too dour or too fluffy and trite to handle at a given point.  So I think there are an awful lot of variables here that CAN'T be explained about why I love a book - because then I'd have to launch into my entire life history up until that point when the book just NAILED something PERFECTLY in my life to really get to the heart of the question.

IJ is that book for me.  I would have to start with my first living memory and tell you all I could remember up to and including all the little moments of my days that summer in South Africa to explain what made me love this book more than any others.  I do know that when everything was crashing down around me, when the panic attacks came violently and swiftly, when I contemplated taking the elevator of my apartment building to the roof and stepping off because I could not possibly ever comprehend how the person I had loved most in the world had raped me, David Foster Wallace's words, his difficult, hilarious, brilliant book, is what saved me.

Mad Men Season 4, Episode 7: Uh?

Guys, Don and Peggy?

I don't know. 

Some thoughts: I love when Peggy she says she knows what she is supposed to want, but it never feels right, and it never feels as important as her job.  This sentence could stand as my whole fucking life and the way I approach my work.  There is also that alcoholic thing going on, and as the victim of a partner with substance abuse problems that was hard to watch, where Peggy was supposed to be mother everyone behaving badly.  Don just told Peggy more about his life than almost anyone else when we know he is notoriously secret, and what was that hand holding at the end?

There is something I love about the way Don and Peggy interact, too.  I mean, not his sexism, or the way he uses her to substitute for his own lack of life, but the way they meet each other, the way they are platonic, the way they talk to each other as equals.  Even when they fight, there is a profound amount of respect each has for the other.  Don uses Peggy, and its gross, and while I want Peggy to fight back I find she responds to people much as I do, getting trapped in that place where people are a mess and need help and even though you know you should push them away, you can't help yourself but go to them, because you hate to see anyone suffer.

And back to that hand holding - was that a thank you?  Or was that more?

Discuss.

Yeah, I KNOW IT SUCKS; or how not to be an asshole to someone with celiac disease

Yeah, I have celiacs, and let me just state on the record that I am fully aware that it sucks.  It is deeply, deeply, annoying.  Thanks, I got that.  It has also made my life IMMEASURABLY BETTER, such that I feel like I have a WHOLE NEW LIFE now that I am not eating the dreaded grain protein.  And, ya know, I try to concentrate on that last bit.  EVERY ONE ELSE IN THE WORLD, however, is fixated on how terrible celiacs is, and it makes me want to punch the whole world in the fucking face until it cuts that shit out.

I went to the park yesterday by the river to lay in the sun and read a gazillion pages of case materials for my clinic (I don't know if I mentioned here I am working on a trafficking case?  I am.  It is going to be an AMAZING experience).  As I was walking home, I thought for a treat I'd stop in one of the newer cupcake places here in Old Town that I know makes gluten-free cupcakes (also for the record, Lavender Moon Cupcakery makes the best gluten-free cupcake I have ever, ever had.  It's heaven, with frosting).  While I was standing in line, the woman in front of me pointed to the gluten-free cupcakes and said to her friend, "Oh, UGH.  Those must be awful."  And so I spoke up and said, "Yeah, some of us don't have a choice, but thanks for that, much appreciated."  The woman turned around and began to apologize, and the lady behind the counter attempted to convince her that they were actually really, really good because they were made with coconut flour, but basically, I was pissed.

Now do you walk up to people who are eating food you don't like and point to it and say, "OH, EWWW"?  No, because you have manners.  Yet you would not BELIEVE the lack of  manners that come out when it comes to me and my celiac disease and my eating habits.  And for a girl who struggles with eating problems, this never goes well.  So here's a handy guide to not being an asshole to someone with celiac.

For those of you who live on other planets without google, celiac is an auto-immune disease (and NOT an allergy) where if you eat gluten, the protein found in many grains, your body decides to wage war on your small intestine.  It's different from a wheat allergy, in that, well obviously, that's an allergy, but gluten is found in more grains than just wheat, so celiac folks have to cut out more grains and can't resort to, like, spelt, which has gluten.  It's genetic, and it's estimated 1 out of every 113 people has it, so it's not especially rare.  A lot of people have it and do not know, or they get diagnosed later in life (and some people with very bad arthritis go on gluten-free diets to reduce pain - gluten seems to cause a lot of swelling in the body).  Many people who have been diagnosed with other illnesses, like Crohn's or Irritable Bowel Syndrome, are now getting tested for celiac's and finding that was actually the problem in the first place.

My stomach and digestive system used to be a MESS.  For a long time, doctors and I assumed it was because I got so very very sick when I lived in India when I was 20 and 21 - and I do still have parasite problems, like amoebic dysentery flare-ups - those never totally go away (and they are as fun as they sound).  But the problems just kept getting worse in my 20's - my stomach was often painfully big and bloated, I almost always had gut pain, I was tired and felt like I wasn't getting enough nutrition from food, I couldn't digest anything well.  I finally had a doctor when I was 26 who said, um, I don't think this is just parasites, I think there is something else going on - and  hooboy, was she right.  The first week I was off gluten, it was like the very angels of heaven had come down and were singing hallelujah choruses just for me - the pain disappeared.  The bloat was gone.  I was sleeping well, feeling rested.  I had more energy than I could ever remember.   It felt nothing short of miraculous.

It thus took a while for the realization that this would also kind of suck, being gluten-free, to sink in.  It means that my food is more expensive, I have trouble finding snacks if I need them and I am out and about (and I am hyploglycemic, so sometimes, I NEED THEM; I usually have to make sure I always have something on me), I can't do social things like eat pizza or drink beer, I have to cook a lot, it makes it hard for people to cook for me, I have to quiz waitstaff at restaurants and scour menus and ingredients lists, and I pretty much have to think about what I am putting in my body ALL THE TIME.  And for someone who can get into pretty fucking unhealthy spirals over what I put in my mouth, this is not really helpful.

So, here's some things that are ALSO not helpful:

1.  Do not react to someone telling you they have celiac by announcing that that sucks.  As I've stated, WE KNOW.  Also, it doesn't, and every time I try to be a normal person and eat wheat, I remember why it is awesome that I do not anymore.  Do not look at the person with celiac as if you now can only pity them.  I promise you, they are a lot happier to not be eating gluten at this point.

2. Don't get cranky if there is a thing involving cake for someone's birthday and I don't go.  Look, no, I don't always need to eat what everyone else is eating and I don't always need to be accommodated (and I am a vegetarian, so I got over this long ago), but what WILL happen if I have no cake is someone will ask me if I am on a diet, which will make me want to stab them, and then I will have to explain why, and then answer all their questions (This usually begins with, "Oh my god, so what can you eat??? And if I am not feeling indulgent, I will only say, "ONLY GRASS.  I have to go out and graze with the cows"), and then they will react with #1 above, and then I will have to go through this EIGHT MORE TIMES.  Also,  I will get at least three reactions like #3 below, and these are infinitely WORSE.

3. DO NOT TELL ME HOW LUCKY I AM BECAUSE THIS PROBABLY MEANS I CAN STAY THINNER.  This is not a weight loss tool, how dare you suggest that about my auto-immune disease, and also, FUCK YOU.

4. Fucking google, people.  Use it.  Maybe I don't feel like talking about my celiacs today.  Go learn yourself.  If you are dying to know whether I can eat a certain thing or not, that's why phones connect to the interwebs now.

5. Do not announce you cannot survive/would die without pizza or beer or WHATEVER.  You're being hyperbolic and stupid.  You're also erasing the fact that people with celiac don't have a choice, and now you're just throwing their limited diets in their faces.  Also, you are an ego-centric prick, and if you say this, I will respond to you with, "I know, I have to talk myself out of suicide EVERY DAY," and then I will glare at you in such a way as to make you uncomfortable, and it's really hard to tell whether I am kidding or not sometimes.  You will feel bad.  So let's not go through this.

6. If you are willing to cook for me for dinner or a potluck, great!  Thank you!  Now please do not text me every three seconds about whether the ingredients you are putting in are safe or not!  See #4.  Also, if the google doesn't know, I don't know either, so don't ask.

7. People with celiac are not on diets.  I used to have a friend who would dangle bites of brownie or cake in front of me and say, "You know you want a bite," trying to tempt me into eating it.  I am not trying to cut calories.  You are not tempting me into eating yummy sweets I am depriving myself of by choice; no, what you are asking me to do is hurt myself, cause myself pain, and make myself sick.  That's not cool.

8. ALSO do not eat yummy sweets I cannot have in front of me and announce, "Oh my god, I am so sorry you can't eat this, it's so good."  You are now just as much a prick as the fucker in #5.  But also don't say, oh, I won't eat this in front of you because you can't have it.  I don't need to be coddled.  I will not cry if you do.  I am quite fine with you eating whatever in front of me.  Just don't be precious about it.

9. DO NOT ALWAYS MAKE ME PICK THE FUCKING RESTAURANT.  You would be amazed at how good I am at picking out the things I can eat from any menu.  And if I have a problem with your choice, or I'm pretty sure I can't find much there, I will say something, but do not put all meal decisions (even the ones we make at home) on me.

10. All the weird ways that people make food and the food we put in our mouths and our eating habits public and about morality and up for comment, especially when it comes to women?  All that shit, do no transfer it to me.  What I eat is not up for comment.  Don't put your eating issues on my disease, thanks.

I am quite sure there are more, but I am tired.  But, if you are my friend, and you manage to not violate any of the above, I will make you some gluten-free brownies someday that will knock your socks off.   You will take a bite, and groan, and your eyes will roll back in your head, and it will never occur to you that you need to inform me my celiac disease must suck ever, ever again.

*** Edited to add - someone brought up appropriate responses?  I put them in a comment here.

Azrou helps me change the sheets, part a billion

Yeah, I have like 3 posts in my head I need to write, but I am waking up early tomorrow to go trail running, and I am tired, and seriously, making the bed with Azrou is an ORDEAL.  He loves playing in the sheets.  I mean:

YAY SHEETS.

Thursday Night Crap Music Post

Ok, so, I have this very serious post I need to write about being gay and being targeted in India and the Uganda anti-gay law and whatever, but I am not prepared (read: too drunk right now) to write it.  So.  We're gonna talk about COMPLETE BULLSHIT in this post, here we go.

You know who is so aggressively mediocre that I absolutely cannnot understand his popularity and I will immediately leave any space I am in, I don't care if they are about to award me the Nobel Peace Prize I am out of there, if they ever play him?  Fucking Billy Joel, guys.  Fuck that dude.  He is SO AGGRESSIVELY CRAPPY.

Today, I went to my favorite vegetarian place near school for lunch in an effort to get something in my belly before I went to journal happy hour so I wouldn't get too drunk (OH WELL), and they were playing like the Best of Billy Joel or something.  And I ate my lunch, and stayed for as long as I could, but DEAR SWEET JESUS Billy Joel is so bad.  There wasn't a single song that wasn't somehow overly cheesy and melodramatic while yet tepid.  And I am NOT the only one who thinks this.  Anyway, I started texting a friend, trying to figure out which of his songs are the worst (and I may hate "Piano Man" the most, but I've had to hear it the most, and for me it's gone from tolerable if schlocky to brain-aneurysm-unbearable). 

My friend said "We Didn't Start the Fire" was super fucking annoying to him.  My vote is, "She's Always A Woman."  This Village Voice article claims it is "I Go to Extremes."  There are so many, really, to choose from (I feel like this is a very similar competition to the, like, worst Robin Williams' movie, as there are, again, so many painfully bad ones)(And I'd have to go with Patch Adams there).

So, Readers, what do you think: Which is the crappiest Billy Joel song?  Or which is the crappiest Robin Williams movie, since I brought it up (Bicentennial Man- also really fucking bad)?  Or just what crap piece of popular culture can you really not explain (example: Grey's Anatomy)?  Or should Gayle really stop trying to post when she's drunk?  Any and all of these questions beg to be answered.  Lovely Readers, the answers are in your hands.

Hey folks! Heeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyy.

So, seriously, I got nothing to say this morning.  I just wanted to say, "Hi."  I went to see The Vibrator Play last night (and here is the NY Times Review so you can get a better idea of the story) and so I have been thinking about orgasms like ALL morning, but I don't have any coherent anything to say about that yet.  I have been pondering what female orgasms would look like, what my orgasms would look like, if porn and R-rated movies had never existed, and there weren't expectations by myself and others that I would come in a certain way.  I have a meeting, a great deal of reading to do, and happy hour with my fellow journal colleagues today.  It's still fucking hot out.  If I end up on all un-air-conditioned subway cars AGAIN today, I will know god is officially fucking with me.

I just wanted to reach out and say, "Hey."  Hi, Readers!  This is an open thread.  Share whatever you like!  I'll see you in comments.

This must have been arranged by the God of Ridiculous Set-Ups

Remember when I wrote that post about books that didn't change my life?

Turns out not only is the novel Ishmael CRAPPY, it is also apparently DANGEROUS in the wrong hands.

Weird, guys.  So weird.  I have to admit, my first reaction was to burst out laughing.  NOT FUNNY the hostage-taking bit, I know, but still, ok, maybe the inspiration, a little funny.

- h/t to my high school ex-boyfriend, who texted me about this immediately.  God bless that boy, I love him so.