Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

The Hours…and hours and hours and hours

Since You Asked, by Cary Tennis, I’m a high-school dropout in law school — I feel like an impostor! | Salon Life
I’m about to graduate from law school and take the bar exam, and I have no self-confidence. I’m not simply in need of a pep talk; I have a profound lack of self-worth in terms of my academic and professional abilities and it’s driving me crazy. To summarize my strange dilemma: I fear both failure and success.

I’m remembering now why I quit reading salon.com. It’s because of the vast number of bits they waste on whingeing of the sort found in this letter to their advice columnist, Cary Tennis.

Do take the time to read the entire thing. Only then will the true mean-spiritedness of my reply make sense. Here it is:

You, young man, are an insufferable boob.

Allow me to summarize in one short paragraph what took you pages to accomplish:

“Look how special I am! I’m a rebel — but smart, really REALLY smart! And misunderstood! Damn those Catholic school nazis! They didn’t appreciate my specialness. But I’m special alright. And a really REALLY deep thinker. AND! I feel things much more deeply than other people, too. Because I’m so special! Oh, woe is me! How can a super-special and smart and deep-feeling person such as myself possibly survive in a world where I’m expected to…you know…work for a living?”

To make matters worse, Cary Tennis then goes on, for far too many paragraphs himself, reinforcing this nitwit’s inflated sense of self worth.

Sigh.

Here’s what the guy needed to hear — perhaps accompanied by a swift smack upside the head.

Wecome to the real world, chum. Everything you’re feeling has already been felt by thousands of law students before you. You are not unique. You are not special. You’re just another person who’s worried about passing, worried about making a living, worried about paying his bills. Get over it already. Whether you succeed or you screw up, either way you’ll have plenty of company. Just do the best you can and deal with the consequences — whatever they are — once they’re manifest. There’s no point in freaking out about the unknown.

Gee. And it only took me a single paragraph to answer the guy. Sometimes I think Cary Tennis must get paid by the word.

Anyway, this whole episode reminded me of a movie I recently watched. I got it from Netflix. It was The Hours — that exercise in depression starring Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf. The movie annoyed me but I was having a hard time putting my finger on exactly why.

Now I’ve got it.

Like the letter on salon.com, The Hours struck me as legitimizing a sort of self-centeredness. Yes, yes… Virginia Woolf really did, apparently, have a serious mental disorder that resulted in her suicide. I’m not talking about that kind of thing. What I’m talking about are people who are essentially healthy but who can’t quite come to grips with the idea that their own thoughts and feelings aren’t especially different from what other people have thought and felt. They’re all about:

“Look at me! Look at me! I have deep feelings. I feeeeel things! Deeply! No one understands me! Because of my depth. My deep feelings (deeper than other people’s!) have separated me from the rest of humanity! I’m so alone! But deeply intelligent!”

Sigh.

I do understand that many (most?) young people go through this kind of thing as a stage. I certainly did. Oh my… I was so misunderstood! So profoundly..um…deep. But I grew out of it. Alas, a fair number of adults seem never to grow out of this kind of self absorption. And that really is what it’s all about, I think.

I can understand why people don’t want to let go of it. If you no longer think of yourself as special — what have you got? You’re just average! You’re like everyone else!!! How depressing! No, no, no. They refuse to accept it. Here’s the problem, though. When you refuse to accept that other people have the same depth of feeling and thought that you do, you close yourself off from learning anything from them. And that’s just stupid.

I think it’s about psychological maturity. I think it’s about self-actualization.

Well, that’s what I think.

Citi-Data.com

Stats about all US cities – relocation info, maps, race, income, photos, education, crime, weather, houses, etc.
We’ve collected and analyzed data from numerous sources to create as complete and interesting profiles of all U.S. cities as we could.

This is a really fascinating site. Warning! You could spend hours looking at the information here. I discovered citi-data.com* while looking for promising retirement/vacation home locations for the spouse and myself.

Check out, for example, this list of Minnesota’s smallest towns. It just begs for exploring, no?

Besides ALL SORTS of demographic information for cities and counties around the country, they’ve also got discussion forums (I was tempted to write “fora” there but I restrained myself). So, if there’s a particular area you’re especially interested in, you can ask questions about it and people who know the area can often tell you what you want to know. (Sometimes they’re realtors, so… be aware that they may be trying to sell you on the area.)

Anyway. Cool. Very cool.

*Watch out for the URL. It’s citI-data.com — not city-data.com.

55 Below Zero

My friend Brent teaches school up in northern Minnesota — up around Tower and Soudan and Babbitt. They’re having a touch of nippy weather these past few days. In discussing whether they might be closing the schools, he casually informed me:

“there is talk of -50 wind chills- our district automatically closes school at -55 ( we are tough) so… maybe no school or a late start tomorrow, but not getting my hopes up.”

I wonder how well young Dave Kori and his classmates here in Fairfax County would do with that kind of weather?

As it turns out, they did cancel school up north — but it was as much because of the ice on the roads as it was because of the temperature. They had a day or two of unusually warm weather and then the temperature dropped fairly dramatically, creating unusually icy conditions.

Fiftyfive. Degrees. Below. Zero.

Bwahaha! I love it! Bring it on!!

Of course, the key to being happy in that kind of weather is wearing the right kind of clothes. In my experience, one of the biggest problems people have with cold weather is that they just don’t dress appropriately for it. They wear thin leather boots. You need heavy insulated shit-kickers. They wear absurd leather gloves. Only thick mittens will work when it’s this cold. And no hats!! What the hell are people thinking? You need a thick hat and scarves that cover most of your face when it’s that cold. Actually, you need all that stuff even when it’s relatively warm. Say… 20 below zero.

NOW Wants All Women To March In Lock-Step

The XX Factor : Wow, NOW
Can some other women’s group please speak up to say that if Kennedy has good reason to think that Obama would be the best president for the country, and a damn fine president for women, then supporting him is A-OK with them?

Unless you count my alter-egos, I don’t really qualify as a “women’s group”, but I’ll go on record as saying that it’s as stupid to vote for Hillary Clinton solely because she’s female as it would be to vote for Barack Obama solely because he’s black.

Further, I’m not afraid to say that I don’t intend to vote for Clinton in the primary here in Virginia. I don’t trust her to not put her own interests first and I think she’s divisive. I don’t believe that, as president, she’d be able to get done the things that really need doing because there are too many people who really dislike her. It’s entirely possible that some people dislike her mainly because she’s a “strong woman” — and if that’s the case, it just reflects badly on those people — but ultimately it doesn’t really matter why people don’t like her. All that matters is whether she could build enough goodwill in congress to get things done and I don’t think she could.

Indecency

ABC Faces Indecency Fine For 2003 ‘NYPD Blue’ Episode – washingtonpost.com
The Federal Communications Commission yesterday proposed a $1.43 million indecency fine against ABC television stations for a 2003 episode of “NYPD Blue,” the second-largest proposed indecency fine against a television broadcaster ever. (…) The episode in question, aired Feb. 25, 2003, contained a scene featuring a woman and a young boy. In the scene, the woman disrobes in a bathroom. She is shown in full dorsal nudity, and the side of one breast is shown.

It’s so reassuring to know that our federal government is watching out for us, isn’t it? I mean… a BREAST!! My god! For all we know, ABC may even have shown what is unquestionably the most obscene part of the human body: the female nipple.

One of the most memorable images I’ve ever seen on television came from an episode of CSI. In the show, some guy had been crushed by a big packing crate. The CSI investigators arrange to have the crate lifted off him and we were treated to a close up of what was supposedly left of the guy: a mash of skin, bone, and blood. With a few recognizable bits thrown in for effect.

I don’t recall hearing that the FCC imposed any fines for that episode.

Or, here was another good one. Remember when Sadam Hussein’s sons were killed? They were burned up in some bombing, as I recall. Several of the television news shows featured full-color pictures of their bodies.

Now, that was indecent.

The Horror, The Horror (Wind Chill Edition)

Man Braves Freezing Weather To Cross Parking Lot | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source
LANCASTER, PA—Surmounting treacherous icy pavement and a windchill factor dipping as low as 19 degrees Fahrenheit, local resident Louis Bergstrom survived a real-life battle with the elements Friday when he successfully completed a harrowing four-and-a-half-minute journey across the desolate, frozen parking lot of an area G & G Grocery Store, the 38-year-old court stenographer told reporters.

19 degrees. Bah! That’s nothing. Up in northern Minnesota, they’ve been living with wind chills around minus 30 to 40 degrees. Still, anyone who’s lived up north can relate to this very amusing piece in The Onion.

The truth is, one of the reasons I liked (and hope to return to) living in the northland is because of how you feel like like a survivor when you get indoors after spending time outside when it’s really cold. There’s nothing better than peeling off your ice-caked socks and mittens and parking yourself in front of a nice wood fire to warm up with a mug of hot chocolate. Nothing better.

Clinton’s Negative Campaign Ad

Some in Party Bristle At Clintons’ Attacks – washingtonpost.com
The Clinton campaign argued that it was simply quoting Obama. But in the original context, Obama was describing the dominance of Republican ideas in the 1980s and 1990s, without saying he supported them, and asserting that those ideas are of no use today.

Brilliant! Apparently Clinton’s campaign people are trying to demonstrate how much of a Washington insider she really is. See? She can launch a negative campaign as effectively as any Republican.

Aren’t we all more than a little tired of this sort of thing?

Stella and Eddie

I just took this with my iPhone’s built-in camera. The quality isn’t the best, but they’re just so darned cute that I had to post it. Stella (with the black stripes) and Eddie (orange stripes) are very good friends. Stella had been grooming Eddie’s head when they both looked up at me at the same time. Click on the thumbnail to see it bigger.

The Scariness Of Tom Cruise…er…Dick Cheney

Apparently, even the Washington Post has discovered that Scientology video of Tom Cruise going on about the glories of L. Ron Hubbard’s “technology”. If you haven’t yet watched the original, you really must. (I’ve got explanations for some of the stranger things Cruise says here.) Then come back here and click on the cartoon to see the same audio coming from the equally scary Dick Cheney.

I’m Sorry

Bwahaha! I bet you thought you were going to get an apology from me for some perceived naughtiness on my part. Ha! Wrong! Instead, I’m just going to take a moment to address the inanity of this statement:

Why forcing your kids to apologize is a bad idea. – By Emily Bazelon – Slate Magazine
“I don’t think you should force anyone to apologize at any age,” [Jane Nelsen, author of Positive Discipline] tells me over the phone. “That’s teaching kids to lie. If they’re not sorry and we make them say sorry, just to make us feel good, that’s not about empathy.”

No, no, NO!!

Of course, you want to teach your children about empathy, self examination, and atonement. But there is a place in our world for the facile apology. When you make kids say “I’m sorry” to one another, you are teaching them a social skill. It’s not about lying. It’s about smoothing the way between people.

While it’s certainly true that not every person we’ve offended deserves an apology, there are indeed times when it’s smart to say “I’m sorry” even when you’re really not. “I’m sorry” is a kind of social lubricant that eases interactions between people. It creates a way for the offended party to let go of their anger. Even if the person getting the apology knows you’re not really sorry for what you did, simply hearing “I’m sorry” gives them a way to save face and allows both of you to go on your way with a minimum of fuss.

Small children are much too young to understand that sort of apology’s value, but learning to do it will serve them well in the future.

Jane Nelsen is, at least on this topic, a bit of a dope. And I’m not sorry I wrote that.