"what's a blog?"

why i <3 boston

2008-10-06T22:12:00.002-04:00

why do i love boston?

well, the obvious answer is that a) it's a liberal enclave (no, mommy, i do NOT want to live elsewhere in the country to see how the other side thinks or build character or whatever) and b) it snows! what more could you want?!?

but, really it's...

...because at 1 am on a cold, damp sunday night/monday morning, after a 5.5 hour game, all but a handful of the 39,000+ fans who had been crammed into fenway were still there to witness the sox's heartbreaking loss in game 3 of the alds (the first layer of the postseason).
...because as dustin pedroia, who at one point during the regular season had a series batting average of .1000 (freaking amazing) and was 0-17 (.000) in the postseason (aka in 17 at bats, he had produced no hits...no bueno) stepped up to the plate, he did so to emphatic chants of "MVP". (incidentally, he then crushed the ball off the monster to drive in a run and bring the score to 2-0, sox).
...because any time there's a game on, there's a crowd standing on the sidewalk or sitting in the chairs outside cardullo's in harvard square, watching The Game on the flat screen TV that faces the sidewalk and only comes on for sox games.
...because any time, any where (especially the green line), chants of "yankees suck!" are sure to be returned with enthusiasm.
...because the entire city knows the words (and sings along to) a one-hit wonder's 1966 punk rock song that never charted higher than #11 ("dirty water", by the standells, is the red sox victory anthem, played after every home win).
...because no matter what happens in september (and hopefully october), come april, we're ready to fall in love all over again.

go sox!!

"it's not money; it's coins!"

2008-09-06T21:40:00.002-04:00

in the nature vs. nurture debate, i'd like to cast a very strong vote for neither. you see, two people with the same biological parents, raised in the same household, under the same rules, should, if either of those constructs hold at all, have at least one thing in common. one. something. anything.

as individuals, there will, of course, be some differences but nature and/or nurture would seem to dictate that there would be at least one similarity.

as it turns out, there exists a pair of biologically-related, same house raised, exact opposites.

while one if off chasing down coins to cure cancer, the other is turning her nose up at retrieving the coins from the restaurant floor that landed there when her designer purse got knocked over. while one delights in the maintenance-free life of a honda owner, the other has "bad luck" when it comes to her turbo-charged european sports car staying in one, undamaged piece. while one regularly has dinner with a friend made in kindergarten, the other changes friends more often than she changes her thong underwear.

so while this is only an n of 1, it's a pretty strong freakin' n. and if 2 is a pattern, then surely 1 is more than enough to toss out a construct that has always been problematic and hotly contested, at best. no?

then again, maybe one of the best hospitals in the world just isn't that good at keeping track of which baby belongs to whom...

is it bad if it's only a little?

2008-08-24T21:07:00.003-04:00

recently i've been mulling the idea that some times things that are Bad Ideas are also necessary.

now hear me out on this one...

sometimes in order to go from being an absorbing, consuming Bad Idea, one needs to stop trying to shove the Bad Idea into a little box to be stashed away in the far corners of one's mind long enough to just go with it. not completely and not without knowing that it's a Bad Idea, but go with it. just enough to take the mystique-fueled wind out of its sails. just enough to reassure yourself that the world will go on even if you do the one thing you're convinced will grind the earth to a screeching halt.

you can't do it to convince yourself that it's a good idea after all. you can't do it on the spur of the moment (unless you've already thought about it). you can't do it unless you can honestly tell yourself that you'll be ok with the consequences (which you've considered).

but sometimes you just have to do it.

an open letter to the people in charge

2008-08-16T23:15:00.004-04:00

dear people in charge,

why must you suck so much? is it that the 5,983 hours of "management training" that you've been forced to endure have turned your brain into pulverized spaghetti? is it that you've 'paid your dues' and now must force top-down insanity on those below you? or is it, perhaps most terrifying of all, that you really think that's a good idea?

if it's one of the first two, i really can't help you. your problem is beyond my purview, and probably beyond that of even the most skilled neurosurgeon or mad doctor. but if it's the latter, then i think i just might have a solution to the problem of not knowing what would be best for something you're not working on. ready? here's it is (listen carefully, it's tricky): ASK THE PEOPLE WHO ARE WORKING ON IT!!! if you want, we could even do it true or false style; everyone likes true or false. here, i'll give you an example to show you just how fun and effective it can be:

-true or false, that research study that you're trying to find a host event for requires the participants who enlist to be at least 30 years old?
-true or false, 80% of the participants at event x are under 18?
-true or false, event x would be a good place to host that research study?

see how easy it is to decide what to do when you ask the people who will h'actually have to do it???

if only your management training had been 5,984 hours long...

love,
everyone

nyt: wtf?

2008-07-14T21:53:00.004-04:00

file under: the liberal bastion that wasn't...

the 6.22.08 issue of the new york times magazine was full of carefully worded, thoroughly researched, non-hegemonic gems. here are a few for your enjoyment:

-in his article, "the new pariahs? sixty years after the holocaust, europe still may not have learned to accept outsiders", noah feldman (a 38 year old harvard, oxford, and yale educated white man living in cambridge, ma) accuses europe of being racist, basically. he says that in western europe, old school anti-immigration sentiment is morphing into an anti-islamic bias. he cites supporting examples before offering up that, "the u.s. had its own terrible legacy of legalized racism in the form of jim crow laws, which hitler imitated for his own purposes. in the aftermath of world war II, however, we began slowly and agonizingly to come to terms with this past. racial bias is still with us, but so is self-consciousness about our problems and how they must be overcome."

hooray, the white man from cambridge says racism is over! hey cell block 4, did you hear that? racism is over so quit complaining about the higher incarceration rates of black men, the difference in length of time it takes one to reach for their gun when faced with black vs. white perpetrators in simulation exercises, and the like...

-in a featurette on male floral designer daniel ost, ost shares with readers how his father was "less enthusiastic" about his young son's early predilection for flowers. he says, "'when i was young, many people thought floral design was gay so to "cure" me, he sent me for a while to military school.' (ost is happily married and the father of two.)"

thank you, new york times, for establishing that ost is... happily married and the father of two.

oh, wait, did you mean to establish that he's not gay? 'cause that isn't necessarily mutually exclusive with this whole "married father" thing. crazy, i know...

-in a article praising jim rogers for being such an environmentally-friendly big energy (coal) company baron, the nyt paraphrases his prediction that, "coal will never go away, because it's cheap and more accessible than any other energy source."

pop quiz, mine workers (those that aren't dead already or currently trapped in a mine, that is): raise your hand if you think there's a more accessible form of energy. no? no hands? well great then, it's settled, coal is the most accessible form of energy.

(or the mine workers' arms were all too tired to raise their hands since they'd just come off their 4,680th 12-hour shift digging coal out of a mine hundreds of feet below the ground. we don't really want to press this though, lest we give the impression that we care about the value of a human life. after all, if we did that, we might find out more about these workers, like how they'd been stealing coal dust by putting it in their lungs and then we'd have to fire the whole lot of them and then where would we be? awfully cold in our mcmansion, that's where! no, no, we can't have that. this little democratic exercise is over, back underground you go!)

something to which i can aspire...

2008-07-08T22:25:00.004-04:00

bill bryson is fantastic. in the following passage from his memoir about growing up in the 50s, the life and times of the thunderbolt kid, he fondly recalls his days of constructing models...

"at least candy gave actual pleasure. most things that were supposed to be fun turned out to be not fun at all. model making, for instance. making models was reputed to be hugely enjoyable but it was really just a mysterious ordeal that you had to go through from time to time as part of the boyhood process. the model kits looked fun. the illustrations on the boxes portrayed beautifully detailed fighter pilots belching red-and-yellow flames from their wing guns and engaged in lively dogfights. in the background there was always a stricken messerschmitt spiraling to earth with a dismayed german in the cockpit, shouting bitter epithets through the windscreen. you couldn't wait to recreate such lively scenes in three dimensions.

"but when you got the kit home and opened the box the contents turned out to be of a uniform leaden gray or olive green, consisting of perhaps sixty thousand tiny parts, some no larger than a proton, all attached in some organic, inseparable way to plastic stalks like swizzle sticks. the tubes of glue by contrast were the size of pretty large pastry tubes. no matter how gently you depressed them they would blurp out a pint or so of a clear viscous goo whose one instinct was to attach itself to some foreign object--a human finger, the living-room drapes, the fur of a passing animal--and become an infinitely long string.

"any attempt to break the string resulted in the creation of more strings. within moments you would be attached to hundreds of sagging strands, all connected to something that had nothing to do with model airplanes or world war II. the only thing the glue wouldn't stick to, interestingly, was a piece of plastic model; then it just became a slippery lubricant that allowed any two pieces of model to glide endlessly over each other; never drying. the upshot was that after about forty minutes of intensive but troubled endeavor you and your immediate surroundings were covered in a glistening spiderweb of glue at the heart of which was a gray fuselage with one wing on upside down and a pilot accidentally but irremediably attached by his flying cap to the cockpit ceiling. happily by this point you were so high on the glue that you didn't give a shit about the pilot, the model, or anything else."

though it is possible you and you editor have some slight verb agreement deficiencies and a loathing for commas that i do not share, you are wonderful bill bryson and i beseech you to write more. a lot more. in the meantime, i will read your novels that are not about growing up in the 50s or australia (i.e. the other 9 books in your catalogue that are not dictionaries or illustrated books). i'm a fast reader though so get to it!

to rent or to buy?

2008-07-06T17:00:00.002-04:00

there comes a time in most individuals' lives where they have to decide whether to rent or to buy a living space. as this is not a financially small decision, many people take to making lists to delineate the pros and cons of each domestic situation. this list can often grow to be quite long as there is no shortage of considerations.

for example, if you have no idea what you're going to be doing a year from now, buying a property is usually ill advised. if you are part of the fortunate few who do have a clue, then now is a great time to screw a current homeowner who is looking to sell for reasons that could only be described as incredibly desperate*, given the market.

another issue many people consider when drawing up their little two column lists is maintenance. many people who are disinclined to maintain their property and/or born with hooves for hands often place maintenance (or, rather, the lack thereof required of them) in the pro column for renting.

while this is a popular notion, it is, at times, a false one. while renters often enter the agreement thinking that maintenance will be sooo not their problem should a situation arise, the landlord is often a professional at dodging maintenance. it’s like buying a car: the buyer is toast from the get-go because they’re going up against someone who screws people all day for a living.

so, given the terms of the lease, the landlord needs to be a little suave in their maintenance dodging. they can’t just come out and say “you live there and now it’s broken; that sounds like a personal problem. fix it your damn self.” (this is, incidentally, a large part of why i don’t ever foresee myself as a landlord...) what they can do, however, is make it *seem* like a big deal to clean and repair the gas stove that makes your apartment smell like gas when you turn it on such that when the pilot light gets too low to turn on half the burners and the smoke alarm goes off every time you turn the oven on, you don’t call them. it’s easier just to brainstorm desserts to bring to the party that don’t involve your oven.

or they can be so rude and unpleasant that when your kitchen sink completely backs up and all the Nastiness from the disposal is backing up into the adjacent sink, you decide that you would rather take apart all of the pipes below the sink, have filthy water spraying everywhere (including but not limited to into the bucket you placed below the pipes), clear the algae-esque Nastiness out of the pipes with your own hands, walk to the store to buy two bottles of harsh drain clearing chemicals that you don’t believe in (including “foaming pipe snake” – woohoo!), and then, only then, when 24 hours have passed and one sink still backs up with filthy water when you run water into the other sink, do you call the maintenance guy that works for your landlord (who is also, incidentally, a big jerkface).

and then there are the blamers. the blamers are the landlords that blame the tenants for anything that goes wrong, regardless of how preposterous the assertion is. for example, if a rickety old wooden fence is found disheveled on the ground after a particularly gusty windstorm, then it must have been that the 24-year-old young professional women that live in the house were playing on the fence and that’s what brought it down. clearly.

so next time you find yourself with pen in hand, scratching out a list of pros and cons, do be careful as to in which column you place seemingly obviously categorizable attributes, lest you find yourself fanning the smoke alarm with algae/last night’s dinner flying off your fingers wishing, “if only i could call the repairman myself and have someone competent take care of this once and for all!”...

*addendum: or a result of phD-induced psychosis, apparently...

let's hop in our time travel machine...

2008-07-02T14:46:00.004-04:00

so, one time someone asked about what got me out of bed in the morning and (somewhat separately) whether the immediate obstacles of raising children negate the potential fulfillment in harboring the primal concept of loving/nurturing. the questions came during the time when i was searching for the job i have now, which means that i did not have the job that i have now, which means that i hated everything just a bit more... as such:

it's not that i like kids or oppressed people so damn much but, rather, i can't stand the injustice of the situation. have i already expounded on how i think horatio alger is doing a greater disservice to this country than slavery ever did? don't get me wrong, slavery was really bad but it is precisely because it was so bad that we were able to put an end to it. over time, it became clear that slavery was intolerable. the more it was held up as the natural order by its supporters, the more apparent the obscenity of the situation became. horatio alger and his bullshit fucking bootstraps myth, though, are far more insidious. setting aside the apparent fact that he was a child molester (i just checked him out on wikipedia and found a new reason to loathe him), his 'rags to riches' myth only gets stronger with time and recitation.

'the american dream' is a supersized version of his widely espoused malarkey. it's always problematic when someone who was homeschooled, then sent to a place with 'academy' in its name, and then educated at harvard is allowed to define the path to success for a country's people. especially when his beloved theory finds its way into the eager hands of the evil c's (conservatives). they've lauded his teachings as The counterargument to egregious wastes of taxpayer money on things like 'health care' and 'a decent education' for all. "if you can't get health care for yourself (because you had to drop out of school when you were 14 to raise your siblings so you don't have a high school degree and, therefore, are unqualified for any 1 job that would pay you a reasonable salary and give you benefits so instead you're forced to work 3 part-time jobs that don't offer benefits in order to make just enough money to cover the rent on your 1-bedroom apartment where you live with your 4 children who need to be fed by money you don't have and watched while you're working your 3 jobs), then it's because you're not trying hard enough." clearly. "thank you, mr./mrs. conservative, for figuring out what my problem is. i'm grateful that you stopped eating caviar off of that silver spoon you inherited just by being born for long enough to figure out what my problem is because, frankly, i've been a bit too busy figuring how my family is going to eat next week to run a full situational analysis. how much do i owe you for your insight?"

ok, i think that's enough vitriol spewed in horatio alger's and his conservative counterparts' direction... for today anyway... where the hell was i? oh, right, about to segue from wanting to help kids with cancer to not wanting to have kids of my own. i would say that, yes, the obstacles of raising children negates the potential fulfillment BUT i would add a caveat. the issue is not so much the obstacles (which are considerable, mind you) but the idea that raising small humans is the The Way to be fulfilled.

i am vehemently opposed to people who don't want kids having them. i think that's a terrible idea - almost inevitably, everyone involved gets hurt. it's one thing to buy ugly, imported, expensive boots that were only ever meant to be worn as slippers and wear them out in public with mini-skirts because everyone else is doing it but it's quite another thing to bring another human being into the world just to avoid having to answer any more of aunt mildred's 'when are you ever going to have kids? you know, by the time i was your age...' questions at thanksgiving. in our society though, spawning is held up as The Thing You Do and The Way You Get Fulfilled.

well, i don't think it's The Way to be fulfilled. i think a person can choose what kind of fulfillment they want and where they can find it. some people really are happy just working. other people find fulfillment in a romantic partner and their ability to get up and go, together, without worrying about who will watch the kids, whether jane will remember to bring her science fair project to school, and if bobby will make the choir or be beside himself and beyond consolation. still others find fulfillment doing things for others. individuals need different types and amounts of fulfillment and it's incumbent upon them to figure out what kind they need and where they can get it - from what, from whom. and once they've figure that out, to have the gumption to go after it.

__
well, what it lacks in lucidity it more than makes up for in vim and vigor...

hooray for family road trips!

2008-06-28T23:03:00.002-04:00

so my sister's car had to go have stuffs done at the volvo dealership (she likes to drive it into things and my dad has this masochistic impulse to overmaintain her car so it's anybody's guess as to what it may have "needed" to have done. bill (the family mechanic) has, at least once, refused to "get interested" in something that my dad thought should be done. the whole dance is fascinating...) and while it was there, the geniuses managed to drain the battery, which erased the car's memory. ok, fine.

except that her car needs to get inspected this month (another thing that is inexplicably my dad's problem, not my sister's...) and it can't pass inspection without some memory for the emissions part.

so. in order to remedy this situation, the three of us (my sister is, conveniently, currently staggering around europe) are going to drive down to providence (my favorite city! (if by "favorite" i mean the place where, of all the places i've lived, one is most likely to get mugged)) for father's day dinner.

now, i'm sure you've seen volvo s40s from the outside but i don't know if you've had occasion to be in one. while the honda element, for example, is far more spacious inside than it looks to be from the outside, the s40 is the exact opposite. it looks reasonable from the outside but once you're in it, you marvel at how 3 adults can fit into a 16 oz. tin can (with the garbonzo beans removed, obviously). when i drive it, my forehead almost grazes the part where the windshield meets the roof and the part where the driver's window meets the roof is not more than 2" away from my head. i have to put my head in the space between the two front seats if i need to put the visor down. it is amazingly cramped. and that's just the front seat, to say nothing of the back seat...

adding to the joy of the trip will be my father's infinite knowledge and wisdom about how you can't possibly maintain a constant speed by holding your foot just so on the gas pedal. no, the correct way to maintain speed is to push down sharply on the accelerator then quickly remove your foot.

over

and

over

and

over.

did i mention that her car has a turbocharger?

it will be interesting to see which happens first: me throwing up or me grabbing the mardi gras beads off her rearview mirror to strangle myself to death...

post script: neither, though it was quite unfortunate that i forgot that wbz 1030 travels with my father, not just his car. oh ipod, why did i leave you at home???

an open letter

2008-06-26T23:05:00.003-04:00

dear classy gentleman of the night,

i just want to thank you for the kind attention you and 29 or so of your closest friends paid to my friend and me as we walked back to our cars late last friday night. as i derive my self-worth from what strangers think of me, it was really validating to hear you be so complimentary. i was especially fond of your clever rhymes as the time it must have taken you to come up with them speaks to how highly you think of me. the time and effort that you put into being so witty reveal that you value me as a person even though your comments were all directed to my physical appearance.

though your snap judgments about who i am and what i think of you were a little off the mark, i’m sure they will be corrected once we’ve had a chance to better get to know each other, since i know you’re so interested in my personality.

the only difficultly will be deciding which of you to jump into bed with first since you were always in packs of 3 – 5 and i so don’t want to hurt your friends’ feelings… also, you made it difficult because you were never directly facing us when you paid us these compliments; you always waited until we had just walked by you or you called out to us from your second story windows so we couldn’t actually ascertain from whom the flattering remark had originated. maybe next time i have occasion to be walking late at night, i’ll bring a roll of raffle tickets so that we can keep it fair… (though be forewarned that more tickets will be awarded to individuals with louder cat calls/whistles and more graphic guttural noises…)

love,

the grateful object of your affection

i <3 blue cross blue shield

2008-06-24T23:07:00.001-04:00

i used to take rhinocort nasal spray for my allergies when they kicked up in the spring and fall (this is on top of my year round zyrtec...). now, when a nasal spray was prescribed, i was reluctant because as a child i always hated the nose spray that my mom used and would try to get me to use when i had a cold. bleh! but, rubbing my eyes into my head and constantly sneezing isn't so hot either so i filled the prescription.

low and behold, nothing happened. and by "nothing", i mean not only did nasty stuff not feel weird in my nose and not run down my throat but my eyes didn't itch, my nose didn't run, and i didn't sneeze constantly. awe.some.

so i take that off and on for a few years until i get a love note from blue cross blue shield to let me know that they will no longer be covering it because there are other "equivalents" covered.

so finally my allergies get bad enough again and i break down and call my doctor, who prescribes flonase. i'm actually pretty sure that squirting a proprietary blend of lighter fluid and 12 molar hydrochloric acid up my nose and then holding a match under my nose would be more pleasant than this "equivalent". and to add insult to injury, it actually seems to work so i have to keep taking it! my only solace comes from having another reason to hate blue cross blue shield and another example to cite when ranting against them...

oh, and not wanting to rub my eyes out of my head is pretty good too, especially since that much friction would probably set them on fire, given their proximity to my nasal passages...

Rich People are useful after all...

2008-06-23T22:09:00.002-04:00

one pleasant afternoon last week (yes, there are occasionally pleasant days during the summer; they’re just too far and few between), two coworkers and i took a trip to a well-to-do suburb west of boston. we had been out for lunch when we decided that a frozen treat was in order before heading back to the office. luckily one of the two coworkers has both a sweet tooth and a degree from the college bearing the same name as the town to which we were headed so we set off with an expert at the helm.

upon arrival in said town, we parked and walked around the block to the highly regarded frozen yogurt emporium on which we had set our sights. as we were getting out of the car, i spied half a woman. she had all of her parts, mind you; they were all just about half as thin as they should have been. upon entering the establishment that sold nothing but frozen confections, we came across another half woman, this one holding a large dish of frozen something. at this point, i saw fit to confirm with my coworker, the local expert, that this wealthy suburb did, in fact, have grocery stores. she confirmed that there were three, including a whole foods, the holy grail for Rich People (not to be confused with the holy grail of the Truly Wealthy: personal chefs. one per household member, please.).

satisfied that this malnourished look was in fact malnourished-chic, rather than a banal distribution problem, i turned my attention to the board listing the flavors offered. as there were several tempting ones, i was still in the midst of deciding when a charming lady came in. after waiting approximately 0.2 seconds to see if we were ready to order, she asked us if we were ready in a way that made it clear that she knew that we weren’t and just wanted us out of her way. we obliged and stepped aside to continue considering our options. expert that she was, she curtly placed her order and waited for the pleasant girl of approximately 16 years to fill it.

as the young girl was handing over the woman’s frozen yogurt, the kind old lady took that opportunity to inform the young girl that she wanted her yogurt in a cone. she made sure to use that rude tone that people who didn’t order what they meant to and are now unhappy with being served exactly what they asked for always use. to the young girl’s everlasting credit and much to my amusement, she grabbed a cone and moved behind a partition where the curmudgeon couldn’t see her (but i could!) and proceeded to dump the softer-with-each-passing-moment frozen yogurt in the woman’s precious cone. she then emerged and handed the cone over and old woman had the good sense not to say anything further.

by this time, we had all made our decisions so we placed our orders, paid for our purchases, and went outside to eat them on the picnic table outside the door. while we were enjoying our desserts, another half person entered the shop. while she was inside, we speculated as to whether she was 16 and trapped in a 13 year old prepubescent waif body or a 22 year old trapped in a 13 year old prepubescent waif body. we were still trying to decide when she came out, crossed the street, and climbed into the driver’s seat of a range rover. unfortunately, this really didn’t solve the mystery as we already knew that she wasn’t really a 13 year old prepubescent waif. (it did, however, shed some light on that whole “skyrocketing gas prices” thing and that whole “depleting the ozone layer” thing…)

since we had finished our treats and it was hard to tell if the rising feeling of nausea was coming from having too much frozen yogurt in our stomachs or too much money in the hands of too few, we figured it was time to head back to work.

as we drove back to the office and continued to make fun of the spectacles that we had witnessed, it occurred to me that Rich People are good for something after all. as the only non-marginalized minority group, they are the only group of people that it’s stil socially acceptable to make fun of. and that, like everything else they have, is something no one can take away from them…