Do you remember that baby naming book from the eighties and nineties (they released updated editions because it was quite popular) called Beyond Jennifer and Jason? I was obsessed with it when I was a kid; whenever someone we knew was pregnant and they’d whip out that book, I’d get all excited. I don’t know, I just like names! Anyway, a few years ago I nabbed an old copy––I don’t remember how, either from a box of free books on the street or I stole it from someone––and I kept it around as a kind of funny gag and also if I needed help creating a pseudonym. The other day I idly took it off the shelf and was flipping through it, and then my husband saw it (what the fuck is this?!) and was looking through later, and came across a section called “Wimpy Names.” So already this is feeling embarrassingly Dated, because can you imagine an author including that in a name book now? But it gets better. There’s a subsection of Wimpy Names that reads: “A wimpy name does not necessarily a wimpy boy make…. Maybe these guys become supermacho in reaction to their anemic names, or maybe they would have overdeveloped biceps even if their names were Brawley or Flint. Here, a list of famous tough guys with anything but tough names.” And it goes on to list Arnold Schwarzenegger, Charlton Heston, Ernest Hemingway, Sylvester Stallone, and, among others,… Bruce Jenner.
Archive for the ‘Conspiracy Theories’ Category
Time to Update Again
October 9, 2016The Joys of Dissent
October 5, 2016Shit, it’s been a while. Since I last posted, Elena Ferrante’s been unmasked, Kim Kardashian’s been robbed, and Brangelina has been pronounced dead on arrival (little airplane joke there). When I came to look at the date of my last post just now, I felt so guilty that I decided I simply must put something up now. But the problem is I don’t have a ton to say. Well, here’s one thing: everyone knows I’m something of a contrarian, right? Maybe this was a personality trait that excited me in the past, but in recent years, it’s proven more annoying than anything else. If only I could get on board the zeitgeist train, I could write anodyne personal essays about ending the stigma (surrounding anything) and not worry that I’m harsh!
I don’t know if that’s going to happen anytime soon, though. In the meantime, I’ll just have to find a little joy in reading negative reviews of books everyone else in the world adored. Case in point: a review of When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanathi in the London Review of Books. WBBA was gushed over by basically every literary critic and human in the United States, but writer Thomas Laqueur was meh on the whole thing.
“It’s time to confess the obvious: I wasn’t deeply moved by this book. But it isn’t easy to explain why. the first thing that comes to mind is that I find the author pompous, and, whether a true or a faux naif, egomaniacally self-conscious in his search for meaning… A larger problem is that Kalanathi isn’t very good at writing. Having done so little of it, why should he be? As Julian Barnes wrote in his introduction to Daudet’s memoir, dying doesn’t make someone a better writer, or a worse one for that matter.”
This made a lot of sense to me because of my longstanding aversion to our immediate embrace of suffering narrators (because pain doesn’t make you smarter, necessarily, but it does mean people feel less justified in critiquing you, even when that criticism is deserved, which results in a lot of thoughtless applause). But it also reminded me of the extended period of time I spent in my mid-twenties working with someone terminally ill (who is now deceased), I was always half-anticipating a big life epiphany, courtesy of the Sick Person, every day, but most of the time it was just the usual drudgery and the Sick Person remained their flawed, human self, right up to the very end.
Farce?
September 4, 2016On a tour of the Buckingham Palace State Rooms, the audio tour narrator says, “This is the theater for the pageantry of monarchy.” I didn’t know you guys were so self aware!
Soapbox
August 30, 2016Guys, I don’t want to be a curmudgeon, always hating on things that purport to be put forward for our comfort. I really don’t. But you force me into this position sometimes. Case in point: a recent Refinery29 article on miscarrying in your twenties. It’s a special problem, they say, despite recognizing that it’s much rarer to miscarry in your twenties than your thirties (1 in 10 for the former, 1 in 4 for the latter.) Why is it special? Because it’s isolating, because you don’t have the “life experience” to know how to handle it, because, as one interviewee says, you want to “choose when [you] become a mum.” But what about a miscarriage at forty? Also isolating, also you’d like to choose to be a mum (I mean, if the world were perfect, we’d all choose everything) and to balance out that whole life experience thing, the horror of knowing you might not have much time left, which just isn’t the case when you’re twenty-three. People say stupid things to try to comfort you when you’re twenty-three, but they do when you’re forty-three, too, I’m guessing; people say stupid things all the time, and they will continue to say them for as long as the great world spins.
I’m not saying it isn’t emotionally devastating to miscarry, or to deal with any loss or tragedy. I’m just saying that this is an example of the media pretending that these are new, sexy problems that need special attention, when in reality they are just dragged out into the light again so that the publication can attract new eyeballs (=clicks) by pretending they’ve unearthed some heretofore uncharted landscape of human suffering (see also: the Telegraph’s article on “anorexia athletica,” which highlights an unrecognized problem that has nevertheless been in the news for decades now, cannot statistically be said to be on the “rise,” and is oftentimes just a facet of anorexia nervosa, which they can’t use in the headline because that diagnosis has lost its luster as a subject as it’s been reported to death.)
But don’t take it from me––take it from my prophet bestie George W.S. Trow, BDE, who saw this shit coming a mile away.
Important Programming
Important programming is programming that recognizes the problem.
Important Programming
It if is just a problem––teenage alcoholics who need to talk to Matron––then it is a little boring after a while, because it is only half of the problem. The the problem might have to be doubled. You might have to add Angel Dust or Runaways or Child Abuse. You might have to, because just the problem is only half of the problem.
…
Experts
The problem is offered up to authority for healing. But Pepper shies away from healing, and so does Matron. They conduct the problem to other experts. The experts shy away a little, too. Who would have thought it? “We move toward a full discussion of the problem,” they murmur. “During this discussion, you will experience a little sense of home. Do you feel it now? No? Then perhaps our discussion has not been full. Is that perhaps your fault?”
“In what lies your authority?” a willfull person asks after a time.
“Why, in the problem,” an expert answers honestly.
Important Programming
The most important programming deals with people with a serious problem who make it to the Olympics. It is the powerful metaphor of our time––babies given up for dead who struggle toward a national life and make it just for a minute. It’s a long distance to come. People feel it very deeply and cheer the babies on.
Problems
An important question to ask about an association of individuals is, “How does it spend its best energies?” One can imagine many answers to this question. One answer, certainly, would be “Dealing with problems.” One would expect this answer from, for instance, a poor association of individuals or an association without ambition. But even from associations as impoverished as these associations might be, one would not expect the answer “Aspiring to love problems.”
Some Thoughts on the JonBenet Rams-aissance
August 19, 2016We all know people are really into true crime these days. I’m sure there are myriad think pieces I can read about this, but I don’t need a pundit to elaborate on the universal truth that humans adore blood, gore, and a sense of moral superiority. Anyway, according to Vogue.com, it looks like the next big nineties murder to get the true crime docu-series treatment’s gonna be JonBenet Ramsey. A few questions on that, and also the article itself. Here are some excerpts:
“… rehashing the real-life Philip Roth novel that was the O.J. Simpson case proved a successful pursuit this year… “
How do you figure Philip Roth?
“Adding to the bubbling Ramsey craze redux is Dr. Phil McGraw, who is already counterprogramming the CBS series this week by teasing the first-ever interview with JonBenet’s brother, Burke, now 29, who was 9 at the time of the murder.”
Okay, this is the big one . Some of you might know I’m a Burke truther, but that’s neither here nor there. The real question is: you’re a very sought-after interview, and you go with DOCTOR PHIL?! That’s extremely embarrassing. Hit up a classier TV journalist like Barbara, if you have your pick. Not sexual predator, litigation magnet, bad pet parent McGraw. Sheesh. Why don’t people consult me before they do things like this?
“Unlike either Simpson project, The Case of: JonBenet Ramsey won’t be camp drama or a higher-brow almost-academic exploration of the case. Instead, it looks more like a longer, bigger-budget 48 Hours. In a particularly fascinating stunt, CBS rebuilt the Ramsey family home in Boulder, Colorado—to scale—in a warehouse, for the purpose of revisiting the crime scene. But that’s not to say the show won’t smack as sordid or raise uneasy questions about repackaging and resensationalizing a child’s murder, conveniently, during September sweeps.”
Wait-–why is there a “but” after the announcement of the model house?! If anything, to me that revelation indicates exactly that the show will “smack as sordid… ”
Drowning
August 8, 2016That really scary thing where you’re trying to look up the prices for swimming packages at your local Y-ish place and you come across an Independent article from 1995 on the facilities that begins… :
A MOTHER and her two young children were found drowned in a leisure centre swimming pool in central London yesterday. Police said they were not looking for anyone else in connection with the deaths.
Their three bodies, all fully clothed, were discovered by a member of the staff in the main 25-metre pool at the Seymour Leisure Centre in Seymour Place, Marylebone, on arriving for work just before 7am.
I can find no information on whether they actually determined what happened (although it seems like there’s a likely explanation) and I really want to know. Cruel aside: this would be a good opening for a horror flick.
A Chat From the Vault
July 5, 2016Sifting through my Gmail archives and came across this great Gchat from years ago, with my bro…
me: ok so
we just ate with my boss’s potential producer
IS: and how was it?
me: he brought along his friend and potential investor in his company
muammar al-gaddafi’s right hand man
!!!
i ate french fries off his plate!
IS: no!
qaddafi was just on cash cab
me: WHAT?!
IS: as a question! not IN the cash cab
the answer was “Libya”
Exhaustion
June 30, 2016In light of Rita Ora’s terrifying ordeal culminating in her admission to the hospital, we at the National Center for the Awareness of Exhaustion have determined that the time is ripe to bring greater attention to this little known malady. Though it is often overshadowed by more serious ailments, exhaustion has been the worm at the core for a small but significant sector of our population for two entire decades.
What is “Exhaustion?” Exhaustion is a disease that might include the following as symptoms: sleepiness, nausea, dizziness, public passing out. In many patients, it presents as similar to a hangover. No one knows its exact cause, but symptoms are often preceded by periods of bad or no publicity. Researchers have also determined that attending concerts for multiple nights in a row or having an openly secret drug problem heightens one’s susceptibility to contracting exhaustion, though medical professionals are encouraged to not link the two, as that would amount to party-shaming the legitimately ill.
Exhaustion is most common among those who work in the entertainment industry and have incredibly generous health insurance policies. Within this group, white females are particularly at risk. Celebrity sufferers include Lindsay Lohan, Demi Moore, and token this-disease-does-not-discriminate sufferer Dave Chappelle. Exhaustion never affects the following: Hasidic mothers of ten, long distance truck drivers, introverts, or people suffering from diagnosed, medically-recognized terminal illnesses.
Treatment for exhaustion may include a brief hospital admission documented by numerous selfies; often, follow-up care is needed, and can be received at exorbitantly expensive rehab centers with ocean views and sushi chefs on-staff. In order to prevent a recurrence of the illness, the sufferer is urged to hire more hands-on representation who can scrub their hospital stay from celebrity gossip websites.
Jesus!
June 30, 2016The Telegraph has a handy list of fifteen travel destinations with little threat of terrorism. One of their suggestions is… North Korea.
Friends
June 29, 2016I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: British people are absolutely insane about Friends. When we first moved here, I was cooking one day in our corporate apartment and I turned on the TV as background noise, hoping to find something mindless that I’d seen a million times before so I could tune in and back out at my leisure. As there is no USA Network here, sadly there was no SVU, but there was Friends on Comedy Central. “It’s Friends Week!” an announcer joyfully exclaimed at the commercial break. How lucky was I! Hours of exactly the kind of no-attention-required TV I was after. Hooray!
Two weeks later, we moved from our corporate apartment to our real apartment, and I sought out the same kind of televisual soundtrack to accompany my unpacking. There, again, on Comedy Central, was Friends. I looked at the guide––it was Friends as far as the eye could see (well, straight on through until six or seven PM.) I was confused––surely a week had passed? I counted the days on my fingers, confirmed it had, then shrugged, and left it on. Nearly a year later, I’ve learned that if you turn on Comedy Central at virtually any time of day, you will find Friends. Put another way: every week in the United Kingdom (eek, that stings to say right now) is Friends week. The nation’s fervor for the show gets more intense, too, in late August, when a roving tour of sorts called FriendsFest begins. Last year, the festival featured a recreation of Monica and Rachel’s apartment, where visitors could get their pictures taken. This year, they’ve one-upped themselves: sets from the series will be erected in stately homes like Blenheim Palace, and there will also be table tennis and something ominously called “Smelly Cat Karaoke.” Last year tickets sold out in thirteen minutes; this year, my guess is Britons will need even more escape, so passes will fly off shelves even faster.
In my experience, New Yorkers tend to prefer Seinfeld, because Friends presents a too-easy view of life in NYC for natives to really stomach (the gorgeous apartment inhabited by a waitress and a chef who never seem to be at work, for example.) So I wondered if perhaps Londoners loved it for that exact same reason: it was a picture of a happy, idealized New York. I asked a friend why people in England were so obsessed, and she gave me a blase reply: “We just love it.” I’ve read the articles on why millennials are improbably smitten, including Adam Sternbergh’s lengthy one in New York Magazine. Sternbergh chalks it up to a kind of nostalgia for a simpler time the youth of today never knew (no Facebook, no student debt, etc.) But his view is limited to Americans experiencing a very American-centric nostalgia, as is evidenced by his description of it. “The show that feels, in its way, as iconic a relic of the 1990s as do Nirvana, Pulp Fiction, and a two-term Clinton presidency that the Onion later cheekily described as ‘our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity’?” So what do the Brits get out of it?
Itinerantdaughter's Blog 