Ventricle
June 27, 2003
So this guy found my post about affirmatative action and cvilical disobedience and wrote to me suggesting we team up to organize some. When I wrote back to say that I like AA and wouldn't actually organize the sort of protest I described, he got all snot-faced. My favorite part:
I have a master's degree and am very much underemployed. I saw companies aggressively minorities and women with much lower GPAs (mine was a 3.9).
I will acknowledge that there are legitimate arguments against AA, but this is not among them. Hey, dude, we're in a downturn, haven't you heard? And you think that 3.9 means jack out in the real world? Maybe these companies picked up on your attitude problem. Maybe, just maybe, these minorities and women have something to add that goes beyond GPA. Why is it, I wonder, that the world's strongest "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" types, the ones who don't care whether you're born into abject poverty and have to drop out of school at age 15 to help support your family if indeed you ever got a chance at school at all, why is it that it's these types who start whingeing the loudest when suddenly the "leg up" shoe is, however tentatively and briefly, on the other foot? And if there weren't AA, what smallish fraction of you underemployed white male crybabies would see any difference at all? There are a lot more of you than there are of them, after all.
The thing I like best about this quotation, though, is the Freudian slip involved in the missing verb.
Some absolute Einsteins set off a bunch of fireworks in the street a couple houses up from me. They made sharp popping noises and then sent showers of sparks maybe twenty feet up in the air; the very next sound I heard was about a half dozen dogs completely losing their shit. After the second repetition of this display, a woman emerged from her house and started giving the Einsteins absolute hell--babies sleeping nearby, and the like. They swore "that's it, it's over now."
Five minutes later, they were at it again.
June 25, 2003
I have this continuing habit of acting on bad ideas, while excusing myself on the ground that there's no risk of their being realized.
Which is wrong on so many different levels.
June 23, 2003
There are, it turns out, people in this world who have something to say to me at exactly the last moment before I say that I don't have much to say to people who don't have anything to say when I have something to say to them. Not much to say to me, mind you, but enough to deprive me of the satisfaction involved in being justified in not saying much further to them.
It's the timing that gets me more than anything else.
June 22, 2003
It's happened again. I was at a party hosted by a college friend and her housemates: given such a connection, it was inevitable that there would be multiple people I knew from college there. Most of them handled the situation with aplomb. N------ was no surprise: he and I were both prepared and were able to swap seminar stories immediately. O------ I wasn't expecting, and he was a little surprised when I greeted him by name, but he obviously recognized me and knew it was from a geeky college context: he got my name on the second try. But P------ was unfortunate: I never much liked his arrogance. He was an unpleasant fellow, dismissive to those of us, like me, he considered beneath him. Maybe he still is and maybe he isn't, but I didn't really intend to find out. At the party, when I saw him standing in the group of people I was approaching, I called out to him, smiling, and said his name immediately. Beat, pause; I savored the look of confusion he was displaying, then thrust my hand and gave him my name so as to obliterate for him any possibility of saving face by remembering who I was.
I still wasn't glad to see him, but at least I enjoyed the encounter more than I would have expected to.
All my life I've been bad with names and faces. But now the tables have turned. I knew L------'s girlfriend from college, where she was that dippy girl M------ was going out with for a while. She didn't remember me: there was an awful moment when she said "good to meet you" and I said "good to meet you again." The thing being, L------ had figured out the connection, and he told us both about it, because he'd told me that she didn't remember me. In such a situation, there are two polite options: feign recollection or apologize for the unfamiliarity.
She chose neither, note.
June 20, 2003
I had dinner with L------ and his latest girlfriend. He's a noodge of the old school; she's a worrywart. It always disturbs me when people make jokes about their SOs that the SOs don't get, even if it seems to pass for normal with L------ and his chicas. Whereas she was horrified to hear that I don't wear sunscreen every day as a matter of course. But hanging out with them made me see how these two personality traits are just flip sides of the same coin: it's a kind of meddling extroverted self-assurededness with neurotic overtones, and it comes in masculine and feminine versions. They're such a pair of New Yorkers.
And, even if I am sort of one, I hate New Yorkers.
June 19, 2003
K------ is driving me bugfuck, of late. It's not worth repeating the details. It's just that for now, in all good faith, I'm stuck with him. If he completely botches this story, as seems increasingly likely, I can step down and be done with it. If he pulls it off, then I can step down and not have to deal with the process frustrations. Or maybe, miracle of miracles, he'll descend from his high horse. (I'm doing what I can to provide other avenues for interaction with him, ones where I'm being clearly helpful but also highly deferential. Maybe he'll accept those sacrifices to his truculence and be satisfied). But until things come to an honest end, I'm stuck dealing with this snot-nosed tar-baby.
Amazing how you can have institutional dysfunction in an institution of two people.
June 13, 2003
June 12, 2003
There was a happy hour for recent grads from the law school (and current students) in the area tonight. It was at a wine bar. The place was full of people who looked very much like young lawyers. I recognized no one. There might have been no one there from the law school, or a few tables, or the whole wine bar's worth.
I left immediately, without saying anything to anyone.
June 07, 2003
"Don't be afraid to lead me more with your arm," she said. "Go on, push me where you want me to go. That's the only way." While I am by no means an advanced dancer, I do know that the lead comes from the chest; the arms are there to turn the dance into a three-minute hug. It's one thing to be a lead-deaf follower and need to be (literally) manhandled around the floor; it's quite another thing to insist on being manhandled. But insist she did. "I've been dancing for fifteen years, and I've been to Buenos Aires six times, and down there the leaders use their arms really strongly."
With her, I'm sure they do.
June 06, 2003
Lord grant me the patience. K------ is not a good boss. He's slow and forgetful, and he has a disturbing tendency to alienate people who it would have been useful to keep on staff. I manage upwards as best I can, but there's only so much I can do to prod him into action without subverting what little authority he retains. He said today that he didn't see the "thematic connection" between a story of mine and the site.
Oh, like his story about the fish was more appropriate?
June 05, 2003
I shouldn't, perhaps, be bothered that the streets smell of urine. I shouldn't be annoyed that people on the street make strange noises and say strange things to try to freak me out. I shouldn't worry that everything about me, from my watch chain to my gait, marks me out as, well, a mark. I shouldn't yearn for more expensive restaurants and familiar upscale chains. And yet I do. I live in a gated community of the mind.
In some sense, so does everyone.
Out of sight, out of mind.
There are times when I'm glad that I'm shallow, faithless, and predictable.
When I revise my opinion of someone, it's almost always for the better. I'm not sure whether this is a good thing or a bad one. I was wary of K------ , with her blue eyeliner and lavender lipstick, but she turned out to be remarkably sharp and quick-witted.
I suppose sometimes my anti-L.A. prejudice gets the better of me.
