Cultural Reintegration

Over there on the right, down a little, a leetle more, there you go, is a new element that I cleverly called "Cultural Reintegration," continuing the whole culture shock metaphor. It's a list of movies I've seen in 2008 (although since I can't remember exactly when I saw three of the four listed there, it may be more aptly described as movies I've seen in 2008 and maybe a little back into December 2007, but definitely not so far as November.

I realized I have poor short-term memory a long time ago, probably around the time when I was trying desperately to memorize dance routines and just couldn't keep one step in my head before moving on to the next step. The same phenomenon showed up in college, when I swear I read a book but couldn't tell you a thing about it. Ditto for movies. And for pretty much anything that required me to retain information. This might be why I didn't do so hot in grad school.

So as a memory jog, I'm going to keep a tally of the movies I saw in 2008. Movies in cinemas only, please, no rentals/illegal downloads that we watch at home. Those may feature on another list somewhere. Perhaps this will help me remember the general plot arc more than a week later, or make me a little less pathetic in the Kevin Bacon Game. (Truly pathetic. I think I can possibly name one film that Mr. Bacon himself was in.)*

If I get even more ambitious, I might write a review. Although I really hate when bloggers do that. I really don't care about your opinions. So maybe I won't. Unless I decide to.

Yes, that will be all for today.

*He was in Apollo 13, right? Ooh, and Footloose! Two!

Six Words

For the moment, this post is just a placeholder of a link I saw: the Guardian's Six Word Stories challenge. I'm going to try to come up with a few, just not while I'm at work. (Hi, boss!)

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Okay, back now. In the meantime, I've found a lot more examples. Check out Caterina, Wired, or Flickr for stories (and accompanying photos). Here are some I've come up with.

Apartment squeaky clean. Page still blank.

You’re 26. Comic books for birthday?

Guitar in corner, strings all broken.

Finger un-ringed, she’s curled up crying.

As she sobs…he sleeps on couch.

She welcomes pain of cramps, thankfully.

Fan finally arrives, broken, in October.

In-laws come, go, we survived. Barely.

Too hungry to cook. Take-out again?

“Good morning, love.” “Who are you?”

Asleep; it costs too much to eat.

“I only lie when it’s important.”

I want to be anywhere but here.

Most people who have tried this exercise say it's easier to write the sad ones; I agree. The trick is getting the six words to tell an entire story, beginning, middle and end. It's too easy to write a simple description, or to write what could be the first sentence of a book.

And before you ask, some of them are true, some are true but embellished, and some are entirely imagined. Which? I leave that up to you.

The Return

The holiday festivemaking has been made, and no one could think of any good reason not to go back to work, and so back to work we went today. I don't think you could find a more dejected-looking group of privilieged Westerners than myself and my subway mates as we clanked our way across the Williamsburg Bridge into Manhattan today. I even forewent coffee in order to wallow in my more perfect misery. That, and the line was too long.

Anyhow, I was greeted with the Kenyan electoral crisis. We think we have a problem with the Democratic candidates who can't keep straight what side of the fence they're on and the Republicans who, if you added all their ages together, would be able to remember when Martin Luther's German translation of the Bible was banned and mail service began in Denmark, to name a few events of that year.

No, Kenya's electoral crisis is verily a crisis. The incumbent just somehow managed to squeak out 230 000 more votes than the opposition, who was running significantly ahead in all the pre-election polls. And just somehow, the body overseeing the election can't get their hands on the original stack of ballots, before someone just managed to alter 300 000 of them in the incumbent's favor. Now, understandably, people are mad. What do Kenyans do when they're mad? The same thing that Southerners do: go out and shoot somebody.

Well, it's not quite that simple. But the long and the short of it is, there's major violence and unrest in Kenya, and my students were supposed to have arrived there today. They are not. We've delayed their arrival until things settle down, or transferred them to other locations, as they wish.

Our onsite coordinator says things are already settling down, which is in contradiction to every media story I've read so far. But today, more than anything, what has struck me is a passage I remember from John Gunther's Death Be Not Proud: that the media generally reports on anything out of the ordinary. Rather than brood on the destruction and despair in the news, we should instead rejoice that our society still considers death of human beings an anomaly. It's when death becomes so banal that it is not reported in the media that we should become worried.

And we must calmly go about our business, with the thoughts of the Kenyan families in our heads, the ones that traveled great distances to vote, only to see their election stolen and their children burnt in church. I can't believe that this is the same country that I dreamed of visiting only a few months ago.

Wish List

There was a request to move that last post further down the page into oblivion, and so I am gracing you with my Christmas wish list.

Here is the list of wishes I sent my family:

• Yoga ball to replace office chair at work
• Yoga tops
• Yoga pants
• Silver watch
• BBC's Planet Earth DVD
• Books!
• White hoodie

Here's what I would actually like for Christmas

• My loose tooth fixed for good (boo to no dental insurance!)
• Sheets that actually fit our bed and match (can't ask my family for sheets for a full bed, as that would remind them (gasp!) we're not actually married!)
• Someone to take me makeup shopping and buy me stuff that actually works for me and show me how to put it on
• A bike, and to be able to ride it again without fear of it getting stolen or me getting hurt
• To be able to reduce the amount of stuff in my life, without actually having to get rid of any of my treasured possessions
• A really good night's sleep, or twelve
• Better eyesight without glasses or contacts
• A reason, a budget and a workspace to get out my sewing machine again and go to town
• An exchange rate in favor of the dollar, so I could travel more
  

Sometimes I Wonder

Originally written a few months ago.

Sometimes I wonder just what I am doing here. Not here in New York, which I've already discussed many times, but just here in general, at the point in life where I find myself.

We had a fight last weekend. General crankiness, wanting to finish Harry Potter, toothpaste and disagreement about coffee tables were involved.

From a distance of several days, none of those things seem very important now. I haven't learned to choose my battles, that's for sure. Nevertheless, during a fight, each new topic adds fresh rancor and resentment, at least the way I have been taught to fight.

Why is it so impossible to let go, to realize in the very moment that things are not as important as they seem? For several months I justified telling my boyfriend each time he did something I disliked, and exactly why it hurt me, by saying that at least I got it out in the open. Usually this backfired when he continued to do the same as always, which I interpreted as not giving a crap for my feelings. More recently, I realized it was rather a passive way to "improve" another person, to change him into the shape I thought a person should take.

At one point, I did swallow my pride and try to apologize, only to be pushed away. Perhaps we haven't learned exactly what pushes our buttons, when to step down and when to hold tight. There was more than one point this weekend when I thought, "Is this really worth it?"

But no matter whom I'm with, I'll still be struggling with the same tendency to resentment, the same loaded jabs, the same bitterness. I'm worried that as we have bigger things to fight about, our fights will get bigger, too.

Instead of trying to change the other person, how many years together does it take to change one's own personality?

It makes you pretty

I learned today that it takes exactly 22 "glurb glurb glurb"s from the water cooler to fill up my water bottle.

Well, that would be 22 individual glurbs, not 22 triple glurbs, which would come out to 66 glurbs altogether. But I was afraid if I just wrote one single glurb, you wouldn't know what I was talking about.

Then again, you probably still don't.

:(

I've been so depressed lately.

Not in a "are you supposed to slit your wrists across-wise or up-wise?" way, but motionless, energy-less, and bleary-like. I don't think it's the weather, as I finally have a window in my office and get some semblance of daylight.

But I Just. Don't. Feel. Like. It. I don't want to cook (hello, pasta!) I don't want to wrap any more presents. I don't want to read a book. I definitely don't want to go to work, and I most certainly do not want to pick up one more used tissue from the floor by the opposite side of the bed! Gross!

I do, however, want to eat ice cream, chocolate chip cookie dough, surf on the internet until Godknowswhat hour, snap sarcastic remarks in the Frenchy's direction, and in general be in a strop.

Help.