Boys Aren’t Yucky Anymore

In the last few years, and maybe it’s just old age catching up with me, I’ve been changing my mind about some things I had considered hammered out in my head for good. One was my opinion on suicide; I’m not even sure why I thought I needed an opinion on suicide (it’s a little like having an opinion on murder, I mean, come on) but nevertheless at a rather young age I arrived at the conclusion that suicide was more or less a very selfish thing and only very self-absorbed people would ever bother killing themselves. Last year (and I don’t remember what prompted this change of heart; maybe one of my old high school acquaintances committed suicide or something) I rethought it in the context of euthanasia and realized that if I believe a person in immense physical pain should be able to decide when and how he or she will die (which I do) then it was very pig-headed of me to not extend the same sympathy to people in immense psychic or emotional pain. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be ravaged by cancer any more than I can imagine being plagued by severe depression, so who am I to say someone who commits suicide to escape that pain is selfish?

This is going to be a fun blog post, I can tell.

Sorry, but I’m getting to my point, I swear. It’s just that I’ve had another about-face in my entrenched thinking, and I’d like to share. Andrew Sullivan linked to this blog post by Sylvia Lucas, which asserts that the male body should be portrayed just as sexily as the female, because ladies like hot men, guys! I’m less concerned with seeing more naked people in movies, though, and more concerned about the basis of Lucas’ argument: that women are not as icked out by mens’ bodies as everyone claims; that men are beautiful and certainly deserving of visual appreciation; and that we should all stop saying how ookie dangly bits are.

I feel properly chastised because I have definitely, both jokingly and seriously, implied on occasion that male bodies are, if not gross, then at least not as attractive as female bodies. These are passing comments I’ve made, perhaps in the context of discussing bisexuality, about how most women dress better (or at least are forced to dress better or more complexly), take better care of themselves physically (for the same reasons), and are just more beautiful in all their varied shapes and sizes than men. And I sat here and thought about it for a minute after reading Lucas’ piece. Do I really believe that? Do I really think men are yuckier than women? I don’t think I actually do. And I feel more than a little chagrined at ever saying so.

I am told some ladies appreciate this one.

I am told some ladies appreciate this one.

It’s not that I believe that men need a nice pat on the head (poor men with your higher paying jobs and generally easier lives!) but I think in this instance, I owe dudes an apology. Being told your emotions need a mute button is bad enough; I shouldn’t have been reinforcing the idea that your dangly bits are stupid on top of all that. They’re not stupid. They’re just fine. Or at least, no more weird than ladies’ bodies.

Bodies are pretty cool, period. There’s a whole bunch of organs and vessels somehow working together so that we can walk! And speak! And put things up on shelves! That’s impressive all on their own. But we also manage to have skin that’s soft instead of scales, and hands that are clever instead of hoofs, and hair that smells nice as long as you wash it once in awhile instead of fur, which always smells terrible, I don’t care how much you brush your dog, it stinks, sorry.

So yay for human bodies. And men, maybe your form will make a comeback soon. The Greek ideal was male, if I recall. Maybe we can share the ideal in the next aesthetic era. That would be nice. The pedestal is plenty big enough.

Hello 2012

A busy end of 2011 means I didn’t get as much reading done as I’d like, so no new books to share. Actually, since I put a bunch of PDF’s of friends’ writings on my Nook, not a lot of reading of published material will be done in quite awhile. That’s all right, lots of others things happening!

I just bought this dress, which I love:

I thought this video of an impromtu jam session on the subway was charming:

I would watch the hell out of this mashup. And if you haven’t started watching BBC’s Sherlock, oh my god, get on that. Season 1 is on Netflix.

Review: Zone One by Colson Whitehead

Do you like zombies? Do you like reading? Well, have I got a book for you.

Zone One

Zone One is one of those eagerly anticipated books that even a horse-blinders reader like me hears about before it hits shelves. I try to ignore advance chatter about books because they tend to really color the experience, but them’s the breaks. Before I get into that, whether you love or hate the “novelty” of a literary writer taking on a “genre” subject, let’s get a few things straight.

1. Colson Whitehead can write.
2. Colson Whitehead can fucking write.
3. Fuck, can this guy write.

I mean, I don’t think anyone can dispute that. Ninety-nine percent of the time spent reading this novel is spent in a state of intense shame that you, the reader, can’t possibly use words the way they’re being used here. It’s delicious. It tastes like cumin. I don’t even know what I’m saying.

Back the The Drama of this book, which seems to divide readers almost evenly into two camps: those who dig the fact that Whitehead wrote a zombie novel, and those who are gnashing their not-undead teeth over it. Oversimplified, this seems to turn into a literary versus genre war. At least, that’s how the New York Times review seems to take it.

Here’s the problem with these kinds of dichotomies: they don’t work. You can’t say a book should be either genre lit or lit lit. (See: Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, The Road, The Handmaid’s Tale, for god’s sake, Frankenstein, The Time Machine, Slaughterhouse 5!) What I think people who dislike the whole idea of a zombie-lit novel are trying to say is “Zombies are so mainstream right now, ugh, how sell-outty” which is pretty valid. But don’t act like you’re super disappointed to find some horror in your lit soup; you sound like a snobby twit when you flag down the waiter for that.

So does Whitehead do something new and unexpected with the traditional zombie story? There are elements that I haven’t seen before in the (do we have to call it this?) genre: the near-stream of consciousness point of view, the nonlinear outlining of events, the disjointed, post-traumatic mood, and the seeming focus on restoration as opposed to mere survival. But underneath all that, which is fancy-good, the story hews closely to the very first kinds of zombie stories in that it offers no hope or solace to the audience. Hell yes, says I. As it should be. I suspect this won’t be a popular decision among those who were hoping for a different kind of zombie story (or wished it wasn’t a zombie story at all) but those folks would probably be better off reading something else anyway.

I Don’t Need To Be Skinny, I Need To Be Strong

I’m done weighing myself, journaling my meals, and counting calories. I finally found what works for me: swimming a lot, when ever I can, as fast as I can, as long as I can.

I’ve lost a lot of poundage and inches but that’s not what I’m interested in anymore. I know that’s why I joined the pool and got back into swimming, and I’m glad it motivated me. But my first goal, fitting back into my slacks, has been met. And being thin isn’t going to get me around Governor’s Island in 2012.

I’m up to a mile in around 35 minutes without stopping. Now I just have to double that distance.

Here is some motivational picspam for myself, but you might enjoy it too!

Book Review: Super Sad True Love Story

Do you love being sad? How about being super sad? How about being super sad in a futuristic world where you can easily feel superior to everyone?

Then, boy howdy, do I got a book for you.

Super Sad True Love Story

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart was described to me as a dystopian New York adventure filled with lots of wry humor. I don’t think a person told me this, I think it was a description on B&N.com. Whatever. I picked it up for book club and had a very hard time getting through it. And the more I think about it, the less I enjoyed the book.

I’m not really mad about following around a sad-sack, pathetic main character who can’t seem to get his shit together; that’s fine. I’m not even angry about the “annoyingly beautiful but otherwise bereft of any good qualities” leading lady. I’m more peeved about the world-building, and how the future is just a ham-fisted attempt at–I’m not even sure here–garnering my sympathy? Trying to scare me into buying more books? Goading me to shake my finger at the younger generation?

In this Super Sad future, society looks a lot like our current world: everyone wants to be young, people are increasingly reliant on new technology, and the global economy is on the verge of collapse. Actually, it’s exactly like our world, and sad-sack Lenny is exactly like any number of hard-working losers bemoaning the fact that he can’t land a hot girlfriend. And then he does, somehow (money), and they fall in love (?) somehow, and the city sort of riots, but then hot girlfriend leaves him, and oh yeah, Lenny likes to read and collect books and nobody does that anymore, and don’t you hate this scary future that’s soooooo much like the present day!? You read books, don’t you, reader? You’re reading one right now! You must feel the visceral fear of this beautiful hobby going out of fashion, right? Don’t you HATE these little apparats everyone uses in the future, and isn’t it just like today’s iPhones? Aren’t kids today stupid! Get off my lawn!!!

Here’s my problem with all this: Gary just can’t seem to help himself. He says this world is one way and then he proves himself wrong. He says nobody reads or writes anymore in this future, but leading lady Eunice e-mails pages and pages at a time to her best friend and vice versa. Their correspondance is sprinkled with misspellings and ill-used colloquialisms, I assume to show us how terrible these women are at writing and communicating their thoughts, but those passages were some of the only times I didn’t want to strangle a character for being such a dink. So is Gary being ironic in his world-building, or what? Either way I found the story grating and (haha!) found myself skimming when I should have been paying more attention.

Was the whole thing just an exercise in self-fulfilling prophecy? WHO KNOWS, but I certainly don’t care.

Well, who’s going to collect the garbage?

TopatoCo- Not All Dreams T-ShirtI liked Steve Jobs, and I want to make that clear. I’ve always been bi-operating system-sexual (mixing Mac products with Android like a champ) and I was always wary of subscribing to one person’s or company’s vision, but Steve Jobs seemed like a cool dude. And now that he’s gone, it’s clear he’s inspired a lot of people.

It’s natural and good to remember a public figure like him in terms of his inspirational messages. Steve Jobs was an excellent speaker and we have no shortage of insightful, pithy quotes from him on all kinds of subjects. I’m seeing a lot of shares and retweets of his Stanford commencement speech, easily one of the better “follow your dreams” speeches we have on video. And seeing this video pop up again, along with all of Steve Jobs’ bits of wisdom, dovetails with other things I’ve been listening to lately.

The political talks about the economy and our education system all seem to be striving for a goal of allowing everyone to be prosperous and well-employed and happy. I can’t count how many business books and self-help books are out there that boil down to “do what you love.” The Wall Street protesters’ demands seem to seek to level the financial playing field for the majority of Americans. But I’m trying to envision a world where everyone receives the same high standard of education, everyone has the opportunity and the means to pursue whatever career they choose, and everyone makes a career out of doing what they love. I’m envisioning a lot of actors, singers, sports players, novelists, inventors, political leaders, and ice cream taste testers, but not a lot of construction workers, sanitation workers, secretaries, and dry cleaners.

I’m all for aiming high on a personal and national level, but not everyone can be Steve Jobs. He was an incredibly skilled man but he was also very, very lucky. The story of his life (and the story of the computer industry in America in general) is the stuff Oscar-winning films are made of; there are so many twists and turns and what-ifs and if-onlys that it’s a miracle I’m not writing this on an IBM dot-matrix typewriter. I’m just thinking, maybe it’s dangerous to be telling ourselves that we all should strive to attain the kind of professional success and dream-fulfillment that only a few people ever get to experience.

I remember being told as a child (and this story was probably exaggerated by whoever told me; a grandparent, maybe?) that everyone in Japan, even the garbage men, took extreme pride in their work. And that was how Japan prospered so greatly (this was the ’90s): every citizen was doing the best job they could no matter what it was. I doubt the validity of that; surely there must have been SOME slackers, but even so, every country needs a garbage man. Every infrastructure needs people to do jobs that no one grew up dreaming of doing. Is there anything really wrong with doing a job and doing it well even if it’s not what you dream of doing for a living? Isn’t it kind of all right to acknowledge that your dream job might be too competitive, or require a level of skill you may never attain, or in actuality not be very dreamy after all?

A lot of people are quoting the part of the Steve Jobs commencement speech where he compares your work with your lover, and he says you shouldn’t settle for anything less than true love in both cases. I fear a lot of people interpret this advice in a self-destructive way. I think about the people who are waiting to find The One their whole lives. And I wonder what they plan on doing if they never see those fireworks or hear those bells ringing.

I love my job, even though it’s not the job I dreamed of having. (Well-paid world-traveling crime-fighting novelist positions are hard to come by.) I love my boyfriend, even though I had a different picture in my head of who I’d end up with. (Portia is, of course, already taken.) I’m not living the dream, or maybe the dream has changed. But I don’t need to be an astronaut anymore. I’m okay here on the ground.

Image from this sweet tee shirt.

Bite-Sized Book Reviews

Three drive-by reviews on some summer reads!

Footsteps in the DarkFootsteps in the Dark by Georgette Heyer

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Have you read a mystery novel in the last 40 years or seen a mystery movie/TV show? Then you will probably be WAY ahead of the characters in this old-school whodunit/whatsgoingon.


The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #1)The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A sweet, funny book but a little too Lifetime Movie for me.


Midnight in the Garden of Good and EvilMidnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Excellent, riveting look at ’80s Savannah. Makes you want to hop on a plane to GA, and makes you wonder how the hell the author managed to make friends with so many crazy folks.


Diving into the Fast Lane

My personal fitness and nutrition plan is going swimmingly! Get it!!?? I–that is to say–oh, dear. Never mind.

This week marks Week 2 of my slightly pathetic training regimen. I say pathetic because I’m slowly working my way up to swimming 1 mile in one sitting, whereas when I was a scrapping young lass I used to be able to swim 5 or perhaps 10 miles in a single workout. But age comes to us all, and starting over is a humbling and excellent experience. I keep reminding myself that it’s never too late to reinvent yourself; that I can start calling myself a swimmer or jogger or marathon runner or triathlete if I do the work, no matter how old I get. I am honestly scared of the minute when I look around and say, that’s it, that’s all I’m going to do, from this point onward nothing changes. I would rather not get to that point.

The University of Houston was kind enough to give these workout cards to my brother to scan and upload for me. It’s not too shabby!

week_1 Week Two also finds me in the second week of keeping a Fitness Diary. This is the first time since I was 9 I’ve kept an actual pen-and-paper diary, not just a blog. I think the act of actually writing down what I’ve eaten that day, how I feel, and what my exercise was like really makes me own it. And since I have to carry it with me everywhere, I can’t avoid it.

I’m not saying I made some slip-ups (Dominos when I got a cold this weekend because I was too lazy to make my own meals) but at least I have a record where I can go back and do some budgeting. I’m sure next month will be easier, and so on.

I’m just happy that I did something this week I’ve been very nervous about doing: getting into the fast lane at the pool. It’s exhilarating and scary to be in a lane with really, really good swimmers, but how else am I going to keep pushing myself to do my best? Swimming isn’t like other sports or workouts where everyone can sort of train on their own and do their own thing. Your workout is so intrinsically tied to those around you, like traffic. You can’t make a move without being aware of what the people in front of you and behind you are doing. Unless you like banging heads. It’s a weird kind of intimacy that I’ve almost forgotten about. I feel a lot of affection for the people in my pool, even though I haven’t met them properly or learned their names.

Book Review: The Sisters Brothers

Do you love Coen Brothers films? Do you have a dark sense of humor and a strange love of the Old West? Did you laugh during most of Reservoir Dogs? Then have I got a book for you!

The Sisters Brothers

The Sisters Brothers is my favorite book club pick so far. I LOVED this book. It’s the kind of book I would read again, and with my TBR pile, I very, very rarely do a reread. The book is narrated by Eli Sisters, one of the two feared Sisters Brothers. He and his brother Charlie are hired guns, riding from job to job and shooting whoever they gotta shoot to make the boss happy. I wasn’t expecting to like this book; the Western genre was, I assumed, in decline. Though I loved Louis L’Amour books as a kid, in the last few decades Westerns have become less and less popular.

I took an excellent class in undergrad called Genre Lit, where every week we read a different kind of genre: sci-fi, fantasy, etc. The Western genre was difficult because there was so little study being done on it. The professor had even decided at the end of the class that he would have to drop Western week in favor of something more prolific and burgeoning. (I suggested fanfiction. Man, I would have loved to audit THAT week of class.)

Anyway, going into The Sisters Brothers, I assumed it was just going to be a weird, modern rehash of the old Western stories. But I was wrong. It was really strange, violent, creepy, and sad-making. I really liked Eli and his brother, even though they were cold-blooded murderers. They were funny and silly and sometimes pathetic in a way that inspired great sympathy. They also clearly cared about each other in a way that reminded me a lot of Supernatural (which has done a Western episode as well, since so many people drew parallels between the characters’ lives and that of gunslingers), but their relationship was complicated enough to be truly believable.

There was a huge dollop of magical realism tossed in as well, making it seem like one long, surreal Coen Brothers flick: something bizarre happens, then something absurdly violent, then something even weirder, and then onto the next strange thing. It was very satisfying even though the characters themselves experienced a lot of “one step forward, two steps back” in their journey.

Highly recommended.

Getting Back in the Pool

I’ve been thinking of changing up my fitness and nutrition routine, because my half-assed attempts to spend an hour at Planet Fitness three times a week have gotten pretty pathetic. At first I was doing really well, but the long walk to and from the only gym in my neighborhood (compounded by this summer’s 90+ degree heat) and my own laziness have kept me from really pushing myself.

I used to swim competitively when I was a kid, and even though I wasn’t the best or the fastest, I liked it well enough, and I had pretty decent form. And I was in the best shape of my life when I swam five days a week. Here’s a photo my mom e-mailed me the other day in one of those “going through old photos and, oh my, look how tan you used to be” moments that moms sometimes have. I guess I was about fourteen or fifteen here.

Aug10&02

It’s recently come to my attention that I’m not as young as I used to be. I can’t eat fried cheese and sugar cakes by the pound without a care in the world; my metabolism isn’t bordering on dark magic any longer. I can’t stay up all night and then get up the next morning ready to party some more; I need to be in bed by midnight. My hair is going grey. And not in a cool streak like I hoped, but annoyingly, scattered salt-and-pepper style.

So while I was thinking about all these things, I remembered how swimming made me feel: tired, hungry, worn out, sure. But also fit and fiddle-like. And I want to feel that way again. Maybe I’m grasping at nostalgia straws and trying to recapture my teenage years by revisiting my old sport, but who cares? If it makes me happy and allows me to eat a teeny tiny sugar cake once in awhile, then I’m all for it.

This spring, as usual after watching a Hoarders marathon, my roommate and I went through our rooms and tossed a lot of clothes and shoes we didn’t wear anymore. He unearthed my old racing suit from my closet and held it up as if to say, “Well, this is a useless piece of junk that you clearly haven’t worn in years so we must dump it, y/y?”

But I had been saving it with this vague idea that one day I’d have enough money/time/drive/luck to join a pool and start training again. Roommate chortled a little and, once he’d calmed down, said, “Oh. You’re serious.”

And I was. I kept the suit, which I still fit into (barely). And now’s the time. I have the money/time/drive/luck, and I have it all in droves, and if I don’t have enough of one, I’ll goddamn MAKE some more. Next week as soon as my jury duty service is over (please don’t let me get a murder case, please don’t let me get a murder case) I will cancel my Planet Fitness membership, join the Chelsea Rec Center, which has a beautiful pool that they kindly let me visit today, order some new Swedes from Amazon, and start doing laps during my lunch break, which my infinitely cool boss was infinitely cool with letting me do. And once I build up to the point where a 45-minute swim isn’t enough, I’ll start going before work, and after work, and any time I can, because I have a crazy ass goal in mind.

I want to swim around Governor’s Island by this time next year. How stupid crazy is that! I freakin’ love it! Finally, I have a goal besides “become as ripped as Uhura in Star Trek” which is not only impossible but also super vague.

I guess I just wanted to blog about it because I’m really excited. I hope y’all don’t mind. And I hope Ryan, whose Planet Fitness mayorship I just stole, can regain his rightful title quickly.