I've Got the Hots for The Idiot Boksen.

I <3 Danielson.

So I decided recently I need to stop it with the TV. 

The sad thing is, we don't even have TV!

Okay, so we have Netflix Instant Play.

I think it is funny how some people seem so smugly proud of themselves when they tell other people they don't have television or cable or anything, but then add that they've completely caught up with their five favorite shows using Hulu. Seriously. Who do you think you are, anyway? It's the exact same thing. 

At least, for me, Netflix is basically television without the commercials, which means I get to watch even more with less interruptions. 

I've watched entire seasons of television shows in a couple weeks' time. I mean, that's about six months of programming finished in less than half of the time. 

I really love TV. I always have. I used to watch a lot of TV as a little kid. My parents called me EmTV (which is kind of clever and/or cute). I'd like to think I used to love TV because I loved stories, and it lead to me becoming a person who likes to spend hours of time writing extremely long novels and the like. But that would be a little too easy and convenient. Who the hell knows why I loved TV so much back then. 

One thing is for sure: I still like it. But it makes me feel like crap. 

So it doesn't always make me feel like crap. And it doesn't always make me feel like crap right away. Forty minutes of television watching is fine. It's great background noise while I'm correcting student work, or checking my email. Or basically anything; it's just great background noise. Not as great as music, but whatever. In normal doses, television does some good. 

But I am a little freaked out by how I use television.

It's different than watching a movie with someone. When I watch television by myself, it usually serves a slightly different purpose. Kind of like drinking by myself. Or dancing with myself. Okay, maybe not the last one.

Maybe this is a little bit morbid and sad, but what the hell: the first thing Jeff and I did after we put Bella to sleep was watch TV. We cried for a while, and then we were like: "Now what? Hm. Netflix."And it wasn't that we were callous, and it wasn't that we had gotten over it. I still haven't gotten over it. But Netflix was something to distract us from thinking about what just happened. It was easier to just not think about it, or anything else. 

When I was in grad school, it was the same thing. If I was feeling miserable and unhappy (which was probably about 80% of my experience at grad school), I'd drink. All right, just kidding, most of the time I'd just watch television. It was a way to avoid papers, work, the world, all of that stuff. Nothing on that screen was real. Even the news was kind of fake. There's a couple degrees of separation: the actors/people, into the camera, onto film, into electrical signals, into little fragments of light and patterns on a square panel in my living room. (Did you all like "Emma's highly scientific explanation of how televisions work"?) 

I don't think anybody likes TV because it's "real" or "raw." It's an escape from everything that is real.

But like all substance abuse, once the initial pleasure is over, it makes me feel like crap. Especially if I choose to watch the wrong sort of thing. I watched the first two seasons of Veronica Mars last fall, and it did not make my life one ounce better for it. It actually left me feeling inexplicably like: "WTF..." in kind of a let-down sort of way. Recently I've been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Maybe that has added a little more than an ounce to my life, but it is not something that I feel elevates it at all. 

Fluffy TV is fine. This isn't anything against fluff. A friend told Jeff and I we were watching way too many "heavy" shows, and suggested we started watching Chuck, and I was just like: "Imma let you finish, but Mad Men and the Tudors are some of the greatest television shows of all time!" ... Which is true. But those shows make me feel like crap for a different  reason: they're effing depressing! After watching Anne Bolelyn's execution, we decided we needed to lighten things up a bit.

So I've decided to add to my 2011 Revolutions: No Alone-Time TV. 

I don't know if I can do it, but I'm going to try.

Because you know what: television, when it comes down to it, is a real time waster. And when I add up the numbers of hours I spend watching these shows, and then also consider the amount of time I feel like crap while I am watching, it's pretty clear I am wasting my life by filling it with something that doesn't matter. 

And I think my life is already a little crowded by things that don't matter already, just due to the complicated nature of modern American Life. Why add to it? 

Last Month was a Terrible Month.

Hello Everyone.

So I have been on an unofficial hiatus for a week. So much for New Year's Resolutions...

Last week was horrible. In case you haven't noticed, I have deleted the previous post about adopting another dog because Jeff and I no longer have this dog. We decided to give her back to the rescue.

It wasn't because she was a bad dog, or because she had done anything wrong. In fact, for the first three days, everything went well. But in the back of my mind I was worried because she is a mutt... as in part something like a dalmation, part pit-bull, and our condo association has a no pit-bull policy. But we asked a few people, and decided this didn't apply to her because she was a mixed breed.

But as soon as I took her out last Monday morning, my next door neighbor started yelling at me for having her as a pet because of her breed, telling me he wouldn't live next door to a pit bull, among other things. He also told another neighbor that if he ever saw her off her leash, he'd call the police on us.

Jeff went over and smoothed things over with him, and he said he was "fine" with us having this dog, but the damage was already done: I cannot stand the possibility that I might upset or offend someone. It was an unfair characterization of her: Lacey was the sweetest dog without the least hint of aggression towards anyone or anything. But it really bothered me that my dog could do nothing and yet make people that angry with me. Angry enough to yell and threaten me. I became anxious whenever I took her out because I was convinced someone would interpret her actions as somehow hostile or uncontrollable, even if she just really wanted to meet them, wagging her tail and jumping around. I didn't want to take her for walks, and I worried about coming across other people in the future who would be afraid of her.

Yeah, I'm a neurotic and anxious person. And being in a neurotic and anxious state is not good if you are trying to train and take care of a young dog. So we decided to give her back to the rescue for all of our sakes. It was very sad, and I am still very sad about it.

So, add that to the other stuff that's happened this past month, it it becomes pretty clear that the past 30 days have been very shitty.

Maybe I should re-do this resolution thing and start from scratch here. Over the weekend, I've felt so unhappy and so miserable and discouraged. I felt defeated. I still feel defeated. I feel like I failed. In case you haven't noticed, I am very hard on myself.

But this has to stop. It is warped and messed up, really. First of all, it is just damaging to me. And second of all, it's calling God a liar. Holding things against myself and being angry with myself, sometimes border of self-loathing is pretty much telling God that his decision to value each person individually isn't good enough, or true. At least, this is what people have told me.

New beginnings are a good thing. The day after we gave the dog back, my sister, brother in law, and almost-one-year old nephew came to visit, and I am glad they did. My nephew always brings such joy and happiness everywhere he goes. He's a happy little guy. Almost the entire day, we were laughing at the funny and cute things he would do. I think the reason why babies bring that kind of happiness with them is because they represent a new start, a new life just beginning. They are fresh and new, and everything is fresh and new to them.

That's how I want things to be again: fresh and new.

This is the beginning of a new month. January was a let-down. It was stressful. It was heartbreaking. It was miserable. But it is over now. I'm going to start my new year now. It is new again, and everything is starting over.

Plus, Valentine's Day is coming up. And for me, that makes February infinitely better than January, even though Valentine's Day was made up by greeting card companies to make other people feel like crap.

Categories: I Cry Over Dying Dolphins, and I Choose to Swat Mosquitoes.

This Guy Really Hearts Flipper! Yeah! Yeah!

So last night my husband and I finally watched The Cove. I didn't want to watch it for a while, so I kept putting it off. It wasn't because I was afraid it would affect my inclination to eat sushi with my sake, and it wasn't because I hate documentaries. It was mainly because I knew it would make me cry. And it did, so I was right. But sometimes you just can't put off crying-and-watching-a-movie forever. It just had to happen. 

It was kind of your typical moral-type documentary that seems to be pretty in these days. But, like Food Inc., I supported this team's moral agenda. I've always been a little creeped out and grossed out by Sea World, and the idea of training wild animals for our entertainment. More recently, while reading up on that Sea World worker getting mauled to death by a mentally unwell Killer Whale (and yes, there is such a thing as mental wellness in whales, it seems), right after a performance in front of hundreds of people, I've become even more creeped/grossed out. 

Anyhow, to be quick about it, The Cove is about this place in Taji, Japan, where a handful fisherman catch some dolphins to sell to parks such as Sea World, and then slaughter the rest. Although there seems to be a discrepancy in the official number, the documentarians claim that approximately 23,000 dolphins are slaughtered in this cove in a seven month period. It's a secretive business, because the fishermen know people would be outraged if they were made aware of this. 

This is what the cove looks like after the morning slaughter.

Part of the reason why people would be outraged is because of Flipper. It's a vicious cycle, because Flipper is the reason why this is common practice in the first place: we all love Flipper and want to see him on TV and at amusement parks, so this place in Japan has to do this, supposedly, to make some money. 

And people like to anthropomorphize animals: Flipper's...er, I mean, Mr. Dolphin, is so awesome because he's so much like a person! He talks! He can play soccer! He'll let us pet him like a dog! He'll do weird, cheesy things, like waving! Yay! 

So we get sad when we see Mr. Dolphin die, because he's our buddy. But that's what he gets for being so damn cute! 

It's pretty horrible, the whole thing. 

I'm not really going to go much further into the moral aspect of this whole thing. Enough has been written about that, and people on both sides of the fence can get kind of ridiculous about it without actually communicating with one another. 

I think a lot of this film was dedicated to convincing us dolphins aren't just fish. Dolphins are self-aware creatures: they can recognize their reflections in the mirror, they play just to play, they recognize complex signals, and they have a complex system by which they communicate (and yeah, I'm hesitating to use the word "language"; blame Noam Chomsky). But dolphins are not the only creature in the world who exhibit this sort of behavior. Primates do as well. But primates look a little more like us, so it isn't so hard for us to accept their self-awareness. Dolphins don't like like us. Well, they don't look like most humans, anyway:

(Anyone who recognizes this guy gets 10 points.)

Anyway, I think it would be difficult to watch a film like The Cove and not feel some compassion for these animals. One scene was particularly heart-wrenching: one dolphin managed to escape from the cove and tried to swim away, but it had been stabbed already, and whenever it came up for air, blood just poured out of a gaping gash its side. Eventually, it just sunk below the surface and didn't come back. 

When I watch something like that, I wonder how people can think evil does not exist. 

And then, right after I think that I wonder: why the hell don't I wonder that when I eat sushi? Or squash a bug when it's about to bite me (or already has)? Or threaten to give my cat a one-way ticket to Guam after he's been scratching at my door for an entire night?

I think there are two reasons. 

Reason One (and I know not everyone believes this): There is a difference between abusing an animal and using it as a food source. I think factory farms are disgusting, but I have the utmost respect for livestock farmers who raise their animals humanely. And yeah, I know that might not make a lot of sense to some people, but it's the conclusion to which I've come. 

But Reason Two is a little more interesting, I think: I categorize. We all categorize. I know some Vegans who think this is just plain wrong, and maybe they are right. But I would also argue they categorize as well, in different situations, perhaps. We cannot live life without separating things into groups. 

We do not value all movies the same. 

We do not value all art the same. 

We do not value all countries the same. 

We do not value all food the same. 

We do not value all music the same. 

We do not value all cultures the same. 

We do not value all animals the same. 

We do not value all people the same. 

And it has to do with connection. 

I love my mom more than I love other people's moms, because my mom has her own special #1 Mom category. I am saddened when I see a dead cat on the side of the road, but I just go "meh" when I see a dead squirrel on the side of the road. Actually, the squirrel's lucky if he even gets a "meh," to be honest. Because I put cats into the "pets" category. I feel worse about a dolphin getting speared than a tuna fish because I put dolphins into the "interacts with humans and saves them from sharks occasionally" category.  

Does this make me a bad person? I'm not sure. Is it something I can change? Not sure about that either. Maybe it goes back to the whole "humans are basically bad" kind of thing: as long as I'm a human, I'll inevitably favor some things over others just because of my connection to it, and its special category. 

Even PETA knows this, hence the Sea Kitten Campaign! 

We're So Close to Hating Everyone: Religious Bumper Sticker Edition.

So the last We're So Close to Hating Everyone talk Jeff and I had was about bumper stickers. Specifically, this one:

I understand this is not a malicious bumper sticker. There are a lot more insulting, offensive stickers out there. Those might get a blog post some time in the future. 

But I still am close to hating it.

I am close to hating it because it is silly: all of these religions already coexist. (Although, I'm not sure what the peace-sign religion is... Hippieism?) These religions all exist on the same planet, right now. There are wars being fought between some of these coexisting religions/ideologies, in fact. Yes, I know it is trying to say more than this... but more on that in a minute. 

Other people must have noticed this problem, and so they came up with another, very similar sticker:

This one, besides adding in some new symbols and gender-and-sex-stuff into the mix, also has a new word: tolerance. And this is kind of a weird and yet very popular word floating around these days. And that's my trouble with this sticker. Tolerance is not so hot. For instance, if I merely tolerated my husband's existence, I have a feeling our marriage would be considered a sham by others. Similarly, if I merely "tolerate" the existence of another religion, it sounds more like I might touch it with a six foot pole, but that's about it. 

All right, so I am definitely a weird kind of idealist: I am sarcastic, and maybe a bit cynical, and I have this kind of negative view of human nature and things, but I also have very high expectations:

These stickers are a weird idealistic but misguided message. I honestly don't think their message is asking  for this bland world of half-hearted or half-disgusted "acceptance"... but that's what is happening. 

First off: the first sticker annoys me the most, because it assumes a few things that I don't think are true:

1.) Religious people cannot put up with other religions' existence. 

2.) The many problems and arguments between people of different religions are negligible because they're basically the same underneath it all, and should just coexist.

3.) Religious differences are what cause major conflict. (Thank you Dawkins et al... Not.)  

My rebuttal to this:

1.) Me and most of the other religious people I know (Not an awesome rebuttal, but oh well). 

2.) This book. 

3.) This post. 

The second sticker is a little less annoying, but still not great: 

As we were having our little discussion, Jeff reminded me of a guy we heard speak about six or seven years ago name Greg Ganssle who said this idea of tolerance is ultimately misguided. Tolerance is not an ideal. It's kind of a sad ideal, if it is. 

Ganssle thinks it would be better if we replace "tolerance" with the word "appreciation." And I think this is a much better substitution. For sure, we will never get to a point where everyone agrees with each other. Hell, even within the same religion people can't agree with one another, hence sects and denominations. To respect someone else or something else is not necessarily to agree with them. But it is possible to disagree with someone's point of view but still respect and appreciate it. 

Yeah, I know that sounds kind of crazy in this current cultural situation where we instantly disparage any perspective that's different than our own (often with some snark). But, for instance, most of my in laws are Vegan, mainly for ethical reasons. I am not Vegan, and I do not see animals the same way they do, exactly, but I can understand why they've made this decision, and on some levels, I do agree with their reasons for choosing not to consume animal products. We'll never agree completely with each other on this subject, but I don't merely tolerate their choice and will adopt their diet when we spend time together. 

So that's why respect is a better goal than coexistence or tolerance... but maybe it doesn't look super-awesome on a sticker. 

Eff Money and Live Your Life.

Money and I are not friends, apparently.

I was poor when I was a kid, but that wasn't my fault. I guess it wasn't really my parent's fault either. We were poor, and there were a lot of kids. Okay, so the lots of kids part was their fault, for sure.

I was poor when I was in college, because almost everyone is at that point in his or her life. But I was in college for a while.

And now I'm (relatively) poor still. It's kind of stupid to say I am actually poor because I'm not. I shudder to think what life looks like for someone at the "real" poverty level looks like, because I have a hard time believing a family of four making just above 30,000/year is considered above the poverty level. That, my friends, is bullshit.

Jeff and I just haven't had much financial security, partly because even though my parents were poor, they still encouraged their kids to follow their dreams and get useless degrees. Here's the really sad thing: I have the most "practical" degree, and I studied English. It doesn't help that I studied English but want to write and have no interest in corporate malarky.

Maybe my parents also instilled in me some kind of bad attitude about money and how one might attain it as well. Because I'd rather freeze in a house heated at barely 60 degrees than work over 40 hours a week copyediting or whatever it is "successful" English graduates do (besides get lots of fancy graduate degrees).

Anyhow, yeah. $$$ + Emma = An inevitable break-up in our future.

Being an adjunct is unpredictable as far as work and cash flow go. And there really isn't a possibility that I might get this awesome raise someday.

I always say God has provided for Jeff and I, even when it looks like we're totally effed. And it's true. We haven't missed any mortgage payments, or resorted to eating the cats for dinner or anything. (I definitely had a new perspective on what it means to be really hungry when a fellow student at my undergrad said that before her family moved to America, they had a pet monkey... that they had to eat when they ran out money and food. I tell that story to my cats sometimes, but I don't think they believe me).

But, because I am a New-Englander brought up by New-Englanders, there is still that sense that you cannot spend money, ever. I think it's also because of my parents, who only recently bought themselves a new refrigerator (after having a fridge without a light on the inside for about 5 years... and the fridge was about 25 years old), and a new stove (because it was leaking gas, not because my dad had to use to hammer to open and close it... and it was about 23 years old). My brother in law calls this the Bradley-pinch, which is probably an apt description.

Today, though, my husband said we shouldn't let money (and the fear of the lack of it) paralyze us and make our lives less full. And I think he has a point.

On one hand, consumerism and the idea that buying such-and-such item will make us happier somehow, is not good. So I am not really talking about the American Dream and thinking one can define and identify oneself by what one purchases.

I'm talking more about this: So, I kind of jokingly wrote that it's my parent's fault that they had so many kids, which is true. But that was what they wanted to do, so they did it. It's not good to be irresponsible about having children; I don't think they were at all. But they were determined to make it work because they wanted to have a large family, and they weren't going to let money dictate whether or not they could do this.

There are people who would get angry at them, or think they were crazy, because there's this attitude that's like: if you are going to have six kids, you should have lots of money in the bank, stocks, savings accounts for college, etc., because that is what is expected.

My parents didn't have that kind of money, but they provided a home for us, and a wonderful home at that. They sent all their kids to college. They didn't have to take advantage of welfare (not that there's anything wrong with that; it's just my dad's pretty proud of being able to solely provide for our family), because they made it work. They didn't even land in credit card debt. My siblings and I didn't have a lot of "stuff," but we didn't realize it, because, really, that stuff doesn't matter.

I'm not making the same choices as my parents (obviously, since at my age, my mother already had 3 kids, or something), but I think their attitude about money was right:
1.) You don't need to spend money to be happy.
2.) Fuck Money and live your life. (I should clarify: my parents would never actually say #2, because they're good Christians, but that's my interpretation of it).

"My Other Comp. Teacher was French and Deaf": First Day Back at School!

So as many of you know, I teach as an adjunct instructor. Today, I started the spring semester, this time at a new community college. This college has a satellite campus in the town next to me. And my class only has only 9 people in it (it only needs 5 to run, so we're in the safe zone as far as paychecks go). I teach another section on Saturday mornings. And the pay is less.

Some of you might think this Saturday-morning-and-less-dough-thing is a raw deal. Not me.

Because this means, compared to other semesters:
1.) I have a commute that is shorter by, oh, one entire hour.
2.) I have classes that are shorter by, oh, about twenty students.

And today I already had a student tell I am much better than the instructor she had last semester, mainly because I spoke coherent English, and I am not hard of hearing.

This particular class, though, will be a bit of a challenge in that it is a basic reading class. And the real challenge there is: many of the people who adjunct at colleges never had to take a Composition course, let alone a basic reading course, because we tested out. At least, this is what I've discovered when talking to my fellow adjuncts and instructors.

And I don't blame my students as much as I blame my inability to see things where they are coming from. It's hard to figure out how to put together assignments and ask questions on the spot and consider the possibility that my students really do not know what the hell I am talking about. The sad thing is, they don't know what the hell I am talking about, but they are too embarrassed to tell me this.

That might be one of my biggest challenges as a teacher. Also: making grammar seem fun.

My thoughts on this slushy day.

My Dad still gets really bad post-Christmas let-down. I think he passed this on to his children when we were little. I remember feeling so unhappy Christmas was over; it was hard to handle. And my dad still feels this way. He was listening to Christmas music for two weeks after. My mom finally pulled the plug on that one. (She let him listen to just one more Christmas record after dinner, and then that was it).

I know most of that let-down has to do with childhood nostalgia. That happy, naive, childhood sense of wonder, excitement, bliss, completely devoid of adult troubles such as work, deadlines, responsibilities, shopping, etc.

This isn't to say being a kid is easy. I am so glad I am not a kid anymore, because it was very difficult. Adults who go on and on about how kids have it so easy: just stop. Being a kid is so hard. You are so dependent, fragile, confused, and bound by what adults say you can and cannot do. And other kids can be cruel and terrible, because they're going through the same thing. It's frustrating. Plus, you can't just go and eat a cookie whenever you want.

Today, it's "slushing" outside. And this reminds me of another reason why I would get post-Christmas let-down: Snow after December kind of sucks. I associate Valentine's Day with this kind of weather, where it's cold but not that cold, and you can't see the snowflakes falling, because it's more like rain, and when you go outside, you get soaked right through your boots and jacket. You can't build a snowman. You can make a snowball, but it's not the kind you throw at someone because it's like getting slapped with a half-frozen tomato. You can't play outside at all. And you have to eat fish-sticks for dinner. (Okay, the fish-sticks are just another random, childhood free-association with Valentine's Day for some reason).

I'm not going to bother googling this because I'm that lazy, but I'll just throw this out there: perhaps Valentine's Day was invented by New Englanders to break up the grim monotony of slushy-winter a little bit.

Me on Valentine's Day, circa 1987-ish.

I wasn't there when this happened, but about twenty-three years ago, my Mom tried to open a jar of homemade preserves on a day like today, and the whole damn thing broke in her hands and cut her up pretty bad. My sister Ingrid was home sick from school that day, and she had to go out in this kind of horrible, slushy, cold rain, to tell our neighbor, because she was only about seven or eight years old. She had a sore throat, and could barely speak as she cried and yelled for help. Our neighbor, afraid of the sight of blood, wouldn't come over. My Mom ended up having to get a lot of stitches. She wore this funny bandage cast over her hand for what seemed like months afterwards, and I remember feeling vaguely disturbed by the whole thing, despite her attempts to shield her children from the horror that is the realization that one's mother is not infallible or unbreakable. 

This is a bleak time of year. About five years ago, I read Ethan Frome. It was my first Edith Wharton, and people told me: "Oh, that's way different than her other books." Which kind of means: "Oh, that's not as good as her other books." But I didn't really have anything to compare it to, and I read it anyway. It's very good. And yes, it's way different. But it does a great job of capturing that sad, forlorn quality that's attached to New England winter. 

And yet, I won't complain too much about it. This is home, after all. I'm protective of New England's bad/weird weather. It's not like we're known for our sunny skies in summer, or temperate winters. Our only "good" season is fall, and it is probably the shortest (or, at least, seems to be the shortest...) But those people on FB who try and make me feel bad about the slush by posting their pictures of sunny skies and palm trees outside their front doors don't make me feel all that jealous. Maybe the older I get, the closer I am to becoming one of those curmudgeon-y, prideful Yankees. Or (more likely) I realize no matter where I live, there will always be a downside... At any rate, I really could not live anywhere besides New England.