this is so true.

From www.xkcd.com.  Click to enlarge.

no use for a title

Currently I'm reorganizing my bookshelf and deciding what to bring to Cambridge.  I'm getting excited about the move, mostly because having my own place is such a big step forward for me. The initial euphoria of my job is wearing off a bit, but I still like work about as much as I liked high school.  Which is to say, I'd rather be at home, but I don't dread going, the people there make me happy, and I'm learning a lot.  It's actually better than high school because there are no tests, no homework, I'm helping people, and I'm getting paid.  I really hope I can get hired in the fall at the Boston center, but if not, I'll at least make the contact with them and hope for an opening next summer.  It's a place I think I'd be happy working at for awhile.

This morning I bought tickets to the WFNX Disorientation show in September, featuring Flogging Molly, Alkaline Trio, the Kooks, Rogue Wave, and another band I don't know. I'm not a huge fan of the new Alk3 album, but I'm counting on them playing some older stuff.  If they play anything from Infirmary or Good Mourning I'll be satisfied. And Flogging Molly is just so much fun.  I'm pretty psyched about it, and now that I have some money I feel like I can afford it.  I'll see if Philip or Matt want my second ticket.  I'll bring Matt if he shows any interest and then Philip can get his own.  ^_^

The novel is coming along sloooooowly.  Changing everything to first person present is a drag.  But it is moving.  I've got some new scenes and some new insights from the fiction technique books I've been perusing.

Matt's coming to visit again a month from tomorrow (I miss him SO much!), and we're flying back to Boston together.  By then my summer work will be over and I will (hopefully) have met up with Emma at the conclusion of her cross-country bike odyssey.  I'm a little nervous about next year, finding work, settling in with roommates, and dealing with the depressing weather, but I'm alsos pretty optimistic.  I just have to keep my mind open and not get bogged down in mental sewage.  I told Bill Fash I'd stop by his lab to check out some Maya sculpture in September, and I'd like to make good on that and not lose touch with my department during my hiatus.

Well that's about it.  We're celebrating my brother's 20th today in Orange County with the Grans.  Anything that involves a free lunch and proximity to South Coast Plaza is good for me.  Next post will have politics in it, I promise.  And bear with my constant layout changes.  I'm trying to find a basic template that satisfies me and makes me want to write.

Food (in a cup?) for thought

I loved Wall-E. Like many viewers, I adored the Chaplinesque first third with its melancholy charm. The shots of the lone robot building skyscrapers out of cubes of compounded trash set a dark backdrop for the poignant revelation of the lonely android's home. For Wall-E is a collector, and his abode -- an abandoned transport unit -- is lined with junk he has salvaged from the global landfill. These curiosities: strings of Christmas lights, a Rubix cube, the enigmatic spork, and a tape of Hello Dolly, which he totes around with him while he works. This insight into Wall-E's world is touching not only because it reveals the robot's acquired human sentimentality, but also because, in a way, it softens the film's stark eco-disaster pitch. The discarded trinkets Wall-E gleans from the garbage are reborn as objects of fascination, something worth preserving. It adds a touch of empathy for the waste-ruined humans: if Wall-E can fall prey to the fruitless accumulation of 'stuff', who can blame us? But it also reminds us of why we collect in the first place. 'Stuff' has meaning. From artifice comes art, and culture. Cue Strauss here.

But I digress. This isn't really a review of the film. As we emerged into the theater lobby, the four-foot ads for popcorn and Coke popped out at us in garish moving colors. My mom commented, "It looks like the spaceship!" Indeed it did resemble an eerily accurate foreshadowing of the Axiom, the ginormous space colony where the escaping human population has been devolving for the past seven centuries. Sponsored by Buy N' Large (whose empire is so pervasive that the U.S. President serves as their Global C.E.O.), the Axiom is a floating dystopian resort where obese, bone-deficient people move about exclusively in flying individual easy chairs, equipped with holographic screens and cup holders for all their supersized liquid meals. In order for these cartoon people to return to Earth, which has once again become inhabitable, they must regain their bipedalism and their determination to live rather than merely survive. Yadda ya.

Not everyone was as wowed by the film as the most effusive reviewers, but I never expected the futuristic fable to offend anyone, except perhaps the most avid anti-environmentalist. However, this Slate piece by David Engber brings up an interesting point.

Wall-E is an innovative and visually stunning film, but the "satire" it drawsis simple-minded. It plays off the easy analogy between obesity and ecological catastrophe, pushing the notion that Western culture has sickened both our bodies and our planet with the same disease of affluence. According to this lazy logic, a fat body stands in for a distended culture: We gain weight and the Earth suffers. If only society could get off its big, fat ass and go on a diet!

But the metaphor only works if you believe familiar myths about the overweight: They're weak-willed, indolent, and stupid. Sure enough, that's how Pixar depicts the future of humanity. The people in Wall-E drink "cupcakes-in-a-cup," they never exercise, and if they happen to fall off their hovering chairs, they thrash around like babies until a robot helps them up. They watch TV all day long and can barely read.

The article continues to point out that obesity has far more to do with genetics than with actual eating and exercise behavior (though I find the degree of assertion dubious). Engber goes on to cite other examples in which the growing obesity epidemic has been linked to the growing environmental crisis. He reminds us that this connection is not so simple. Fat people may weigh down planes and increase fuel use, but the people doing the most flying are the trim business class, not the demographic raised on Big Mac. Finally, Engber suggests a political overtone to the discussion, framing urban "eco-liberals" as fretting over their less enlightened brethren in Red State U.S.A.

It is Engber's last citation that really got my attention. We get the sense that this was the piece that prompted the Slate writer to action in the first place. In a heartbreaking viewer reaction, a presumably obese woman writes a letter to Pixar denouncing the portrayal of the overweight in Wall-E. She left the theater crying.

It is horrible when you see the only bodies shaped like you as things to laugh at, as living examples of as a culture, how shoddily we treat the earth. There’s no complexity, no understanding, just an easy punchline. Why is it instantly funny to see people fall and struggle and be hurt? Worst yet, I sat there watching trying to be hopeful because at least the fat couple touched hands and smiled at each other. Unlike Wall-e and Eve, they never got to dance...

I support environmentalism. I am hurt by the same issues in consumer culture. I don’t even drive and have lived car-free for my whole adult life. I guess if you look at me that doesn’t matter.

As someone who has been weight-sensitive my entire life, I can empathize with this woman. At the same time, I cant help but feel like a perpetrator. After all, who demonstrates more prejudice against the overweight than a normal-weight girl on a diet? After finishing a double scoop instead of a single, I would fear the slightest weight gain and chastize myself as "greedy" in the same breath. In that theater, I laughed along at the bumbling, doughy cartoon bodies. Did I fail to notice the prejudice because I myself have the same deeply rooted bias?

Let's look at this anthropologically.

First let's look at Engber's argument that genetics, not lifestyle, controls obesity. This is only partially true. For example, as a demographic, Native Americans today have one of the highest rates of obesity in the country. Obviously, in addition to high poverty rates, there is some genetic factor at work here. But in the 1700s, obesity as we know it was nonexistent in Native Americans. The difference, of course, is that back then then the Indians -- like most of the world -- were living in a much more sustainable way. Fast food was a buffalo, and you had to ride like hell to catch it. Whatever genetic component it has, the truth remains, obesity is not healthy and it is not natural. Yes, we all have a set point; most of us are never going to look like Kiera Knightley. But no one's set point is 300 pounds.

Engber is right that the poorest, fattest demographics are not the ones most directly harming the planet. However, it's no coincidence that the age of obesity is the age of global warming. Obesity and pollution are each symptoms of a broader problem: over-consumption. Whether it's 99-cent cheeseburgers or $5.00 gas for the Hummer, Americans today over-consume to a degree that was never possible before. We all eat, drink, drive, fly, watch, produce, buy, discard, and use too much.

I will defend Wall-E by pointing out that in the film, the environmental crisis precedes the waistline crisis. The planet did not have to evacuate Earth because they were fat; in fact, the film makes clear that the rotund human form at the time of the story is the direct result of the 700-year stay aboard the Axiom . In other words, fat people did not kill the Earth; they were fat because their environment was restricted. The truth is, in the robot-controlled conditions in which Wall-E's people live, we would all become floating doughboys or close to it. Like animals in captivity, they changed, and though some spiritual or intellectual failings seem to accompany the physical degradation (primarily ignorance), the humans do redeem themselves. They take action. If super-fat people who can't even walk can turn around to save the world, certainly the film isn't arguing that fat people today are ruining it. Nothing in the movie blames obese people for the waste that Wall-E is cleaning up on the abandoned planet. It does suggest, however, that we are ultimately responsible for our own obesity problem, which for some may be an inconvenient truth that's hard to swallow, even in a cartoon cup.

I am so glad Fafblog is fully operational again.  

Why are there no Rainer Maria torrents for download on Mininova?

There are many petty things I really dislike in the world, and I've kept a list in my head for about a year now.  Pretty much every time I add something, I forget what all the previous items were.  So I'm trying for a minute to collect them here, and then post individual rants on each one.  

Mezzanines

Crocs

To be continued.

Summer rolls along.  I've got a solid draft of the first fifty pages of Bodies in Flight, parent approved, though the rest will be slower to edit.  I've been downloading bunches of music, both old and new, reaching back into the classic punk catalogue and the newest indie delights. Work is going very well these days.  There's a whole new crop of trained coworkers who are equally fun as the previous two.  I've bonded with several of my students and will definitely miss them in the fall.  However, I'm getting pretty excited about moving into my new place in Cambridge. Matt's already planning another visit in August, with Channel Islands camping and possibly Vegas included.

Here are some of the things that have amused me lately.

Credit Scores with Natalie

John McCain continues to be a ridiculous embarrassment

Kristol is my favorite of these

...and the living's easy

Matt spent ten days here in the thick of a glorious heat wave.  He arrived Friday night, and we spend Saturday hanging out on the patio with Sandy Owen, walking the RHE trails, and dipping our toes in the night-shrouded Pacific.  After Father's Day brunch at home on Sunday, we drove to Balboa Island for salt-water taffy and frozen bananas.  It was a brilliant blue day.  During the week, I was lucky enough to have two-hour lunches at work, of which we took full advantage.  The long summer evenings were sweet: sunset at the PV cliffs, dinner at the Red Onion, drinks and appetizers in Long Beach with Mel, and watching old Beatles episodes of the Ed Sullivan Show.  It felt so great to not have homework to do.  The last weekend, we took Highway 1 up to the Getty Villa, spent some time bumming around the cliffs past Malibu, and slept in Ventura.  The next morning we continued north to Santa Barbara, where we stopped by the Mission, the long promenade of State Street shops, and Stearns Wharf.  He left on Monday, so we're in for another long dry spell of Skype and Scrabulous.

After two weeks of actual teaching, I can say I love my job.  It's tough, but genuinely rewarding and often very fun.  I can't believe that only three months ago I was convinced I would never be able to find a job I didn't hate, and on my very first try I've scored a jackpot.  Seriously, April feels like a full nine months ago.  The life I'm living now is so much richer and more complete, and so many radical changes have unfolded since then, that the reality of the time frame seems impossible. How life's pendulum can swing from despair to ecstatic satisfaction!  Once I let go of my graduate career, and acknowledged my underlying unhappiness, I began to recover my appreciation for life.  But it wasn't until I began working that true joy began to bloom within me again in a rush of gratitude and excitement.  The blank white page of the future no longer terrifies me; it is freedom.  Life is short, and there are things to do.

Ten Things I Like About Life Right Now

1. My boyfriend is coming to visit next Friday! I'm the luckiest girl in the world.

2. Indiana Jones 4 is quite a lot of fun.  Harrison Ford just owns, period. 

3. OBAMA!  YAY!

4. My job, though tiring, is rewarding and fulfilling.  I would like to continue when I go back east.

5. I'm kind of on an LotR kick again.  It's a more hopeful fantasyland than the one I was living in before.

6.  I am no longer terrified of freeways.

7. I'm starting to lose the motivation/need to dress up every day.  I think I feel more real and whole than I did, so I don't always need to build up an existence out of makeup and accessories.

8. Coconut is delicious and good for you.

9.  The fog has lifted from my eyes, and I can see beauty again.  PV is beautiful.

10. Did I mention my boyfriend is coming? ^_^

Siva Noir

I had the pleasure of attending college with the talented and beautiful Lexi Newman.  A lover of literature and rock, the crown jewel of her Yale career was the staging of The Tempest interjected with live David Bowie songs.  She's currently the singer in an alternative outfit called Siva Noir, whose dark glam-ternative alto sound evokes Souxie and the Banshees, Concrete Blonde, and (though she would kill me if she read this) a much more talented Evanescence.  Their MySpace  features a few songs from their upcoming album, although my favorite ones, including "The Rapture," aren't available there.    It's good stuff, and Lexi is deeply cool.  On Friday, I saw Siva Noir with Cleveland's Mr. Gnome and Montreal's Bad Flirt at The Knitting Factory's Alternate Lounge.   Siva kicked serious butt, and the other bands rocked too, particularly Bad Flirt with their not-too-cutesy, punky, fuzzy girlpop. Yum.  It was only Siva Noir's third show, and you never would guess it from their polish and energy. Lexi, you are an inspiration to all of us who dream of pursuing our creative loves.  Rock on.

Matthew M: Erica, I want to congratulate you on having done so well in this prim--scrabble game.

Matthew M: We have both worked long and hard at winning the vot--points of each of the tiles, by playing them on the board.

Matthew M: I will graciously therefore accept your concession in this game, and look forward to joining forces with you against John McCain

Matthew M: You see, I have played more tiles this game, than any other candidate. I have the support of more letters of the alphabet than any other player in History!!!

Matthew M: It is UNFAIR to count letters like Z as 10, when no Democrat has won these tiles in the past 30 years, whereas I have played a majority of the "E"s that our party will depend on for victory in November

Matthew M: The point scoring system is inherently UNdemocratic, and I ask you to help me rectify this by dropping out.

Matthew M: You have run an awesome campa--game this time around, but I think you'll see that when we discount the words you played on triple word score spots (undemocratic again) and reapportion Zs and Ks to 1, that I have won

Matthew M: Thank you and GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!