Girls, girls, girls

My thoughts are pretty chaotic right now, which is making it hard to write a pithy blog post. But I want to share some of the things that have been kicking around the last couple of days, and they do all seem to hit on a common theme.

1) At work right now they’re in the middle of interviews to fill a vacancy. After the hiring committee meets with the candidates, the rest of us staff have been meeting with the prospectives in a less formal, less interview-like session. Yesterday it hit me: the hiring committee is all men, and the staff at the get-to-know-you meeting are all women. It’s bad enough that I’m the first female in the 33-year history of the place to sit on the Editorial Board, and these job candidates are getting the same message on their first visit: men in power, women in supporting roles. Depressing.

2) The sudden upsurge in new babies (my new niece, Frantix’s recent arrival) and the “On Balance” blog at the Washington Post have me thinking about breastfeeding. (I’m not linking to “On Balance”, by the way, because I think it’s actually very lame; you can track it down yourself if you’re really interested.) I am truly appalled sometimes at the virulent militancy of pro-breastfeeding people. Let women make their own damn choices, all right? Formula isn’t paint thinner, for pity’s sake. And making specious arguments about cow’s milk not being meant for people, or implying that women who feed formula aren’t good mothers because they’re not sacrificing enough of themselves, is the exact kind of irrational nonsense that traps women in the same old stereotypes. Stop with the crazy talk and give me something reasonable we can discuss.

3) Along the same lines, the recent debates about working mothers (just Google “Linda Hirschman”) never ceases to amaze me. Reading anything written by Caitlin Flanagan or Sandra Tsing-Loh in the Atlantic makes me want to tear my hair out, they’re so righteous and so fond of ad hominem. Has anyone else ever noticed that this debate in particular seems to demand that every participant hold up her own life for scrutiny? Do we ask politicians to have opinions only on matters with personal relevance? (On the other side of that coin, it never fails to irritate me when a politician takes up a cause only after being affected by it personally. To quote Meadow Soprano, “Self-involved much?”) Is it so implausible to think that we could discuss the truly difficult issue of balancing work and the rest of one’s life in a rational and less personal manner? Besides, I wonder whether the working-mother question is more of an economic issue than a social one. Health care in the U.S. is almost entirely dependent on full-time employment, which means that in a domestic partnership you need to have at least one person working those 40 hours per week. If we could sever health care from employment, you could have each partner working 50%, or 75%, and strike a balance between work and family that fits your needs exactly. Never mind that revamping health care in the U.S. is probably harder than colonizing Jupiter.

The only thing I can conclude from all this is that I’m in dire need of a vacation. Fortunately, I have one coming up next week. Pundit fatigue is setting in...

Aunt Snorklewacker and Uncle Swami

As of 10:30 this morning, I’m an aunt for the first time on the in-law side! Welcome to Earth, As-Yet-Unnamed-Girl. You know, it’s Elvis Costello’s birthday today, too. There are so many naming possibilities that take advantage of that fact: Alison, Juliet, Georgie (although she hated her name), Betty, Tokyo, Giant Insect Mutation—the last one has the added bonus that the proud parents can name their second kid Bug Attack. I dare you to tell me that’s not a brilliant idea.

Cilantro-Lime Rice

Last night was Homemade Burrito Nite, which is an extravaganza of burrito-making that results in three delectable dinners’ worth of burritos. And the key to success? Cilantro-lime rice. Cook your rice, and when it’s done, mix in some fresh-squeezed lime juice and a fistful of chopped fresh cilantro. Mmmmmm. I know that there are strange people out there who hate cilantro, but you all require counseling.

This discussion of rice reminds me, Raoul now has a blog! Welcome to the Intarnets, Kaskasero. And why do you hate America, anyway? The economy is collapsing without your shopaholism!

Book review: Just a Geek by Wil Wheaton

This review will address two themes: ST geekery, and a more sober discussion of life and adulthood and all of that self-reflection schmack.

First, some geekery. I must begin with full disclosure: I am a huge Trek fan, and have been since I was 8 or 9 years old (I was always Captain Kirk in the role-playing I did with my friends—yes, even at that tender age I was domineering). In fact, I recently unearthed a calendar from 1984 among my possessions where I had written in which TOS episode aired each day. Now that’s some good blackmail material.

When TNG started up, though, I was going through a phase of Geek Denial and didn’t watch it. Actually, I’m not sure I even knew it was on; 1987–88 was a particularly crappy time in my life. It wasn’t until the fourth season that, under the influence of roommate Marc, I started watching ST again. It’s probably for the best that it happened that way anyway, considering that the first two seasons were fairly awful, and seasons 3 and 4 were excellent. Anyway, let’s just say that I am now and shall always be deeply in love with TNG. I think it’s the best ST series by far. Some obscure cable channel has been re-running them lately, and I find it damn near impossible to keep from watching them every night. (One of the greatest hours of TV ever was on the other night, in fact, when they showed “Family.”)

Despite all the love, though, I thought (and pretty much still think) that Wesley Crusher was the biggest L0ser in the known galaxy and I always thought his character was completely lame. (I shall not weigh in with my opinion of his eventual fate, except to roll my eyes.) Steve and I nicknamed him “The Weasel,” and lo there was much mockery. Things remained in this state for the entire decade of the 1990s and the early years of the 2000s.

Then, a few years ago I discovered Wil Wheaton’s blog. I don’t remember how I found it, or what I expected, but I ended up spending a fair amount of time poking around. I do recall the first realization that struck me: he and I are about the same age. Since I had watched the early TNG episodes only in reruns, I always assumed I was older. We also have both played a hell of a lot of Nethack. Other than that, I noticed his writing style was engaging, and he wrote pretty openly about his family and whatever was going on in his life. He seemed like a real person, rather than some 2D, glossy celebrity. The fact that he had his own presence on the Web, all done himself, was cool. And the site was damn popular—every post had comments numbering in the dozens at least, so clearly the dude was writing something interesting. Then it dawned on me: Wesley Crusher might not be cool, but it was distinctly possible that Wil Wheaton could be cool. They were, like, orthogonal and shit.

So last Christmas I found myself asking for Just a Geek, which he was plugging on his site, and so I got it. Fast forward to last month, when I finally took it off my huge stack of planned reading and cracked the cover.

Suffice to say, I devoured the whole thing in a few sittings. If I had to sum it up, I’d say that it’s a narrative of Wheaton’s struggle to come to terms with his past as Wesley Crusher. Somehow over the course of his time on TNG, he went from successful child actor to starving adult actor, and at the same time he suffered a fair amount of rejection from people at Paramount and the convention circuit as they treated him far worse than the other regular cast of the show, even after the series ended and everyone could be considered former cast members (Wheaton had left partway through season 4).

But the message is larger than that. When Wheaton hits his late 20s and early 30s, life gets pretty nasty and complicated as he has to confront the fact that acting might not ever pay the bills again. I think many people can identify with this arc, since I think for many of us our career path, determined by choices made in college or grad school, will at some point naturally start to reach a lull (or smack into what turns out to be a brick wall). So Wheaton’s struggle to confront this, and his eventual success in overcoming everything that was holding him back, is engaging reading and inspiring to those of us trying to avoid the same traps. Even though this isn’t All About Me, I would also humbly point out that his own blogging and book-writing have provided some of the impetus for me to get off my ass and finally create this blog.

All of this, plus a few hilarious anecdotes about TNG and some warm recollections about his fellow cast members, made this book a very satisfying read. In terms of design, I thought O’Reilly did a good job even though it’s not their usual fare. I especially dug the sans-serif typeface they used for Wheaton’s quoted blog entries. (That was an obligatory warm comment about O’Reilly, should they take an interest in hiring me—hint, hint.) I might not ever give The Weasel the time of day, but Wheaton will definitely get the Fingers of Rock if the opportunity ever comes up.

Mel Gibson vs. Nightcrawler

Last night I dreamed the following, more or less: I was in a theater watching the newly released X-Men 4. The movie was turning out to be really terrible, although I was glad to see they brought Nightcrawler back from his completely unexplained vacation from X3. Then Mel Gibson showed up, both in the movie—as Nightcrawler’s brother, which seemed as outrageous to my dream self as it does to me as I type this now—and in the theater, sitting one row in front of me. At that point the movie began to reach new depths of suck, mostly because of Mel’s crappy acting. Meanwhile, the Mel in the theater started making an ass of himself, talking and generally being obnoxious. So I stood up, knocked his baseball hat off his head, and basically picked a fight. At this point it became clear that he’d had a few (what can I say, apparently my subconscious reads more supermarket tabloids than I do) and the cops quickly showed up. We were ordered to empty our pockets, and Mel spent about twenty minutes pulling fistfuls of cash and empty Heineken bottles out of various places on his person.

At this point things get kind of sketchy in terms of story line. I know that at one point I told Mel to “shut the fuck up already,” and then one of the cops started to accuse me of being emotionally unstable. Fortunately for all involved, the real-life alarm clock went off and I woke up.

Study questions: (1) Do you think Mel really drinks Heineken? Why or why not? (2) Discuss the pros and cons of Nightcrawler turning out to have a crazy cop for a brother who paints half his face blue (aha!) and goes around pouring glasses of water on extraterrestrials. (3) Essay: Imagine a world in which Mel Gibson would actually be cast in an X-Men movie. Extra credit if you bring up the fact that David Hasselhoff has actually played Marvel character Nick Fury in a cheesy TV movie of his own.

Current doses of WTF

As I ease back into the grinding despair of the workweek, here are a few things that have me shaking my head.

• This newsflash from Ars.Technica: the RIAA are still peabrained, despicable weasels


• Recently overheard from a coworker: it is being overly attached to your possessions and loved ones that causes cancer. Silly me, I thought it was caused by damage to DNA, triggered by genetic or environmental factors.


• Maurice Clarett. Seriously, dude, WTF. See especially the most recent developments. If you feel like signing up to read the Washington Post, Michael Wilbon wrote a good piece on this trainwreck of a guy. (Note that one of the sidebars contains the misspelling "Columbis"—whoops.)

In Soviet Union, watch winds you

In keeping with the ’80s theme around here so far, I just wanted to share a closeup of this watch. My friend Carla gave it to me long ago—it had no band and didn’t run. I resolved to fix those problems some day, and, well, it’s probably been fifteen years but I finally did it. I found a watch shop that looked like they could handle an odd piece, and they certainly did. The woman there insisted that I go with a red band, which violates my all-black-all-the-time philosophy when it comes to accessories, but you’ve got to admit that it just makes sense.
I loves me my throwback Soviet watch.

Book review: V for Vendetta

Was it only a couple of years ago that my bookshelf had a mere one or two comic books among all the holdovers from my Russian literature degree? Now there is at least one foot of shelf space devoted to the things. If I had to characterize turning thirty a few years ago using a single metaphor or meme, it would be that of Humility: realizing that all kinds of things I used to scoff at (flared-leg pants, comic books, fitted t-shirts, Kashi cereal, Green Day) are worthy of respect. I’ve even confessed in the dark of night that there are songs by Steely Dan and Elton John that don’t completely suck. Did I just write that?

So anyway, comic books. Or graphic novels, if you like. Something I always considered to be the domain of lonely teenage boys who were compelled to draw or just gaze at the impossible women that they could never date. (Never mind the fact that stereotypical comic-book women are probably structurally unsound to begin with, and therefore inherently undateable.) So what happened? The aforementioned Humility, I suppose. Well, that and Bryan Singer. Despite all of my mixed feelings about 20th Century Fox and their handling of the X-Men (I’ll save that for another rant, as it’s a lengthy one), I’ll say that Bryan Singer directing the first X-Men movie was a smart, smart decision. And it was a brilliant move to make an X-Men movie that stripped away all the candy-colored comic silliness of the X-Men, much like ST:TNG rose so far above the campy beehive hairdos of the original Star Trek. It meant that I, a self-confessed female, actually could get into the movie and the characters, and come away without feeling too geeky. (Of course, I recognize that using Star Trek metaphors is the apotheosis of geeky and I should just shut up and face the music, but never mind.) Plus, Hugh Jackman is a damn good Wolverine, even if he’s several inches too tall (I leave it to the hardcore fanboyz to give a damn about that kind of crap.) And for the lova Pete, you put Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian in a movie and it more than makes up for the non-acting of Halle Berry! So the X-Men movie made me think, hey, there are decent stories behind all that cheesy spandex and HH chest measurements. And so comic books, and graphic novels, began to trickle into the house.

I should also give credit to Frank Miller’s Sin City, whose artwork and anti-superhero characters showed me that there was more to the genre than good vs. evil and fights on the moon. So he gets a paragraph all his own.

Then Raoul gave Steve Watchmen by Alan Moore. Goddamn. The book threw me into a depression for weeks (nothing like bleak, late-1980s cynicism to make you feel like hanging yourself instead of celebrating the holidays—I recommend reading it in, say, June), but the complexity of the story and the characters earns it the coveted label of literature. Never mind that the thing is done with pictures—excellent, cinematic pictures—if that’s going to cause you to write it off, then your mind is closed, baby.

After that, the small trickle of pebbles became a real rockslide. I started picking up some X-Men trade paperbacks, although I have yet to find a series that doesn’t smack too much of The Silly, or have lousy artwork, or some unholy combination of the two. Then League of Extraordinary Gentlemen invaded the house and kicked all sorts of ass. Let’s all pretend that there was no movie made of that masterpiece. Bone even showed up, my reading of which is the only thing that has prompted strangers to speak to me on the bus (despite my strong vibe of leave-me-the-fuck-alone).

And now at last I’m ready to talk about V for Vendetta, which I just finished last night. As with Watchmen, it’s a thick slice of 1980s-style paranoia, which is all right by me. In my universe, post-nuclear fascist dystopia is always in style. And speaking of style, despite the book being over 20 years old I don’t find too much that’s dated about it, except perhaps the art. The colors are very weak, like a faded page of comics from the newspaper, and lines are not particularly sharp. I don’t know if that’s because it was done on softer paper or not, but it’s striking if you’re used to the sharp color and smooth paper you find in recent trade paperbacks. The art also often feels quite cramped, and you do often find yourself straining to see more detail in an individual panel to figure out what the heck is going on. I don’t know if the art was shrunk from a larger size, or if the claustrophobic panels are supposed to metaphorically reflect the stifling fascism of the society portrayed within, but either way it’s not deal-breaking. (Dig my rationalization, though.)

Regarding substance, I was curious to see how the book differed from the movie, which I saw first. (And by the way, thanks to Vendetta the Wachowski brothers have regained a small measure of respectability, all of which had been lost as soon as the second Matrix movie came out.) There are certainly differences, and in many cases the movie is an improvement. Regarding the book, the character of Eve is problematic, in my opinion. She’s profoundly weak; even after her transfiguration into V’s protégé she doesn’t come across as possessing the brash spirit or intellectual promise that you’d think V was looking for. I’m glad that Natalie Portman’s Eve had more going for her. In the book I found myself wondering why V bothered with her, since it didn’t appear at all certain that she would ultimately have the strength to do what he needed her to do. And one must recall that it was complete chance that she was the one whom V rescues at the beginning of the story—I suppose that’s where suspension of disbelief comes in, to ease the jarring shift of her character’s development.

In the obligatory feminist portion of this review, I must point out that the women come off very badly. There’s the calculating bitch, the spineless wife, and the helpless victim—not a lot to go on in the Fem Pride department. But truthfully, once I change out of my feminist superhero costume and return to my mild-mannered self I see that the men are just as petty, pathetic, and pathological. So I conclude that Moore’s not a misogynist—he’s a full-fledged misanthrope. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

So to sum up, I think if you are going to hold your nose and grudgingly read only one Alan Moore graphic novel, read Watchmen. If you’re more comfortable with your inner geek, or if you have a soft spot for dystopian novels, read Watchmen, but read Vendetta too. Ave atque vale!

By the way: Here’s a good biography of Alan Moore.

"Recycling Day": a haiku

Recycling day dawns
Glissades of glass crash and crunch
The blue bin thunks down

Testing, testing

If this doesn't work, well, then the gravitational constant of the universe has been somehow altered.