hairs were cut

Last night while waiting for Loopy, who was attending one of the many dissertation research meetings that bring her (and sometimes us) to Chicago every week, I got my hair cut. In the car before, we had this exchange:

Me: I don't know why you won't ever tell me if you think I would look better with bangs.

Loopy: Oh, for chrissakes! [this is the fifty millionth time I've asked that question] I think you look better without but it's YOUR HEAD! Why do you care what I think?

Me: Okay, I won't get bangs.

Loopy: Oh, now, see? This is why I don't give my opinion! You just do whatever I say.

Me: Honey, you're my wife, you're the one who has to look at me the most, and besides, I'm not good at seeing what I really look like.

Loopy: So LEARN to see what you look like! Aaargh!!!

...pause...

Me: Maybe I will get bangs.

In the end, I got a bob with bangs (see photo at right), not because of this conversation or anyone's opinion, but sort of at random, and at least partly because I was as tired as Loopy of hearing myself ask "but do you think I would look good with bangs?"

Conclusion: I look okay with bangs.

Also, without bangs.

Turns out it doesn't make that big a difference.

Oh well.

more horrifying concepts from the real world

From the catalog "Childswork, Childsplay: Essential Resources for Counselors and Educators," a few choice entries:

The Positive Thinking Game
Ages 9 & Up. This exceptional therapeutic game maintains the premise that thought is the source of many of our emotional states. By becoming more aware of our self-talk and cognitive responses to situations, we can better control or select our emotions. Helpful in addressing emotional difficulties such as anxiety, depression, anger and low self-esteem. For 2 - 6 players.

Oh, well, if depressed kids could just "control or select" their emotions they'd be just fine! Repression is a wonderful way to cope with stress! So next time Daddy is beating Mommy, just repeat to yourself, "I can choose to be happy" over and over. If you do it real loud, you might drown out the sound.

Winning at Loss
*NEW!* Ages 6-13. Designed to help guide children through the grief process, this game uses open-ended questions to facilitate discussion about: dealing with the shock; admitting the reality of the loss; feeling the pain of loss; adjusting to life after loss; and rebuilding for the future. Comes with two sets of cards & a facilitators' booklet.

How wonderful—instead of years of pain and suffering, now (new!) we can help kids zip through the whole grief process in the time it takes to play a quick board game. I'm sure if they're having trouble "admitting the reality of the loss" that reading a special card with an "open-ended question" will really help them accept reality.

Monster Stomp Game
Ages 4 & Up. Help children gain control over things that scare them with this nonthreatening, fun-filled game. Kids mold and then stomp monsters as they travel from room to room in the goofy, monster-filled house. As players stomp monsters, they get to collect them in the monster jail.

This one is horrifying in so many ways that I don't know where to begin. A monster-filled house? What fun for a four-year-old! And how can this game give you control over things that scare you if they are things you can't control? "This monster is called 'Mommy's drinking,' this monster is called 'Daddy killed my kitten'...." This is insane. For extra fun, explain the "monster jail" to children who are anxious because a parent is in prison.

The Upside Down Divorce Game
Ages 6-12. Most children don't want to talk about divorce, but this game makes talking easy. As they go around the colorful board, they flip their playing pieces upside down. To turn them right side up, they have to learn new coping and communication skills. Children are also challenged...to express positive feelings about themselves and their future.

Am I the only one that thinks this sounds like absolute torture?

OK, enough with the extended commentary... I'll just leave you with a few of the choice titles:

• Maybe Days: A Book for Children in Foster Care
  
  
• Finding the Right Spot: When Kids Can't Live With Their Parents
  
  
• Why Are You So Sad? - A Child's Book About Parental Depression
  
  
• Sammy's Mommy Has Cancer
  
  
• The Year My Mommy Was Bald
  
  
• Why Did You Die?

(those last four could really be read as a series, don't you think? Oh, I know, I'm evil)

• Anger Bingo For Teens (???)
  
  
• Rufus, The Bear With Diabetes
  
  
• Blink, Blink, Clop, Clop: Why Do We Do Things We Can't Stop? (for kids with OCD)

Oh, god, I can't take it anymore!

I just had to post this since I'm trying to clean up a bit and this obviously has to go in the recycling bin! Now!

"fighting to penetrate the amygdala"

No wonder we feel so overwhelmed and bombarded—our amygdalas are suffering a hostile takeover.

The amygdala is part of the brain that stores our most profound emotional experiences of pain and pleasure. But it's manipulated and assaulted on a daily basis in the service of profit...without any thought of what it does to us to have this promise that our needs can be met, this illusion of meeting them, and the ultimate letdown of it all being part of a big scam to get our money.

I knew this, but it's sort of disgusting to read an instruction manual on the fine art of emotional-manipulative brain surgery, viz., this horrifying article, Recognizing the Moments of Truth for Your Hotel Guests. Truth, anxiety, safety, desire for human connection—all analyzed and subverted to serve the goal of Branding.

Some excerpts:

The beauty and curse of the amygdala is that logic will not penetrate its walls. Emotion created through human connection and dynamic aesthetics is the only means to get through. To shift your status [in the guest's mind and make them like you] begins here....

"Welcome" is never just "Welcome", but an invitation for your guest to enter your brand’s story, in all its color and glory...[Y]ou want the guest to know that they are Captains on this trip. The fastest way to the brain’s brand central is to have it feel like it’s in control....

....the key is responding to the guest’s essential emotional and aspirational benefit needs, rather than only the functional....

...this is a Moment of Truth. Here the guest makes an instantaneous evaluation of all that has come before. It is rife with pure emotion, the kind that goes to the amygdala and has a party. I would venture to say that if consumers were wired up so their chemical brain activity was recorded, this Moment of Truth would rank high on the Richter Scale....

...Here, the brand story gains closure and the brain’s pleasure center recalibrates its feeling toward your brand....

There's a reason "branding" is named after a process that involves searing living flesh.

Wouldn't it be cool if all this knowledge of human needs, pain and pleasure, was used in the service of actually creating socieites, cities, institutions that were less painful and more human?

Yeah. Dream on.

squirrel pants?

I really want more people to go to Loopy's blog and guess what these are. Pretty please? C'mon.... it'll make me happy*....

---

*ultimate extortion from a depressed person to her worn-out friends & loved ones! ;-)

i am surrounded

by pompous academics.

I'm in a local eatery. Near me is a professor from a department you may know, pompously pontificating to two grad students whom I don't recognize. The first couple times I caught references I knew--to a prof, or a specific brown bag--I inadvertently looked up. Fortunately this has had the effect of causing him to lower his voice considerably.

At the very next table is a different professor explaining very basic computer concepts to another professor. He's talking as slowly and clearly as if the other is hard of hearing and doesn't speak English, though neither of these seems to be the case. It's grating on my nerves.

First he was explaining what a "pdf" was (including the comment, "PDF stands for.... I can't remember," which I'm certain is bullshit because almost nobody knows what PDF stands for, and who cares) slowly and laboriously; now he's explaining wireless ("the young lady behind us is connected to what is called a WAAYERRRRLESSS network... that means...")

This also wouldn't be so annoying if he didn't sound so smug about what is obviously a much smaller granule of knowledge than he seems to assume. He's not using all the "right words," yet he seems incredibly condescending.

It's like... a friend told me a story about a guy she had sex with, who said, "this may be uncomfortable because my ____ is so large," but it wasn't large at all; "on the small side of average," was how she put it.

That's exactly what this is like. "Don't be intimidated by my massive brilliance at computers," except, yeah, you know what a pdf is, big fuckin' deal.

Enough whining. Back to work.

I cooked

and I'm very proud of myself.

I made fettuccine with plum-shiso sauce and seaweed topping. Okay, it came out of a packet (at left), but I did have to boil the water.

One depressing difficulty: figuring out how much pasta to make for one person. If Loopy ever left me this is the sort of thing that would really put me over the edge. I have never in my life cooked for one person—only microwaved frozen things for one person.

Maybe I should look at it as a brave new frontier in adult independence.

Another amusing aspect: the vast gulf between my definition of "pasta for one" and the definition of the Japanese company that packaged up the plum-shiso sauce. To be more specific, it didn't come out of a packet, it came out of two packets, and I should have made twice as much—I'm still hungry.

So in Japan, my "one-person serving" would feed a family of four.

. . .

"Hey Birdfarm, what did you do today?"

"Well, let's see—I screwed around on the computer, then I cooked dinner, then I blogged about cooking dinner."

Yeah, I definitely need to get out more.

what a load of crap.

This quote scrolled across the top of my gmail today:

"Freedom means the opportunity to be what we never thought we would be."
-- Daniel J. Boorstin

Bullshit.

In my opinion, freedom is three things:

Freedom is safety—having your physical needs met so that you can think about something besides whether you and your children will survive the next week.

Freedom is being able to speak your mind without fear of government repression.

Freedom is self-determination—having some ability to affect the outcome of all decisions that affect you.

In my estimation (yes, this is my blog, it's all about my opinions and estimations), we in the US only have the second of those three definitions of freedom. And that one is sliding down a slippery slope.

They're right that "freedom isn't free." But not enough people seem willing to pay the price for everyone to gain freedom.

Oh well. Maybe some other century.