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March 27, 2008

Feminists on Film

Posted by Holly at 9:56 AM | Comments (5)

March 23, 2008

Pagan Moon Stuff

Happy Easter, I guess. Not that I much care about the resurrection of Jesus these days, and I can't say I ever much believed in it, really. Easter just seemed such a second-rate holiday. It's supposed to be the holiest day in the Christian calendar, but it never felt convincing: Thanksgiving and Christmas were obviously so much more important, even though Thanksgiving was supposed to be secular and national rather than religious.

There were two things I always liked about Easter: getting a pretty new spring dress, and the way it moved around. Ever wonder how Easter is reckoned? Well, I learned long ago in a class on medieval literature. Easter follows the lunar rather than the date calendar, because people went on pilgrimage at Easter time, and they needed light to travel by, and the sun and the full moon were really the only things that provided much light long about the sixth century. So Easter is always the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox--the vernal equinox bit being important because Easter supplanted all sorts of pagan spring festivals--hence the bunnies and eggs and such.

Easter this year is about as early as it can be. The equinox was Thursday; the full moon was Friday. The earliest it could possibly be is the equinox itself, if that were also a full moon falling on a Sunday.

On my mission I went to church one Sunday morning in March and wished the elders "Happy Easter," because it was Easter. They told me it wasn't Easter, couldn't be Easter, because Easter was always the first Sunday in April. I explained about the equinox-full moon thing, adding, "Go home and ask your families when Easter is this year. They'll tell you I'm right," but the elders informed me--foolish, misinformed girl that I was--that there was no way determining the date of a holiday could be so silly or arbitrary. They were ADAMANT, and of course I had no evidence to support my claim, because there wasn't a single mention of Easter in any of the lessons or talks that day. The country as a whole didn't pay attention to Easter (and why should a non-Christian country bother with it?) and no one but me cared about observing the progress of the calendar, so no one but me knew it was Easter--even though, as I say, it was supposed to be our holiest day, the day on which the miracle that justified our entire religion occurred, some two thousand years before.

Yeah. If I ever forget why I found my mission frustrating or why I gave up on Christianity, thinking about that always helps me remember.

Anyway, if you celebrate and enjoy the holiday, I hope it rocks for you.

Posted by Holly at 10:55 AM | Comments (6)

March 21, 2008

JS on "the Speech"

In case you didn't see it:

For the record, Obama's my man. I am praying he wins the nomination.... And lately I've been thinking about what else I can do besides requesting that vague powers somewhere in the universe help us put the right person in the White House, particularly as Pennsylvania has one of the few remaining primaries. So when someone from the Obama campaign called me yesterday and asked me for a donation, I gave it, and asked for a volunteer packet as well.

Posted by Holly at 8:20 AM | Comments (2)

March 20, 2008

The First Day of Spring Where I Live

Looks like this:

So if you live someplace where it's already green and bright; if you've already spotted those early harbingers of spring, crocuses, dainty but brave; if you've already seen a clump of sunny daffodils; if you've already been caught by the seductive, sweet scent of hyacinths (one of my very favorite flowers, of spring or any season); if you're already noticing the prim, proper appearance of tulips, whose petals remain close about their nectar, modest and protective no matter how bright their exteriors until they suddenly become frowzy and blowzy when summer's almost here; if you're already living with all that, well, all I can say right now is

Bite Me.

Posted by Holly at 9:42 AM | Comments (7)

March 18, 2008

Stupidest Flesh Wound Ever

Yesterday I was fiddling with something in a cabinet under the counter and I stood up a little too quickly and a little too close to the counter top and scraped the skin off the bridge of my nose. It bled--copiously, profusely, excessively. I have to wear a band-aid across my nose, and it looks really dumb. It also feels unpleasant--it's much worse to have a sticky piece of plastic on your face than on, say, your finger or elbow.

And when, after trying to stop the bleeding, I went back to the kitchen and finished what I'd been doing, I found the bit of skin still clinging to the counter top.

In other words, yuckiness abounds.

Posted by Holly at 10:25 AM | Comments (7)

March 17, 2008

Arguably Giants

Earlier this month I wrote about my interest in trying voice-recognition software. I decided I might as well go ahead and buy the program--it wasn’t that expensive, and I thought it might be helpful. It arrived last week, and having spent some time using it, I’ve decided, typing is better.

I admit I had some fallacious ideas about what using voice recognition software would be like: I thought I could roam around my house and speak my random thoughts aloud and the words I’d spoken would appear, almost like magic, on my computer screen. No such luck! I have to sit down at my computer and wear this annoying little head-set microphone thing that’s jacked into my computer, and then I have to speak VERY SLOWLY AND E-NUN-CI-ATE VER-Y CARE-FUL-LY or the program mishears half of what I say.

I’m a really fast typist--in the neighborhood of 80 or 90 words a minute--and I also like to type. I like how it feels and I like seeing words appear on a page and I like the way it helps me think as I compose. So this program is beyond useless in helping me compose or draft new material--it actually slows me down. However, it is useful if I have to transcribe a long passage of text I can read aloud, provided I am willing, once again, to speak SLOWLY AND CLEARLY--that is about as fast and easier on my wrists than propping the book open and trying to get everything right without once glancing at my screen. Still, the program makes mistakes. Here’s a passage I had to transcribed today, from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen:

They shut themselves up to read novels together. Yes, novels; --for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they themselves are adding--joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally takes up a novel is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! if the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the Reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers. And while the abilities of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens,--there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labor of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them.

That’s the passage as it appears in the book. But here’s what the voice recognition software first gave me:

They shut themselves up to read novels together. Yes, novels; – for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom still common with novel writers (inserted gratuitous line break), of degrading by their contemptuous and sure the very performances, to the number of which they themselves are adding – (here it missed an entire phrase) and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine , who, if she accidentally takes up the novel is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! If the heroine of one novel the not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such infusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now roams. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our photos are almost as many as our readers (forgot the period here) and while the abilities of the 900th a bridger of the history of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope and prior, with a paper from the spectator, and a chapter from Stern, arguably giants by a thousand pens, period (and then it freaked out and didn't get the last few lines)

As you can see, “are eulogized” was turned into “arguably giants,” which is a pretty big discrepancy. And even though I was reading quite slowly, the program couldn’t keep up with me and missed entire phrases. Admittedly, I went back and added them very easily later, but still, I had to do that.

I’m not sorry I bought the software, and I will use it. Furthermore, I’m sure that with time, I’ll get better at employing the proper commands and it will get better at recognizing my voice. And I imagine that for someone who can no longer type, this program is just about miraculous. But it’s not the really cool fix I thought it might be for me.

Posted by Holly at 2:01 PM | Comments (1)

March 15, 2008

Rare, Beautiful, Ephemeral, Glittery and Very, Very Dangerous and Destructive

Last week was a pretty funky week weather-wise here in Northwest PA. It ended with the blizzard that dumped two feet of snow on us, but it began with abnormally warm temperatures--it was 65F on Monday, March 3, well over 20 degrees above average.

And then on Tuesday, March 4, we had an ice storm. It started raining in the afternoon, and then temperatures dropped sharply, and precipitation continued to fall, not as snow, but as rain, which froze when it hit just about any surface--in particular, roads and sidewalks. It's really hard to control a vehicle when you're driving over a surface entirely coated with an inch of slightly bumpy but still very slick ice, which is why ice storms can be one thing that entirely shuts down an entire city used to cold temperatures--in Iowa City, when there were ice storms, buses and so forth quit running and people did their best to stay home. Here, apparently, they just called out the cops and the ambulances to deal with all the people who ended up in traffic accidents because schools and businesses didn't shut down.

Anyway, I am not writing to complain about the ice storm--I'm writing to praise it, or at least to tell you how astonishingly beautiful and strange it made everything. And I'm not asking you to take my word for it; I'm going to include photos.

Here's what my porch looked like Wednesday morning:

Pretty funky! (If you want to know what my porch looks like in the summer, go here and scroll down.) It looks like the glass in a shower door or a bathroom window, which I guess is why they call that stuff "frosted" glass.

Keep in mind, this

is a vertical surface, so you can imagine what the horizontal ones were like. I was VERY glad I didn't have to drive anywhere Wednesday morning. And while I was out taking these photos, I kept hearing this weird clacking sound, which I eventually realized was the noise made as the wind blew the ice-covered branches of the trees against each other. It was a very alien environment.

Wednesday afternoon, however, the sun came out, and that's when things got downright gorgeous. Thursday morning things got even better. The sun was out, but the temperature wasn't high enough to melt much. I went for a walk early, and saw things like this:

It's a neighbor's tree, entirely encased in ice, and backlit by the sun, so that it positively glittered. The photo doesn't capture its brilliance.... And I'm surprised that it turned out as well as it did, because I couldn't see a damn thing--I just aimed the photo in the right direction and hoped for the best.

As I walked, I kept seeing these little partial tubes of ice

which I eventually realized had fallen off powerlines. I was also intrigued by the way ice-coated blades of grass poked out of the snow like strange little antennae.

Here's my favorite photo I took, of an oak branch (acorn caps still attached) coated in ice:

Of course, I also saw things like this:

Plenty of trees snapped under the weight of the ice. One of my colleagues walked out Wednesday to find a great big branch on top of his car. And surfaces stayed slick and slidy as the ice melted, because chunks of ice would fall of the trees, so that the area under one might look like this:

I burst into astonished tears several times at how gorgeous and strange it all was.... The world creates these scenes of profound and passing beauty, and they're a gift. I've seen ice storms before but the aftermath was never this lovely.... I feel lucky that I got to witness this rare confluence of the elements. I wanted to stay in that environment for hours, but I had professional and personal obligations to attend to.... And even if I had the entire day at my disposal to wander around that winter wonderland, it wouldn't have lasted. The sun moved up in the sky and the scene wasn't as striking--the trees were more dramatic and glittery when the light was behind rather than above them. And there's always the fact that as the sun got warmer, the ice melted.... It just couldn't last.

And I also kept thinking about all the damage the storm had done, and could still do: I had to guard my head from falling ice. It all reaffirmed for me the basic truth that nothing is an undiluted good, everything costs, has its drawbacks. Even--especially?--beauty.

I'm still glad I saw it.

Posted by Holly at 9:26 AM | Comments (2)

March 13, 2008

ONN: TV Nudity OK If It's Who?

Here's a funky little thing from The Onion News Network that freaks me out a bit:

FCC Okays Nudity On TV If It�s Alyson Hannigan

I saw this a few days ago but haven't posted it sooner because I needed a while to think about it. Obviously it's a joke 'cause it's from the Onion, but is part of the joke that Alyson Hannigan isn't all that sexy? I'm honestly confused, and I honestly need help understanding this, 'cause it's sorta relevant for a paper I have to write.

As longtime readers of my blog will know, I do scholarly work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Alyson Hannigan played Willow for seven years, and part of Willow's character was that, at least initially, she WASN'T sexy--she was the wallflower character. But does she become truly sexy and do I fail to see that about her because I am blinded by her original characterization? I honestly think she's the least sexy character on the show, even after she hooks up with Tara--I think Tara is much hotter.

I haven't stopped to think about whether or not I find the women of Buffy all that hot--too fixated on Spike, I admit--but now that I consider the matter, I think there are lots of female hotties on Buffy, but Willow really isn't one of them. I think Joyce is hotter than Willow. I think Jenny Calendar is hotter. I think Halfrek is hotter. I might even think Dawn is hotter, though her sexuality is so rarely addressed that I find it inappropriate to consider the matter. And there's no question for me as to who's the hottest woman on Buffy: it's Anya.

But is Alyson Hannigan hot in ways that Willow (regular Willow, not vamp Willow) isn't? I admit I didn't think she was hot as Trina Echols on Veronica Mars, and I didn't watch enough of How I Met Your Mother to decide if she was hot on that.

I know, I know; it's a goofy thing to worry about. But as I say it's relevant for a paper I'm writing so I welcome opinions from any and all Buffy fans who might come across this.

Posted by Holly at 9:53 PM | Comments (5)

March 12, 2008

Women's Magazine Pays Misogynist A**hole to Insult and Demean Women in Print

Thanks to the media news digest I get every morning, I was able to spend several hours following the links detailing the sordid history of How Glamour Fired Nasty Male Blogger after its readers demanded the magazine do so. Turns out some self-proclaimed narcissistic asshole had a blogging gig at Glamour, which he used as a forum for writing about (among other things) running out on a woman after she made dinner for him because he assumed that some sort of small sore on her lip meant she had herpes, and how he then went to a Foo Fighters concert with her a week later, only to use it as an opportunity to feel up some other chick, and how being SUCH a jerk has been really emotionally HARD on him, especially since he forgot to the get the phone number of the anonymous chick at the concert.

The bile rose in my throat as I read about the events from the perspective of the woman who actually bought this creep a ticket to the concert. I'm glad to say that I've never dated anyone this awful, though I was sickened to realize that some of what the guy said echoed lines I heard from my evil ex Adam.... No. Won't go there. It's in the past. Anyway, after all his asshole-ry, this guy has the nerve to claim he's still the wronged one, that he would sue this crazy bitch, except she's crazy--really crazy, and he's afraid of her and for her--if he took legal action, she might hurt someone--even herself, and that would make him sad, because he's both an asshole and a guy with a big heart! As for the other details, well, Jezebel knows and analyzes the whole situation well enough that I don't feel obligated to attempt it myself.

What I really want to know is this: how did such an obvious douchebag and really crappy writer get this gig in the first place? OK, I discovered that part of it is that he used to screw the woman who started the blog at Glamour--it still has her name in the address. But didn't any of the editors read this guy's stuff? Didn't they pay attention to both the misogynist content and the dreadful prose? He treats women like shit, and then writes shitty little entries detailing it all. And for this he got paid? Like, not just with hair care products or a year's supply of Turtle Wax, but with real money, that stuff you can use to buy toilet paper, dog food, hot dog buns, bleach and a place to live?

It's all further proof that most fashion magazines are written and published by people who hate women and consider them stupid. If you don't believe me, check out Jezebel's wonderful column Cover Lies, which decodes the hyped-up teasers on the covers of magazines into the sorry, pathetic messages they really are.

Posted by Holly at 1:34 PM | Comments (0)

March 10, 2008

Not Unpleasant, But Still Not Attractive

It turns out that certain psychological states are simply unavailable to me when I positively REEK of Bengay, the first being any sort of inclination to engage in social interaction, even interaction via an unscented forum like the web. Another is the belief that I can write anything worth reading. No, when my skin and my clothes smell so strongly of Bengay that my cat won’t come near me, all I really want to do is lie down.

The smell of Bengay is weird, right? Most people will agree with me on that. And I might be the only one who feels this way, but I don’t find the smell unpleasant--I don’t think it out and out stinks--but I also don’t find it attractive. And it’s not just because I know it’s medicine often marketed to old people; it’s because it’s such a strong smell, from a substance that really freakin' HURTS if you get it near any mucus membranes, and because it makes you want to lie down. Seriously: I put it on, and I want to lie down. I suspect there’s some real physiological process going on there; something about how it increases blood flow, and makes your skin feel sensations ranging from mild tingling to out-and-out burning, and makes your muscles soften a little, and assaults your nostrils and tear ducts. I don’t know. I tried to find out what the side-effects of Bengay are, if overwhelming albeit short-term fatigue is one of them, but an entire series of google searches only turned up this bizarre story about a teen athlete who died from a Bengay overdose.

You might be wondering why I smell like Bengay, and the reason is: we had a blizzard this weekend. I’ve already done the “shoveling lots and lots of snow really SUCKS” rant, so I won’t belabor that point. I’ll just state that between about 10 a.m. on Friday and 2 a.m. on Sunday, or a period of slightly less than 48 hours, we got 24 inches of snow, and unless I wanted to stay put until April, the snow couldn’t stay put. Hence the shoveling, which, as I’ve already explained, is accomplished more efficiently if you start it before the last of those 24 inches has fallen. I started going out Saturday morning and kept at the sorry business until Sunday afternoon.

Having to clear a driveway has helped me understand some of the processes behind the melting of the polar ice caps. It’s easy to melt snow and ice even if temperatures are below freezing, provided you have two things: sunshine, and an exposed surface that absorbs heat. If you leave even a thin layer of snow--say, an inch--covering your driveway, it will stay there. But if you clear a patch, even a small patch, and the sun comes out, the sun will warm the concrete, which does a really remarkable job of absorbing and radiating heat. So the light of the sun on top of the snow mixed with the heat from under the snow does a good job of melting stuff, and, provided there’s a way for the water to run off or that there’s not so much that it won’t just evaporate, you’ll have a clear driveway with a minimal amount of work, provided also that you’re willing to wait a while, because it doesn’t happen instantly. However, if there’s nowhere for the water to go, you’ve got to get rid of it yourself, or it will turn into a layer of ice as soon as it’s no longer getting direct sun. Anyway, apparently oceans warmed by climate change work as well as concrete in helping to melt ice from underneath. And the periods of re-freezing are getting shorter, so stuff melts more quickly, and stays melted.

OK. So I know that was a diversion but I’ve wanted to write about it for a long time. It’s just interesting to me that at least some of these processes scientists are telling us we should worry about aren’t arcane or difficult to understand; they’re actually quite logical and observable in our own lives.

But back to my driveway. Because the sun was out, I managed to get sections of the driveway completely clear, but I knew better than to tackle the mouth of my driveway, because there’s that thing that happens to a shoveled surface near the street after the snow plows come by.... And sure enough, Sunday afternoon, the plows came along and packed all the mouths of all the driveways with a bank of chunky, dirty, icy, compacted snow almost four feet high and six feet wide. There was no way I could manage that on my own.... So I paid a neighbor with a snow blower to cut through that. And even with a machine, it took him almost half an hour. it was serious business.

Clearing the part I did myself took many episodes of many hours, all requiring much lifting. After about the second foray out, I rubbed Bengay all over my neck, right arm and shoulder. It helped. It helped enough that I began applying it prophylactically, BEFORE I went out, so that so that my muscles got heated up before I had to heft that stinkin' shovel full of snow up over the drifts.... And while I felt a certain sense of pride that I managed to do so much hard manual labor, I also felt sore and exhausted--I’m neither athletic nor known for my upper-body strength. I am sure that somewhere there are people who can shovel and such for hours and feel smart afterwards, but I felt downright mentally incapacitated. I couldn’t do much for the remainder of the day but watch TV and knit. Even now, I feel sort of foggy. And I really hope that this was winter’s last hurrah and I won’t have to do it again for a good long while.

Posted by Holly at 2:24 PM | Comments (1)

March 5, 2008

Good Grief (as Opposed to Bad)

Here's an article I found really annoying and trite, despite--or rather, because of--the fact that its goal is to complicate the way we see depression. Written by some British psychiatrist, it decries "the assumption that depression is a disease," an assumption "reinforced and perpetuated by biologists, psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies, all of whom have a vested interest - consciously or unconsciously - in the clinical perspective." He also laments the fact that "Most of the time, depression is hidden from view because of the stigma attached to it."

I've already written about what I think was one of the greatest benefits of Prozac: that it made it so much less shameful to be depressed or to seek treatment for it. So I'm a bit surprised to read a passage like this one:

The disease model may also be engendering a sense of powerlessness in those with depression or ex-sufferers. What so commonly goes along with this perspective is the implication that the condition is due to some unusual constitutional weakness. The only solution, therefore, is chemical.

What? What the fuck? I mean, yeah, the disease model has its drawbacks, many of which I think this guy fails to address, but the idea that "the condition is due to some unusual constitutional weakness" was MUCH more destructive under the previous way of seeing depression, because the "constitutional weakness" was moral rather than physical. I mean, one of the main things now recommended (in, for example, the studies I mentioned last week) for mild depression is exercise, something to get blood moving and alter brain chemistry etc, etc, whereas before the main recommendation was to "just get over yourself and improve that lousy attitude, you weak-willed, weepy little snit."

I tried very hard to find a decent bio of Dr. Keedwell; I realize it's dangerous to speculate about things like age based on a tiny photo on a webpage, but Dr. Keedwell looks pretty young, and I seriously wonder if he is old enough to have had much experience with the way depression was viewed before the development of Prozac.

I am also irritated by the fact that the good doctor fails to address an issue of semantics. "Depression" IS a disease, which is not to say that grief or despair are diseases--they are not, because those are not the names of a disease. However, "depression" is a disease because "depression" is the clinical name for a condition or set of conditions that doctors treat. Doctors do not treat grief or despair; friends, family, counselors and clergypeople treat grief and despair.

In other words, all these words may be names for essentially the same ontological condition, but "depression" is the only one doctors deal with.

I'm a fact-checker--I think the impulse that makes me one is part of the same set of personality traits that made me so susceptible to depression in the first place--in other words, a refusal to take things at face value, to accept someone else's authority just because, without looking into the facts and causes as well as I can myself. So I'm also indignant that the doctor doesn't even bother to fact-check something like the year of John Stuart Mill's birth. Thus, he writes, "The precocious philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote his famous work, Utilitarianism, [as if Utilitarianism was his only famous work--what about On Liberty or The Sujbection of Women? Does this guy not know how to use commas?] in 1861 at the age of 19 and became depressed at the age of 21," which meant that the newspaper had to print this correction: "We exaggerated the precociousness of John Stuart Mill in saying he wrote his famous work Utilitarianism in 1861 at the age of 19 in the article below. He was 55 at the time."

Many years ago I came across an idea called "depressive realism," best stated, in my opinion, in an amazing article entitled "A proposal to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder" by Richard P Bentall and published in the Journal of Medical Ethics. You can read the abstract here, but this passage sums it up pretty well:

It has been shown that happy people, in comparison with people who are miserable or depressed, are impaired when retrieving negative events from long-term memory. Happy people have also been shown to exhibit various biases of judgement that prevent them from acquiring a realistic understanding of their physical and social environment... (and) give unrealistically positive evaluations of their own achievements, believe that others share their unrealistic opinions about themselves, and show a general lack of evenhandedness when comparing themselves to others. Although the lack of these biases in depressed people has led many psychiatric researchers to focus their attention on what has come to be known as depressive realism it is the unrealism of happy people that is more noteworthy, and surely clear evidence that such people should be regarded as psychiatrically disordered.

(I really recommend this article; it's absolutely deadpan, quite informative and insightful, and still hysterically funny. Find a copy if you can.)

So there's a long history of attention to the ways in which "depression" or "melancholy states" or "grief" offer states of being superior to happiness; one of the best discussions of this matter from the 20th century is from William James's Varieties of Religious Experience, particularly the chapters on "The Religion of Healthy-Mindedness" and "The Sick Soul." Comparing "healthy-mindedness" to "morbid-mindedness," James writes

It seems to me that we are bound to say that morbid-mindedness ranges over the wider scale of experience, and that its survey is the one that overlaps. The method of averting one's attention from evil, and living simply in the light of good is splendid as long as it will work. It will work with many persons; it will work far more generally than most of us are ready to suppose; and within the sphere of its successful operation there is nothing to be said against it as a religious solution. But it breaks down impotently as soon as melancholy comes; and even though one be quite from from melancholy one's self, there is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and they may after all be the best key to life's significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.

In other words, James is trying to grapple with the spiritual and intellectual meaning of suffering, a question at the heart of Buddhism, after all. But Keedwell reduces this complex issue to the glib sentence, "Depression can lead to great insights and achievements."

And OK, that sentence is a transition, not merely the summation of his thesis--he goes on to elaborate and give examples of what he means. But still, it's "depression" again. The clinical condition again. He complains about the fact that "depression" is seen so often through "the clinical perspective," but that's the only perspective he seems able to have on it. He even goes so far as to wonder "why depression has not been 'bred out' through Darwinian natural selection."

There's something incredibly wrong with that, though it will take me a while to figure out everything that's screwed up there. What leaps to mind is the idea that the question is possible ONLY if you see "depression" as clinical, avoidable state rather than one intrinsic to consciousness (because even animals get depressed). Can you imagine wondering why happiness or love or anger or contentment or poor time-management skills or plain old STUPIDITY have not been 'bred out' of us through Darwinian natural selection? As if dumb people or people who go through periods of profound sadness can't procreate.

Anyway. I could continue arguing with this thesis, and I probably will, but I think I've said enough for today.

Posted by Holly at 10:46 AM | Comments (2)

March 4, 2008

Look, Ma, No Hands?

Like Gifted Typist and First-Person Narrator, I've got something nasty going on in my neck and shoulders. I injured something about a month ago during a week of travel--all that hefting heavy luggage onto the overhead racks or compartments in trains and planes--afterwards it hurt to lift my right arm above the level of my shoulder. But it got better after a few days, at least until this weekend, when I did something worse. I thought maybe yoga or a little weight-lifting would help the muscles heal, and I didn't think I overdid things, but apparently I was wrong....

Anyway, commenters suggested that Gifted Typist look into voice recognition software. And I thought, maybe I should look into that myself.... Dragon Naturally Speaking Standard seems like it would fit my needs, such as they are.... I mean, do I really need software that transcribes what I say? Has anyone used this? I type pretty fast, and I like typing, and I also like the way typing makes me reflect on what I write.... I'm not sure transcribing everything I say would make my writing better; it just would mean I could do it without hands.

Or maybe it would completely change my life, and I just can't imagine how.

Advice, anyone?

Posted by Holly at 9:49 AM | Comments (2)

March 2, 2008

Technically, This Is a Grilled Cheese Sandwich Too

Currently Wegmans has this chocolate bread made with organic flour, cocoa and chocolate chips. It's more substantial than cake, not quite as sweet, and pretty damn good.

And I couldn't help it: I thought, what sort of grilled cheese sandwich can I make with that?

So I cut two slices--you have to slice it yourself; the chocolate chips means they can't run it through the automatic slicers, because they get all mucked up--spread cream cheese on one slice and raspberry jam on the other, then mushed it together, grilled it and ate it for breakfast.

God, it was delicious! The grilling meant the chocolate chips got warm and melty, as did the jam. It was decadent and not all that healthy, I realize, but still, it was a very nice way to start the day on a lazy weekend.

Posted by Holly at 11:31 AM | Comments (2)

March 1, 2008

More Grilled Cheesy Goodness

The other day I had to go grocery shopping, and I figured I might as well take the advice I was offered by Mr. Nighttime and see what sort of grilled cheese sandwich I could make with Wegmans rosemary and olive oil bread. I figured since I was using a previously untested bread I might as well experiment in the cheese department too, and asked the cheese lady to recommend something with a bite but no blueness--I hate blue cheese.

She suggested an imported Gouda that had been aged five years. I think Gouda is OK; it's not my favorite. Or at least that's how I felt before I tried this stuff. It was amazing, to die for, unbelievably delicious.... OK, none of these phrases capture how good this cheese really is. So let me try again.

I have this thing about spending money on food: I'll do it. You have to eat it, so why not enjoy it? Good food contributes to good health, so why be stingy about something so necessary to a healthy, pleasant life? However, even I have my limits, and paying eighteen bucks a pound for cheese--which is what this cheese cost--comes pretty close to being one of them. I mean, I feel extravagant when I pay twelve bucks a pound, which is what I paid for last week's Gruyere, and this cheese cost half again as much. But it was worth every penny, and I will even buy it again. That's how good it was: complex and tangy and sweet and slightly crunchy, which I learned is due to protein crystals that form in older cheeses.

It made a good sandwich, though I haven't decided whether I think melting the cheese improves or impairs its flavor. I took a picture, but it didn't look like anything special--it just looked like a grilled cheese sandwich--so I'm not posting it here.

However, I also took the hint dropped by A. and added some sweetness to my grilled cheese sandwich. I used the rosemary/olive oil bread and a nice but not too pricey Emmental, along with some raspberry jam. It looked like this:

As you can see there was a problem, in that the bread was too holey and the jam leaked out. The warm jam was REALLY yummy, but overwhelmed rather than complimented the mild cheese, and even the tang of the rosemary got lost in all that sugar. It wasn't a tragedy, but it sure as hell wasn't a success, either. Still, it was good enough that I'm going to have to keep working on this one.

Posted by Holly at 10:06 AM | Comments (5)