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Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
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At the risk of sounding too much like a Peace Corps Volunteer or something, this article from the "New York Times Magazine" really inspires me. It also highlights one of the tougher problems I've been dealing with lately. It's from the August 23, 2009 issue, which was all about "why women's rights are the cause of our time", and which I almost unreservedly love. (My reservations mainly cluster around the "Lives" column about sex work in Swaziland. It does a great job of painting sex workers as one-dimensional innocent victims; failing to put the story in a Swazi context rather than that of, say, a privileged Western radical feminist; and ... okay, I'll just get mad if I keep going. So. Anyway ....)
The article is long, and makes a lot of complex points, and is worth reading. (To my fellow PCV readers: Yes, Swazi salt is already iodized.) I wish I could detail all my thoughts, even the few reservations I have on this piece .... But here's the bit I want to respond to just now:
It's fair to ask: empowering women is well and good, but can one do this effectively? Does foreign aid really work? William Easterly, an economist at New York University, has argued powerfully that shoveling money at poor countries accomplishes little. Some Africans, including Dambisa Moyo, author of Dead Aid, have said the same thing.
... Our take is that, frankly, there is something to these criticisms. Helping people is far harder than it looks. Aid experiments often go awry, or small successes turn out to be difficult to replicate or scale up. Yet we’ve also seen, anecdotally and in the statistics, evidence that some kinds of aid have been enormously effective.
... In general, aid appears to work best when it is focused on health, education and microfinance (although microfinance has been somewhat less successful in Africa than in Asia). And in each case, crucially, aid has often been most effective when aimed at women and girls; when policy wonks do the math, they often find that these investments have a net economic return.
So what does this mean for me as a Peace Corps Volunteer? Well, obviously I want to support income generation projects for women. I wanted to support it long before I read the article, and as I've gotten a firmer grasp on the issues I've just wanted to support it more and more.
But.
Over the holidays absolutely nothing happens in Swaziland (seriously, nothing), and so I found myself at loose ends for much time between December 15-January 15. (Even more at loose ends, I should say ... we PCVs have a lot of free time.) I decided that one thing I could do is introduce myself around more local homesteads; so I convinced one of my host sisters to come walk around and translate for me. The last homestead we visited belonged to an older woman, Agnes, and her various relatives (most Swazis, especially older ones, adopt English first names). Agnes became excited and swiftly communicated that she wanted me to help her get financial assistance so she and her friends could start a chicken business.
I've now had a few meetings with Agnes & co; I've gone through a really thorough outline of how to do a business feasibility study (provided by Peace Corps, incidentally, which has a lot of really amazing support materials available). The thing is ... well, there are a lot of things. Most importantly, though, it's often really hard to measure Swazi motivation when they ask for things. This country has seen so much aid, and so much of that aid has been sloppily/hastily/badly allocated, that attitudes towards aid have gotten pretty twisted. My Volunteer friend Ali tells a story of how she met with a women's group that had been established by a previous Volunteer at her site. She asked the group what they needed, and they promptly requested a workshop on starting up a business. Sounds reasonable, right? Except that Ali had read the previous Volunteer's reports, and she knew that the previous Volunteer had already given them exactly the workshop they were requesting.
What this anecdote illustrates is that:
(a) The populace often knows what we can provide and can hone their requests, but
(b) For the most part, they are much less interested in, you know, results ... and more interested in, say, having some entertainment for a few days plus free meals provided.
Similar things have happened at my site. The youth keep wanting me to re-start the youth group that a previous PCV oversaw. "But the Association fell apart when that Volunteer left," I say. "It was supposed to be your group, not his! I'm not going to start it up again if you guys aren't invested enough to keep it going on your own! But if you have any project ideas, I'm happy to help you develop those." At which point they subside into confusion, or even sulk. "We don't have any projects! We need your vision!" Translation: We want you to run fun youth events that provide free meals, maybe even free t-shirts. (God, don't even get me started about the free t-shirts.)
So how do I make sure that Agnes & co. really want to run a chicken business? Not just get the money, maybe buy some chickens, whatever?
A PCV from last year's batch gave me some advice on how make Agnes's group jump through as many hoops as possible, to measure their commitment. I've been doing my best, but where's the line between having them show their commitment, and creating meaningless challenges that will cause them to lose faith? And how reasonable are some of these hoops, anyway?
For example: I told them I'd look into grants and loans, and I've been doing that; but the other day when I went to tell them about some of the loans I'd heard about, they seemed uncomfortable. "Interest can be hard to pay off," one of them said. "The interest rates are high."
"Well ... you should be making enough profit to pay it off," I said.
"But what if we don't?" she asked. "It's much better if there's no interest."
I was tempted to view their hesitation as lack of commitment, and lay down the law. I wanted to say, "Look, are you invested in starting this business or not? Do you seriously believe this can succeed or not? You seriously expect me to just get you free money?" But of course they do. There have been too many grant programs for them not to expect that. And, I mean, who wouldn't want a grant instead of a loan? And isn't it reasonable to be nervous about taking out a loan? And aren't they right that the interest is pretty high? (I did some quick Internet research just now; apparently the average rate of interest for a small business loan in the USA is 8%. In contrast, the lowest rate I've so far found here is 15%.)
My friend Jonathan once told me an anecdote he'd heard about, I think, the top 10 billionaires in the USA. Apparently, he said, nine out of ten were trust-fund babies. This says a lot about their privileged upbringing, quality of their education, etc -- but, he noted, it also says something about the risks they were able to take. When they needed to take a potentially very expensive risk in order to further their business, they were able to do so without worrying that it would break them, cripple them with debt. That was where the real privilege was: having a safety net for those serious, big-time risks.
I mean, these women have no safety net. They have the opposite of a safety net: too many children to care for, many of those being orphans that they're only tangentially related to ... their quality of life may not be the lowest in Swaziland, and Swaziland's got it better than a huge portion of the developing world, but Christ, they are about as far as you get from rolling in privilege.
I want to help them. Of course I want to help them. But isn't it reasonable for me to be a bit alarmed that they, for example, immediately reacted against a loan? How do I measure their commitment? How do I choose the hoops?
And isn't it discomfiting, to be in this position in the first place? Aren't I being arrogant and judgmental and appallingly patriarchal? Isn't my privilege smacked into my face every day that I'm here? Is it even such a bad thing if I just secure some money for them and they do ... whatever?
P.S. Sigh. The contents of this blog are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the US Government or the Peace Corps.
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Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
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My ownership of shataina.com lapsed while I've been here, and Godaddy.com is being very unsympathetic and probably won't let me have it back (I guess someone else bought it?). So, if any of you fine people have links to it anywhere (I can't imagine why you would), those links should be updated to point to:
http://pandora.simons-rock.edu/~shataina/
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Tuesday, December 29th, 2009
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It's interesting how ritualized siSwati is. (Perhaps English is too and I'm merely accustomed?) When one passes another in the road, one always, always greets. Most of the time, even if you don't know the other person at all, you greet. "Sawubona," to one person, "Sani bonani," to more than one (or a particularly respectable one). They answer, "Yebo," ("yes") and you say "Unjani?" or "Ninjani?" ("how are you?"). To which they always say "Ngikhona / sikhona," or "Ngiyaphila / siyaphila," ("I'm here" or "I'm healthy"). If you choose to continue then you ask, "Uyaphi?" ("where are you going?"). If you choose to continue past that then you can say "Liyashisa," ("it's hot") in summer or "Makata," ("it's cold") in winter. To which the polite response is "Yebo, liyashisa kakhulu!" ("it sure is!") even if it's not particularly hot at all (or cold).
I have this conversation at least ten times every day. It is in fact offensive not to greet someone; I've gotten in trouble for it. Because I'm impatient, I often skip straight to "Unjani?" Less formal, but it does the job, and won't offend unless it's the chief or something.
...
It was slow in my community today, so slow; even slower than is usual, here, partly because of the holidays. At least it wasn't terribly hot. I took a nap in the late afternoon and woke up around 6.30, took my daily malaria prophylactic. I wanted to go for a walk, but in Peace Corps we're trained to be terrified of that kind of thing. Never go anywhere alone, unless you know the route well and there are lots of people. Never, ever go out after dark. I spend so much time sitting still; the Swazis say, "ukhuluphele" -- "you're doing well, you're getting fat." Not quite fat, and maybe they're exaggerating out of politeness (fat's a Good Thing), but I'm certainly too sedentary. I had to walk. It wasn't dark yet. And the community knows me pretty well, now, so how dangerous can it be to walk in a new direction from my homestead? Just for twenty minutes? As long as I'm back by dark?
The earth here is red -- deep red -- brick-red. The dirt roads are all red, practically glowing in contrast against the dusty yellow-green fields and scrubby small trees. My area is bounded in distant romantic cliffs and mountains. The wind was strong today; it wasn't even close to hot, by 6.45; my hair blew across my face and streamed behind me. I went in a direction a host sister once told me was dangerous. "The last Volunteer used to walk along that road, in the fields," she said. "But it's dangerous."
"How?" I asked.
She shrugged.
"What do you mean?" I persisted.
"I don't know, it's just dangerous," she said.
"So I shouldn't go there, then?" I asked. She shrugged again.
Conversations with Swazis often go like that.
At a crossroads I saw a boy with a wheelbarrow twenty feet away, accompanied by a small sisi (girl), and waved. He waved back, asked how I was.
"Ngiyaphila."
He shouted something I couldn't hear.
"Angiva," I shouted back. ("I don't understand.")
"You look like an angel," he cried. The girl was hopping on one foot, giggling.
"Ngiyabonga," I shouted. ("Thank you.")
"I love you!" he said, which is normal; at least this one didn't ask me to marry him.
"Ncesi," I called back. ("Sorry.")
The girl was in paroxysms of laughter.
I was reminded of another man who mistook me for an angel. I was reminded of the song "Nobody Needs to Know," from the musical The Last Five Years; a betrayal, that song -- dislikable lyrics, but the melody's so beautiful.
The fields are very empty along that road. That's probably why my host sister said it was dangerous -- there'd be no one to hear me scream. I passed three Swazis walking abreast. "Ninjani?"
"Siyaphila," they chorused.
One turned to watch me and asked, "Uyaphi?"
I smiled. "Just walking."
They laughed and shrugged me off.
Over a year ago I talked to one of my oldest friends, Ed, about whether I should come to Africa when the Peace Corps called -- that, or try to hold out for a region I actually wanted, like Asia. I already knew Africa was the place they intended to send me, and I knew it would be risky to hold out for someplace I really wanted, because PC disdains such preferences and judges applicants negatively for having them. I remember that I was drunk. I was on the edge of crying. Ed said, "I think you should go to Africa," and I said, "Why?"
He said, "Because I think Africa will make you a better person."
An orange-legged round insect the size of my palm darted into the road, dug, darted back into the bush. I passed one of the skeletal bushes with white wooden thorns several inches long and paused, touching the thorns, pushing my fingers gently against the points.
Singani sami -- my boyfriend -- Rob and I trade text messages every day. Last night, in one flurry, I noted how much I appreciate it that "I always feel sure that you listen to what I say & interpret charitably." He wrote back: "If I ever felt anyone deserved a charitable interpretation, it's you, a creature of love and madness, even desperation." And tears came to my eyes.
I'm falling in love. With the many-shaded red road, with the dusky mountains and white thorns. With slowness and ritual greetings and text messages thrown into the ether, like messages in tiny bottles. This love doesn't quite feel -- natural? It doesn't feel unavoidable; it doesn't feel like lightning or an avalanche or an inferno. I am not overwhelmed. I'm walking into it slowly.
I joked to all my friends before I left that within six months I'd either develop Stockholm Syndrome or go home. I've got it now; I'm falling in love; I have no choice. But I wouldn't have come here if I wanted a choice.
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Sunday, December 27th, 2009
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I'll just paste it here, because I doubt that the "Times of Swaziland" is going to get on my case. It's worth glancing at the original for the comments though. This mirror has some good comments too. Keep in mind that the contents of this blog are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the US Government or the Peace Corps.
It's from the Letters to the Editor section:
Sir,
My name is Willard Windsor a resident of New York, United States of America.
I was born in Swaziland in 1964 and I left your beautiful country with my father when I was three years old.
My mom stayed on in Swaziland until 1986, and when she came back to the States she told me that if I wanted a happy life I should marry a Swazi woman, as they know how to take care of their husbands.
I didn’t listen to her then but I’m willing to listen to her now.
I am coming to Africa for the soccer world cup next year and I would like to use that opportunity to visit Swaziland as well, and hopefully meet and marry my new wife.
So I am hoping that you will publish my request for women who would like to marry me to send me emails so that I can communicate with them and make a proper choice before coming for the world cup. Briefly about myself; I’m a VP for Acquisitions at an Independent bank in New York City.
I am a divorcee and I have a 12 year old daughter. I’m looking for a woman between the ages of 20 to 40, and I’m not too picky; I just want a woman with a good heart to help me raise my daughter and take good care of me. I make good money so my wife will not need to work or worry about finances. So please publish my details in your newspaper and help me meet my future wife.
Willard Windsor.
willardwindsor@aol.com
The editor responds:
Windsor,
My immediate thought to your request is that I hope it is a genuine interest you have in our women. I also do hope that you are not just looking for someone to keep you busy during the month of the world cup. Having said that, it obviously lies with all the women who will show interest to make sure they know what they are getting themselves into.
Otherwise, let’s appreciate what your mother told you, it goes without saying that she is very right. We have beautiful women, who were raised right, and who I am sure, are intelligent enough to see through certain cons. Good luck, and may all those who will be interested tread carefully!
Editor.
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Monday, December 14th, 2009
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BOOKS FOR SWAZILAND! :: An exciting request.
A PITCH THAT I SPENT MUCH TOO LONG WRITING.
(Cross-posted to: my LiveJournal and related communities, my Facebook profile and related pages, HPK-Mayhem, Bowers House, Moomers Readings, lots of my friends. Please forward!)
Hi everyone!
My name is Lydia and I am currently volunteering in Swaziland with the U.S. Peace Corps. For several years previous to my departure, I worked in the wonderful bookstore O'Gara & Wilson -- Chicago's oldest bookstore, in fact! (It has a beautiful new website that you can access by clicking here). I am also a nigh-rabid writer, and generally spend much more time reading than out in the healthy fresh air like a normal human.
Recently, my friend and fellow volunteer Jason collaborated with an organization called Books For Africa to create Books For Swaziland, a project designed to establish new libraries or enhance existing school library facilities in rural Swazi communities. He then recruited a bunch of us other volunteers to help distribute the books around our communities. If this sounds awesome to you, please donate money to help ship the books by clicking here.
But perhaps you have doubts! Read on, my friend. I will settle all your doubts and solve all your problems.
Your Doubts!
I know what you're thinking. You're thinking:
1) "Wow, it is awfully culturally imperialistic for America to be shoving our books down Swaziland's throat. I am disappointed in Lydia, as I thought she was a more culturally sensitive human than this!"
2) "Book donations are very rarely of good quality or useful subject matter. Doesn't Lydia know that it will not be awesome for Swazis to receive thousands of obscure literary criticism tomes and 1995 computer manuals?"
3) "I feel zero confidence that these books will be properly accessible to the Swazi populace and/or taken care of. For example, how is Lydia ensuring that the books for at her site are not sold, or perhaps destroyed through neglect?"
I completely understand! But rest assured that I would not participate in a project that did not address said doubts. Allow me to explain!
Solving All Your Problems!
1) "Wow, it is awfully culturally imperialistic for America to be shoving our books down Swaziland's throat. I am disappointed in Lydia, as I thought she was a more culturally sensitive human than this!"
While my cultural sensitivity may not be an enormous thing, I like to think that I am relatively perceptive, and I have been living in Swaziland for almost six months now. Swaziland was colonized by the British and attained independence in the middle of last century. SiSwati is the tongue spoken by almost all citizens, but English is rife: it is the official government language, and is for example used at all government meetings. Newspapers are in English, all the books in my local library are in English, and when asking for siSwati books at various Swazi libraries, I've been informed that there aren't any. Most Swazis speak at least some English, and schoolchildren learn all their lessons in English -- in fact, kids are punished for speaking siSwati in school.
You may have mixed feelings about how prevalent English already is in Swaziland -- I certainly do -- but the fact remains that it is everywhere, and the books available are already almost entirely in English. So by donating to this project you will be allowing Swaziland to access more and better-quality reading material of the type that it already uses, rather than forcing American reading standards upon uninterested and unappreciative Swazis.
Also, this project has been designed such that the collaborating Peace Corps Volunteers and our community partners are fundraising a considerable chunk of the budget (45%). So you may be sure that the communities receiving the books are interested, because they're putting in money!
Are you comforted? Donate!
2) "Book donations are very rarely of good quality or useful subject matter. Doesn't Lydia know that it will not be awesome for Swazis to receive thousands of obscure literary criticism tomes and 1995 computer manuals? What about the mildew and water stains?"
As a former employee of O'Gara & Wilson (did I mention that the store has a gorgeous new website?), rest assured that I am incredibly familiar with the frequently-terrible quality of book donations. Because I am so familiar, I grilled Jason when he recruited me. "Jason! Are you encouraging me to raise 1500 emalingeni just so my library will receive a thousand odd volumes from the 1962 Encyclopedia Britannica?"
Jason has informed me that he carefully checked into this matter before putting together the project. Some of the books are new and donated by the presses who printed them. Others are gathered from donation drives and carefully sorted. But if you don't believe these secondhand assurances about Books For Africa, you can check out their website directly, where an assortment of testimonials may be gathered from countries that already received books.
Also, I am pretty sure that it will be easy for these books donations to be better-quality than the books already available. Some of these books are going to places where there are none; some (such as those for my community) are being sent to existing libraries. And let me give you some random samples of books I found while wandering through my library:
# AIDS: Your Questions Answered. Copyright 1987.
# A book that had been thoroughly investigated by termites.
# Six odd volumes from the 1980s science fiction Gor series by John Norman, none of which were the first in the series.
Are you comforted? Donate!
3) "I feel zero confidence that these books will be properly accessible to the Swazi populace and/or taken care of. For example, how is Lydia ensuring that the books for at her site are not sold, or perhaps destroyed through neglect?"
Each Peace Corps Volunteer involved in Books For Swaziland has personally vetted the area where the books will be stored. In some cases, these are clean, dry rooms in schools; in others (such as my own) the facility is in fact already a library, with some books (and even a librarian) already.
Also, the volunteers involved in the project will be given a two-day workshop on setting up a good space for books and taking care of them properly, after which we will return to our communities and teach those skills to anyone who will listen. Although book preservation was never my O'Gara and Wilson specialty (check out their exciting new website), I feel confident that I can ensure at least some value at this workshop, even if it does manage to be terrible, which I'm pretty sure it won't.
Are you comforted? Donate!
That Is All!
Thank you for reading! Even if you are not concerned about the bookless Swazis, I hope you will think about donating in consideration of the mild entertainment that you have gained from this message, being as you made it all the way down to this paragraph.
You can do it right here!
Take care, all of you. I hope all is well in America.
Lydia
P.S. Guess what? The contents of this blog are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the US Government or the Peace Corps!
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Friday, December 11th, 2009
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The bookstore where I used to work now has a gorgeous website, whence I have learned that pastries are now served every Saturday. Seriously.
Dude, we don't even have used bookstores in Swaziland. Excuse me, I need a cry-for-missing-America moment ....
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In the evenings, I sometimes go sit and watch the sunset -- there's a glorious angle on it, glowing over fields and huts and mountains, that I can observe from a pile of rocks behind my homestead. I am aware that this habit is wretchedly self-conscious and picturesque.
I learned recently that when I do this, my host family assumes that I'm homesick.
...
An Anecdote About Waiter Treatment and Cultural Relativism That I Would Find Stereotypical and Boring If Someone Else Told It, But Is Interesting Because It Happened To Me
Last week I was in Mbabane, the capital, with my friend Thabani (tah-bah-nee), who's from Zimbabwe. Before we headed back to my site, he suggested getting lunch. I convinced him to go out for Indian, which he'd never had before -- when I'm in Mbabane or Manzini I like to get Indian, because there aren't any Indian places anywhere else in the country. (Often the Indian restaurants are short on things, too. For instance, paneer runs out a lot because it's hard to get here. Also, because there is apparently some confusion about which types of ethnic food are which even among the locals who go to ethnic restaurants, such places often serve a variety of other foods -- the one we were at, for instance, had chow mein on the menu.)
At the end of the meal, I tipped the waitress 10%. Thabani was surprised. "What's that for?"
"It's a tip," I said. "She did a good job."
"Huh." He observed closely as the waitress picked up the money, as if he were a tourist watching a particularly fascinating local custom.
"It's normal in America," I added. "It's expected."
"Then wait staff in America must be very rich," he said. "Getting so much extra from every customer!"
"Well, no," I said slowly, suddenly realizing that what I was about to say was ridiculous, "because in America the restaurants pay waiters less. To make up for it."
Thabani facepalm'd, and cracked up. After a minute, I did too.
...
Guess who is the new co-editor of the Peace Corps Swaziland newsletter? Oh yes. My friend Ali and I were elected to the editorial positions last month. (This was not a difficult election -- we were the only ones running; most people ran to be on Peer Support Network, which is kind of the intra-Volunteer social services, instead.) My motives for being on the "Swazi Sojournal" editorial team (we can rename it if we want, but I can't think of anything clever) were, I admit, not entirely pure. It was partly because going for it gave me an excuse to talk to Rob, the scrawniest male Volunteer (therefore the one that I immediately got a crush on), who was half of the previous Sojo editorial team. It was also partly because Sojo editors get travel and board costs paid by the office for a monthly three-day visit to Mbabane.
But it is actually a legitimately cool function in itself, because I get to interview people for the Sojo, including folks like a local gender activist at the incredible organization Women and Law in South Africa. (I intend to post some of the stuff learned from WLSA at some point -- it's really fascinating.) Also, there is an amazing recurring feature in Sojo called "Hard Corps / Soft Corps" in which Volunteers make fun of each other. Here are verbatim examples from previous Sojos, which were compiled by Rob and his co-editor Margaret:
You know you're Hard Corps when ....
You have Swine Flu. [Yes, we got it here too!]
A roach crawls out of your pit latrine and up your leg and you don't even blink.
You trash-talk the ambassador.
You burst into shocked laughter when someone stops for a pedestrian at the crosswalk.
Your rat problem is so bad that they eat your host family's ARVs.
You see ants on your avocado and you think, "Mmm! Protein!"
You don't bother showering when you come to town because you just don't care anymore. [Most of our sites don't have showers.]
You're still positive about your vacation, even though you spent four days of it in the hospital. AND you don't use it for pity points.
You know you're Soft Corps when ...
You get a driving blister on your foot.
You have a karaoke machine sent to you.
You teach swimming lessons in Pigg's Peak [where there's a gym].
You're so broke, you pay your khumbi fare with a handful of bubblegum.
You take motion sickness medication on your khumbi.
You show up a day late to Sojo and find that your co-editor has already done the whole damn thing.
You only submit half your Sojo article (WHY???)
You've been in Swaziland for two months and you're still updating your Twitter account.
You accidentally delete the Sojo (way to go, Rob).
...
In yet another spectacular example of how entirely goddamn absurd my life is, I actually first met Rob in Hyde Park. In fact, I met him at Bookstore Y, where I used to work. How is this possible, you ask?
We figured this out when I was still in training, after I told him I used to live in Chicago and work in a bookstore. The conversation went like this:
HIM: Did you live in Hyde Park?
ME: Yeah! How'd you know?
HIM: I did my Greek there.
ME: At the University? Lucky you! I love the University almost as much as I love Hyde Park itself.
HIM: Hey, wait a minute ... did you work in the bookstore that faced south, next to the Metra tracks?
ME: Indeed. It has a green awning.
HIM: Were you there in summer 2007?
ME: Yes ... I sold you science fiction books, didn't I.
HIM: Yeah. A Heinlein novel and a collection of Soviet science fiction stories, to be precise.
He even remembered which books they were! This just goes to show all you bookstore employees out there that engaging customers in friendly conversation will not only leave a lasting impression that can only mean good things for the store -- it will also serve you well in your future romantic endeavors.
...
Eek, I almost neglected to mention that the contents of this blog are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the US Government or the Peace Corps. Never forget, my children. Never forget.
CIA Secrets Revealed Like Magic
The Cold War made for strange partners -- including the CIA and a well-known magician named John Mulholland. In 1953, Mulholland was hired by the C.I.A. to adapt his craft for its agents. The documents he produced, long thought destroyed, were discovered in 2007 by two C.I.A. historians, who have recently published The Official C.I.A. Manual of Trickery and Deception.
What could a magician teach spies? Much sleight of hand, apparently, that could be used for dosing drinks, passing pills and exchanging messages. And then there were the covert signals, including some that could be sent by tying your shoelaces in special patterns. The Boston Globe has illustrated some of the tricks in this marvelous slideshow.
Folklore.org stories of Apple history: Are You Gonna Do It?
No matter how much resolve you could muster, it was still difficult to quit Apple if Steve wanted you to stay. You'd have to sit down with him for a reality distortion session, which was often effective at getting people to change their minds. One day, a few of us were talking about strategies to overcome Steve's persuasiveness.
"I've got it!" said Burrell. "I know the perfect way to quit that will nullify the reality distortion field."
Of course we wanted to know how he could do that.
"I'll just walk into Steve's office, pull down my pants, and urinate on his desk. What could he say to that? It's guaranteed to work." We laughed, thinking that not even Burrell would have the guts to do that.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
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Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009
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All the Peace Corps Volunteers in Swaziland just finished up a big all-volunteer conference in which we showed up at the biggest city, Manzini, and endured a metric ton of workshops. One day at lunch, I had a conversation with a few others about potential methods for educating vampires about HIV risk. We had just finished when Mr. Rob* appeared and sat across from me.
"You missed the conversation about interventions for vampires," I told him.
"Aw, man," said Rob. "That's a population I really want to work with! It sucks that I missed the focus group."
Potential HIV Interventions for Vampires: My Notes **
The target population is approximately 18-1023 years of age and tends to be unemployed, but wealthy. According to the roleplaying game Vampire: The Masquerade by White Wolf Game Studio,*** which has both condensed and defined modern perceptions of vampires,**** vampires can carry and spread HIV although it does not make them sick. The game also notes that vampires don't especially enjoy sex but do, of course, require blood to survive; thus the major vector for transmission is biting rather than sexual contact, and that's where we should focus our efforts.
The mechanics of this will vary. The well-known acronym ABC summarizes the methods used to prevent HIV spread among humans: Abstention from sex, Being faithful to an HIV-negative partner, and Condom usage. Analogous practices for vampires might include abstaining from human blood by drinking animal blood instead, but this is an inefficient and ultimately unsatisfying alternative for the vast majority of vampires -- particularly very old ones, which require a certain minimum quality of blood. A vampire might be faithful to one partner by only choosing to feed from one human; in fact, many vampires already keep a retainer to serve this purpose ... but is it realistic to expect complete fidelity? As for prophylactics, perhaps it would be possible to develop some kind of tooth-sheath that would protect human meatpuppets from contracting HIV, but I strongly suspect that humans will prove unwilling to utilize this intervention because it will decrease the unearthly bliss imparted by vampire bites. Another idea from the focus group is simply encouraging vampires to drain human blood into a glass and drink it from there, but again, lack of unearthly bliss = almost certain failure to adopt intervention.
Vampires are a highly marginalized and stigmatized population. This makes interventions difficult. The vampires, who must hide from humanity to survive, will be hard to find. Additionally, they may be wary of well-intentioned human educators. It's conceivable that they may even consume said educators -- our initial team should never travel alone. (But while it may be tempting to equip the team with materials such as stakes and flamethrowers, we must keep in mind that if any of us actually kills a vampire -- even in self-defense -- that will only make our job more difficult in the long run as they may begin perceiving us as vampire hunters, etc.)
Since fetish communities are both marginalized themselves and have demonstrable vampire sympathies, it might be worth seeking out HIV educators that have historically been willing to workshop that population (such as Chicago's group Better Living with HIV, which has given workshops at BDSM clubs). We might also seek parallels with initiatives for commercial sex workers. Like vampires, CSWs have experienced exclusion and even abuse; some (though not all) are not happy to be CSWs, and would take other options if they were offered.
Ultimately, the lesson we have learned from other similarly stigmatized populations is that one of our best possible tactics is to recruit educators from within those communities and educate them so they can convince their peers. Thus, we should probably begin by trying to reach out to known high-profile vampires such as Ann Coulter.***** But the vampire community itself, which greatly fears human attention, polices its ranks for HIV carriers and slays them when found because carriers are considered a threat to vampiric secrecy. This has the unfortunate effect of driving vampiric HIV carriers even further underground, and of course making them even more difficult to reach.
Thus, we must accompany our educational efforts with a destigmatization campaign both within the vampire ranks -- encouraging them not to terminate HIV carriers but rather to treat them with sympathy and understanding -- and among humanity itself -- encouraging them not to view all vampires with fear and mistrust but to understand that many vampires legitimately live peacefully among humans, and those should be differentiated from violent, murderous, non-consensual vampires.****** A good start might be to encourage kine humans to use the polite term "thanatotically challenged" to describe the undead, plus some nice diversity workshops in schools and corporations where everyone gets snacks afterwards.*******
A final recommendation from the focus group: workshop venues for this population should probably be dark.
P.S. The contents of this blog are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the US Government or the Peace Corps.
P.P.S. Today is World AIDS Day, folks! Donate money or something. I mean, [begin guilt trip] I'm devoting two years of my life in the Third World, the least you can do is give five bucks. [/guilt trip]
* Has it become a convention on this here blog that I refer to certain men in my life with Mr.? I can't remember how consistent I've been. Maybe it has.
** I really can't tell if this will be funny to other people. We'll have to see.
*** Technically the game has been updated and is now called Vampire: The Requiem, but the old version was better, damn it.
*** To the extent that major popular movie-makers have been sued with relative success (i.e. money-grubbing settlement) for stealing setting material from the game. Also, I've heard that the recent prime-time TV show "True Blood" claims vampires cannot spread HIV, which strikes me as dangerous and irresponsible spreading of misinformation. (But naturally, those who truly believe vampires cannot spread HIV will argue that by claiming they can, I am cruelly increasing vampiric stigma.)
**** I take it back. Ann Coulter is not even close to cool enough to be a vampire.
***** Of course, successful destigmatization of vampirism may lead to people becoming more careless about becoming vampires or even choosing to become vampires (after all, from some perspectives the benefits are considerable). It's hard to know how to deal with this effect. I mean, we can't all be vampires; that's unsustainable, more's the pity.
****** I'm particularly fond of those square-shaped sugar cookies.
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Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
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Sudden Poll!
1. What are our responsibilities to people we love?
2. What are our responsibilities to people who love us?
3. Why?
4. Where do these responsibilities overlap?
5. What kind of love did you default to while answering this poll?
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Saturday, November 7th, 2009
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"You haven't stopped being a child. ... You still think that home, at the end of a long journey, is a place where a man finds peace." (229)
"I knew you lived," she said. She did not mention his wounded arm.
"And you must live too," he said. "The crowd is growing larger." He said nothing of the aching of the wound in his right shoulder, or of the flame radiating outward through his body from it. He said nothing of the pounding of his heart when he looked at her. He felt short of breath after his long ride. He did not use the word "love". For the last time in his life he wondered if he had wasted his love on a woman who only gave her love until it was time to take it back. He set the thought aside. He had given his heart this once in his life and counted himself blessed to have had the chance to do so. The question of whether she was worthy of his love had no meaning. His heart had answered that question long ago. (298)
~ The Enchantress of Florence, Salman Rushdie
...
A friend of mine recently emailed to ask my opinion of psychotropic drugs (that is, Prozac and Paxil and Wellbutrin and all their ilk -- not mushrooms and acid and suchlike). I tried to compose a reply only to discover that it became long, too long, and remembered that anyway people ask me this question a lot. So it might as well be a LiveJournal post, to which I can direct people at will.
This is going to be rambly, but so many factors go into my feelings about these things ....
My Opinions On and Experience With Psychotropic Drugs
(a.k.a. a very limited memoir of my time up through my first year of college)
Firstly, let me say that I don't have much pity for my younger self; I say this because I'm afraid that my upcoming remarks could be somewhat interpreted as a request for sympathy. I did not fit in well at school, but there were a few people I could talk to, and I never lacked for books or art supplies or solitary amusements (including, when it came along, the Internet). And although my parents had a lot of difficulty with each other, they did their best to make it always entirely clear that they loved me and were proud of me. They are also both very intelligent and interesting people, who did their best to treat me as a likewise intelligent person; I can still recall one childhood neighbor returning home from visiting me and telling his parents in shock that, "Lydia's parents talk to her like she's a grown-up!"
More to the point .... My ex-housemate Laura sent me a letter after I came here to Swaziland containing a line that struck me: we'd had a number of conversations about our history, and she described me as a "precocious child who acquired an early disdain for conformity, which developed into an overwhelming fear of mediocrity". I've always vainly wanted to consider myself as a precocious child, but I'm wary of it, too, because I'm so aware that enormous swaths of my early development -- for instance, the fact that I went to CTY (nerd camp) to take college courses starting in middle school; the fact that I went to college when I was 16 -- these things are at least as based on my socioeconomic privilege as any native intelligence I could claim. And I've often thought that my inability to fit in at school was, in many ways, a refusal to fit in, a refusal to take the other kids' perspectives seriously: a facet of my own overwhelming fear of mediocrity. A superiority complex. Which is not admirable ... not something I should value.
(And yet being in Swaziland has reminded me what it feels like to be attempting conversation, constantly, with people with whom I have almost no cultural context or intellectual bond .... The feeling is familiar and demoralizing. I don't know if the heart of it, way back when, was that I haughtily rejected my schoolmates, or I just couldn't figure out how to have an extensive conversation with them. If I was just in culture shock against normal America. I don't know. I really don't know.)
At any rate. As far as I'm concerned, I turned out fine, and -- although I sometimes wonder what on Earth will become of such an idiosyncratic creature as myself -- I'm happy with where/who I am now.
Okay. Disclaimers done. Oh, wait, I'm required to write this one: The contents of this blog are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the US Government or the Peace Corps.
Okay. Disclaimers done.
I must have been pretty unhappy when I was younger. I've got any number of fond memories from my hometown of Hastings-on-Hudson, which I sometimes find difficult to reconcile with memories that seem to indicate my own unhappiness. But then again none of these images, fond or un, are easy to grasp. I feel as though the minute I walked away from Hastings my life got so much more vivid, so much more present .... So much more real. I once spoke to a filmmaker who, fascinated by high school, longed to make movies set in high school because she said that "high school is such a universal experience": this quotation has stuck in my head ever since because it totally bewilders me. Universal for who? What do they find universal? I barely remember my two years of high school, and what I do seems to indicate that it was pretty different from most peoples' high school experience. Does not compute.
I first started seeing therapists in elementary school. I don't remember why; I was probably threatening suicide or something. I went through more than one, was never much engaged with any of them. The memory that sticks out the most is from -- Dr. Slater, I think his name was -- in fourth grade or so. I'd been reading some book I found lying around, Zhuangzi Speaks, a spectacular graphic novel adaptation of the philosophy of Zhuangzi (a Chinese contemporary of Confucius, really funny and warm and down-to-earth and worth reading). I was discovering relativism, how exciting! One parable in particular struck me; it was about a man who feared death, to whom Zhuangzi said: "Maybe death will be so great we'll end up regretting having ever lived."
Thrilled and awed, I read this line to Dr. Slater. He had piercing blue eyes and glasses, and his expression currently said: you-poor-troubled-child-don't-worry-your-little-head-I-understand-everything. "Is that what you think?" he asked gently. "That death will be so great, you'll regret having ever lived?" He was plainly all set to jot my latest suicidal ideations in his notebook. Disgusted, I changed the subject. Within the year I had evaded Slater's clutches, and he was my last therapist for a while.
( Read more... )
... and so. So. So, Lydia, what do you think about psychotropic drugs?
... How do I pull together my experience into a coherent opinion?
I don't know if they helped me. I don't know if they'll help you, either.
Maybe bullet points will assist this process.
* Cultural baggage: It's not nearly as bad as it used to be, but there is still a ton of stigma surrounding the usage of psychotropic drugs (and psychotherapy in general). I think anyone who goes on them ought to examine their own assumptions about psychotropics. What stereotypes do you hold? What stereotypes do people you care about hold? Are you going to feel comfortable being "out" about your psychotropic usage? Are there any judgments that you fear?
* Side effects: Know them. I recommend a second opinion outside your doctor and maybe some independent research, too. Track the side effects as you start taking them. And remember that we have no longitudinal studies and no complete understanding of what these drugs "really" do. This is true of many drugs, of course.
* Outside pressures: How much of this decision is yours? If other people are influencing it, why and how are they doing so? What are their biases?
* Therapist / psychologist mesh: You'll need someone to prescribe the drugs. I definitely recommend shopping around until you have one whom you both like and trust. This might take a while but is worth the effort.
* Employability: Just keep it in mind. Most jobs won't be able to discriminate against you, but some -- e.g. Peace Corps -- are free to do so, and might very well do so. (Let me say this again: The contents of this blog are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the US Government or the Peace Corps.)
* Life circumstances: Are there things about your life that are really hurting you, that you could change? Is whatever it is that's leading you to this decision an outside factor that can be adjusted?
That's the best I can do.
....
Management manual by gamers
Imagine the value if you could transfer the excitement and focus found in great games to the office. What if your employees could solve customer problems, design new software, or configure better shipping routes working inside a game environment at work?
This isn't just possible, say Byron Reeves and J. Leighton Read; it's inevitable. As employee productivity and engagement become more critical, the user experience provided by game technology offers a tantalizing solution for business. This is far more than a quaint metaphor or a twist on e-learning. Game design elements can address a host of business problems with morale, communication, and alignment while honing skills like data analysis, teamwork, leadership, and more.
Middle East female sex activist!
Wedad Lootah does not look like a sexual activist. A Muslim and a native Emirati, she wears a full-length black niqab — with only her brown eyes showing through narrow slits — and sprinkles her conversation with quotes from the Koran.
Yet she is also the author of what for the Middle East is an amazingly frank new book of erotic advice in which she celebrates the female orgasm, confronts taboo topics like homosexuality and urges Arabs to transcend the backward traditions that limit their sexual happiness.
Does anyone else feel a bit uncomfortable with the tone here? I mean, I'm glad to read about this woman, but ... "backward"? In terms of sex-positivity, too, there's a lot of pot-and-kettle from America to the Middle East.
The Promoted Fanboy
"My entire career has been a secret plan to get this job. I applied before but I got knocked back because the BBC wanted someone else. Also I was seven."
~ Steven Moffat, upon being named lead writer/producer for Doctor Who
Some fans have all the luck. Somehow they've managed to be a part of the very industry—or even sometimes the exact show—that they're a fan of. This can range from the minor, such as a Contest Winner Cameo, to the point where the fan has creative control and is Running The Asylum.
With a long list of oddly fascinating examples! I found this page because someone linked to it while referring to me (I count as a Promoted Fan because I worked for White Wolf after writing considerable fan content). Hilarious.
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Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
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My personal favorite thing in this entire country is a billboard that hangs over the Manzini bus rank. It says: "Are you thinking of raping a child today? Consider the consequences." It would take a severely disturbed person to find anything funny about that billboard, so let me assure you that I am that person. But this entire paragraph is probably too culturally insensitive for me to post publicly, so I'll stop.
...
Lightning Capital of the World
Swaziland is the Lightning Capital of the World; more Swazis are killed by lightning, per capita, than any other country's population. SiSwati for "it's lightning-y" is liyamanyata, which I want to name one of my daughters someday. Peace Corps Swaziland safety training included lightning safety tips (for instance, I unplug all appliances when I'm not using them, and I never plug anything in during a storm); the safety precautions installed on my homestead included a lightning rod. I dutifully absorbed all this information during training, of course, but I didn't think about what it would look like until we had a major storm last Friday. (As it happens, a Swazi was killed by lightning during that very storm. He was in his kitchen and there were no electrical appliances operating. I read this in the paper, so it might be true.)
I was cooking when the rain started. Rain on a tin roof is amazingly loud. I've gotten used to it. But this was so loud, it was hard to concentrate. I left my electric stove on for the bare minimum of time to finish my dinner; the power went out a moment later. Glancing out the window, I saw one, two, three flashes within the span of a blink. It was pretty astonishing, even from indoors -- one bolt must have struck nearby: I felt the air around me electrify, with the faintest shock all the way down to my bare soles. I stood at the window, torn about going outside, and eventually couldn't deny the urge.
The night itself was dark, and only candleglow lit my homestead's windows, but it was actually easy to see by the continuous hallucinatory flares. Small rivers of water poured across the yard's red earth. Some of the homestead's kids ran, shrieking, from the kitchen to Grandmother's house through the downpour. Awed, I huddled under the eaves of the main house to look out over the fields; then I ran across the yard to cower under the tarpaulin over my malume's ("uncle"'s) doorway, so I could have a better angle. With each flash, it seemed that the air itself shone ... as if it held the charge, the light, within itself. (Maybe it did -- I don't know anything about lightning.) The main, pale house kept flashing from silhouette to whiteness as if with an irregular strobe. It felt swifter than seconds; it was impossible to look at the sky for the briefest moment without seeing one, two, three quadrants lit white.
( Read more... )
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For Linguistics Nerds: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About siSwati But Were Afraid To Ask
I hate this language. And by hate, I mean love. Language was my favorite part of training. We did it in small groups (mine was four people), each with its own native speaker to teach us (a Language and Culture Facilitator, or LCF). My friend Reid and I would pounce on every new piece of information and try to tease it apart and loudly went insane, often with the peals of hysterical laughter that can only be prompted by utter despair, while the other two people in our language group went insane more quietly. My group eventually got to the point of predicting my reaction upon learning a particularly disturbing new piece of information: I would begin to freak out, take a moment to examine the data, breathe deeply, and then say, "Okay, great. No, this is great. This is awesome. I love this."
There are clicks (c and ch). They are hard to pronounce. Swazis laugh at me for many reasons, but attempting to pronounce the clicks is one of the most frequent. I had the extremely exciting realization a few weeks ago that one logical extension of this is that baby talk includes clicks: the local two-year-old was harassing me and suddenly went "cacaca!" instead of the usual "mama!" or "gogo!"
There are also tones. We did not bother with these during language training; our teacher assured us that people would understand us without the tones, and siSwati is hard enough as it is. And he was puzzlingly reticent about the "to be" verb. I'd ask direct questions about it or try to figure it out from other constructions, and he'd change the subject. Eventually, Reid and I were reading the dictionary and we realized: in the present tense, the "to be" verb is denoted by tones. Yes! Hence, sihlala is "tree", but sihlala with a different tonal intonation means "it is a tree". I would have thrown the dictionary across the room, but it was Reid's copy, so I just rolled around on the floor laughing instead. But it gets better.
Nouns pluralize in front, which is cool. There are nine classes of nouns that all take different plurals, which is less cool. Hence, the plural of likhaya ("home") is emakhaya, likati ("cat") emakati, lilangeni (the local currency) emalingeni; but the plural of singani ("boyfriend") is tingani, sigebengu ("thug") tigebengu. Lest you think it's easy to tell what type a noun is just by looking at the beginning, let me assure you that it isn't. There's an entire class of nouns that doesn't have regular beginnings -- make, babe, gogo ("mother", "father", "grandmother") all pluralize with bo- (thus, bomake, bobabe, bogogo). (As a small mercy, this class can sometimes be sort of predicted, in that most "kinship" or family-related words are in there; another example is that two people surnamed Dlamini would be boDlamini.) Also, some of the types are very similar to each other: the plural of umuti ("house") is imiti, but the plural of umfana ("boy") is bafana; the singular of tinyanga ("traditional healers") is inyanga, but the singular of tibuko ("mirrors") is sibuko. Some noun classes only have one form for each word: usually this kind of makes sense, as with kufa ("death"); occasionally it makes me want to bang my head against the wall, my personal favorite example being buhlalu ("beads"). Exactly -- there's no such thing as a singular bead. And then there are -- you guessed it -- irregular nouns! Yay! I haven't come across too many of these, and our LCF assured us they are rare. One example is liso ("eye"), which pluralizes to emehlo. Another is emanti ("water" or "liquid"), which has no singular.
( Read more... )
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I've been having the chance to read more, which is nice, and one of the better books I've read lately is Lawrence Durrell's Justine. It's all about a beautiful woman, a courtesan type; self-destructive and obsessive and dramatic and dark; and how everyone around her falls in love with her. You can already tell that it was practically written with my tastes in mind.
In another glorious example of my improbability field, this book was lent to me by another PCV (she said: "You know, I've got this book ... it's about four people and their weird sexual relationships ... I bet you'd like it,") who is a Nigerian-American girl about my age -- and then less than a week later it was recommended to me in a letter from another friend, who is a middle-aged ex-Green Beret and sexuality commentator. What do these people have in common? Mid-1900s reading material, apparently ....
Anyway. Quotery!
She gave me an impression of someone engaged in giving a series of savage caricatures of herself -- but this is common to most lonely people who feel that their true self can find no correspondence in another. (47)
"Idle," she writes, "to imagine falling in love as a correspondence of minds, of thoughts: it is a simultaneous firing of two spirits engaged in the autonomous act of growing up. And the sensation is of something having noiselessly exploded inside each of them. Around this event, dazed and preoccupied, the lover moves examining his or her own experience; her gratitude alone, stretching away toward a mistaken donor, creates the illusion that she communicates with her fellow, but this is false. The loved object is simply one who has shared an experience at the same moment of time, narcistically; and this desire to be near the beloved object is at first not due to the idea of possessing it, but simply to let the two experiences compare themselves, like reflections in different mirrors." (50)
"i expect that every time you are unfaithful to me and consumed by guilt you would like to provoke me to beat you up and give a sort of remission for your sins. My dear, I simply refuse to pander to your satisfactions. You must carry your own burdens. You are trying hard to get me to use a stockwhip on you. But I only pity you." (page 69)
She pressed a warm hand to my mouth to stop me talking and said something like: "Quick. Engorge-moi. From desire to revulsion -- let's get it over." She had, it seemed, already exhausted me in her own imagination. But the words were spoken with such weariness and humility -- who could forbear to love her? (71, slightly paraphrased for tense)
I remember the edges and corners of so many meetings, and I see a sort of composite Justine, concealing a ravenous hunger for information, for power through self-knowledge, under a pretence of feeling. Sadly I am driven to wonder whether I ever really moved her -- or existed simply as a laboratory in which she could work. She learned much from me ... perhaps what I took to be love was merely a gratitude. (71)
( Read more... )
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Saturday, September 5th, 2009
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(I had to come to Swaziland to get into Beyonce's music. But she's so good!)
Okay. Here I am! I'm alive and well, and will remain so as long as I continue to take my malaria prophylactic pill, not to mention boil, filter and put bleach in all the water I drink. I miss you all very much.
I thought I'd have more time to write once I was done with Pre-Service Training (PST) and out in the field, but there's so much to do out here ... between settling in, introducing myself around the community, getting to know my host family, continuing to practice siSwati, reading the ten thousand books Peace Corps gave me, and implementing the various assessment tools and integration process assigned by Peace Corps, I'm still really busy.
However, I have good news about Visitors!
I told everyone they shouldn't visit me before I left, because PC had informed me that it would count towards my vacation time. As it happens, this is not true in PC Swaziland -- if you visit me and I keep working, then it won't count towards my vacation. So you're welcome to come if you really want to! But you have to be prepared to live like I do -- don't come if you can't do a lot of sitting still in very high temperatures. I believe that the plane tickets cost about a thousand dollars round-trip if you come through Johannesburg, and then we'd have to figure out a bus to Swaziland or something.
Some Reasons Why Peace Corps Blogs, In Particular, Tend To Be Relentlessly Boring
I have seen very few travel blogs that weren't relentlessly boring. I'll do my best not to fall into that mold, but there are some complications.
Firstly, I can't post anything that could potentially give away my exact location or the location of another Peace Corps Volunteer; we're very strong potential targets for crime. Secondly, I cannot take political stances; Peace Corps is a thoroughly neutral organization. Thirdly, I cannot say anything that might be construed as culturally insensitive.
If you send me an email or a letter telling me about your life, though, I can send you a letter that might do some of the above ....
Oh yeah, and by the way, the contents of this blog are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the US Government or the Peace Corps.
Swazi Public Transit: the Khumbi System
People sometimes complain about the transit here, but the khumbi system is pretty amazing considering that it serves the entirety of this country -- most of which is rural. Khumbis (sometimes spelled kombis) are large vans that stand idle at their departure points (usually cities) until they are full. Once full, the driver gets in, puts on very loud music of his choice (this varies from gospel to electronic to pop to breathy love ballads), and speeds to the end of his route hell-for-leather, pausing only to pick up people who flag the khumbi down or when a passenger says "siteshi" ("station"). For some reason, the drivers always seem to hear a person who says "siteshi", no matter how loud the music is. Drivers drink frequently; one of our Peace Corps Safety Tips was to make sure we pay attention to the driver's apparent state of intoxication before taking a khumbi.
Individual khumbis have varying degrees of personality -- I think the drivers may be allowed to decorate them however they want, as long as the starting and ending points are written on the front and back of the van. The fonts used for this purpose are unpredictable; it's often a plain Helvetica or whatever, but another favorite is that drippy monster / Halloweeny font, and yet another is a New-York-Times-esque heavy calligraphy gothic capitals. (Maybe this has to be seen for the jarring effect to be fully appreciated.) Many khumbis are painted with gospel slogans or praises for the Lord; one is painted entirely red (yay). I've spotted one that has STREET VIBE painted across the back in skater script, and there's another that says NCESI (which means "excuse me", as in "excuse me, I seem to have just run you over because my driver is totally plastered").
Slogans
Slogans spotted around the place by myself and some other local Peace Corps Volunteers:
1) For the Koo brand of canned beans: "It's the best you can do."
2) The name of a general store near Mbabane, the capital: "Siyazama" ("we are trying".)
3) The name of another general store: "Take A Chance".
Are these hilarious, or is it just us?
Libraries!
The libraries here are really interesting. Almost all the books are in English, and many donated from the First World, so the collection is a bit idiosyncratic. There are a few classics, a bunch of thrillers, and a surprisingly high percentage of science fiction and fantasy. When I first browsed the local library branch, I found six novels of Gor on the shelves in the fiction section (none of which were, by the way, the first in the series). The amusement I felt upon encountering these was matched only by the sudden dropped-stomach pang of despair that hit me when I realized I know exactly nobody on this continent who'd understand why their presence is both hilarious and scandalous. There's a Tanith Lee book there, too -- and one of her more obscure ones, Sung in Shadow, which retells Romeo and Juliet.
To request a library card, one must submit two passport-sized photos -- and in lieu of proof of address or anything like that, I had to get a local friend with a good reputation to sign the application as a reference.
I just recently made friends with one of the local librarians -- a young woman who grew up in Manzini and studied in South Africa. She seems to feel a bit bored in this little town, and said that I'm unlikely to find anyone "like me" out here; that nobody reads. (Literacy is high in Swaziland, 80% or so, though of course that doesn't mean anyone actually uses it.) At another library, I asked one of the librarians why there weren't any books in siSwati. He looked at me over his glasses. "Swaziland is still a backwards country," he said. "No one is writing here."
That quotation is representative of an attitude I see a lot. A lot of people here really feel that they're living in a "backwards country", and aren't embarrassed to say so. And they often do so in language that a culturally sensitive person in the USA would blush to use: for instance, "backwards country". There's this fascinating consciousness of themselves as "backwards" or, better yet, "undeveloped".
Gender Equality Dynamics
That same consciousness makes for interesting attitudes around gender equality. Gender equality (one facet of which is often considered to be opposition to polygamy) is seen as a development issue here. Apparently, greater gender equality is very aligned with more highly-developed countries, and so now many development agencies "market" gender equality by saying that. One result of this is that gender equality is kinda being imposed "top-down" -- you see a lot of government speakers and media groups and such that are very consciously pushing gender equality, while the general population might not otherwise be inclined to think about the movement on its own.
And then, on top of that top-down effect, you also have a very weird feeling about the movement among the people we're teaching. For instance, during training we had to teach a practice class in a local high school, so my friend Ali and I chose to teach a gender lesson. When we asked the students why it's important to create gender equality, one of them answered that we should do it for the development advantages. Not because equal opportunity is a human right, not because all people should be accorded the same amount of respect, not because diversity is important ... etc. Because it'll make Swaziland more developed.
Of course, gender / feminism points are routinely oversimplified in the States too, but that tends to go ... in a different direction. In the States, you have people rattling off lines about how the media gives women unrealistic body image (kind of true, and kind of way oversimplified -- the media and the existing cultural norms are an interlocking system that can't be separated so easily). Here, you have people rattling off lines about how creating gender equality will be a major step forward in fighting the HIV pandemic (kinda true, and kinda way oversimplified -- it would certainly help if women felt more empowered to insist on condom use, etc).
... Okay. I know that's not much, but I'll post more when I can. In the meantime -- yeah, I really do miss you guys. Next time I'll post about the siSwati language (impossible to learn!), the tinyanga and sangoma ("traditional healers"), and much more!
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I'm exhausted. I'm scared. My flight for Swaziland leaves today. Send me an email to get information on how to send me mail. I'm telling myself this is gonna be incredible.
That's about all, really. I'll miss you guys.
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Thursday, June 18th, 2009
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I am acquiring a Kindle e-book reader for use in Africa! I feel like a vile traitress to the used book trade.
Sudden Poll! Got any references for awesome reads that I can port over to my Kindle? I probably won't be able to load books onto the Kindle when I get there, so they need to be files that you can email me -- or that I can download / find online -- within the next few days. My email: dragonladyflame fwip gmail mrow com.
Files of the following types can automatically be read on the Kindle:
* Kindle (.AZW, .AZW1)
* Text (.TXT)
* Unprotected Mobipocket (.MOBI, .PRC)
Files of the following types may easily be converted to the Kindle format:
* Microsoft Word (.DOC)
* Structured HTML (.HTML, .HTM)
* RTF (.RTF)
* JPEG (.JPEG, .JPG)
* GIF (.GIF)
* PNG (.PNG)
* BMP (.BMP)
* PDF (.PDF)
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Vegetarian Deconstruction
Okay. So I'm standing by the refrigerator in my vegetarian co-op and I open the door to see what I can eat and I see, what do I see, but some sausages. Apparently, I discover, we have tons of sausages. And chicken. Vast quantities of meat have stuffed the co-op to the gills -- all of it left over from a local art festival. It will go to waste if we don't eat it. And there is tons of it.
If I eat this meat, then I'll be breaking my vegetarianism. But my vegetarianism is about the resource usage that goes into American meat, and it's about the cruelty inflicted on animals in American farms; it's not, in my mind, about my health (health-wise, I could probably use some meat; I'm not so good at the protein thing). So if I eat this sausage, then I'm not actually having any effect at all on the problems I purport to care about -- because this sausage has already been purchased, is left over, and will go to waste if nobody eats it.
But I could leave it to my housemates to eat.
But it doesn't matter, because whether I eat it or not, it will be eaten, and the effect has already been had anyway -- viz., the commercial support of fucked-up treatment of animals has already happened, and so has the commercial support of an industry that uses completely insane amounts of resources. What difference does it make?
Well, I could argue that I am setting an example by being vegetarian. That I am helping the vegetarian movement by standing true to my beliefs and showing others that yes, giving up meat is actually not that big a deal, and in fact it's an important moral decision that we can stick to. Except that it's 2AM on a Sunday and no one else is awake to see me eat this meat, so what example? Where? I see no example.
So really the choice I'm facing is whether or not I stick to a rigid moral code in face of a choice that will hurt nothing. I mean, what does it matter if I eat meat that I didn't buy, that was basically rescued from the trash, with nobody observing me? The only reason not to eat it would be "because I don't eat meat, that's all," and shouldn't any moral code be flexible? Shouldn't everything be flexible, doesn't flexibility = survival and effectiveness?
But the moral crisis that led me to vegetariansm taught me that I had to acknowledge the line, that I had to toe the line, that I could not allow myself "room to maneuver". And yeah, I haven't been perfect about that this year. I've fucked up a few times. But I think I've done my best. I think. I don't know. I haven't done my best, but maybe I've done my best at doing my best. Argh, it's not enough. How about this -- I tried.
Anyway, the point is that I have to make a line and toe it. Psychologically. Surely the psychological angle matters. I have to make myself feel guilty for eating all meat because what keeps me from eating meat if not guilt? And how do I maintain my vegetarianism if I let the guilt slip? Except that I don't really believe that the only thing maintaining my vegetarianism is guilt. I have not historically needed a whole lot of guilt in order to do the right thing; my convictions seem to stem from something else. Unless the guilt goes deeper than I think it does, which it might. Anyway ... anyway ... anyway, surely I have to draw a bright line and force myself on one side of it psychologically. Force myself to see things in black and white.
But on the other hand, do I? I actually think that a lot of problems have stemmed from seeing things in black-and-white. It gets dangerous, it makes people follow the letter rather than the spirit, it blinds people to important understanding and compassion, it allows people to feel less responsible for their decisions ("I was following my code!"), it disappears all the shades of grey -- and life is shades of grey. Inflexible moral codes create monsters. Morality isn't about the words in the code, it's about the intent and the effect.
So really, if I want to show that I'm actually a thinking being who isn't blindly following a rigid and unchangeable moral code, I should eat the sausage.
Actually I think the moral of the story is that I should eat nothing at all and go back to what I was doing, which was working on wrapping up my biggest project before I go to Swaziland. In a week. A week. Not that I'm panicking or anything. Everything is fine and I am totally capable of getting everything done before I catch my plane next Sunday. Totally. Fucking. Capable. And not hungry at all. I don't need sausage. Or food. Ever again. Eating is for chumps.
...
Saddam's Palaces: An Interview with Richard Mosse
These extraordinary images — published here for the first time — show the imperial palaces of Saddam Hussein converted into temporary housing for the U.S military. Vast, self-indulgent halls of columned marble and extravagant chandeliers, surrounded by pools, walls, moats, and, beyond that, empty desert, suddenly look more like college dormitories. Weight sets, flags, partition walls, sofas, basketball hoops, and even posters of bikini'd women have been imported to fill Saddam's spatial residuum. The effect is oddly decorative, as if someone has simply moved in for a long weekend, unpacking an assortment of mundane possessions.
... Fascinated by the dozens and dozens of incredible photos Mosse emailed — only a fraction of which appear here — I asked him to describe the experience of being a photographer in Iraq.
Detailed description of Hindenburg interiors from zeppelin history site
from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif) cooper_korman.
Elaborate dice collection plus pictures
Includes ancient dice! Matt and I found it while discussing what ancient dice might be made of -- turns out basically anything from ivory to stone to metal to wood.
Research shows robots forming human-like societies
Dario Floreano and his team at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology built a swarm of mobile robots, outfitted with light bulbs and photodetectors. These were set loose in a zone with illuminated "food" and "poison" zones which charged or depleted their batteries. ... At intervals, the robots were shut down and those that had the most charge left in their batteries were chosen as "successful", and their neural programming was combined to produce the next generation of the robots. ... Within fifty generations of this electronic evolution, co-operative societies of robots had formed -- helping each other to find food and avoid poison. Even more amazing is the emergence of cheats and martyrs. Transistorized traitors emerged which wrongly identified poison zone as food, luring their trusting brethren to their doom before scooting off to silently charge in a food zone .... Some robots advanced fearlessly into poison zones, flashing warning lights to keep other robots out of harms way.
Bibliodyssey: Books, Illustrations, Science, History, Visual Materia Obscura, Eclectic Bookart
Incredible antique book illustrations.
from my mother.
Antique vampirism articles
The "vampirism" tag from a blog whose description is: My current research has me looking through microfilmed tabloid newspapers of the 1930s. My progress is greatly impeded by my inability to scroll past unrelated “human interest” stories, most of them tiny nightmares like something out of Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts (which you should read immediately if you haven’t already). Anyway, I’ve started this blog as a place to memorialize these spectral and transient tragedies.
from Housemate Ackerman.
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Putting up this entry scares me more than anything else I've ever written here. I don't know what people will think of me. I'm superficial. I'm vain. I'm self-centered. I'm seeking attention. I'm a brainless bimbo.
I've been writing this off-and-on for ages. It doesn't go anywhere. It feels like a pathetic excuse. It feels like something obscene. It feels like I'm whining, and not just whining, but whining about something totally stupid. It's going to run too long. And maybe tl;dr is the best reaction to hope for.
But I want to talk about beauty. About the idea of being beautiful. And about how I look. I'm circling around the thing it scares me to say. Maybe I'll be able to say it by the end of the entry. There's no way I could have this conversation with someone in person. I feel like a bitch for writing this, but I'd feel like even more of a bitch if I tried to talk about it.
...
Beauty, the idea of being beautiful, matters. I can't speak for anyone else, any other woman. I don't know how much, if any, of my experience is true for other people.
Maybe I have obsessed over appearance more than most people; but I always fantasized about being beautiful. It was always a core part of the early stories I wrote, the characters I created. I always drew, primarily, beautiful women. My avatars were inevitably beautiful.
I didn't date in high school. I spent the bulk of my time running around the Internet, playing computer games, and reading. I was not, one might say, popular. One of the Popular Girls once said I'd look great if I had a makeover, and offered to give me one; another of the Popular Girls once came up to me while I was wearing a new shirt and said, "Lydia! You look so trendy today!" ... I remember this interaction primarily because it made me feel ill, it made me want to go home and change. Oh, I wanted to be beautiful -- but far more deeply, far more powerfully, I didn't want to be like the Popular Girls. I hated what I could see of their world. And I wanted to be beautiful only on my own terms.
I didn't understand yet that there's no way to be beautiful on your own terms.
...
I remember the first time a boy my age -- someone besides my parents, or the doctor, or someone else way older than me -- told me I was beautiful. I was sixteen. It was my first week at Simon's Rock College, and a sophomore boy had taken me on a walk around the lake. It was late at night, mist was curling everywhere, and he'd been saying how he could just imagine a grey dragon materializing from the mist.
He said, "I feel very connected to you right now," and I said something stupid like, "Why?" and he hesitated and looked at me, "Well --" he said, "you're very beautiful." Just a line? Maybe. It seemed sincere. The way he was looking at me seemed sincere. I caught my breath, my eyes fluttered closed, my pulse slammed into my throat. His words were like a slap in the face. Leaving me breathless. (Though it's maybe weird to say "I feel connected to you because you're beautiful", as opposed to feeling connected to someone because of a mental/emotional commonality or shared experience or whatever ....)
It was something I'd always dreamed about, of course, being beautiful enough to have moments like that along the side of a lake. It was something I'd thought about so much that it almost seemed ... inevitable. Like, "Oh, there it is; this is the part of my story where the ugly duckling grows up!" But after the moment passed I didn't know how to act. I knew how to be brassy and forthright and abrasive and angry; I also knew how to be silent and absorb myself in a book and disappear. I knew how to dress in glitter and bright colors and interesting jewelry and incredible costumes, and I knew how to ignore the way people looked at me when I was wearing something ridiculous. I knew how to flirt with someone online; I'd played out any number of romances in online games, as Shataina. I even had some idea of how to flirt with a guy in real life. I'd even kissed a boy once, no way! But I still didn't know what to say to the way that boy was looking at me right then.
I don't think I've ever learned what to say. I've learned, since then, to pretend the compliment didn't happen; or to pass it off like it's not important; or to be sarcastic, to derail the conversation; or to look away while I thank the person, and quickly change the subject.
And I've unlearned the reaction that I got, long ago by the lake. It doesn't hit me like that anymore; not unless it's someone I care about, saying it. Not unless it's someone I trust a great deal. Anyone else says it, and it makes me feel put on the spot, self-conscious and defensive. Or I feel sick. Or I feel nothing.
...
Interestingly, when I started playing tabletop roleplaying games -- in college -- I always made my characters beautiful. Always. I always spent the points necessary -- and it always did cost points, even in games where there are no obvious in-game advantages (e.g., many White Wolf games charge for the Appearance statistic, but it's very rarely useful). It felt necessary, even for characters that had nothing to do with being beautiful (like ninjas). When I created Shataina as a character -- my avatar, the character I always thought of as closest to myself -- I always made Shataina as beautiful as I possibly could. More beautiful than any other character I made. I spent the maximum points.
I could deal with being beautiful in a game, where it wasn't real. I could even revel in it. I loved the fantasy. But I also accepted a certain level of disempowerment -- maybe partly out of guilt; I felt guilty for daring to have such a vain shallow fantasy in the first place. Having a beautiful character was never primarily a benefit, though it sometimes was useful. GameMasters would occasionally give me some kind of benefit for it, but would also frequently impose penalties because my character was a beautiful woman: penalties on trying to disguise her, for instance, that would not be imposed on an handsome male character or any other unusual-looking character. Or social costs, or abuse. One of my characters was coerced into sex by another character, and the reason given was that she was beautiful (this experience was a major contributing factor to that article I wrote about rape in RPGs, back in 2005).
(For comparison's sake, imagine a character who's really strong or intelligent. Now try to imagine a GameMaster imposing a penalty on some unrelated skill check, because your character's so strong or intelligent. It doesn't happen. But it happens for high-Appearance characters. Particularly female ones.)
Later in my life, when I volunteered for True Dungeon -- they tend to dress their female characters in very revealing outfits. One year in particular I remember badly, because the True Dungeon people dressed me in a really stripperiffic dress and didn't give me any spoken lines, and I was basically a "girl not wearing much clothing" prop for my entire experience. But the worst part of that situation wasn't actually the way they dressed me or told me to act, which I did -- after all -- consent to (even if I felt uncomfortable about it during and afterwards, I did consent). The worst part was when one group came through True Dungeon and one of the women said something angry about my character. Which was reasonable, because my character was kind of a bitch. But one of the men said, "Oh, you're jealous," and the other men all snickered, and I didn't know what to say and I ended up letting the moment pass without venting my spleen.
But it made me feel sick, it made me want to scream. If I could go back in time and slap that man across the face, I would. "I hate you and your male entitlement, the way you so casually take possession of my appearance and use it as a weapon. Don't feel entitled to how I look. Don't use a comment about my appearance to disempower that woman's perspective. Don't use me to make other women feel bad."
...
A while ago, I discovered a brand of jeans that fits me really well. Caslon, by Nordstrom. I really wanted more of these jeans, so I did an Internet search for them, and one of the first hits was a blog post from a woman who absolutely hated Caslon jeans. (This is no longer true; the top hits for Caslon jeans have changed, and I don't know where that blog post is now.)
This woman said Caslon jeans were ridiculous, unreal, that no actual woman could ever fit them. I remember reading her blog with an odd sense of displacement ... maybe, as if I were outside my body looking in. Apparently, the jeans that fit me perfectly were disempowering to this woman. Apparently, my body couldn't be real. Part of me felt a little frustrated at the way she was denying my experience -- claiming that I could not possibly exist -- shaming me, even. But more of me felt sympathy for her. Felt guilty. My body, by fitting Nordstrom's jeans, had betrayed her. By existing, I was contributing to a hostile world for her.
...
If a friend told me they liked me -- if a man told me he loved me -- for my intelligence or my skill at writing or my irony or my perspective or any facet of my personality, really, I'd be happy. If someone told me they liked me, or loved me, for my appearance -- I'd feel hurt. Confused. Sickened. Even now, when I feel like my boyfriend is saying "You're beautiful" too often, I get ... uneasy.
I've dated one man who never said I was beautiful. I think he complimented my appearance exactly once, and it was with a somewhat reserved term ("cute"). Sometimes his lack of feedback on my appearance made me feel safer with him. But sometimes with this particular thing ... appearance ... I'd think he disliked me for it. Not because he wasn't attracted to me, but because he was. He implied once that he felt guilty for being attracted to the people he's attracted to (presumably including me). He implied more than once that he thought I was too focused on my appearance, and disliked that.
How do I address an implication like that? "You're very focused on your appearance," he said once, in a vaguely accusatory tone. What does that mean -- what sin am I committing? At the time I said defensively, "Well, appearance is important," and he nodded and turned away; I should have asked him what he meant and why it bothered him. I think I was afraid to get into it. His opinion mattered to me so much ... I was afraid I might find out that he considered me shallow and/or vain. I could have tried to talk about façades and image control and making people think certain things about you, and really, when I think about that particular ex, I know that he was quite preoccupied with his image -- though not with beauty. We could have had an interesting conversation about the way we think about appearances. But I felt too ... accused ... to start that conversation.
...
I don't wear lipstick or concealer or eyeliner; I don't shave my legs. I don't do these things because they bore/annoy me to implement ... but when someone tells me, "You're very focused on your appearance," it makes me feel as though I have to make it up somehow, as though I have to prove my "appearance doesn't matter" cred. It makes me feel as though not wearing makeup, not shaving, is an obligation. It makes me feel as though even if I wanted to, I shouldn't start doing those things.
A gentleman recently told me that he loved how I don't shave my legs because it's like a statement of power ... a statement that I don't care. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I guess it's nice to be validated. On the other hand, I hate the fact that not shaving my legs is A Thing. I don't do it because it takes me a while to do and I hate the way my legs feel afterwards, not because I'm trying to make a statement, but at this point, I've had to think about and defend it so much that it's become by default A Thing and that makes me crazy. Why do I have to spend so much goddamn time thinking about a single cosmetic practice? I don't actually believe this -- but I'm tempted to say that his comment was nearly as repressive as any pro-shaving comment might be.
Using makeup feels like a sin. When I do it, I feel awkward about it. I don't wear significant makeup unless it's really really obvious -- I only do it when I feel like I'm putting on some kind of costume. You know, dramatic makeup -- sparkles or cat-eyes or bright colors. I would never even consider plastic surgery, unless I was scarred; then it would be "reasonable", it would be "fair", it would be "acceptable" to get plastic surgery to reverse the damage. Getting plastic surgery just to make myself more beautiful? That'd be "fake" and "superficial".
I did some modeling for fun a few years ago -- mostly what the industry calls "trade for pictures"; I was only ever paid once -- and I always felt awkward about it. Early on, I mentioned it to some of my friends, but I tried to pass it off lightly. With most people I never mentioned it at all. And a lot of the reason I stopped was -- partly because I figured I couldn't make the grade as a pro -- but also partly because I thought, "If I do make the grade as a pro, then that makes me nothing more than a vain self-centered model."
Then last year I did some more modeling projects for fun, because I had free time, was going slowly mad and needed to do something with my time. I loved the pictures but I felt torn every time I wanted to share them with my friends. I adopted the same kind of semi-open, semi-hidden behavior I've used in the past re: modeling; I feel strange being proud of the pictures. I think I've posted a total of one modeling picture to LiveJournal ever, and it was highly stylized, not one I thought of as attractive. I used some modeling pictures as Facebook avatars at one point this year, because I loved them ... but I also felt relieved when outside circumstances made it wise for me to take them down.
I remember very clearly that when I posted this picture of my Halloween makeup, I cropped out my body and only included my head. The full picture, with my body, involved a corset and looked fabulous. I felt too self-conscious to post it; it was too good a picture.
...
Occasionally, people will talk to me as if there's some assumption behind my appearance, as if it's taken for granted. My college friend Vinny once asked me, "Hey Lydia, do hot people sit around and talk about other people who aren't hot?" Or sometimes some guy will be hitting on me, and he'll say something like, "Well, you know how pretty you are ..." as if we're on the same page, somehow, as if we both understand each other automatically. But what does it mean if I agree with that statement? Is that allowed? It feels like a trap. Not to mention, it doesn't feel real.
I remember a moment with an ex-boyfriend where we were both very intoxicated, and I looked at him and asked: "Do you think I'm pretty?" And he looked back at me and said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, "Yes." One of his friends laughed and said, "You know, my girlfriend will also say the most out-there stuff when she's messed up," and I didn't know what to say. Is it such a weird question to ask? When images of heartbreakingly beautiful women are everywhere, I am really supposed to simply assume that I'm pretty?
...
Back when I was working as a game writer, one of my housemates suggested that I create a website where I put up pictures of myself and marketed myself as "the hot game writer girl". The idea was nauseating. I couldn't stand it. But it probably would have worked: after all, when I was writing games, one of my employers outright told me that he hired me because he thought I was cute.
If I'm beautiful, it calls all my accomplishments into question. Was I hired, recruited, accepted for my appearance? It calls all my friendships with men or gay/bi women into question. Do they like me because they want to fuck me? If I'm beautiful, I can't feel secure in it. Better not get used to it, because by the time I'm 30 it's gone, right? If I'm beautiful, that beauty isn't mine. I can't take credit for it, I don't own it ... I certainly don't deserve it.
"I'm beautiful." That's the thing it scares me to say. That's the thing I've been circling around. I can write it only because it's in quotes, it's not real -- and typing the words still makes me wince. I'm not beautiful. I can't be beautiful. If I'm beautiful, I don't deserve it. If I'm beautiful, I'll inevitably lose it. If I'm beautiful, what does that make me?
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My boyfriend (this one's name is Matt) should never have logged into Facebook on my computer.
Suggestions welcome. If your suggestion makes it to me before Matt (a) realizes what's going on and does whatever you have to do to log someone else out of your Facebook account at a distance or (b) reads this livejournal entry, then I will totally implement it.
So far:
* Changed his icon, obviously
* Made him a fan of many Pókemon pages
* Sent messages to several of his female friends saying that he's madly in love with them
* I'm not going to list all the changes because I know he's going to read this
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Housemate Mike wanted to get my perspective on this article on a rationalist web site titled, "Do fandoms need awfulness?" I wrote an irate response that I will now post here.
In re: Jack Vance (who is highly praised in the article), there are aspects of Jack Vance's work that are monumentally bad. Trust a rationalist to be so excited about Vance, who completely sucks at character and emotion but excels at shiny-looking logic puzzles and clever solutions to dungeon crawls.
I've encountered arguments like the one made in that rationalist article before. Always stuff like, "Wow, since we think X piece of art is totally awful, then I guess fans of X must really like awful things!" As if there's no possibility that X actually has significant redeeming qualities, or that other people might have different tastes from the reviewer. It consistently irritates me that people apparently prefer to criticize the fans for liking X "awful" fandom, than to figure out what's appealing about Fandom X. It's all a product of considering some cultures better than others -- high culture vs. low culture, etc; it's a function of stigma and bias, and it pisses me off particularly to see it on a so-called rationalist site.
Tangentially (as I mentioned in a recent post), something similar has been happening with Internet culture and new Internet publishing tools -- people from more established publishing media will say snarky things about how "those damn kids" must have no taste, or must like really awful stuff, because we're using blogs and forums and Twitter etc etc. Rather than trying to figure out what's successful about the blog/forum/Twitter model, and how people can use it/are using it in intelligent ways, they simply decide that people who like blogs/forums/Twitter are stupid. Quit patronizing my generation! :roar:
...
I found the most incredible karaoke place ever the other night. Cabaret room. Lounge singer style. I was wearing leather pants and I sang "Blood and Roses", also one of my companions convinced me to sing the female part of "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" despite the fact that the song is everything wrong with heteronormative America. It was sheer class.
...
Quick links:
An entire blog devoted to the Arabian Nights!
Awesome! I found this, by the way, because I was trying to figure out when Mary Zimmerman's version of "The Arabian Nights" is going up. Zimmerman is known for such myth-based plays as "Metamorphoses", "Mirror of the Invisible World", and "Argonautika", and she is incredible. And her version of "The Arabian Nights" is playing in Chicago right now! And I'm still here for it! Amazing!
Wikipedia's list of unusual articles
Hours of fun. Includes the Facteur Cheval!
from Housemate Rebecca.
Glass Petal Smoke: Gleanings from the World of the Senses
Glass Petal Smoke was created out of a personal passion for things olfactive and gustatory. The back story regarding a raw material or finished product is often rich with history, myth and folklore. When all of these aspects are brought together, they tell a story of our common humanity, as expressed through the senses. Because Glass Petal Smoke is a blog, an element of cyber anthropology infuses the space in which it exists. Culture is about human nature and people who love food and fragrance are acutely aware of the connection between the senses and memory. Glass Petal Smoke appeals to readers who possess such awareness and those who aspire to it.
from my mother.
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1) OK, fine. Dreamwidth. Apparently it's quite easy to migrate over there, and you can crosspost to LiveJournal. LiveJournal is on its way out and I'm contemplating which service to back myself up on. How does one get a Dreamwidth invite code?
2) I got a very sober email from Mary Marcy today, talking about layoffs at Simon's Rock. Anyone know who?
3) Sudden Poll!
You're born in the eighties, grow up in the middle-class or upper-middle-class First World, go through college and one or two jobs plus several romantic relationships throughout your late teens and early twenties. There are some ups and downs; all kinds of learning experiences! After a while -- late twenties, early thirties -- you start dating one person you really like. Ze* is really into you, puts a fair bit of effort into seducing you, makes you feel wanted and appreciated. The two of you laugh a lot together. Travel well together. The sex is good. Around the same time, the two of you work (or luck) your way into decently-paid jobs that interest and challenge you. You settle into those jobs, and into each other.
Years pass. You've long since said your "I love you"s. And you do love each other. Ze knows you better than anyone, you can't imagine life without hir. You talk seriously about getting married, you work through the vague inevitable skittishness around the idea of marriage and settlement, you go into the wedding clear-eyed.
You have kids. Both you and your partner raise the kids as well as could be expected. Grow old together. A few career changes, but your livelihood ends up fine; no serious catastrophes materialize for your decades-long life. You retire and travel to exotic locales. Charming hobbies, kids and grandkids occupy your older years. And the two of you always get along fine. The sex remains good forever. You die in hir arms, surrounded by loving descendants.
Q. Where did you go wrong?
... It's sort of a clumsy imitation of David Foster Wallace. But I am serious about the question.
* Gender-neutral pronoun
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Insanely busy, going crazy, etc. When was the last time I posted? For that matter, where am I and what the hell is going on in my life? But as I was writing out strategies for Bookstore Y to market itself in Today's Ridiculous Bookstore-Unfriendly World (tm), I came upon this thought tangent. And what else are thought tangents for if not LiveJournal? Plus, I've been thinking about marketing, so I get to use boldface everywhere.
There's a lot of tales in ancient mythology (particularly Greek) about attempts to avoid prophesied death by doing pretty rough things, frequently involving killing children. Perseus is an example of this -- Perseus was the son of Zeus and Danae. Danae's father, King Acrisius, set Danae and her son adrift on the sea because of a prophecy that Perseus would kill him.
Sometimes people will act all weird about stuff like this, as if it's totally crazy for a dude like Acrisius to kill his own daughter and grandson. But what people don't understand is that back in the day, this was actually a perfectly viable strategy. That is, in 95% of cases where concerned parents bricked their daughter up in the back room and left her to starve, said daughter would in fact starve to death and would not birth the foretold son who returned to kill his grandfather (or whatever the prophecy was).
Fashions in the manner of killing one's troublesomely fated children would fluctuate. Partly, this was determined by success rate -- "immure girl in tower and forbid anyone ever to see her" was a surprisingly effective strategy for escaping Fate, at 97%, whereas "stick infant in basket and send down river" only boasted 65% success. There were also PR debacles -- no one did the reed basket thing after the Moses incident. But it was also a matter of convenience, of course. Not everyone has the time, resources or inclination to build massive doomy dungeons for their family members.
Also, children in the neighborhood would totally spread prophesies to get each other in trouble.
"Ed took my favorite blocks and won't give them back. Let's tell everyone he's gonna kill his dad and marry his mom!"
"You got prophesied! You are so grounded!"
The above were common refrains among scampering kids in the agora.
Anyway so, seen in this context, it is clear that the stories passed down to us re: Greeks doing things like killing their fathers and marrying their mothers aren't really intended to be sobering parables about the remorselessness of the gods, or human helplessness in the vast universe. They're more of a "Wow, really?" ... the kind of thing where ancient peoples would tell the story, shake their heads, and be like, "Well ain't that the damnedest thing?"
"Dude, did you hear Acrisius got killed by his son after all?"
"Jeez, poor guy. Who'da thunk that'd happen?"
"Yeah ... after all the effort he put into setting his daughter adrift in the sea. And I mean, he gave her a much nicer death than I gave my daughter last year -- I just flung the girl to the dogs."
"Just goes to show, man."
"Yeah." (pause, pull on beer) "Just goes to show."
...
And now that I've written that I might as well post some links.
Taxidermy!
Examples of taxidermy articles from antique "Popular Mechanics" magazines. Just trust me. It's awesome. And I even found it myself!
I assume you all heard that it's over for Geocities.
What this ending of Geocities does make me realize is, for all our scary talk of how we need to watch what our slutty, drunken selves put online because oh no someone who may pay us to do something might see it, is how not permanent so much of the web truly is.
from Audacia Ray.
Oh my God there's a "Journey to the West" TV show!
In case you've never heard of the Chinese epic Journey to the West, you have a treat awaiting you.
Journey to the West is a household legend and myth throughout East Asia, especially China, and among Chinese throughout the world. It is based on the real life monk Xuan Zang's (also known as Tripitaka or Tang San Zang) pilgrimage to India, to fetch back some Buddhist scriptures. Nonetheless, this fictional retelling focuses on San Zang's first disciple, the monkey king, Sun Wu Kong, who captured readers' hearts and imagination with his bold, daring, and mischievous personality. He was also very rebellious. As a matter of fact, Wu Cheng En wrote Journey to the West to criticize China's political system and society.
from my mom.
On the trail of Trebitsch Lincoln, 1920s triple agent
Searching at random I came across entries for Trebitsch in almost every year between 1921 and 1938. These were frequently of a piquant nature, tantalizing by reason of their brevity. Thus the entry for 1923: ''LINCOLN, Trebitsch (alias Patrick Keelan) Activities in connection with Chinese deputation to General Ludendorff respecting Sino-German relations.''
Or for 1924: ''LINCOLN, Trebitsch (alias Trautwein) Alleged sale of bogus German military plans to French authorities.''
As I moved into the volumes dealing with the 1930's, the arena of activity appeared to shift. 1931: ''Initiated as Buddhist priest.'' 1937: ''Japanese propaganda activity.'' 1938: ''Activity in Tibet.''
Found this one myself too, and all because I work in a ridiculous bookstore with obscure books about every which fact. I love my job, it's breaking my heart to know that I'm finally leaving. Even if it is a "finally".
(McSweeney's) ENG 371WR: Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era
Instant messaging. Twittering. Facebook updates. These 21st-century literary genres are defining a new "Lost Generation" of minimalists who would much rather watch Lost on their iPhones than toil over long-winded articles and short stories. Students will acquire the tools needed to make their tweets glimmer with a complete lack of forethought, their Facebook updates ring with self-importance, and their blog entries shimmer with literary pithiness. All without the restraints of writing in complete sentences. w00t! w00t! Throughout the course, a further paring down of the Hemingway/Stein school of minimalism will be emphasized, limiting the superfluous use of nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions, gerunds, and other literary pitfalls.
You know, as I get older I get more and more bored by the handwringing of my elders over the death of writing. This article half-amuses me and half feels unbearably pretentious. The Internet is replacing print because it's a better technology, people, it's not because we kids are idiots who can't string a thought together. Oh well. Here endeth my rant.
from someone I definitely don't follow on Twitter. Because I don't use Twitter. Twitter is for the peasantry.
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working.