Warning: Un-pithy pseudo-psychological vom to follow.

Ever have a day that gives you whiplash?

Monday at the office was horrible. I still like working there very much, but it is hard to fight the gloom and doom of an overworked and slightly dysfunctional office. Believe me, I tried. I sent out pictures of puppies, told very funny jokes, made presents, all to no avail. Eventually I got bogged down in the mire of despair too. The biggest challenge is coping with long, involved projects -- even when you're making progress, it doesn't feel significant if you can't check a whole item of a list. This is a mental exercise in framing more than anything and I need to get better at it. That exercise is: set goals that are attainable. Do not become infatuated with the unattainable. Hint hint euphemism.

Anyway, it took most the evening and a little imbibition to shake the blues. But it is nearly three and I am settled in with my writing and I feel great. The apartment is quiet and warm. I just kicked one paper's ass and intend to, at minimum, fight the other to a draw. These tasks are manageable and I am good at them. The whipped cream on my contentment pie? The following message from Maor, the strange and bounderish love of my life, who took only two months to respond to my email:

hey girl, its been a while your right. i finished my studies and im starting a whole new ones. i wrote and directed a play that was very succesful and im having a good time un the thing i start loving the most (after the kualla bear and sex with ants). i moved to tel aviv and it is the craziest city in the world. and i miss you alot. you remind me of good times only. and every time i see a lesbian i think of you. :)

Degenerate illiterate that he is, that Israeli man hits the emotional nail on the head. Things take time to fall in place. Do the thing you're good at. Love your friends absolutely as much as possible, and try to remember to tell them.

Alright, enough with the sap. I have a lot of angry posts pent up, rest assured you will be hearing from my come-down grumpy ass tomorrow.

Marry me, Maddow

Go and watch this video immediately. The important part starts about 3 minutes in.

What Maddow hits on here is one of the biggest media fallacies of our time: that fair reporting means reporting equal blame and legitimacy. That our media, rather than serving truth, serves balance. That a holocaust denier can sit onstage with a credentialed historian and be given equal footing not only by the visual, but by every framing device of the journalist, even though one account is demonstrably wrong. The way it's been leaping out at me recently is this weird assertion by journalists that identifying / decrying racist rhetoric is a sin (!) on the same order as employing racist tactics. As if "crying racism" or "playing the gender card" was a valid accusation in the first place... but in cases where racism or sexism is clearly present in an objective evaluation, that demanding that someone answer for that racism / sexism is a smear and a piece of nasty politics. Absolutely ridiculous.

Maddow hits on a hundred more fallacies of current Republican rhetoric -- that rabble rousing is the same as civil discussion, that coded racism is not racism, that caution and thought are cowardice. In passionate advocacy of an ideology close to my heart, she defends the playful and sarcastic handling of sensitive issues as legitimate, and rejects categorizing it as negative or divisive. She's basically the shit. Thank you, thank you, thank you Rachel.

I have a hurricane within me...

The other day David came marching into the living room demanding the source of a quote which had been rattling around in his head. For the life of me, I could not remember if it came from Leaves of Grass or Elizabeth: The Golden Age. What a world, what a world.

I contain multitudes...

I have my first real meeting with Ed this afternoon. I'm obviously terrified. But I did some pretty thorough atoning yesterday for Yom Kippur, so hopefully there's a little bit of positive karma stored up. That statement deserves an award: Most Botched Understanding of Eastern and Western Religion Demonstrated in a Single Sentence. Having a clean slate is nice, though, however briefly.

5 Friends

I can't be the only one who found this video surprisingly compelling. If those actors were given scripts half as convincing as an ad lib imploring Americans to vote, our movie landscape would look entirely different. Laura Linney basically made me sob. Even the asshole comedians were effective in their own way. For Christ's sake, Ellen accused me of watching internet porn and I loved every second of it! Watch this video and enjoy feeling patriotic for a little bit.



Really, anything that makes Jennifer Aniston and Leo look this relevant is accomplishing something. Vote and care and vote.

Civic Duty! Heck Yeah! Doggone heckuva job!

Keyser and I just registered to vote! I did not expect to feel this excited. I've voted before, but only absentee from DC (at a steady 92% democrat! electoral college rocks!), and never for president, so I guess this is bigger. I tried to register a month ago, and the clerk lost my application. The whole registration concept seems in itself to be an disenfranchising force... reading the guidelines is confusing, I never have a utility bill on me when I run into folks registering voters on the street, and you still need an ID. So it serves the same purpose as states which make you bring a drivers license to your polling place, no? I'm sure there are well thought out reasons that this registration system makes more sense than, say, dipping our thumbs in ink, but all the red tape makes me long a little for that fledgling democracy authenticity.

Ed Roberson and I are terrified of each other. One day I may look back on this and find it adorable, but right now it's a major stumbling block in the thesis process. I also feel like a jerk who goes to his readings only to corner him about setting meetings. Whatever, that's not true, his poetry is incredible and I love watching him read it. Grow a backbone. Grow one without all the alcohol it takes to face him at Columbia College.

It's funny being a senior and finding these readings that come up a million times over the course of college. Just this week I read Aristotle's Poetics for the third time and Orwell's Politics and the English Language for at least the fifth. You know, they're both pretty good...

adolescence = paralel universe.

Also from the google annals of eternity: the website Rachel Cohen and I built in the beginning of high school. What a weird thing to stumble back upon... a surprisingly large number of the teachers we poked fun at have since passed away. How bizarre to have our little high school jabs at them be around after they are. I don't know if anything we wrote seriously breaches the barrier between in good fun and mean, but I can see how it toes the line. I'm shocked we never got in trouble for it. I'm shocked it's still on the internet. My, but we always have been clever little devils, haven't we... I hope we can keep that site around for long enough to make trouble for someone's Senate campaign. Personal archiving is awesome and strange.

It's been a while, huh. The short update consists of school promising to kick my butt, work promising to calm my anxieties about the job market and my place in it, and my emotional life promising to catch up with me.

Google opened up its archives in honor of its anniversary. What fun. Here is the blurb me and my best buddy Big Gabe put up on the interweb in honor of our b'nai mitzvot. I was really into justice? And basketball? Oh how the times change.

B'nai mitzvah this month

Dinah [Redacted]

Bat Mitzvah September 2

My name is Dinah Fay ***. I am 13 years old and attend the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School. I am entering the 8th grade. Some of my interests are piano, softball, basketball, and acting. Much to the disgust of my friends and delight of my parents, I love math. When I grow up, I hope to be an architect to target my talent.

For the past half year, I have been studying religiously (ha ha) for my bat mitzvah. I hope that this event will help me with my transition into the adult Jewish world.

In my parasha, Shoftim, G-d tells us the importance of fairness in our justice system. "You shall not pervert judgement, ...you shall not accept a bribe, ... for the bribe will blind the eyes of the wise and will make just words crooked. Justice, justice thou shalt pursue." G-d is helping us realize that there will always be people who want to corrupt or pervert our justice system. We also need to understand that it would be human nature to forget what is moral for personal benefits. It takes a tzadik to stand up for what is right and put themselves after fair dealing.

Gabe [Redacted]

Bar Mitzvah September 2

Hello, my full name is Gabriel [silly middle name] [Redacted], and my bar mitzvah will take place on September 2. I'm 13 years old and am going into eighth grade at Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School.

I enjoy roller blading, computers, and music. Our math team at JDS placed first in the country last year.

Out of the checks I receive as gifts, one-third of the total amount will be donated to Chai Lifeline, an international organization that helps Jewish children with serious illnesses, and their families.

I would like to thank Rabbi Berliant and Rabbi Seidel for tutoring me, and my mom for organizing everything.