Will I Have to Put Out?

I'm scheduled to get my rebate check--a whopping sum of $900--direct-deposited by the IRS on May 9. While it may mark the only time I'm actually thrilled to be making less than 75K a year, a part of me feels so Spitzer dirty for this Bush buy-off (I know for $900 I oughta be able to suck a golf ball though a garden hose). Still, the list of things that need replacing in my life just keep racking up, such as the camera and laptop. And I'm not even talking about things that can't be bought, such as a new memory card for my brain (or a new jump drive for my uh...other drive). Maybe I'll just use the money to stimulate the Argentine economy instead. It seems only fair after all.

So...Hellooo, Prune!

Happy Belated Earth Day!

In keeping with my procrastinating nature (you never did get that birthday card in the mail, right?), here's my post on ED 2008.

So last Tuesday I hauled 17 kids off to La Reserva Ecológica in our school's "backyard" for a gorgeous romp through the wicked wild. Earlier in class I'd shown them these cute little shorts from PBS Kids EekoWorld when right in the middle, I noticed one little girl sitting there with soft, muffled sobs. I was all, "oh honey, why are you sad?" and she goes, "because my parents work in oil." Actually, more than half my students have parents with Chevron or Petrobras or the like (the others mostly with multinational corps), and it dawned on me right then & there that I also needed to present a clipped version of All Good Things That Oil Enables in the World (my favorite being the ability to hop on a plane and experience another culture firsthand--yes, I know it's facile but these are first graders after all). It's a reflection of my getting old but I think so often moderation and tempering go missing in environmental talk, the strident, shrill extremist tone of The Story of Stuff being just another example.

But I get it. When I was 20 and spraying factory farms with "Meat is murder" and leafleting I too felt the apocalyptic urgency of our downward-dog planetary trajectory. I had laser-like contempt for all drivers-cum-oil-guzzlers and meateaters and Republicans and suburban dwellers and malls and cheerleaders (ok, a peeved bias I can't let go off), but these days my mantra playlist shuffles between It's Not That Simple and Nothing Is Black and White to You Lost That Loving Feeling.

I have a clear memory of debating with a professor in law school about indigenous whale hunting (I was opposed to the killing of all animals for any reasons with the supreme smugness that youth is afforded). How he managed not to club me on the head for my insufferable know-it-allness I still can't fathom. What is cool about the passing of time, not just for an individual but for a generation, is that issues that seem debatable develop less clarity, like a reverse Polaroid, while certain ethos gel (if I'm making sense). The kids I'm teaching today came out of their mama's hoohoos soaking in an amniotic fluid of earth consciousness. It's a given for them that taking care of the planet matters. So while the trees in the debate need to be further bandied about and tagged, the forest is a given. And that's a good thing.

God, I love Sundays!

I've just spent the last couple hours leisurely sifting through more than 500 photos of the world's street foods found here on this Flickr slideshow, my movie-viewing snack of choice being a giant bowl of popcorn liberally doused with melted butter, curry powder, shoyu, black pepper, and nutritional yeast and a tall glass of condensed-milk-sweetened Thai iced tea (I had brought a giant bag of these tea leaves from the Bangkok market in LA)--all this after a proper Argentine breakfast of medialunas de manteca and café con leche con crema. God, I love Sundays.

Everyone Hates Me or (otherwise titled) Woe Is Me

It's as inevitable as the setting sun or death & taxes. There comes a point in every personal relationship I have when I become disappointing. (At least here at work it's taken me two years to get there.) And what I mean by that is I just don't need people enough or alcohol-induced socialization enough for whatever the fuck's considered normal, and this lack of need gets in the way of perception. Maybe it comes down to extroversion vs. introversion--not to be confused with shyness--but I really would rather spend my weekends/evenings strolling the city discovering new stuff all by my lonesome, or curled up with a good book, than with mass companions. This has served me well back home, but I'm finding that in the insular, artificially shrunken world of expatting, it stamps a big scarlet S (for "savant") on your forehead (or in my case, fivehead) the more your RSVPs fall resoundingly in the "No" column.

Case in point, last weekend I decided not to go to a progressive dinner party (the kind where you walk to a new home for each course) when I realized there would be kre8tiv games played in teams (such as, create a silly new dance with your teammates!). If there exists an alternative hellish social event as creative team games, I sure couldn't picture it (oh OK, a scrapbooking circle with Oprah fans?). The end result was alienation from a few coworkers. Because here's the thing about international teaching, you are certainly eating where you're shitting and your coworkers are indeed your friends, no matter how much you resist the notion. It's a mind-altering amalgam of that adage, "you can pick your friends, but you can't pick your family." sigh

ETA: This is all orthogonally related to whether I like my coworkers, which I do. There are some great people in the bunch.

Apropos of Something

I wrote about bad customer service being the norm here just the other day and funnily enough this afternoon my Argentine friend (the one with the sister who's just moved back from the States) unveiled to me their secret plan to open a business in the near future offering what they called "American-style customer service." I swear I didn't mention my recent spate of complaints to them, because I have better manners than that, y'know?

Admit It--You Missed Me!

I've had little inspiration lately, dear readers; hence, the lack of posting. Perhaps my sole energy's been too focused on eating and napping and shopping and lounging and eating some more, with little brio left to lift a posting digit. Because I'm constitutionally lazy, I won't bother to recount the heartstopping excitement of my nearly 7-week break. Instead, a photo montage... BTW, other than my possible ineptitude, why is it so effin' difficult to post multiple pictures in blogger? I want a scattered layout with captions, y'all, but instead they get jumbled in one congealed column. Any tips out there not involving html tables--I'm only willing to divert my napping energy so much.

Edit: Never mind, I'm a slut to flickr mosaics now...

Reducing Blur

I'm wasting time at a Starbucks in West LA, awaiting spawn who's chilling at the home of an old school friend. As my visit here wraps up, I feel swirls of angst, one part dread at the thought of returning to work (despite this being my best professional gig yet), one part melancholy at having to bid family adieu again, and at the very center, a chewy nougat of excitement at the thought that in exactly a year and a half, I'll be expatriating to some other fascinating part of the world. The world is big--did you know that?

Story of My Life

I suppose it's the math geek in me, but graphs like these thrill. How I wish everything in life can be x- and y-plotted with an absolute degree of certainty. I'd swagger about with so much cock and confidence in my manifest destiny. Better yet, let's make everything binary so that my odds of getting it right are half.

Mood Swings

This four-day weekend has thrown me for a loop. So dazed/confused am I without my 40-hour workweek anchor that I'm invoking Yahoo! Calendar for regular mood guidance (not to mention, the mood ring I sent away for has yet to arrive). Why does it matter what day it is? Well in my too-limited mind, I equate each day of the week with an emotional stasis (perhaps all modern humans are hard-wired to do this). For example, Sunday is mood-ring black (think tense, nervous, anxious), the proverbial dread-in-the-pit-of-the-belly "shit, I forgot to lesson plan again" day; whereas Saturday, in true mood-ring blue form (think calm, relaxed, lovable), is the universal "you can't make me effin care about anything" day.

Anyway, being that (1) this is Saturday, (2) I'm still in my PJs and bunny-slippered, (3) I'm feeling lovable, I've chosen to whittle away copious hours on YouTube in search of a soundtrack to this "worker's playtime" (tm Billy Bragg). And this awesomely poppy tune from '06 is my current earworm:

In Defense of the Silly

Earlier this week I read the always-stuffy Thomas Friedman's finger-wagging op-ed accusing the Q-for-quiet generation (his term, not mine), the current twenty-somethings, of being too politically apathetic while grudgingly acknowledging how world savvy and well-informed they are. And then I read this young lady's poised response and thought how what she touched on could've been attributed to even the generation before her, i.e., my generation X. This was how we disaffected, cynical Gen Xers (aka slackers) were described by Time Magazine in 1990:

". . .They possess only a hazy sense of their own identity but a monumental preoccupation with all the problems the preceding generation will leave for them to fix . . . This is the twenty-something generation, those 48 million young Americans ages 18 through 29 who fall between the famous baby boomers and the boomlet of children the baby boomers are producing... By and large, the 18-to-29 group scornfully rejects the habits and values of the baby boomers, viewing that group as self-centered, fickle and impractical. While the baby boomers had a placid childhood in the 1950s, which helped inspire them to start their revolution, today's twenty-something generation grew up in a time of drugs, divorce and economic strain. . .They feel paralyzed by the social problems they see as their inheritance: racial strife, homelessness, AIDS, fractured families and federal deficits…"

Take all that and add to it the flattening of the world (to borrow from Friedman himself), a tragically wrong and expensive war that makes the first Gulf War look like child’s play, and the current unrelenting glut of virtual info--not to mention, tech toys!--I am amaaazed any twenty-something can maintain any kind of political stamina. It is absolutely true that in this day and age, all of us (not just the whippersnappers) are faced with too many causes to support and indignities to battle and so we are overwhelmed into neutral. (Just sign this online petition to make it all go away!)

I remember being reduced to tears by the first Gulf War--I never had any stamina myself--vowing to escape my government by moving overseas some day, feeling hopelessly marginalized in being anti-war (and this was the day before Freedom Fries were even around). Then some 12 years later, I joined others on the streets of LA--spawn in tow--to protest the Iraq Invasion, fully mired in my apathy yet thinking I owed it to him to keep my game face on. Because let's face it: The world can be so fucking depressing and kicks you in the ass in so many ways. Some days I can barely stand to glance at the headlines, let alone read it, so instead I dive straight for the Entertainment section. Perhaps that's why The Daily Show is so appealing--it parcels out bad news in bite-sized portions with enough humor and verve to balm any residual angst. You don't feel crippled with helplessness overload. You feel you are exercising that crucial right to dissent en masse and with a live audience. You can even watch it while updating your Facebook.

I titled this post thusly because I'm glad silly distractions exist to help us cope. This younger generation may have their iPod and HBO, but my gen also has...well, iPod and HBO too (and maybe even an iPhone because we make more money). The silly and the shallow are necessary to allow us to come up for that gulp of fresh air before we are dragged under again by thoughts of rebel suicides and Darfur.

So go ahead, have another laugh at Britney, the poster child for anti-gravitas. And have you been to www.gofugyourself.com lately? If not, get thee on over for some good old-fashioned fashion snark.

Someone's Hijacked My TV!

Scapegoating Hollywood for the world's ails is as passé as using dial-up (which, as a cliché, is even passé), as safe as proclaiming Bush can't orate, as edgy as recycling. I suppose if all I saw day in and out were "The New Adventures of Old Christine" and that insipid Brad Garrett sitcom whose title I am uninspired to even lift a Google finger for, I'd think what the fuck myself. But oh Argentina, you marvelous glass house you, let's not cast the first stone, because the last time I couch surfed, your pratfall-style humor left mucho to be desired in the, well, quality-control department. And while there’s dreck in every entertainment industry, the thing about Hollywood is that when it’s good, it is pretty damn good. I was about to list examples but being anal retentive, spent way too many brain cells revising/editing the list.

So here's a tip: Stop importing junk* like The Bachelor and My Super Ex-Girlfriend. There’s a host of brave, smart, well-crafted movies and TV shows that still manages to awe and inspire, making us think differently in an age when being derivative is pretty much the norm. Don’t shoot the messenger--just use your God-given talent to spam filter.

Having said that, I can fully get behind the loathing of Disney for inflicting High School Musical and its multitude spinoffs on an unsuspecting generation. (So if you come across a Mickey hate graffiti in the near future...)

* I know it's the guilty-pleasure thing, the liking-a-bad-boy-while-hating-yourself thing, but lord help me, I kinda dig "Two and a Half Men." So there, I outed myself.

Who's Left?

I read today that Bush's approval rating has dropped to 24%, record breaking even his ol' self. So we're down to what now, my parents and the clinically insane? (Supposedly 25% of adult Americans believe the Sun revolves around the Earth, so...not even all idiots approve of Bush.)