Highlights Atmospheric Disturbances

I found out about Atmospheric Disturbances, by Rivka Galche, through the NYTimes’s UrbanEye mailing list. It’s about a psychiatrist who thinks his wife has been replaced by a doppelganger and tries to find his real wife.

From the very beginning of the novel, it’s questionable whether his wife really has been replaced or if it’s all in his head, especially since the only patient of the doctor’s that we ever meet has similar delusions. Because I have these doubts so early on (hello… the narrator is a psychologist), and because they’re not really answered until the very end of the book, I found most of it kind of boring. You can’t take anything that the narrator says very seriously because you think he’s crazy. I liked the idea of the novel enough to give me hope that there’d be more, but I ended up expecting there to be so much more to it that I was disappointed.

I don’t regret reading Atmospheric Disturbances but it’s not a book I would tell other people to read. Here are my highlights:

Loc. 103-5, added on Sunday, May 10, 2009, 03:00 PM

She does often manage to give people the impression that she loves them in a very personal and significant way; I must admit I find it pretty tiresome dealing with all her pathetic devotees who think they play a much larger role in her life than they actually do;

Loc. 148-51, added on Sunday, May 10, 2009, 03:07 PM

Functionally speaking, Harvey’s main problem—or some might say his “conflict with the consensus view of reality”—stemmed from a fixed magical belief that he had special skills for controlling weather phenomena, and that he was, consequently, employed as a secret agent for the Royal Academy of Meteorology, an institute whose existence a consensus view of reality actually would (and this surprised me at the time) affirm.

Loc. 174-75, added on Sunday, May 10, 2009, 03:11 PM

When asked about his absences, Harvey’s elucidation tended to go no further than to say that he was “laboring atmospherically.” Arguably these disappearances actually endangered his life.

Loc. 186-88, added on Sunday, May 10, 2009, 03:13 PM

I did make a few other efforts to gently instill in Harvey some creative doubt in the internal perceptions of his world—such doubt being the usual cornerstone of delusional treatment and the path back to the consensus view of reality. But I failed.

Loc. 198-200, added on Sunday, May 10, 2009, 03:15 PM

But that I—unlike Harvey—was an agent of superior rank. Who was in touch with an agent of even more superior rank. “Psychotics very much respect ranking,” she announced authoritatively.

Loc. 214-16, added on Sunday, May 10, 2009, 04:17 PM

“There’d still always loom the possibility of being discovered, of being revealed as a liar. I wouldn’t be able to go a day without worrying. I can’t live like that.” “Oh,” Rema answered with a small unimpressed shrug, “but that’s what life is like all the time, no?”

Loc. 262-63, added on Sunday, May 10, 2009, 04:24 PM

it struck me anew that I’d once thought that after enough time with me she would have put on a precious little potbelly and let her hair remain messy at home.

Loc. 277-78, added on Monday, May 11, 2009, 09:01 AM

it seemed like she’d been infected by a very American idea of identity, to think that who you were mostly consisted of what you did to get paid—that seemed silly to me.

Continue Reading >

- Comment - Tagged: , ,

Coming Out, Again

I came out to my parents on September 13, 2002, mailing a letter to them on the first anniversary of 9/11 (it was a highly-charged time, so it seemed like a good moment to do something personal). Their very first reaction was to tell me that they support me and that they’re driving right away to New York City to give me hugs, but what actually happened was my dad lectured me the whole weekend to my face about why I can’t be gay, why being gay is wrong (he even offered to pay for a hooker if I need to prove to myself that I can like girls…). I mostly just let him say what he wanted to say, while my mom stood by us crying and not saying much.

For a few weeks after that, my parents bombarded me with emails quoting things from anti-gay organizations. Then the emails finally stopped and we never talked about it after that. My parents stopped asking me about girlfriends or anything related to that subject, a silent acknowledgment that what happened happened. A few years later I briefly confessed to my mom (over e-mail) about having broken up with a boyfriend whose mom accepted us being gay and liked me a lot, telling her I wish my parents were like that, but shortly after that the subject was never brought up again.

Four years later, my current boyfriend Alex and I decided to move in together and I knew I wouldn’t want to do that without resurfacing these issues with my parents again. I had been living by myself for a long time and I had no other reason to move in with somebody besides that we were in a relationship and this was a natural progression for us. I had to tell my parents that Alex was my boyfriend and that I’m getting an apartment with my boyfriend.

I was nervous as hell, but I had hints from my mom that things wouldn’t go as badly as they did the first time. By then, I had already talked about Alex a lot with her (he’s a handbag designer and he even got her a free bag from the company he worked at) and once she asked me if he’s “a good boy” in a way that sounded like “is he good to you?” (although that was just me reading into things). My parents were also really into reality tv where over and over they saw people like them rally around gay people and support them (and rally against their anti-gay cast members). My mom even named certain gay people as her favorites (like Will Wikle from Big Brother 5) in a “see, I can like gay people” way (again, me reading into things). People like to disparage the value or quality of reality television, but in my opinion nothing has made the issues that gay people face as clearly and easily accessibly to Middle America as shows like Big Brother and Survivor.

So when Alex and I moved, I sent my parents an email with my new address, explaining to them that we’ve been together for four years and this was the next step in our relationship. My mom called me pretty quickly after that and I forget what the first thing she said was, but she was extremely supportive! She went right into asking questions about Alex’s grandparents (cause he had been living with them before, so she was worried how they reacted) and if our dog Miki (who she loves like a grandchild) was happy and had enough room, what our apartment was like, if it was close to work. It was really amazing to be able to talk about those things with her, about Alex, and have her know that he’s somebody I love and he’s not just a friend.

To varying degrees, every gay person is broken by the experiences they’ve had on their way to coming out. We’re broken when we get mistreated as children for being different than other kids, we’re broken during the difficult time of pre-adolescence when our sexual urges are kicking in and we’ve been told same-sex urges are not OK, we’re broken when we can’t start relationships the way every teenager can with the support of our peers and families (or even the same tough love of a father not wanting his daughter to date too soon), we’re broken when we’re confronted with lost friendships and hostility in our communities (and government) with regards to our relationships and starting our own families.

Ultimately we have to find the strength within ourselves to be OK with who we are, and surround ourselves with people that have our support. But no matter how OK I might think I am with being gay, steps like this one that I took with my parents feel like another piece coming back together again, like I’ve entered a new level of gayhood, one I didn’t realize existed. :)

A few months ago my mom met Alex and we had dinner together. All three of us were nervous and a little awkward, but it was great. My mom bought Alex a big cooking pot as a gift because she knew he likes to cook. When she went to Poland, she asked what size slippers Alex wore so she could buy him these traditional Polish slippers. When we had problems with our landlord, she suggested that Alex and I should consider buying an apartment together! One time before that she sent me an email out of the blew saying that I should be careful with us sharing our finances, because I never know where things will end up. OK, that’s not exactly positive but it’s relationship advice from my mother! It’s amazing for us to be at this place right now, something I hadn’t imagined back in 2002.

- 2 Comments - Tagged:

Highlights Buying In

[Buying In book cover]

I bought Rob Walker’s Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are after seeing him in Objectified, a documentary about product design. His attitude was on the verge of being cynical, but I think it was just his no-B.S. way of explaining things that I really liked.

Buying In is about consumerism. It tries to explain why people associate or disassociate themselves with certain brands and make the purchasing decisions that they make. I’m not sure if I’d want to buy any more books on this subject, but it was pretty interesting. The book goes through a lot of different examples of brands and sub-cultures and I think it depended on them a little too much. I expected more conclusions to be drawn and a lot of times he would say he would go into things later towards the end of the book, but I don’t really think he did.

It is pretty obvious that he’s obsessed about this topic, though, and knows his stuff. I especially liked how he talked about Etsy.com and American Apparel, two sort of anti-bad-consumer brands that fit into the bigger picture in interesting ways.

While highlighting this book on my Kindle, it was funny how I kept highlighting big chunks of information, compared to the book I read before, Smilla’s Sense of Snow, where a lot of meaning was packed into one or two sentences. Here are my highlights for Buying In:

Loc. 176-78, added Friday, April 17, 2009, 09:18 AM

But why, really, did I feel so strongly about a brand of sneaker—any brand of sneaker? I know why I rejected the swoosh. In Air Force 1’s, I’d feel like a brand zombie. But what I suddenly couldn’t reconcile was my belief that I could project my individuality through some other brand.

Loc. 195-97, added Friday, April 17, 2009, 09:21 AM

So we can talk all we want about being brandproof, but our behavior tells a different story. This is why I have come around to the view that there is nothing to be gained by simply believing we are immune to brands. But there might be something gained in understanding why we aren’t.

Loc. 262-64, added Friday, April 17, 2009, 09:28 AM

So when Consumer Reports, or whatever other authority is doing the testing, studies some group of products, the conclusion is invariably that most of the choices are, you know, pretty good. All that’s left is to sift among increasingly minor differences to decide which one is the very best value of all, by however absurdly narrow a margin.

Loc. 354-57, added Friday, April 17, 2009, 09:42 AM

Marc Milecofsky grew up in Lakewood, about an hour and a half south of Manhattan, and spent more time in malls than in the streets. His father was a pharmacist, his mother a real estate agent. He had two sisters, one of whom was his twin, Marci. (The name Ecko is derived from a family story: When his mother was pregnant with Marci, the doctor informed her of an “echo,” which turned out to be Marc.)

Loc. 373-75, added Friday, April 17, 2009, 10:23 PM

The first brand logo worn on the outside of a garment is believed to be the Lacoste crocodile: 1920s French tennis star René Lacoste, playing off a nickname given to him by the press, had one embroidered on a jacket he wore and then tennis shirts he designed and sold after retiring.

Loc. 376-77, added Friday, April 17, 2009, 10:23 PM

A logo can acquire its meaning from the product it is attached to or the people who use the product—in ads, in the real world, or in the gray area in between, such as pictures of celebrities in magazines.

Loc. 395-98, added Friday, April 17, 2009, 10:37 PM

A working-class Jewish kid from the Bronx defined WASP status in a way that was accessible on a mass scale. He made it the acceptable thing for the skeptical sixteen-year-old Jersey mall rat who would become Marc Ecko and who never gave a thought to whether the relationship between that Polo symbol and the man who created it was an “authentic” one or not.

Loc. 440-43, added Saturday, April 18, 2009, 03:28 PM

Hello Kitty’s blank, “cryptic” simplicity, he argues, is among her great strengths; standing for nothing, she is “waiting to be interpreted,” and this is precisely how an “ambiguous”—and let’s be frank: meaningless—symbol comes to stand for nostalgia to one person, fashionability to another, camp to a third, vague subversiveness to a fourth.

Continue Reading >

- Comment - Tagged: , , , ,

Don’t Need [Insert Name of Musician]’s Stuff

Now that I’ve made the leap from being someone who has to have my own physical copy of a book to someone who doesn’t have a physical copy at all, it’s making me rethink what else I really need to own. When I buy a book and read it once, it’s no longer going to be propped up on a shelf, taking up room, collecting dust, from apartment-to-apartment, never to be read again. This is a waste I’m glad to no longer have building up (with the exception of art/photography books), especially since there is nothing inherently special about the way most books are made. If you’re buying a paperback book, the text got sent to a factory, mass-produced on equal-sized sheets of paper, passed on from warehouse to warehouse until it ends up for a relatively short amount of time in your hands.

This got me thinking about what it means to be a fan of someone like Bjork. She is constantly releasing special edition CDs and box sets and DVDs and various combination of them of all her music. Her last studio album, Volta, was released on May 7, 2007, and it had a CD, special edition CD, double vinyl, and four singles. Next month she is releasing more stuff based on the tour and music videos from this album, something with its own brand and unique artwork called Voltaic, coming in five different physical configurations of two CDs and two DVDs.

One could say that the ultimate Bjork fan would own EVERYTHING that Bjork releases, including stuff only released in other countries (sometimes the Japanese editions have songs not found in the U.S. or European editions). At Amazon.com’s “Artist Store” for Bjork, there are 161 items in the U.S. alone!

It’s true that a lot of thought and creativity went into the design of the booklets and packages that accompany them, and I appreciate the artistic value of those things on their own, but they again end up being something that I hold in my hands for a very limited amount of time and then put away. I would rather see it once or twice at an art gallery that many people can visit, and see some interesting features on her site. I did actually go to an art gallery in Queens where she made sculptures and drawings for Volta, and screened the first video from the album in 3D, and that experience meant more to me than owning anything.

Ultimately I like Bjork for her music, not her stuff, which is perfectly enjoyable in digital form inside my iPhone and computer.

- 1 Comment - Tagged: , , ,

The Way I Was Raised

A few days ago, Maine became the next state to approve same-sex marriage. This is obviously a great thing, but the first quote I read from the governor who signed it into law, Governor John Baldacci, is this (from a New York Times article about it):

“It’s not the way I was raised and it’s not the way that I am. [...] But at the same time I have a responsibility to uphold the Constitution. That’s my job, and you can’t allow discrimination to stand when it’s raised to your level.

Why, at such an important moment in Maine’s (and America’s) history, does he have to add the caveat that “it’s not the way I was raised”? What, he wasn’t raised to be gay? Is anybody? Or was he not raised to approve of gay marriage, or homosexuality in general?

At the very least it was a cowardly way for him to save face with his anti-gay supporters, but I also find this to be a really immature way to define your beliefs. My parents had a lot to do with who I am and I appreciate everything that they did to make me the person that I am today, but I would never defend my beliefs because they’re the beliefs I was raised with. Today I believe in something because it’s what I believe as the adult that I have become, where on a regular basis I still question my own beliefs and change them based on my life experiences.

This is the same poor excuse that Carrie Prejean, Miss California, threw out when she was asked about her beliefs about gay marriage during the Miss USA pageant, after Vermont legalized it. I found it really embarrassing for her to constantly repeat, even in interviews after the show, that this is just not how she was raised. If she was raised around racist family members, would this excuse her racism? Would she still be the victim here?

- Comment - Tagged: , ,

Find Companies

My boyfriend and I have talked about my job (web developer) allowing me to work almost anywhere, while his job (handbag/accessories designer) pretty much limits him to working in New York and (maybe) Los Angeles. Recently I found out that Amazon.com’s headquartes are located in Seattle, and started wondering what other technology companies might be in that city. After talking about this with a co-worker, I found a great way, through LinkedIn, of getting a list of the top companies within any specific industry located in a specific city.

  1. Log into LinkedIn and click on the ‘Companies’ link at the top
  2. Leave the ‘Company Name or Keyword’ field blank and select ‘Located in or near:’ from the ‘Location’ drop-down menu.
  3. Put in any zip code for the city you want to find companies in, like 98104 for Seattle. There’s a ‘Look Up’ link that lets you search for them (or just Google for it).
  4. Check ‘Only company headquarters’ (so you don’t end up getting retail stores if you’re searching in an industry that has them…)
  5. Click on the ‘Show more…’ and select an industry from the drop-down menu (like ‘Internet’ if you’re trying to get a listing with a company like Amazon).
  6. Press the ‘Search Companies’ button.

Voila! Searching for Internet companies in a Seattle zip code, with only the headquarters, gave me a list with Amazon.com at the top and other major sites like Classmates.com, Disney’s Internet Group, and Drugstore.com. I’m not 100% sure how these sources are sorted, besides the first set of them being companies that have employees that I’m connected to somehow.

On the right you can refine these even further by entering keywords (although that can narrow it down too much… Amazon.com doesn’t show up with “books” as a keyword, but does if I type “bookstore”…), the size of the company, related industries, and only companies that are currently hiring.

This is definitely better than a blind search on Google with city names and words related to your industry, or business directories which don’t let you filter the listings in any meaningful way.

- Comment - Tagged: ,

Kindle DX

People have been asking me if I’m annoyed that the Kindle DX came out after I got the Kindle 2, but I’m actually relieved that the DX is what it is. It’s not a slimmer, lighter, faster version of what I have; it’s almost exactly the same thing in a larger form factor (more suitable for documents than books) and it looks like Amazon is going to keep improving both as separate products in the same family.

One of the reasons I got a Kindle is because I love reading books and I wanted to be able to read more often. I usually read on the subway, but I also like to travel lightly (before the iPhone I was an iPod mini/nano person) so I’d end up leaving heavier books at home half the time. With the Kindle, the size and weight issue is completely gone.

No matter what I’m reading, no matter what books (plural!) I have with me, it’s always 10.2 ounces and 8″ x 5.3″. If I’m squished between two people, or standing up and holding onto a pole, I can still hold it comfortably with one hand and easily go to the next page (a tricky maneuver if you have to turn physical pages with one hand).

Plus I like that when I’m looking at the text of a Kindle 2, it’s still the same size as a real book. It doesn’t feel like the device is altering my experience and pacing of a real novel. Having the text re-flowed to double that size would feel more like reading a Word document on a computer screen.

I would love it when I was in college, especially since college books are way heavier (and all the great features like searching text, seeing definitions of words right on the spot, exporting highlights/notes/bookmarks would be even more useful), but if I’m using it mostly for books the Kindle 2 is a better fit for me.

- Comment - Tagged: , , ,

Highlights Smilla’s Sense of Snow

[Smilla book cover]

Every time I finish a book on my Kindle, I’ll post the phrases that I highlighted (it saves them to a text file), as my personal summary of what I read. I’ll note spoilers if there are any. Sometimes I might highlight things to look up later (like other books or music that were mentioned). “Loc.” is the location of that phrase in the e-book (since you can change the font size, what ends up on a “page” varies so e-books have locations instead).

This one’s for Smilla’s Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg.

Loc. 1275-76:

“There was snow on the roof that he fell from. I saw his footprints. I have a sense of snow.”

Loc. 1277-78:

“Snow is the symbol of inconstancy,” she says. “As in the book of Job.”

Loc. 2257-58:

He boils milk with fresh ginger, a quarter of a vanilla bean, and tea that is so dark and fine-leaved that it looks like black dust. He strains it and puts cane sugar in both our cups.

Loc. 2565-66:

“I just wonder how you can conclude so much from so little.” “Language is a hologram.”

Loc. 3187-88:

in a nanosecond she’s reduced from the great, proud, sovereign, invulnerable mama to a spiritual gnome.

Loc. 3194-95:

Whining is a virus, a lethal, infectious, epidemic disease. I refuse to listen to it. I refuse to be saddled with these orgies of emotional pettiness.

Loc. 3205-7:

Modesty is part of the fundamental nature of human beings. It makes me sick to think of the European idea that they can solve all their own self-induced sexual neuroses by laying the meat on the table and putting it under a microscope.

Loc. 4030-31:

I hate being scared. There is only one path to fearlessness. It’s the one that leads into the mysterious center of the terror.

Continue Reading >

- 3 Comments - Tagged: , , ,

Blood Type

I work at a company that I consider LGBT-friendly. They have an LGBT affinity group, have events at the cafeteria during Pride Month to highlight important LGBT people, and I had no trouble registering my boyfriend as a domestic partner for health benefits. But one thing that doesn’t fit in that environment, and which I don’t really blame my employer for, but nevertheless is one of those situations when I don’t feel comfortable, is blood drives.

As of 1985, no man who’s had sexual contact with another man since 1977 is allowed to be a blood donor. It is a mandate for the Red Cross that the FDA has been asked to reconsider almost every year and every time they still refuse to back away “in the interest of public health.” A straight person who has frequent one night stands is considered less of a public health risk than a gay man who’s been in a monogamous relationship for ten years or a man who had sex with another man once, 30 years ago.

This law basically requires that a gay man be honest and not go to a blood drive pretending he’s straight (something I wouldn’t do out of principle but also because I’m a horrible liar). Why can’t this same level of honesty be expected from gay men about their behavior? Instead of excluding an entire population of people, the law should instead require honesty about individuals’ actions, actions that could be applied to both gays and straights.

I’d like to donate blood. I think I’m an extremely good candidate, more so than a lot of straight people I know. This is why it bothers me when I see posters at work urging me to donate, get emails reminding me about a blood drive in our cafeteria and hear employees talk about having donated blood, without any acknowledgment that all gay men in the company are excluded.

I read a good idea somewhere. Blood drives should let “ineligible” people sign a form each time they would have normally donated blood. Gay men could at least participate by making the government aware of their numbers and see how much blood is being rejected, perhaps making them reconsider if the form gives people a chance to explain what makes them good candidates. And by having people at company blood drives aware of this issue, supporting employees by making this an option, there would be one more thing companies would could tick off to be more LGBT-friendly.

- 2 Comments - Tagged: , , ,

Big Blog Rebirth

Welcome! Not much to see here yet (please excuse the mess on other pages… still working out the kinks), but I’m excited to start blogging again. Sometimes I want to say more than 140 characters, but I’ve outgrown my old blog so I’m starting afresh thanks to motivation from Jeremiah and this Big Blog Rebirth.

We’ve been trying to gather up some old (mostly gay?) blog friends and get everyone to start blogging again. Strength in numbers! Find pther participants at our Facebook event.

- Comment - Tagged: ,