this morning i was listening to NPR (guess i'm an adult now), and the news segment was an analysis of bush's proposed $250,000 "hard cap" on pain and suffering damages in medical malpractice suits. the segment was brief without sacrificing nuance, and it even suggested the kind of underlying cause that most newscasts avoid, the systemic kind that can't be swept away by one tidy piece of legislation. i could feel a deep love for public radio, nurtured by kodak-style dream sequences of our future together, taking root in my heart. the main point was that the malpractice liabilities that drive up doctors' insurance costs are not pain and suffering, but the actual fuckups that they make in treating people. this is not because the formerly rugged individualist physician archetype has been hijacked by a bevy of incompetent liberal ninnies unfamiliar with the maladies of jus' folks, but because medical advances over the past fifty years have created a lot more situations in which doctors can be blamed. (the example the newscast cited was that fifty years ago, diagnosing cancer early didn't matter; you were going to die anyway. now, in some cases, it can mean the difference between life and death.) in short, bush's proposed cap trivializes the problem and fails to remedy anything other than his shortage of policy initiatives to thump his chest over. all of which you could read in any times editorial, except they then played a statement from paul o'neill about how we live in an adversarial society where people think of misfortune as the fault of malevolent (suable) perpetrators.

brilliant. it is so true. i was at peace with the world this morning as i drank coffee and listened to my beloved NPR until, on the walk to work, some asshole (see? see? delusions of others' malevolence) gave a big rude honk, directed at the car in front of him, which was turning but letting me (the wronged victim, the girl in the legbrace) and others cross the street on our walk sign. angry at this small injustice even though the honker couldn't have known he was lashing out at the handicapped, i tumbled irretrievably into the me-first indignance of every pedestrian and motorist and everybody in new york, and now another day has been contaminated by arrogant suspicion of my fellow citydwellers. it's hard to go twenty feet without experiencing or even witnessing that emotion in others, which is a big part of my problem with new york. it's a hundred times more adversarial than any other place i've lived (which, admittedly, isn't so hard to do, considering i come from small-town florida and went to school in even-smaller-town davidson). i can understand how it happens here, because we're nine million people, all with our own agenda, crammed into such a tiny space. but i still don't like it, especially when i see it in myself.

i've started drinking my coffee black. amazing. my father told me this would happen, and i didn't believe him at the time, which was when i was like three and, although (involuntarily) not a coffee drinker then, i could not fathom a time when i would elect not to add sugar to something. i also am getting gray hairs, which i don't mind at all, but all i ask is that my body stop producing pimple-causing hormones. pimples AND gray hair is unreasonable.

eh. interview was yesterday. i'm not sure if i'll make it to the next round. this one was a preliminary with HR, and as i'm sure you all know, HR ladies are demons who think you need to be metaphysically aligned with whatever job they happen to be offering. when prodded, i will always admit that i prefer editorial to production. that is what HR ladies are there to do. prod.

the other day i saw a job ad for a copyeditor for something called mediamatters.org in dc. they correct and re-spin conservative misinformation in the media. i like the idea of promoting accuracy (see the institute for public accuracy), but it sounds like they only do it when it's to their advantage.

ah. and. once again, the onion presents a dark vision of what my life could one day be like: Someday, I Will Copyedit The Great American Novel.

also don't miss The Fabulous Friends: Conservative Christian Groups' Least-Favorite All-Star Cartoon. it's a bright day out there on the internet.

yeow

days when i actually do my job are taxing. which, nowadays, is many of them. which is why i'm in the market for a new job. if i'm constantly uninitiated, i'm never responsible, eh? i wouldn't mind being worked hard if it were something i cared about, and then this bourbon here i'm drinking (i never drink bourbon) would be celebratory rather than habit-forming.

so my newsgeek interview's tomorrow, and i'm going to find out exactly who these people are who put all the damn subscription cards so loosely in the magazine pages so that they fall out at all the wrong moments. i wonder if they are creepy or dignified. or artless. or look like litterers. or if they're just like the people at the museum, and if so, are they the nice reasonable ones or the scary bulldozing nincompoops?

i may be a newsgeek!

next week i'm interviewing for a production assistant opening at newsweek, which is, like, closer to my apartment than the museum. and pays much more. it's basically my job here but for their circulation dept (i.e., those pesky blow-in cards and other satellite pieces), but i figure it'd be wise to move to a magazine, and not a terribly embarrassing one at that (yes, i admit to scoping out elle decor when i saw an editorial opening there, but i just couldn't bring myself to apply). as for the voice internship option, i'm realizing it's merely a context for networking and wheedling assignments out of editors. in theory a job at newsweek provides the same context, as long as i can manage to hang out with editorial. or move there after a year.

not sure why my nyorker subscription notice is asking me what i've been doing this week to combat the despair of the nation and the world

i've been scurrying around trying to organize my head and my priorities by shuttling objects and bits of paper around my room. i feel inundated by Big Questions and i'm attempting to get a handle on them by controlling the messy little piles that consitute my life.

all i've really done is reconfigure the piles from my desk into slightly different piles on the ironing board, which is smelly and wasn't much help last night when i was facing off against two pairs of indefatigably wrinkly pants.

my pants are still wrinkled and i don't have any solutions.

i've determined that the world is both more and less arbitrary than i thought. more arbitrary because all of my striving produces nothing but sweat and illusions, and if it yields nothing, i'm more comfortable blaming my hair and not what's under it because i can change the former but not the latter. striving is more about self-esteem and getting through the day than willing into reality some idealized lamar who lives in the future. my thank-you note to the village voice will have no effect on the world or my place in it, and neither will the resume i just sent to newsweek....less arbitrary because there is logic to how things happen, it's just not always the logic i prefer.

why aren't there peppermint lollipops?

is it because peppermint was originally consumed in stick form, and the transition just never happened when the rounded starlight mint swept the nation?

the application is done and gone. now that i'm no longer fussing over personal statements and GRE absurdities, i can go back to fussing over (or putting off fussing over) bills, bank statements, cleanliness, orthopedic woes, food, items i can't afford, my netflix queue, and grammar. eh. maybe i should find more grad schools to apply to.

home stretch

soon my personal statement will be finished and i can go back to exercising and drinking beer. until then, i am fidgety sack of bones hell-bent on picking my brain for brilliant things to say.

buyblue.org

phew—tangueray, j crew, and netflix gave money to the democrats this year. starbucks and barnes & noble, evil as they are, did too. my mother won't like the news that saks gave $110,000 to the bushies.

eGREgious suffering

it was awful but it is over. i was not prepared for the absurdity of such arbitrary judgment exacted by an unfriendly computer terminal while being forced to sit on my butt for four hours, addled by hunger and frustration at the strange mentality that demanded repeatedly, cruelly, that i answer committee-formulated, whole-picture questions from an uninformed yet well-adjusted perspective.

the inanity of the princeton review's practice tests did not prepare me for the bludgeon that is ets mentality. extra stress on the mental there. here's an analogy to summarize my experience:

princeton review :: ets: cafe lolita :: a) kahlua b) everclear c) franzia d) a kahlua bottle that actually contains...heroin.

the correct answer is d).

ambitions in canary yellow

trying to make everything happen for my nyu app and trying to be articulate at the same time is making my brain hurt. it feels less like a race against the clock than a stampede traced on a flurry of post-its. maybe they would like an all-post-it grad school app.

re: diculousness of corporate titles

Did you know Les Moonves is the Co-President and Co-COO of Viacom?

Apparently he's not the only one.

actual sentence from a GRE practice reading comprehension

from the princeton review's test-prep cd (the novels in question are toni morrison's beloved and faulkner's absalom, absalom!):

"Both are considered by some critics a Bildungstroman, or coming-of-age novel. Morrison's Sethe and Faulkner's Quentin, find self-worth instead of relying on dominant society's values. Also, although using psychological realism plot style, both novels have a complex, experimental structure, using fragmented viewpoints to further the plot and juxtapose perspectives. I call this method psychological juxtapositioning."*

elsewhere in the passage, the author says morrison addresses the 'psychological affects of slavery,' a flub repeated in one of the questions. how disheartening to be trying to beat a test asking me to comprehend writing that belongs on engrish.com.

*this sentence is faithful to the original. i carefully typed all the errors as they appear in the test. just imagine one giant sic over the whole thing.

harper's rejection came in the mail yesterday. even tho i was prepared for it and had even already rationalized it away, it was still totally demoralizing. i had planned to start my nation letter and study for the GRE, but i just couldn't do it. so ed came over and we drank port with holly's theatRE friends and scarfed many varieties of chocolate.

well, i didn't get an elite internship, but i did get cute shoes for a steal on ebay. they are $240 mary janes made by birkenstock (i know! the nerve!), and i got them new for $60.

so really, my evening had happy ending. my dreams of catapulting into secret literary zones where no one makes excel charts were capitulated,* but as long as i'm pumping my meager paycheck back into the economy for identity-reaffirming goods, who cares? it's the beauty of the capitalist machine that you can't have bootstraps without first having boots.

*more slightly flubbed uses of GRE words coming soon

hopped up on coffee and calling insurance companies

i went to the rockefeller center postal service (amazing that i was able to distinguish it from all those mail-delivery-system-wannabe emotronica bands out there. cuz they're so hard to tell apart. just like wilco and those bible-belt fillin' stations of the same name. i never know who to ask for cigarettes and who to boogie to.) to mail some internship applications, and the concourse was crawling with tourists sucking on starbucks and becoming acquainted with the bathroom line and the concept of 'bathroom usher.' most people complain about tourists, but i've developed an affection for them. they are nice, pleasant people who are nearly always happy to be here. they have a sense of humor about being crammed up against each other in the elevator. and they walk slower than i hobble.

today i will do EVERYTHING.

heh heh.

forget liberal bias—butt bias is the real issue

"Astronomers took a closer look at Uranus, and found it stormy, with 'vigorous convective activity in the southern hemisphere'; they described the rings around Uranus as 'a layer of chunks.' " —Harper's Weekly Review

"Earlier human ancestors, like chimpanzees today, had pelvises that could support only a modest gluteus maximus, nothing like the strong buttocks of Homo." —New York Times

strong buttocks of homo . . . could be the tagline for the next abercrombie catalogue, or another suppressed lynne cheney novel going for $1,000 on ebay.

direction

i just registered for the GRE. i'm applying to NYU's cultural criticism & reporting program at the j-school so that i can learn how it's done from former voice and harper's editors. screw internships. i knew i was sluggish on applying to MFA programs for a good reason. writing isn't the thing i need schooling for; it's the body of knowledge cultural critics have that constitutes the gulf between my current job prospects and the ones i want to have. i just applied for an assistant editor job at parenting.com, and i don't think they want to hear about how their advertiser-driven content is part of the slow but pernicious brain-warping that causes people to rely on purchases for emotional meaning.

this morning on the way to work a lady with a headset wouldn't let me get within fifty feet of my building. they were shooting a movie, and i had to stand on the sidewalk until a silver car ostensibly containing matthew mcconaughey pulled up to the 21 club. they stopped all the real pedestrians so that the extras who were skillfully playing new yorkers could bustle past and ignore the movie set. i'm really good at ignoring movie sets, and i'll be good at bustling once my cast comes off tomorrow, so they should pay me to walk and fro in front of work.

activists are normally such understated, delightful people

(from the open newswire) "Students and activists interrupted the launch of Victoria's Secret's 'Angels Across America' tour today with a rowdy protest by people dressed in angel wings and lingerie and wielding chainsaws, and including a large banner reading 'Victoria's Secret: Their Catalogs Destroy Endangered Forests.' "

i've been googling for independent press outfits that look interesting enough to ask for a job. it occurred to me today that although interning at a literary magazine certainly would be more relevant to my interests than my current job, i might have better luck trying to work for some indy paper or indy media advocacy group. unfortunately, alternet is out in san francisco with mother jones, and they're the ones who are really legit and on top of their game. so i googled for ny organizations and came up with indypress.org, whose superearnest populism i recognized from some distant freakfest my memory had muddled with bust, bitch, butch, and all the other self-marginalized media i came across in college. three clicks later the words 'campus alternative journalism awards' brought it all back. russ and i entered libertas my junior year, and after i wrote our application and spent ten minutes on the phone explaining to some indypress fellow in arizona why we didn't just write off the meatheads and the godsquad at our school even though, yes, they were funny—oops, of course i meant 'poisonous'—russell the love muscle and i were shocked by the kind of tripe they hailed as winners. and we were proud to have lost.

i don't think i will ask them for a job. i want to be independent of corporate control, but i also want to be independent of sucking.

discovery!! followed by democracy in scare quotes

the #2 bran muffin in the new york metro area is a four-minute hobble from my apartment. (#1 lives at phoebe's, the cafe that is unassumingly neither too cute nor too scruffy and very assumingly near ed, and is delicious toasted with butter.) this muffin is bran fig, and it has big, spaced apart crumb-units, as though it's made of a larger sub-muffitomic particle, that are buttery but not too sweet. satisfying big rough-textured muffin top, too.

i voted in midtown manhattan this morning. crazylong line all the way down the block, understaffed voting center, mysterious vending machines full of crayons. never a better time to be on crutches. one guy working saw me and said, honey, you sit down, we'll get you to the front of the line. it then took fifteen minutes for him to communicate to the only other person working the lines that he had someone on crutches and could she get through.

my boss voted on the upper west side, where they had only one machine per district and no one to move along the hundreds of disgruntled voters more efficiently. you'd think in a city with thousands of ATMs we could manage voting at least competently. ATMs even give receipts. how hard could it be to write software that would allow the sweet juices of our beloved republic to course through every city's ATM system for one day every four years?

i think kerry will win the election, but who knows if he'll become president.