(no subject)

Another lovely day, if a tad on the chilly side. Accomplished a few things, just wish didn't amount to expenditures of cash. Sigh. Bought food - shitake mushrooms, chives, artichocke/garlic chicken sausage, artichocke/lemon pesto, raspberries, cocnut chocolate/cocnut lemon macroons, steak, breyer's natural vanilla ice cream, and bottled water. Bought books as well - that was the pricy item, books and a magazine, been on a magazine kick recently - don't know why. This week's were: 1.) George RR Martin's A FEAST OF CROWS for $22.20 (nice discount), no clue why I felt need to buy this in hardback or been lusting after it, know it will leave me unsatisfied just from a scan read. But Martin is an odd writer, you scan, then you feel an urge to really read it, even if it takes a long time. Reminds me a lot of Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond series, except better plotted and less romantic. So if you remove the romance and the crazy plotting of Dunnett, and literally go inside the pov of every character and go in depth on the political wrangling - you got an idea of what Martin is like. Plus the character's are tad more complex than Dunnetts, and considering Dunnett drew complex characters that's saying something. Never could read Robert Jordan - so would not say it's comparable to him. But it is decidely odd that I bought Feast, without first reading Storm of Swords, which apparently is the best of the bunch, albeit a tad on the grisely side. 2)Baroness Orczy's The Scarlette Pimpernell, a book I read over and over and over again as an adolescent and cherished. Haven't liked any of the tv or movie or play version nearly as well as the original - mostly because they do not reproduce the last three chapters and instead do something far less interesting to me. For me, the best part of the book is the last three chapters. (this was a cheap $5), 3) World Philosophies by Ninian Smart, described as a comprehensive introduction to all the world's major philosphical and religious traditions. Ninian Smart (1927-2001) - is described as the world's foremost scholar in religious studies. (hmmm, wouldn't know, but that's what the book jacket says. Looks readable and fascinating.), 4)What every online budding intellectual snob cannot live without - The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy - Second Edition. Yes, apparently, I've decided to enhance my psychological studies with a bit of philosophy on the side. May even write about to the abject horror of the philosophy experts on my flist. (I have an incredibly intellectual flist by the way. Very well-read and a good portion of them seem to know more than two languages. Intimidating to say the least.)5)The Economist: "France's failure". The question is - when will I find the time to read all this stuff???

* _{Oh and on the shallow, geeky front, yesterday, I bought Angel S5 DVD that I've been privately lusting after for the last year and a half. I liked that season, I identify. I work in the legal department of big corporation. Plus, Spike. Illyria. Cool Cordy. And the return of Lindsey.}

This morning got up early and did laundry. Yep, again. This round linens. Since going off to Hilton Head next weekend. Read this week's New Yorker - three articles, one on the recent election, one on the Supreme Court, and one on malpractice suites. Came home, watched my tape of this week's Nip/Tuck - which I found vaguely interesting - at least the Christian Troy sections, the other characters are boring me. Then took off for my walk and mused over the week's events.

If last week I felt as if I were sitting at a train station watching everyone board trains and leave me behind. This week I felt as if I were playing conductor, giving them directions on which trains to board. Or rather which ones they should take. Go figure. Life never fails to amuse and astonish me with it's unplanned twists and turns.

Very odd week. Had lots of eye-opening conversations - the type where you go, whoa, wait, that explains it.
Or whoa...that makes sense now.

I don't know what to lable this entry...it's a hodgepodge

You ever think that you think too much? Or over think things? Been wondering that lately. Turn off the mind.
Told a friend the other night that the only time I turn it off is when I'm focused on creating something artistic - whether it be a watercolor, a painting, a drawing, a bowl in pottery class, a story, what have you.
That's when the mind quiets. I sit at the wheel molding clay, feeling it slip and slide between my fingers. I press it into shape, my body curled over the wheel, elbows on knees, palms caressing the mud, fingers lightly pressing, capturing, molding, shaping. When I'm in the zone, I hear nothing, see nothing, but the clay, the shape, the slide of clay. Nothing exists outside of it, nothing but an aura of negative space. Than jarred, I snap out of the zone, hear the conversations buzzing, see the other wheels, the other potters and my piece looks odd to my eyes alien and I wonder vaguely where I've been and how did it turn out much better than expected. How did I do that??? Also whatever will I do with it. It's not the end product that exhilirates so much as the process of creating it. They say there are those who love the process and there are those who love the product. For years I thought, I was more interested in the product, recently I've realized I could care less about the end result - it's the creation or the journey involved that gives me the high - that puts my demons to rest.

Speaking of demons...

As you may have gathered by now, I'm hyper-critical of myself and highly analytical - hence the critical. This next bit will seem a tad jagged and disconnected. My thoughts are running on multiple tracks tonight, out of sequence, bumping into one another like drunken blind men.

Most of this week been a bit hyper-aware of biases, my own and others. Seeing all of them, no matter how benign or seemingly harmless. As if they are pimples and freckles and postules sticking out on people's noses. Aware that we all are, whether or not we admit it, members of "in-groups" and "out-groups" and often base our opinions on others on which group they appear to be a member of when we encounter them. In the class that I'm auditing this week, the professor stated that she did not believe there was such a thing as truth or rather that we could not find it, since we see everthing through a veil of our own biases, some so ingrained in our make-up that we are not conscious of them, cannot see them. Only catching them when they accidentally slip out in casual conversation, if then.

The film Crash while heavily flawed, is an excellent examination of bias, how everyone has them and how people reacte to one another - creating rather destructive situations - based on them - literally crashing into each other's assumptions. [I saw the film this week - which is a story about a bunch of seemingly unconnected people in LA after 9/11 who bump into each other and change one another's lives - emphasizing their racial prejudices and how those prejudices and assumptions affect their behavior in situations and how depending on the situation they can do horrible or wonderful things, partly due to those prejudices or in spite of them.)

You biasis on fan boards all the time. Fans are very biased, more so than a casual viewer actually. You can see it in how people's views of a tv show are so contradictory, you wonder if they are watching the same one. They are - it's just that each person is watching it through their own shield of prejudice, their own past hurts, their own up-bringing, things you can't dismiss or ignore or forget. I was reading some posts on Veronica Mars for instance that confused me because the episode people were reviewing - it wasn't this week's, I watch it on Sunday's so a week behind, was not what I saw on the screen. Reading the posts carefully - I saw the biases, the wants, the desires of the individual poster. It reminded me of what I saw on fan boards and fan fic during Buffy and Angel's run. And how important it was for everyone that they were right. And how defensive people got when someone said they weren't, myself included. If you made the mistake of pointing out that perhaps they were biased - they'd retort, so are you. I'm not sure you can see a story clearly when you are obsessed with it - because the thing about the story that obsesses you will overshadow everything else, also obsessions often are short lived, or momentary, so it is more than likely, years later you'll revisit it and wonder what the fuck? I know I did when I revisited a few obsessions from my youth - Kimba, Robin Hood (the animated Disney Version), Batman (the cheesy tv series), The Monkees, Battle of the Planets, BattleStar Galatica (original version), and Star Wars. What was it in each of these obsessions that gripped me? I think I know - it was a character - a vulnerability, a sense of adventure, maybe? Then again maybe I don't know. I look at the first three seasons of BTVS and wonder vaguely - why did I get so obsessed with Angel for a while? I did by the way, was watching it in S2 almost purely for Angel - was completely obsessed near the end of that season and started hunting spoilers online, visited websites at work, felt silly , taped the episodes, and did not tell anyone.
Closet obsession. Looking back? I think, what the fuck??? Course at the time was equally obsessed with the Jean Grey/Scott Summers romance in the Xmen. Another thing I've told no one until now. And had a weird yen for Vicky Bliss mysteries by Elizabeth Peters. Re-read one recently, and I get the Peters yen, don't get the other two at all.

Biases, obsessions...are they interelated? Hmm. I've learned the term "cognitive miser" recently. What it means is mental short-cut, or someone who thinks conservatively or relies on mental short-cuts or stereotypes, categories. An example - "Rosaria is tempermental and very confrontational.."
Response:" Isn't she Italian? Italians are tempermental and confrontational..." Or : "Alberto got a full scholarship to NYU." "Alberto is Spainish and an Immigrant and that's why he did, they always give those people scholarships because of Affirmative Action." Or..."People who want control...Men are like that.." or "I get Anti-Semitism now, it's the tall poppy syndrom, whenever someone says I'm chosen or better, others want to kick them." Or "Harry Potter is exactly like Star Wars, has the same story framework, that's why people like it..." (actually all stories are based on four or five basic tropes, what makes them interesting is the characters, universe and things people add to them, the basic plot is not the creative part - that's why a basic, sketch of a plot can't be copyrighted. Example - "the heroes journey" - see Buffy. Or the tragic hero? See Angel. Man vs. Organization - Firefly, X-files...so on and so forth. We tell the same stories over and over and over again.)We do it all the time. Every day. Every hour. In every single conversation. Every post. Make judgements based on our bias, based on the short-cut. It's how people think. And it's not necessarily predictable or consistent because biases can change as can prejudices, they aren't constant. Someone said in class that one of the best tv shows that depicted the inherent biases in people was "All in The Family", would agree.

Almost picked up a book today entitled The Race Myth - it's about how race or the color of someone's skin, the width of their nose, their hair color, their weight has absolutely nothing to do with personality or intellect or behavior. But we believe it does. And why we do and why our thinking is completely unfounded on science or anything remotely rationale. But this thinking is ingrained. In class the teacher spoke of internalized homophobia - the person who is homosexual but hates themselves - an issue hit briefly on in one of the episodes of Season 2 The L Word and one I experienced personally with a friend of mine in college - who hated herself because she was gay. I've known people who felt shame and frustration because of their race, felt that if it weren't for that one little thing they would be a member of the "group".

Mentioned in class this week the quote by the Secretary of Education about how the crime rate would be reduced if we aborted black babies and how morally reprehenisible that is and we'd never do it, but it still would reduce the crime rate. People in class asked the same questions that people online and my friend Wales did - at the time the quote happened. First they were shocked that someone in government, with an education would think such a thing, then they tried to rationalize how that biasis came about. What caused that thinking. And other examples started to get thrown about - such as the distinguished Harvard Professor of Mathmatics view that women were not as good at math as men, that genetically they just weren't designed for it in the same way, the brain was different. Yet there are women who succeeded in mathematics that disprove this, how can he believe it? Well, according to Eliot Aronson - what people do is "subtype" - they convince themselves that while this is probably true is a rare exception to the stereotype. Or they respond to the counterstereotyping by mentally creating a new category to place the person or persons in. Lableing the exception as the "exception that proves the rule." Oh and he goes on to define "stereotype" which is to assign identical characteristics to any person in a group, regardless of the actual variation among members of that group. And we learn how to assign identical characteristics at very young ages - ie. "who is popular, who is atheletic, who is smart, etc..." Stereotyping by itself isn't an intentional act of abuse - according to Aronson and I'd agree, rather it is the we have of simplifying our view of the world and making decisions. We all do it. Read the reviews of A History of Violence and see how people stereotype Americans and the American sensibility. Or how about what is happening in France right now? Or how about the reaction people had when they discovered Tim Minear, a favorite writer was a Republican. No, wait, I'm confusing definitions here - that's not just stereotyping, stereotyping is not all that different than categorizing in of itself, no when an negative reaction is assigned - that becomes "prejudice" and when we act on our prejudices, that becomes discrimination.

"prejudice" is defined a hostile or negative attitude toward a distinguishable group based on generalizations derived from faulty or incomplete information. Based on that definition, I can safely say that everyone I've ever met is prejudiced. And believes they are justified in that prejudice to some extent. (ex. Wales recently told me she was prejudiced against fundamentalist Christians.)

There was a study done a while back on sports uniforms. They discovered that teams with "black" uniforms recieved more fouls and were reprimanded more by referres than teams with light colored or white uniforms. The referees did two things here - they stereotyped, subconsiciously the uniforms, then discriminated based on their prejudice regarding the stereotype.

Tonight while watching The L Word I noticed a few interesting things - how women deal with men. How we assume as women that men do not know what it is like to be intruded upon or violated or fucked with. That they have it easier. They don't by the way. Just different. One of the perks of having a younger brother who is just three years younger - is you do get to see the other side of the equation. Women aren't the only ones who go through hell. But we think we do, because hey, we aren't men. We can't imagine what it is like to be a man and the men are in control - they have the physical and monetary power in our society. They are "in-group" and we are the "out-group" and the out-group always gets defensive about the in-group or the group in power. And the in-group always feels threatened by the out-group taking that power away from them. Was discussing power with a friend last night, and realized all relationships are about power. Heck posting on lj is about jockeying for power - how many friends do I have, how many people read me, am I more interesting or less interesting? We engage or disengage - and each choice we make has a weight behind it. Who makes the biggest compromise? Just going out to a restaurant or picking a movie - can be a power-play between two people. Or a conversation.

That said, one character's comment got me thinking - she said: " Every woman has been at some point intruded upon or violated by a man no matter how benign it might seem." I started thinking back and realized yep.
That was true. And yep, power games. It's about power. In school, I was taller than the boys and ruthlessly teased by them. I think one of the reasons I despise skirts and find them uncomfortable is at an early age I learned I could not play in them without risking some boy pulling it up or looking beneath and teasing/embarrassing me. Can almost hear the reader's response - boys will be boys or everyone does that, people get past that. But do they? And having a younger brother - I know he was teased in other ways, got in fights here and there, etc. We both left high school with huge chips on our shoulders. We both felt at times violated and intruded upon by the opposite sex. And by our own. Women can be as nasty as men. Just different.

I think what it comes down to is who has the power in any given situation. Or rather the most power and it's not always the person you think. In the L Word one of the most powerful characters appears to be the weakest: Tina and Jenny. Why? They make the choices that affect other characters. Shane and Bette who appear to have power, actually have none. They are weak, they've given it away. Same with BTVS. Spike and Angel are actually powerless when it comes to Buffy, Buffy has the power in her relationships - which is why Spike attempted to rape her as a soulless vampire and Angelus tried to rape/kill/maim/destroy her world and friends. Why? Buffy had the power and they had none. They were at her whim. Or rather felt that way. Power...ugh. I hate it sometimes.

Damn 1 am. And got up at 7am. Tired. Must sleep.

End of brain download. Make of it what you will...