On hiatus

The reason I haven’t posted a lot is because the school year is very much in session and I’ve been trying and trying (very much) in vain to grow a set of time management skills this year. Having a blog doesn’t help.

Oddly enough, when I have something I really want to rant about, I’m always hesitant to post it here, even though I know no one really reads it – just because I’m afraid it will be disorganized and all over the place.

Plus, now I have a tumblr, and I’ve found that easier to update.

So what I’m saying is:
-I need to get more confidence in my writing.
-I need to learn how to manage my time.

and then I might actually update this thing once in a while.

Playing pretend

So I’ve decided that, as much as I admire her, I don’t really agree with Eleanor Roosevelt’s quote “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

You can tell yourself that you don’t care what others think.  You can feel disdain or indifference toward them as they walk past.  You can know intuitively, that you feel more at ease alone in your room than you do around certain people (or indeed around even people you do like, but that’s beside the point).  You can know from past experience that such people are not worth your time or concern.

And yet, when you see some sign of their dislike or hatred toward you, even if you’ve told yourself that their opinion doesn’t matter, and indeed if on other matters their opinion really doesn’t matter – you still feel small, feel like a freak.  When you see some sign that you’re not invited, that you’re not welcome, even if it’s something that you don’t really want to take part in anyway – you still feel like you’re missing out.

And as much as you tell yourself, you’re here to learn, that school is about classes, not parties and social standing – as much as you’ve experienced in the past more fulfillment out of learning in class than socializing outside of class – you find yourself caring when people give you that look that tells you they want nothing to do with you, that they’d rather you weren’t here.    And as much as you know that you have good friends, that you’re not an outcast, you certainly feel like one when that nasty clique gives you that look.

People can be assholes in college too.  “Mean Girls”-style behavior doesn’t go away when you get your high school diploma.  And even when you’re grown up enough to know it’s not your fault, that it says more about them than it does about you, it still hurts.  You don’t get to decide this.  You don’t need to give your consent.  It happens.

List-o-rama #1: Pottermania

First of all, I wanted to wish my fellow Francophones:  Joyeux Quatorze Juillet !

Secondly, as most of you know the sixth Harry Potter movie will be coming out at midnight tonight, and that means that everyone all over the Internet is making their own Harry-Potter-related lists.  At Rotten Tomatoes, critic Matt Atchity is rewatching each of the past Harry Potter movies counting down to the new Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in his “Deconstructing Harry” series.  So I thought it would be a good idea to get this blog back up and running by doing a Harry Potter list of my own – reviewing each of the books.

My impressions of each of them have changed a lot over the years, and it is difficult to remember some of the first 3 which I first read about 10 years ago.  (I’m not going to re-read them, especially since I lost my copy of Chamber of Secrets after my sister lent it to an unscrupulous friend.)   It would be easier to rank the movies, but I feel the books are the real heart of the series – and, allow me to judge the series as a whole, since the last few movies (HBP and the two parts of DH) have yet to come out.

My preference has generally been toward the later, more adult books, where the series transcended the children’s genre and headed straight into “young adult” territory, and where the series gets much darker and people are dying off with every book.  It is interesting that Rowling took the characters’ emergence into adolescence – Book 4, where the main characters first experience romantic feelings with all the drama of the Yule Ball – as the time for Voldemort to return.  As they physically and emotionally grew into adulthood, their demons shifted from smaller, “proxy” battles to dealing with the real Dark Lord and his army of followers in person.

I want to note I won’t be using spoiler tags; I’m going to assume you’ve all read the 7 books or at least know what happens.  So, if you haven’t, consider yourself warned.

From least to best, here is my ranking of the 7 Harry Potter novels:

7. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Perhaps I would have a different impression now, but at the time PoA really just felt like a filler and a delay – and not particularly dark or scary, as it’s the only book where there aren’t any real villains – since the main villain, Sirius, turns out to be on Harry’s side.  The characters of Lupin and Sirius, and the whole backstory about James and his friends during his time at Hogwarts, becomes important later on, of course, but dedicating a whole book to it that could have been used for more battles seemed kind of lame to my 9-year-old self.  And consequently, it took me the longest to read; I only made an effort to finish it when the news of Goblet of Fire’s release date came out.  It was also odd that the 13-year-old versions of Harry, Ron, and Hermione still felt like children; their true adolescence didn’t start until they were 14 in Goblet of Fire, which didn’t seem natural.

Ironically, this turned out to be my favorite Potter movie  so far(we’ll see if HBP changes that), so I wonder if I might like it better if I re-read it (and since 10 years of reading life have passed, I know my tastes in books have changed at least a little).

5 & 6. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

It’s hard to distinguish these two too much, because they both had a duel effort of establishing the wizarding world for the readers, and the plots follow pretty similar structures, so I put them in a tie.  The central conflict of Chamber of Secrets was far scarier and more exciting than the central conflict of Philosopher’s Stone, but in PS all the little details and characters of Harry’s world were brand-new both for us and his character, so in that sense it was equally enthralling.  Plus there was a certain humor in Vernon Dursley’s character dealing with all the wizards celebrating the defeat of Voldemort and being utterly perplexed.  At the same time, these books are the ones that most clearly fit the “children’s” tag that the series gets put under, lacking much of the complexity and darkness of the later books.  So they’re in a tie, near the bottom.

4. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

This was my least favorite of the four later books, largely because I thought it was trying to do too much at once.  It had to establish Voldemort’s (and part of Snape’s) backstory, the two central romances of the series (Ron/Hermione and Harry/Ginny) and how the wizarding world was transitioning to crisis mode – and the beginning of the full-on war that would dominate the final book.  Unlike the other three later books, though, it did not feel very cohesive, and I felt like Rowling was trying to make up for the fact that she delayed much of the fighting action with OotP.   While I love Phoenix (as evidenced later in this post), I feel like Prince could have worked better if she put some of the details – like the Voldemort history stuff – into Book 5.  But overall, I enjoyed Prince, especially the heavy focus on Snape and the comic relief provided by high-school drama (largely absent from Book 7).  So, on to…

3. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

I was blown away by this when I first read it; it was clearly in a very different category of literature than the first 3 in the series.  In retrospect, I’m still wowed by this one, because of how it seems like a story in a very grand sense, with lots of action (but a brief comic subplot in the Yule Ball scene and action leading up to it) and much more complex relationships between the characters.  This was also the first time that we saw the character’s burgeoning adolescence out in the open, with Harry’s crush on fellow Seeker Cho Chang (probably lucky for him there was no Quidditch that year), Hermione’s relationship with Durmstrang champion and international Quidditch superstar Viktor Krum, and Ron’s general cynicism about it all.   Overall, the relationships between the four Champions and the way others vying for their adoration related to them all was compelling, but what made this book the most for me was the scene where the loyal Death Eaters returned to Voldemort, and Harry got to see all of Voldemort’s victims – including Harry’s own parents – when their wands were linked.  I remember that I had to keep re-reading those scenes, they were so brilliant.  And R.I.P. Cedric Diggory, and my former attraction to Robert Pattinson in that role (before he became a sparkly emo vampire).

2. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

It was very close between this one and Goblet. Of course, I had been eager since I started the series (or at least, since OotP, when we find out Harry’s fate is either to kill or be killed by Voldemort) to find out what happens in the final book, when he faces off against his nemesis for the final time.  And the fulfillment of that desire is part of what made this book rank so high on my list.   But largely, the reason I liked it so much was because it continued a lot of the anti-establishment themes that I so enjoyed in Book 5 – taken to a much further conclusion, with the Death-Eater-controlled Ministry seeming more like Nazi Germany with its anti-Muggle viciousness, where the Ministry in OotP was more like the Bush Administration (while still menacing, it was ultimately more bumbling and foolish than anything).  I like the fact that Rowling rounds out characters like Snape and the Malfoys; we find out Snape’s true motivations and he ends up becoming possibly the best character in the novels, whereas the Malfoys are at least shown as more human and less unilaterally evil.  I especially like Narcissa’s scene towards the end, when she discovers Harry is not quite dead and lies about it when he says Draco is safe; she shows that for even the most despicable of people, there is some goodness and love in their hearts.

The Deathly Hallows arc, continuing Rowling’s theme about being unafraid of death, were an interesting addition to a book that could have been all about good-evil battles – as with the romantic tension between several of the characters.  I also liked the Dumbledore development, although it felt a bit like overkill at times. And against popular opinion, I actually liked the epilogue; I was happy to find out what happens to the characters after their time at Hogwarts, although it did seem a bit sappy at times.  What kept this book, for me, from getting the top spot was that I felt that sometimes Rowling sacrificed real plot development for just battle scene after battle scene.

1. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

I tried to deny this for a long time, as I heard the common opinion that OOTP was just Rowling’s attempt to delay the anti-Voldemort action for another book by making the wizarding world ignorant, but this is truly my favorite of the series.  Perhaps it is because of where I was in life when I read it, as a middle-school student frustrated with students picking on her and teachers who didn’t understand her, who felt like she was battling The Man every day of her life.  I now look back on where I was and laugh at how I was able to compare my relatively trivial circumstances to what Harry and the rest of Dumbledore’s Army deal with, but truth be told, the events of this book are the most relatable and probably hold the best lessons for conduct in real life.

I say this because the primary antagonists of this book – the Ministry – are problematic not because of the fact that they are “evil” per se, but because of their slavish devotion to the status quo regardless of the consequences.   Most people in the world wouldn’t choose to actively support evil, but might choose complacency – as the Ministry does – for fear of attracting the wrath of the evil ones.  Look at Nazi Germany, and how the debate is less often why Hitler was so evil than it is why the majority of Germans did nothing to stop him.   A lot of those same Ministry members who were so eager to believe the lie that Voldemort had not returned later supported – or at least, ignored – the Death Eater regime when they took over the Ministry in Deathly Hallows and began purging Muggle-borns.  OOTP is, above all, a charge to question authority and not be afraid to stand up against even when the consequences are dire.  We may not all get to battle a Voldemort, but pretty much everyone knows (or knew) an Umbridge or a Fudge.  We might not be able to stand up for good against evil, but we probably will get many chances to stand up for the truth against ignorance.

Beyond the book’s message, I thought OOTP did the puberty subplot right in a way where in HBP it occasionally seemed like overkill and a bit of a distraction to the main plot.  In OOTP, Harry’s relationship with Cho was interwoven with the main plot of the book; doubly so in the movie, where she (not her friend, Marietta Edgecombe) is the one who betrays them all.  The “Weasley is Our King” bit was also a nice triumph for Ron, who often feels – and seems – like the third wheel next to the powerful, “chosen” Harry and clever, wise Hermione.  And the way Harry fights against Voldemort’s control over his thoughts is an apt metaphor for the way each of us struggles with our own potential for both good and evil, and with decisions that seem to tear us apart.  Perhaps most critical to my opinion of the book was that it introduced one of my favorite characters, Luna Lovegood, who was my favorite to be the future Mrs. Potter even after the events of Book 6.  And I liked that her, along with Ginny and Neville – so often derided in the first few books by the trio – placed as integral a part in the final battle as Ron and Hermione.

Though it was the longest, the plot felt the most cohesive compared to the books preceding and following it – and it was a good foreshadowing of what was to come in the next two.  It was a disappointment that the accompanying movie didn’t live up to the brilliance of the book.

———-

So there you have my ranking of the Harry Potter books in order.  My opinions on the movies are almost reversed – POA is my favorite, and OOTP is probably my least favorite – which say something about how much of the success of a movie-based-on-a-book is dependent upon the director, screenwriter, performances etc. and less on the actual source material.  How do you rank the books/movies?

What’s interesting about Harry Potter is that there is no real, agreed-upon order between the best and worst books in the series.  Beyond the fact that most people who grew up with Harry Potter (and are now in their late teens/early twenties) agree that the simpler, more kid-oriented early books are not as good as the more mature, darker later ones, the rankings could vary wildly from fan to fan, so I’m interested in seeing how other people’s lists differ from my own.

Small Update

I just wanted to apologize for the lack of any posts over the past month.  Shortly after I posted the last one, I left college to go back home for the summer and not much exciting has really happened other than looking for jobs (and not getting them), cleaning my room, and spending a lot of time surfing the web and catching up on reading I couldn’t do during the school year.

In short, nothing worth blogging about has happened, and that’s why I haven’t written anything.  There have been a few political stories that have intrigued/disturbed me (two acts of domestic terrorism by right-wing extremists, the troubling Iranian elections, the GM bankruptcy, to name a few), and while I considered blogging about those it was difficult to translate how I felt about them into more than just the short, snappy comments I’ve been leaving on Jezebel.com and other such places.

In composition news, I’m finishing up the song I’ve been working on since December, and starting up a new choral work to commemorate the sesquicentennial of my stepdad’s church (where he’s the minister – yes, I’m a PK).  I also may be getting back into creative writing again, although very slowly.  (And mostly prominated by the “hey, if people think Stephanie Meyer can write, maybe the bar isn’t as high as I think” mentality.)

See?  It’s been a long, dull month.  I have no life.  Four brief “paragraphs” and I’m boring you already

A tragic loss

A week ago this Saturday, one of my friends from high school passed away.  Although in my opinion, the phrase “passed away” does not do her justice.

When I think of “passed away” I think of a very old person dying in their sleep or a person with a deadly disease who loses their fight.  It’s something sad, but in a way inevitable.

This is not what happened to my friend.  She was 18, and perfectly healthy.  She chose to die.   Using a combination of sleeping pills, alcohol, and car exhaust fumes (from the stories I’ve heard), she took her own life.

Why?  Because she got a bad grade, and her parents hassled her about it.  At least, that’s the story I’ve heard.  I’m certain there’s more to it than that, because it seems all too surreal for that to be it.

And yet, at the same time, considering the culture we live re: grades & academic achievement, it makes perfect sense…

——–

This is the second classmate we’ve lost since we graduated, less than a year ago, on 30 May 2008.  With both classmates I felt at first that my response was inappropriate.  I had expected that I would be bawling my eyes out if this ever happened, but the tears didn’t come.  At first.  With the first classmate, who died in a car accident last December, they eventually came.

But with this classmate they didn’t come at all.  And it really bothers me.  I know it sounds like I’m making a big deal out of nothing – it’s not like I’m not sad, it’s just that my reaction has been more like shock than bawling my eyes out – but to me it does seem worrisome.

This classmate and I had a conflicted relationship.  We were very good friends at the beginning of high school, but drifted towards the end.  Part of it was just different social groups (the people whose lunch table you sit at the first day of 9th grade are rarely the people who you’re sitting with in junior and senior year) but also, there was some conflict over a boy.

Yep, it sounds like a bad teen movie, but:  I had a huge crush on this one guy through the last two years of high school.  We were good friends, at least for a while – but then he found out and stopped wanting to be friends with me so much.   Not that he showed it of course; he still treated me the same way, but would bitch about me “stalking him” behind my back to his other friends.

She was one of those other friends, and they decided to go to prom together.  She also reported to him when she found me ranting about his two-faced-ness on an online message board, and so I spent the remaining month of high school secretly resenting her.

Of course, even before this awful tragedy occurred, I had put all this senior-year drama in the past and wished that, instead of letting our friendship go to pieces over a guy we had been able to get beyond that.  Because she was an incredibly cool person.  She was a very gifted artist; I still have a drawing she made of me, chibi-style, as a part of the Anime Club’s booth for our school’s International Festival.  She was really smart across the board in her subjects….she focused on math and science mostly, but she was also good at English and history (and gave me some much-needed advice about my college admissions essays).  And music.  We were both in the school orchestra and band together, where she played first oboe.  She also took my little sister under her wing when she joined the anime club as a freshman.   In addition, she had one of my favorite senses of humor of any of the people I knew: a very leave-no-stone-unturned, frequently-pushing-the-envelope-too-far sort of humor that I loved.  Even when I was resenting her, I still loved reading her  zany Facebook notes and (before that) her Xanga blog.

In short, she was a very intelligent, multi-talented, hilarious, amazing person.  But none of that mattered in the end.  What mattered were her grades, and they were not good enough.

So I worried at first that my lack of tears over her death were because of the mixed feelings I had had toward her at the end of our high school years.  But I think the real reason I didn’t break down into tears at any point over the past week was not because I wasn’t upset by her death, but rather because I was upset in a different way:  I was sad, but more than anything I was angry.

I was, and still am, angry at the society of academic overachievement that tells us that, despite whatever other talents we might have, what matters the most is a bunch of letters on paper.  I’m mad that her parents’ feelings about that pushed her to that point, but more mad at the fact that society – and moreover, the school we went to – encourages parents to pressure their kids to the point where it takes a toll on their mental and emotional health.

I remember fondly the academic awards ceremony at the end of senior year where my school had refused to list me in the program with the other National Merit Finalists, instead separating me as only a Semifinalist.  When my mom complained that I had indeed been a Finalist and deserved to be listed with the others, the counselors sarcastically quipped that “I really deserved it.” I had frequently felt singled-out because my grades were not as high as they should be.  Though I cared about grades, I knew that striving to get an A in every class – just to get that elusive 4.0 – would take a toll on the cello-practicing and composing I needed to get into a good music school, which cared more about my creative abilities than my GPA.  However, to my school, the fact that I had other talents and that they might matter more to my future than, say, getting a top-notch math grade was irrelevant.  What mattered were what was on paper, and consequently I was a less valuable person because those letters were not as good as those of my classmates’.  I didn’t deserve to be ranked with the other National Merit Finalists and their top-notch GPAs, and consequently, in that program I wasn’t.

Likewise, my classmate and friend was a talented, successful human being.  She was extremely smart.  She was talented in multiple areas, from science to art to math to music.  She had a great sense of humor, and a great laugh.  She had many friends and many interests.  In short, she had a lot to live for – but she had been told her entire life that those letters on a piece of paper were the ultimate judgment of who she was.  Even after she left high school, that attitude stayed with her.  And when those letters took a dip, she took her own life.

For a long time, I’ve been thinking of doing a darkly-comic parody of my school, and the toxic environment it promotes and how it hurts us students who are taught to value marks on paper more than anything else about ourselves.  Now that this has happened to my friend, I feel like the need to do this is even more necessary.  After all, even politicians are jumping on the bandwagon that we kids don’t work quite enough; I just heard Obama proposing something about extending the school year.  This, despite all the evidence to the contrary that we kids are worked to the death, that high school is harder than it’s ever been, that the stakes for getting into college have never been higher.

I do not want my friend to have died in vain, and I feel like the time to do this has never been better.  I am waiting a while to get started, of course, because I’m sure some people will see it as an insult to her memory.  I don’t think it is.  I think my very funny friend, with her cross-all-boundaries sense of humor, would appreciate it.

I can’t think of any other way to pay tribute to her.

Cinco de Mayo/Finals Week Playlist: Study Music

Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone!  (No… I don’t know how to say that in Spanish.  Lol.)

My playlist for the past week or so has absolutely nothing to do with Cinco de Mayo and is actually pretty random.  Kind of like my music collection in general.  Some repeats from last week, some new stuff.

But since it’s mostly good essay-writing music, it’s mostly rock music (and minimalist classical).

John Adams – Nixon in China

The Beatles – Help!, The White Album Disc 2, Past Masters vols. 1 and 2

The Clash – The Essential Clash and London Calling

Crosby, Still & Nash – Greatest Hits

Donovan – “Catch the Wind” and “Colours”

Bob Dylan – Another Side of Bob Dylan

Franz Ferdinand – You Could Have it So Much Better

Steve Reich – Music for 18

The Ramones – Rocket to Russia

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov – Capriccio espagnol

Patti Smith – Horses

Talking Heads – More Songs about Buildings and Food

Various Artists – CBGBs and the Birth of U.S. Punk

The White Stripes -The White Stripes and White Blood Cells

Based on this clinical study, late ’70s punk, folk-rock, and minimalism appear to be the best types of music for studying.

It’s been a pretty stressful week thus far.  In addition to drowning in finals and essays, I found out on Sunday night that one of my high school classmates and former friends killed herself on Saturday, as a response to parental pressure about grades.  That’s going to require a longer, more thoughtful post, though, so I’ll wait until finals are over.

With God on Their Side

Recently I’ve come across this book,  The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University.  It chronicles the experience of Kevin Roose, liberal Brown student, when he decides to spend a semester as a student at Liberty University, Jerry Falwell’s “Bible Boot Camp” in Lynchburg, Virginia, one of the most conservative and strict campuses in the country.  When visiting the school while helping A.J. Jacobs with his research for The Year of Living Biblically, Roose finds himself unable to conduct a normal conversation with the Liberty students, and wonders why it’s so hard for him to bridge the “God Divide.”  Realizing that evangelical youth culture is probably more foreign to him than any of the European countries where his college friends were studying abroad, Roose turns his semester at Liberty into his own sort of “study abroad” experience.  It’s fascinating – I’ve blown through about half the book in just a few hours.

With a background not too different from Roose’s – agnostic with liberal Protestant upbringing; ultra-leftist parents who support gay rights and despise almost everything Falwell’s ever said; currently attending a prestigious secular university where I engage regularly in sinful activity like partying and pro-choice activism – of course, the inevitable question for me while reading this book is: Could I do it?  Could I pull off being a Liberty student for a semester like Roose did, without either caving in and losing my soul to Falwell’s hateful branch of fundamentalism, or speaking out on something I didn’t like and thus calling my bluff?

In one sense, I do have it going for me that I’m a bit more familiar with evangelical youth culture than Roose is.  I went to a Missouri Synod Lutheran school from K-2, where I learned Sunday school songs (like the ones that Roose uses to remember the order of books in the Bible or the plots of certain Bible stories), watched VeggieTales, and probably wore a WWJD bracelet and something fish-related at some point.  Even after I had figured out I was an agnostic and switched to a public elementary school, I still had plenty of classmates who were born-again Christians.   I think the fact that I’ve had years of practice defending my agnosticism to my evangelical friends would make me better prepared for holding tight to what I already believe and keep me from caving in to the pressure to become “saved.”  I’m also involved enough with pro-choice and pro-marriage-equality issues in that I don’t think I’ll ever change my opinions there.

Any true-believers in fundamentalist Christianity reading this are probably shaking their heads at how I’m so afraid to accept the “way” of Jesus or whatever.  Honestly, Christianity in general doesn’t bother me much.  Jesus (if he actually existed) was a great person, and I agree on a philosophical level with a lot of the ideas presented in the Bible (mainly the New Testament).  I still have something of an attachment to the mainstream Protestantism, and I attend my stepdad’s Presbyterian church (where he is the pastor) semi-regularly when I am home.  What bothers me are people like Falwell who use the teachings of Jesus to justify demeaning attitudes toward women (in terms of their stance on women’s sexuality, both on the abortion  issue and the “purity” issue) and homosexuals.   Hate is hate, even if you have a religious text to back it up.  I’m sorry, but I’ll never be able to accept that it’s the “right way” and the “truth” to believe that my gay friends can only be “saved” if they have to deny who they are and who they love, and twist themselves into a pretzel to become someone they are not.  For that matter, as a feminist woman, I’d  have to change who I was to fit the Christian-right patriarchal ideal of what a woman should be.  In the dating world of Liberty, men are expected to do pretty much all the important stuff – to the point of even leading the conversation where they want it to go.  And in the orientation activities, men are taught that the most important thing for a woman is her “purity” – not her intelligence, her talents, her sense of humor, or her kindness – but whether or not she’s abstaining from sex.  I can’t buy that worldview that ties my entire identity to my sexuality, whether it’s coming from raunch culture or from the Christian Right.

And see, I feel like I could not pull off Roose’s experiment because I’d have a much harder time not crying foul on the homophobia and outdated gender-roles that he experiences every day.  The latter, particularly, because as a woman I’d be expected to conform to those gender-roles, something I’ve never been very good at doing.  Roose’s success is aided by his privilege, something he even points this out in his book: “[I]t’s becoming clear that I’m in the best possible position to enjoy Liberty.  As a white, Protestant, heterosexual male, it’s relatively easy for me to come here and find things to like about it.  If even one of my demographics were changed, I’d be having a much different time, potentially filled with much more hostility and much less desire for reconciliation.  If I were black, I’d be facing some of the same issues as Paul [a hallmate who deals with grief from some racist friends who are bothered by his interracial relationship].  If I were a woman, I’d be seeing a much different side of Liberty’s gender dynamics.  And if I were a Muslim or a gay man, there’s no way I’d be here at all.  I have to keep that in mind.”

This book is very illuminating partly because Roose – in his attempt to bridge the “God Divide” – does not let his classmates “get away,” per se, with having such frightening beliefs about, among other things, homosexuality and gender roles.  He tries to understand them, but he will not agree with them.  He struggles with his moral obligation to call out his friends for their beliefs (especially when he gets calls from his lesbian aunts reminding him that the politics of Liberty contribute to LGBTIQQ oppression) and yet understanding that to act on his moral impulses would be to blow his cover.   He notices one thing I’ve always found puzzling when dealing with friends who are fundamentalists: how people who are so kind, generous and sweet to the people they meet can simultaneously harbor such inflammatory anti-gay or misogynist views.  As many reviewers pointed out, the one place where Roose misses the boat is that he doesn’t go very deep into what about organized religion allows normally peaceful, tolerant people to justify such hateful views toward people who are not like them.  He skims the surface, but doesn’t quite get there.  But then, Roose isn’t a sociologist or a psychologist, and he isn’t as much interested in psychoanalyzing evangelical young people as he is in figuring out what he has in common with them  – if he can connect with them the way he can his friends from his “regular” life.

It’s amusing how this book is being co-opted by both sides of the debate – particularly, it seems like a lot of conservatives are saying, “Hey! Look! Liberal Democrat learns we’re not so bad after all!”   Well…not quite.  He’s still troubled by the same things that trouble most of us liberals about Christian fundamentalists: their hateful anti-gay and misogynist rhetoric, and the way their simplistic worldview (when turned into political policy) often infringes upon the rights of people who don’t share it.  What he does realize is that Christian fundamentalists are people, just like anyone else, and that they’re not as hard to understand, get along with, or talk to as he thought.  And they, being every bit as complex as any other human being, often defy the labels that our culture assigns them.  But contrary to what most conservatives think, those of us who grew up around evangelicals have known this our whole lives.

The Unlikely Disciple is definitely progress toward understanding between the two sides of the culture wars, but what would be real progress is if the other side attempted its own project like it, an Unlikely-Disciple-in-reverse.  Fundamentalist Christians continue to believe that we liberals are out to get them and stomp on their religious rights, simply by demanding the right to have our own beliefs respected too.  It would be nice if Roose’s experiment could inspire some Liberty or Bob Jones student to spend a year at one of America’s most progressive colleges, and realize that those of us on the other side of the cultural divide are perfectly accepting of them as long as they don’t push their views on us.   Perhaps it’s a bit too optimistic to ask for, but one can hope…and pray…

No direction home

Warning… this one’s long.

So I’ve been toying for a while for what to say about turning 19 – which happened to me exactly one week and one day ago.  It’s not typically a milestone the way, say, 16 or 18 or 21 is, but in my opinion it should be.  At least for me.

It’s weird to think of all the different ways I’ve grown over this past year.  So much has happened, not just to me but the world.  We have a new, intelligent, open-minded president.  The entire American political dynamic has shifted in my favor (or has it?).  Where saying I was from Detroit used to be met with nothing more than some dumb joke about whether I own a kevlar vest or how many times I’ve been mugged (zero, morons), now suddenly everyone wants to pontificate to me with their own perspective on the auto bailouts.  Or they want to know mine, and are disappointed to learn that I come from a family of academics who probably don’t even own a pair of jumper cables, and I really could not care less about cars.  The economy has collapsed, and the Republican Party with it.  Two new states have legalized gay marriage – include one I thought wouldn’t for another decade.  It’s a weird new world.

But if the world has been re-made since April 2008, I’ve been re-made a thousand times over.  I did not quite get the enormity of how much I’ve grown until I had a conversation with my little sister over the phone this past Saturday.  Granted, she’s a lot more naive than I was at her age, 16; I did not go to a church that told me that losing my virginity before marriage and drinking before age 21 would lead me down a slippery slope toward dropping out of college and a dead-end job.  The gap that religion fills in her life was always filled in mine by music and literature, which (conversely) told me that life was not as simple and black-and-white as some make it seem, and there was a big, frightening world out there of which I knew nothing.  I was less naive mainly because I was aware of my naivete.

Still, it was odd to hear her questions and not hear a more extreme version of myself as a high-school student.  The questions she asked me seem silly now – “Wow, so you have a lot friends who are not virgins? Ew” – but then I think back to classmates in 12th grade!!! who thought that abstinence-until-marriage was something most people did, and how hush-hush sex, alcohol and parting were at my high school, and I realize just how much of a bubble my teenage experience was.  I think back to when I first came to Peabody, first came to parties, my first experiences of dorm life, and just how much of a culture shock that all was.

But new experiences and becoming open-minded were not the only ways in which I came out of my high-school bubble over the past year.  I’ve explored some new interests: I discovered a whole new field of study which I did not even know existed.  I’ve learned a lot about new music and realized that I enjoyed it a lot more than I ever thought I would.  My goals as a composer – and as an artist or musician in general – have changed considerably from those of the girl one year ago who just wanted to write neoclassical orchestral music.

I’ve also become a lot more confident.  A year ago, I was slowly discovering that the boy whom I had spent the past two years fawning over, whom I thought was one of my closest friends and possibly my soulmate (it’s so embarrassing to recount this now!), not only was not interested in me in a romantic way, but quite possibly hated me and was secretly backstabbing me.  And it tormented me; I thought he was perfect for me in every way, and was worried this was a sign I’d never find a boyfriend.  I was wondering if I was picking the wrong guys.  Now, I not only still don’t have a boyfriend, but don’t really care.  I’ve finally learned that having a boyfriend for the sake of having one isn’t fun, and is absolutely no reason to lower my standards.  If anything, the douchey behavior my “friend” showed me when he found out I liked him caused me to raise my standards, not lower them.  Heck, the person I’m crushing on right now is completely off-limits, and I’ve accepted that and lose absolutely no sleep over it.  I’m finally content with my (lack of a) love life.

Partly it’s the result of my growing interest in feminism – which I think has helped to change my entire view of myself.  I have always identified with feminism, but it’s only in this past year that I’ve started exploring all that feminism really entails, and it’s been quite empowering.  I honestly do not see why society is surprised that young women like me are feminists.  Not being a feminist means driving ourselves mad trying to mold ourselves into what society thinks a woman should be, something that is often impossible (for example, as an introvert I can’t magically morph into the social-butterfly society thinks women should be).  Feminism means accepting ourselves for who we are and learning that we don’t have to change to fit the mold.  Honestly, I’ve never been happier since I started to read up on feminism, whether on the Internet or through amazing books like this one).

Even more importantly, though, I’ve finally created my own life for myself.  I don’t drive, and in Detroit that means you’re basically handicapped; my parents had to chauffeur me everywhere.  I spent most of my time outside of school at home or out with them.  This year, I’ve had to learn true independence.  It’s been alienating and scary sometimes, but it’s been worth it – I feel like my life finally belongs totally to me.  And both they and I are shocked at how well I’ve succeeded in forging out my own life.  (Not to imply that my parents suffocated me or kept me from being my own person – they definitely did not, but I still felt a little stifled by my lack of independence back home.  Which I think is inevitable for anyone in the situation I was in, even with such ultra-liberal parents like mine.)

I mentioned in an earlier post that I’ve felt like I’ve grown more in a single year than I ever have since I was an infant.  And it’s really true.  This year – where I’ve grown so much, exposed myself to so many new influences and experiences – I’ve felt like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz when she steps out of the black-and-white dust of Kansas into an explosion of technicolor.  Only, unlike her, I have no desire to go backward.

How does it feel?

To be on your own

With no direction home

Like a complete unknown

Like a rolling stone

(I feel like pretty much experience in life has a Dylan song to accompany it.  Or, at least this one does.)

Hump-Day Playlist #1: Americana

Some of the stuff I’ve been listening to this week – a lot of American composers and rock bands (with some Brits thrown in too, of course, for good measure):

“Classical”

John Cage – Sonatas for Prepared Piano

Aaron Copland – Symphony no. 3

George Crumb – Black Angels

Charles Ives – “They are There!,” Three Places in New England, Variations on America

Steve Reich – Music for 18 Musicians

Terry Riley – In C

Thomas Tallis – Spem in alium (arranged for string quartet and performed by the Kronos Quartet)

Ralph Vaughan Williams – Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis

Rock/Pop

The Beatles – Help!, Beatles for Sale

Bob Dylan – The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Bringing it All Back Home

The Jefferson Airplane – “Somebody to Love,” “White Rabbit,” “Come Up the Years”

Lou Reed – “Take a Walk on the Wild Side”

Patti Smith – Horses

The Velvet Underground – The Velvet Underground & Nico, The Velvet Underground

The Who – Who’s Next

Follow-Up: Basic Rules of Facebook Etiquette

(I promise not every post on this blog will be about Facebook.)

So yesterday – April 18th – was my 19th birthday!!!  I’ll probably post some melodramatic “what-have-I-learned-and-where-do-I-go-from-here” birthday entry tomorrow (especially since I think this past year of my life has seen more growth – emotionally & mentally, at least – than any year since my infancy, and deserves some serious reflection). But for right now I’d like to focus on something altogether different that has been bothering me for quite some time.  Consider this the follow-up post to the below Facebook rant.

I’ve been using Facebook, as I said below, for a little over a year and a half now – since September 2007.   And despite the fact that many of my friends have been using it a lot longer than I have, sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who has a clue how to use the site.  It just seems like there are some unwritten rules about the site that everyone should follow.  Everyone’s idea of what this list is different, unfortunately, and perhaps that is why the way others use Facebook will continually annoy me.

For what it’s worth, here’s  my list of rules that I think could make Facebook a little bit happier for everyone:

1. Now that the applications are separated from the regular profile, having an excess of stupid apps is no longer a mortal sin.  However, please don’t send me multiple invites to said apps.  I’ve made it clear already that I don’t want to participate in “Friends for Sale” – you don’t need to keep sending it.  The ability to invite friends to an app should be about turning them on to a cool app you think they might like – not spamming them.  This is how you lose friends.

2. Don’t post about the same thing in every status.  This is particularly true if it’s your romantic relationship.  “I love [insert bf/gf's name here]” is cute and sweet a couple times, especially on appropriate occasions such as an important anniversary or said bf/gf’s birthday.  However, if you have to include it in every status, this is probably a sign that you need to get a life outside your relationship.  That kind of single-mindedness is not healthy.  Plus, cute gets vomitous after overexposure; you’re make all your friends want to puke.

3. Do not invite me to pointless groups.  I understand if it is something you feel strongly about or that you think is important, and you want to raise awareness.  I understand if it’s a clever joke that you want to share with friends.  I also understand if it’s a group that you created.  I am sick to death, however, of completely pointless groups like “Let’s Get Everyone in Facebook in One Group!”  No.  The concept is idiotic to begin with, and the creator is never going to reach their goal, considering there are about 239489038493 other groups on Facebook competing against each other for the same goal.  You lived through the chain e-mail fad of the early ’00s; you should have learned by now that just because something says “invite all your friends,” that does not mean you should follow that advice.

4. Do not invite me to events that I cannot possibly attend.  This seems to be occurring more often now that I’m in college, and my high school friends are spread all across the country.  However, the other people who are out-of-town seem to get this and are more choosy with who they invite to events.  It is the friends who chose to stay nearby for college – or who are still in high school – who still invite their entire friend list without bothering to check who has skipped town.  Sorry, I’m not going to drive 10 hours to see some crappy a capella group you’re in at West-South-Central Michigan Dipshit Commuter School, and then drive 10 hours back the next day so I don’t miss any classes at my real university.  (Does that sound elitist?  That’s because it is.  Sorry, but this one really irritates me.  There’s no “select all” option when inviting friends to events; you have to individually select people.  So I don’t really understand the thought-process here that drives them to select friends to invite whom they know are living in another part of the country/world, especially when it’s people I haven’t talked to in years.)

5.  Accept everyone you know who goes to your school or works at your office.  You’ve probably seen them around somewhere, and just do not remember.  Don’t ignore someone’s friend request just because you don’t like them if you do know them; remember, Facebook friends are not really “friends,” they’re just people with whom you associate in one way or another.  This is particularly true if they do not know that you hate them.  They will figure it out eventually, and it will make them deeply insecure and they’ll probably continue to send you friend requests.  If you really don’t want to be friends with these people, just don’t touch the request & leave them in Facebook limbo forever.

6. Only block people if there really is a compelling reason to do so, such as their Internet stalking reaching the level of you fearing for your safety, or cyber-bullying or all that shit.  If they’re annoying, just don’t be friends with them.  (Yep, I’ve been on the receiving end of said blocking-out-of-spite.  It’s really immature and stupid.  The blocking feature wasn’t created to feed your ego.)

7. It isn’t mean to delete someone as a friend who you realize you don’t really know that well & don’t care much about, especially if they update their status all the time and post a lot of stupid shit and it keeps you from getting updates on the people you want dirt on from your news feed.  After all, I friended everyone I barely knew in high school, and when I graduated I realized I was left with a lot of Facebook friends whom I’d said hi to once and about whom I could not care less.  What is mean de-friending is when you do it to someone you do know, out of spite or some disagreement.  You also are more likely to regret that decision later (for example, if you reconcile – then, by sending a new friend request to said person, you have to essentially admit to them that you de-friended them in the first place).

8. The “is” in the status update has been gone for a while.  Learn to make status updates that form sentences.  And most of these are not that hard to form into coherent sentences:  “Bobbi is I love my bFF” can easily be re-worded to say “Bobbi loves her bFF.”

9. Melodramatic statuses that come from emo song lyrics are for MySpace, not Facebook.  Likewise, if you want to be able to “pimp out” your profile by giving it different colors & layouts and forcing your readers to listen to some shitty song you like when the page opens, then you really should go back to MySpace.  Your Facebook groups about wanting “colored profiles” and “profile songs” are missing the point: The lack of that gunk is part of Facebook’s charm.  Facebook distinguishes itself from MySpace because of its refined austerity and USABILITY – pages don’t take forever to load because of 129389102904293 animated gifs, you don’t have trouble reading the text because of an overly-busy background, etc.  If it’s more important that you “express yourself” than that people are actually able to load your profile, Facebook is not the place for you.

10. Getting tagged in incriminating photos should be something you opt-in to, not the reverse.  If your friends haven’t told you that they don’t mind, don’t post any photos that show them drinking underage/doing drugs/doing anything else that could get them in trouble with any authority figures.  This is particularly true if their mom or their RA are in their friend list.

11. Give real answers to the questions on your profile.  “I don’t read” is not an answer to “Favorite Books,” nor are things that are clearly not books, such as magazines.  If you truly have a lot of different types of music that you listen to, then it’s okay to just write “anything good,” but this should be a last resort if you’re truly stuck.  And lastly, smart-ass answers – like “Films I’ve enjoyed” for “Favorite Movies” – do not make you seem clever or ironic, they just make you look like a stuck-up asshole.

12. Likewise, never quote yourself in the “Quotes” section.  Really.  You’d think this would go without saying, but I’ve actually seen friends attempt this.  There’s no way you can do this without looking like a douche. Unless your name is Oscar Wilde and you’re just that freaking quotable, but you’re not.

13. Don’t add random people you don’t know, even if you have friends in common.  Again, this is Facebook, and MySpace.  There’s no “race” for the most friends.  Adding randoms is considered creepy here.

14. If you’re going to have a fake Facebook marriage, make sure it’s someone of the opposite sex to the one you’re attracted to (someone of the same sex if you’re straight, someone of the opposite sex if you’re gay; if you’re bi, probably avoid fake relationships but if you absolutely must, choose a friend who isn’t bi and isn’t attracted to your sex).  Otherwise, people will mistake this Facebook marriage for a real relationship, and the rumor mill will go crazy.

15. Don’t poke.  Unless it’s with a close friend, people will likely mistake it for flirting or just being a creeper in general.  At least be creative and use SuperPoke!

16. If you’re going to leave Facebook for a while, then make good on that promise.  Don’t come back for a long time.  I’m really sick of people who abuse the fact that they can temporarily turn off their profile and are constantly moving on and off Facebook.  It’s probably good also to tell people why (e.g. my parents are punishing me, it’s messing with my studies/work, I gave it up for Lent, etc.)

16. If you’re not a political candidate, then be very careful about using Facebook as a soapbox.  (I’ve learned this one from experience.)  It’s one thing to get into heated debates on the discussion boards of political groups or applications; that’s what those things are for.  It’s another thing to constantly post politics-related stories as links, especially if the source is extremely biased, or really inflammatory toward those who don’t share the author’s opinion.  If you’re going to post a political link, realize that your friends who disagree with you will see it too, and don’t post anything that is too offensive.  The more you piss them off, the less likely it is they’re going to understand your point.  Tread lightly around the most controversial and emotion-stirring issues, like abortion.  Also, expect that these things are likely to start debates; don’t get offended if someone with a different opinion on the issue wants to share their views.  As long as they don’t start flaming and throwing insults, of course.

17. Likewise, do not invite friends to political groups, even ones you created, unless you know they share the group’s opinion.  The same goes with groups that are devoted to your religion or lack thereof (or groups attacking another religion, or people w/o religion).  Even if you think everyone should agree with you, not everyone does.  (I can’t tell you how many pointless debates have started because some entitled douchebag assumed I must be opposed to affirmative action or abortion like he is, because who wouldn’t be? Uh…people who take time to research both sides of the issue instead of just clinging to their own arguments, perhaps?)

18. On the same political/religious bent, leave your most extreme opinions off Facebook.  They probably won’t make people think you are cool and radical.  Depending on how extreme they are, they may make people think you are crazy, or possibly dangerous.  This is doubly true if the extreme opinions are virulently racist/sexist/homophobic/etc.  or if you are advocating violence in any form.

P.S.  Godwin’s Law does indeed apply on Facebook as well, and it makes you look like just as much of an ass as it does anywhere else on the Internet when you decide to test it.

19.  Facebook stalking is perfectly acceptable and even encouraged in some cases.  After all, the site was basically created so students could keep up with the dirt on each other.  However, it can get excessive, so know when you’re crossing the line into an unhealthy obsession with someone.

20. As in real life, be yourself on Facebook.  Anything you do to make yourself look “cooler” will probably backfire, or at least make you cringe later.

————-

Cool song lyric of the day:

People take pictures of the summer / Just in case someone thought they had missed it / And to prove that it really existed

-The Kinks in “People Take Pictures of Each Other,” anticipating Facebook 36 years before it started