Since Fundie Mormons Are a Downer, and Since BEM is a Pansy,

and I mean that in a good way. Really. I remember being really impressed as a kid that the flowers called "pansies" were demonstrably the hardiest, outlasting the earliest and coldest snow falls in the unpredictable Montana weather. But, yes, a pansy. In preparation for his immanent descent on our beloved 'burg, I sent him a number of cupcake possibilities (since I tend to promise cupcakes), with a clearly stated imperative that he must choose. Instead, BEM replied, narrowing the list of five to three, and optimistically enjoining me to choose for myself. The full text is worth quoting here. Here's what I said:

To: BEM From: Asenath Subject Line: Your options

Cupcakes:

Root beer float

S'mores

Orange Chocolate Pudding

Mexican Hot Chocolate (since Q insists)

Margarita

You must choose. No halfsies.

Here's what he said:

Man, those all sound pretty amazing.

I guess I would go with either the Mexican Hot Chocolate, Root beer float or Margarita. You make the final call.

Aweeeesome.

As though, god love him, this helps me.

While I don't want at all to give anyone the impression that I ultimately will not just decide, regardless of what anyone (though I love you all so) has to say on the matter--cause I totally will, and it will no doubt (as BEM probably suspected all along) be simply a function of my caprice and whimsy--I thought I'd stage a poll.

What should I make?

Option A: Root Beer Float Cupcakes.
These are an unknown quantity. But they were rated in the top ten of all these vegan cookbooks! Plus: awesomeness?

Option B: Mexican Hot Chocolate Cupcakes.
These are a favorite. Reliably delicious, and they make everyone crazy. I've made them twice: Once with a fluffy, chocolate mousse topping, and once with regular chocolate frosting. If I made them again, I'd do the mousse. The blog that this links to shows the cupcakes with the suggested sprinkling of powdered sugar, cocoa, and cinnamon. I really think the mousse adds a fabulously outrageous dimension, though.

Option C: Mucho Margarita Cupcakes
My (relatively) recently acquired addiction to tequila (thanks a lot, BEM, totally your fault, by the way) makes these particularly attractive. Although, I'll admit to a little trepidation in that I don't know where the fuck I'd find the special, chunky multi-colored sugar that I really really need to have these be as awesome as they should be. I'm a crazy perfectionist like that. Whatever.

Option D: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Brownies.
For our inner and insatiable fat kid. These are a late entry, but I've only recently discovered. My desire for them is only met part of the way by my desire to not eat them all. Good angel, bad angel.

By the way, I made the VCTOTW green tea cupcakes for one of Q's meetings. They were totally awesome, and I've compelled Q to take pictures. Hopefully, I'll have one forthcoming. In the meanwhile, please take a moment and weigh in on my (delicious) quandary.

Why I Heart Dan Savage, et al

We've all heard about the FLDS scandal, yes? I've been following it with the usual interest in American spectacle and grotesquery. There's much to be said. The most recent news, as far as I'm aware, is that government and state agencies are currently trying to dis-entangle the dramatically convoluted genetic lines of this particular band of fundies. It's fucked up in more than one way and from more than one direction. On the one hand, fundamentalists...yikes. Double triple yikes. All the freaking way. Scary, scary shit. On the other, I can't get behind this hysterical desire to simply figure out which sperm went to which egg, as though if we could only discover the truth of the heterosexual nuclear family in the midst of all this unwieldy, patriarchal heterogeneity, that order would return and we could all feel better about any possible future solution. We're all about opening up the straightjacket definition of the family, right? Every child deserving a mother and a father, and this being the key to normalcy, health, and success, blah blah blah. But raffling pubescent girls off to crusty older men, and shuffling younger men off to the suburbs of Utah cities so that they won't be in competition with the aforementioned crusties for the aforementioned girls? Or, not raffling, but "joining in spiritual marriages" with said crusties and popping out as many babies as their bodies can handle.

Anyway, I've been wondering wondering wondering, where on the earth the mainstream, non-polygamous LDS folks are on all of this. Where's the public statement--disavowing, supporting, remaining neutral, WHATEVER? After all, these are the majority of the folks who will be living this one down in posterity. The FLDS, after all, will have retreated to some compound in the middle of nowhere, filled with bolts and bolts of gingham cloth and hair gel (have you seen the 'dos?), so they won't be dealing with the social backlash. Assuming there is one. And then, in the midst of all this wondering I was doing, comes Savage with this post on the Slog. If you love me, you'll read it. It's short. I promise.

OMFG! LMAO!

Sorry for the annoying header. I couldn't quite come up with something better. Also, fair warning to b: This is going to be a "my life this week" "daily log" of boring bullshit blog entry, of the variety the aforementioned notoriously disdains. Correct me if I'm wrong, b. Otherwise, you all should bear with me. Or, you know, fuck off or whatever.

My glorious subject matter? A busy week. Twisting in the wind. So much potential rejection, so little time. Something along those lines.

The short version, to spare you all the banal, paper-pushing details, is that I've applied for a bunch of stuff recently and should have a good idea soon whether or not I'll be successful in any of these. In the meantime, the experience rather intensifies the usual sensation that my diss director assures me is "the quintessential dissertation experience." In other words, my sense of acute adriftness is dramatically heightened by dwelling even more in the unknown. Don't get me wrong, I'm not confused or anything about the nature of adulthood and all the void-twisting that it naturally entails. For a salient example, see my last blog entry. This is slightly less inter-personal, though, and more...professional? Pseudo-apocalyptic? Now I'm (obviously) exaggerating, but my point remains. And this is my blog, so I can whine about whatever I want to.

The upside, and there is a substantial one, is that Spring has finally arrived in Western New York. Daffodils are pushing their insistent heads up all over the places, and all the trees are covered with tight little leaf buds. The 'llonians are going batshit crazy, of course. Somebody at my (extra) place of employment told me the other day that he'd driven by at night, and it looked like "Disneyworld had come to B-lo"! I would think he was exaggerating were it not for the ice cream spills that now fragrantly coat the sidewalk and the cigarette butts (and a bra?!) mingled amid the aforementioned daffodils on the side of the building. So, indeed, Disneyworld, or something. It is beautiful, though. Q and I have been staggering around the city, blinking at the sun like albino moles. Joyously de-winterizing the house. Q has even torn into her Spring ritual of touching up every painted surface that has somehow been marred by our cold-weather hibernation, rat-nesting kind of activities. I'm planning a garden, which I think will consist exclusively (though I've not quite decided) of kale and tomatoes. How awesome would that be? We also have plans to build a compost bin, which can apparently be done cheaply and with minimal effort with a bit of galvanized chicken wire and some stakes of some sort.


Also, I'm making green tea cupcakes for Q's meeting, and plan to steal some of them. My friend from work is having an art opening that I'm looking forward to. And it's the last week of school. Rock fucking on, right? As soon as I grade that last stack of portfolios, I'm free from teaching for the foreseeable future. Super sweet.

Funny story, the aforementioned friend with the art opening featured in a dream I had recently. It was the bizarrely good kind. He and I were for some reason being forced to participate in a gender norming test of some sort. The first test fell to me, and consisted of my demonstrating how well I could iron his pants. There was an audience and everything. The awesome part is that he and I both thought the whole thing was so ridiculous and funny, that we couldn't even participate because we were laughing so hard. Ever have a dream where you're laughing your ass off? Like full, belly laughs that come from your guts? Anyway, that was my dream.


Feel free to rate the banality.

Adulthood

Is a howling wasteland where BFFs move to Chile and totally fuck off. That is all.

Insect Reflection

I've been staying away from my blog for a while, entertaining my mom, and trying to stay out of trouble. Kind of. Seriously, my mom was just here for a week, and we had a good visit as such things go. Typically, our visits start out good, and then we go through a kind of protracted rough patch in the middle where I think we're driving each other absolutely bonkers, and then things turn a corner and the visit ends on a high note (typically lubricated with lots of liquor). I wish, sometimes, that I could verify the rough patch that I always perceive. This is always my moment of hermeneutic anxiety in which I'm wondering whether I'm being as big of an asshole as I think I am. Can it be that my skills of intonation are so superb that she just doesn't realize I'm going crazy, or is she just gracefully choosing to ignore the whole dynamic? I can never tell. Q assures me that there's something weird that happens, and some instances make me feel more confident that I'm perceiving what I am than others.

For example, we're sitting at a cafe, having breakfast, and she starts talking about politics. Actually, she begins by asking me what I think about the war, the presidential candidates, and Guantanamo Bay. The latter, she's convinced, is a huge secret and that we're not even allowed to know why we even have a military base in Cuba. When I try to answer by talking about the history of U.S. interference in elections in other nations, though, her face slams shut like a door. Somehow, I've been a jerk. Inappropriate. I'm not speaking to her question. When I stop talking, freaked out by her response, she continues where she left off with the same interrogatory tone, *as though* we're having a discussion that we absolutely can't have. I get, in some way, that this is because my mom dislikes the particular way in which we all tend to talk to one another about politics, the world, our lives, whatever. She believes, again in some way I can't quite articulate, that disagreement is fundamentally hostile and negative. I learned this lesson the hard way when I had a little too much fun debating some ridiculous point with one of my uncles. My mom was horrified at my inability to simply get along with people.

In my thirties, this tendency to simply be difficult is considerably exacerbated by being vegan. Queer-vegan-academic = the most difficult of all. In this economy, what is good is flexibility. The willingness to accommodate, to go with the flow. Nothing is political, especially not the Olympics or picking a presidential candidate based on a gut feeling. I'm ending my rant now.

Anyway, bizarrely, this experience, coming as it did on the heels of another recent house guest of ours, has led me to some further (insect) reflections. If you're reading all the blogs, you've heard something about a certain "nerd troll" who stayed with us while checking out the program. I won't belabor the incident further than to comment that she is, indeed, an example of what can happen to nerds who aren't sufficiently reigned in by...oh...social sensitivity, politics, literary history, or even just the pressures of high school. They turn into people like Dob Baly, and I think we all know who I mean. For my purposes, here, I'm going to call her Ardelia Knightley. Ardelia drove us totally crazy. When she first got here, she said she had already been up to campus because she likes to show up places when she isn't expected, "just to see what will happen." (picture a little finger curling up toward the mouth as she says this, in an oddly unselfconscious or allusive way)

All I could think to ask was, "And did anything happen?" What a bizarre take on the world and one's place in it, you know? Yeah, she drove us crazy. There was the scream, of course, but harder than that were the constant difficulties of conversing. The pathological inability to admit any gaps in knowledge. The giddy praises of a particular, archaic meter. The mainlining of tea laced with loads of sugar. The just...plain...weirdness.

My epiphany? To my family, I am Ardelia Knightley.

Lunk Alarm!

I had a number of things I was thinking about blogging. I feel like I've been remiss recently. Going to VA, being sick, assembling applications for a fellowship and two GAs, preparing for my mom's visit to NY, etc. etc. Here's what I came up with. It actually started as a Britney rant, and became a gym etiquette rant. I'll get back to the Britney at some future point since you're all no doubt titillated at the prospect. Perhaps there will also be a GA rant, a mom/visit rant, and, most shamefully of all, a That's Amore! rant. This is a spin-off of Tila's reality dating show, and, yes, I've been catching up. Another day.

I'm deadset against being one of those gym types I think of as "moaners" and "yellers." This may sound like Appalachian slang, but it isn't. Moaners and yellers are almost inevitably men. Moaning and yelling are the cardio equivalents of grunting. If you're not a gym rat, you probably don't know about the fervor people work themselves into over gym etiquette. Doing a bit of research on the grunting phenomenon, I found that some of the more inflammatory issues are the obvious ones like not wiping down sweaty equipment when it clearly needs to be squee-geed after your disgusting ass has used it and standing too close to, for example, a treadmill while waiting for the user to finish. If you remember my rage about Yacht-guy, this is probably starting to sound more than a little pathological.

Grunters, though, receive the most press. Some gyms even have posted anti-grunting policies where "lunks"--those who slam weights and make guttural sounds while lifting--are singled out and humiliated via something called a "lunk alarm." Sometimes they are even expelled and have their memberships revoked. I shit you not. Of course, lunks/grunters are upset about this as they feel their god-given right to grunt in public is being infringed upon, while health clubs claim they are trying to set a certain tone in the gym. In other words, not having dudes grunting and slamming weights around makes for a calmer and less intimidating gym experience. There's a great article from the Seattle Times about this issue here, if you're interested. The pivotal contention, apparently, is whether or not the grunting actually improves the workout, as many grunters insist. The Seattle Times writer takes the debate back to where it obviously needs to go: primates. To figure out whether or not it is "natural" for people to grunt, they examine the behavior of primates to figure out whether they grunt in moments of exertion. The comparison regrettably crumbles when the researchers are forced to conclude that unlike humans, monkeys never grunt disingenuously . Here's just a taste for those of you disinclined to follow the link:

But there are differences. Even though monkeys and apes grunt plenty, researchers believe they do it as an involuntary response to an emotion, Owren says. In short, you will never see a monkey fake a grunt.

Humans, however, have a unique ability to simulate or exaggerate this sound strictly for effect. Owren surmises that humans who produce exaggerated effort grunts do so to signal great exertion and, hence, great power.

"One can readily imagine that in a fitness and weight-lifting circumstance that it's being used as a kind of dominance signal," he said.

They really needed to consult a gruntologist (yes, the article refers coyly to the expert as such) to figure this out? Really? I could have told them this. There's a small but prominent cadre of guys who go to my gym who routinely slam weights, grunt, moan, and yell. My absolute favorites are the panting, big-bellied, sweaty older guys who try to correct my form while banging weights so loudly that the floor vibrates. One guy actually asked me why I don't slam them, since he finds it so "satisfying." I didn't tell him that I'm pretty sure if you're unable to resettle the weight without slamming it, you're lifting too much. Dominance signal? Posturing? Or, I guess the gym-slang is hot-dogging? Yeah. In my mind the guys who yell and moan incomprehensibly while running on the treadmill are in the same class as grunters. It's all about taking up space, and men are socialized to do this. Of course, this is when everyone drops in the apparently notoriously vocal Monica Seles and Maria Sharapova as proof that women do it too, but I guess I've just never had the good fortune to end up on treadmill next to one of them or any woman like them. Perhaps this would change everything for me.

The Last of It, I promise

Otherwise known as, "Why I Love the SLOG." For those of you game enough to click the link in my last post, here's the contest decision, cut and pasted for your reading convenience:

"We the judges of this contest believe Ayn Rand serves a critical purpose. She’s the ideal author for a teenager to read and be captivated by because she enshrines the primary value of teenagerdom—the idea that the self is the unquestionable center of the universe—as a kind of moral imperative. By the time you begin to outgrow that sense of self-enshrinement and recognize yourself as connected to a larger world, the stiff, fascistic humorlessness masquerading as heroism of Rand’s writing should become one of those things (maybe the first one) you realize you thought was brilliant, but only because you were young, and selfish, and WRONG. She’s a skin you shed. And essay number one is the best evidence of someone prepared to use this portrait to help future generations shed that skin. So, Bill, the portrait is hereby yours and no one else’s."

To read the winning submission and some others of note, click here.
If you can make it through the cuntberries, you're home free.