Melissa Dunphy

A man's worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions.
-- Marcus Aurelius

If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing.
-- St. Augustine

Ambition has its disappointments to sour us, but never the good fortune to satisfy us. Its appetite grows keener by indulgence and all we can gratify it with at present serves but the more to inflame its insatiable desires.
-- Benjamin Franklin

Desire is the root of evil.
-- Gautama Siddharta

After focusing on real life for a while, I suppose it's time to return to the question of ambition that I've been avoiding because it feels like I need to write a thesis. Which I don't have time to write. But here are some casual thoughts on the replies below.

I'm not angry at my parents, and it doesn't feel right to me that others should condemn them for the way I was raised. As Adam said, I understand their motivation. Maybe it has a lot to do with the fact that my mother grew up in fairly horrific circumstances. One of ten children, she survived the Cultural Revolution by eating scraps and vermin before swimming to Hong Kong at the age of 22 to escape. I don't think anyone who hasn't experienced that kind of poverty and hardship can possibly understand what it takes to survive. I can philosophically ponder the necessity of ambition on the internet like a wanker; to my mother, ruthless tenacity and the relentless drive to succeed were needed just to keep from dying and climb out of the gutter.

Actually, I find I often connect with children-of-immigrants because they have a similar relationship with their parents. When people survive a war, or famine, or the Holocaust, or some kind of displacement, and manage to pick themselves up and move across the world to find a better life, they frequently seem to come out of it with a similar appreciation of ambition and hard work. Or maybe it was in their temperament to begin with, and that's why they immigrated. Chicken/egg.

Abuse is a very loaded word. I do not consider myself abused, but I don't know where I draw the line on what "abuse" is. Certainly, sexual abuse is abuse. Beating. Malicious intent. Neglect. Beyond that, it's hard for me to say exactly what is absolutely right and wrong. Who sets the standard? I'm sure I could point to any parent on the planet and find something in their technique to call abuse; all parents make mistakes. When does a mistake become abuse? When does it even become a mistake?

My mother considers the laissez-faire parenting practices of many Western families to be child abuse. I'm not kidding; she's expressed this opinion many times. A classmate of mine was very intelligent but didn't study or perform well academically; my mother privately criticized her parents for not having the courage and strength to push their child to achieve. To her, failing to engender ambition in one's children is akin to failing to teach them moral values or the basic skills needed to survive in the world. My mother has the same reaction to the "Be proud of yourself! Just do your best! Be whatever you want to be!" style of parenting as (I assume) you have watching incompetent parents struggle with their undisciplined, useless brats on Nanny 911 or Maury. She just draws the line in a different place. "Why wouldn't every good parent want their child to succeed, to be the best?"

It's easy to read my last entry on ambition and assume I had a deeply unhappy childhood, but I really didn't. There were moments of disappointment, awkwardness, unhappiness - sure, even terror - but I also remember distinctly not wanting to grow up because I loved the life I led. I was taught to love learning, and I was never denied the fulfillment of that desire. I loved achieving, and I loved being the smart kid. I was given a lot of trust and social self-determination. I never wanted materially, and was treated to ridiculous experiences way beyond our socio-economic status, like family trips overseas and a hoity-toity private school that I loved attending -- for god's sake, I went to Space Camp. When I recall my childhood, it averages out to a pretty good one overall.

Similarly, I can see that some people might assume that I'm so driven to succeed that I don't enjoy my life because it's a means to an end. No -- if that were the case, I'd be writing this blog entry between treating patients. I love what I do now, and I can't think of anything I've done in the last five years that was purely a means to an end and not personally fulfilling on its own (aside from a few jobs I've taken to pay rent). I've always believed the journey should be just as wonderful as the destination (which is why I really don't care if someone "spoils" a good movie for me).

So, why this discussion? As the title of these posts makes clear, I have one heck of a love/hate relationship with ambition, and I think ambition is one of the most ambivalently viewed human traits -- in any culture. We strive for contentment, but when someone claims to be content in a state we consider unworthy, we deride them for not being ambitious. Some consider ambition a dirty word and try to rid themselves of all desire (an endeavor which becomes an ambition in itself?). Others see this approach as a kind of oppression invented or re-purposed by those who wish to keep society static. Some believe that without ambition we are nothing. Others believe that ambition makes us slaves.

Do we want ambition, or don't we? How much do we want to achieve in life, and at what cost? Can ambition be turned off like a switch in order to achieve contentment, or does the abandonment of ambition cause a slow sink into resentment and self-loathing? Is there an acceptable middle ground?

I don't advocate paying too high a cost, but if you really believe that my experience was so terrible ... well, to paraphrase Bill Hicks a little: name ten people whose achievements you place in the highest regard, and I guarantee you that most of them will have a drive resulting from some hole in their self-esteem, probably created in their upbringing by their parents. Einstein may not have been gagged and put in a sack (that we know of), but Leopold Mozart placed *far* more pressure on young Wolfgang than my mother ever placed on me (jms, you didn't really think I was going to let that slide, did you?). Are we willing to give up the idea of operating at full potential and the possible results for the sake of a happy childhood or adult contentment? Is it a bad thing that I look at what I've done, and always think to myself, "It's not enough"? Isn't that what keeps one adding, walking, advancing?

The truth is, as much as ambition cripples my self-worth, I fucking love the rush of achieving. I love the motivation it gives me. I love the fact that I can make myself do amazing things by thinking myself into a hole and clawing my way out of it creatively. I love the competition, real or invented. I love the sense of primal satisfaction I feel a moment before I tell myself I'm not good enough, the job's not yet finished, and I ride off to slay another dragon.

But I don't know if it's right to love it.

[Incidentally: on this day, exactly twenty years ago, my mother was admitted to a psych ward for the first time. Ugh, no, don't weep for me or her, I just thought it was interesting.]

Labels: childhood, culturobabble, psychobabble

am-bi-tion
Pronunciation: \am-'bi-shən\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French or Latin; Middle French, from Latin ambition-, ambitio, literally, act of soliciting for votes, from ambire
Date: 14th century

1. a: an ardent desire for rank, fame, or power
   b: desire to achieve a particular end
2. the object of ambition <her ambition is to start her own business>
3. a desire for activity or exertion <felt sick and had no ambition>

The noble Brutus hath told you Caesar was ambitious: if it were so, it was a grievous fault, and grievously hath Caesar answered it.

I've been thinking a lot about ambition lately -- about where it comes from, and whether it's a good or bad thing.

I grew up believing that ambition was paramount. Contentment was a dirty word, a state of mind which necessarily breeds stagnation, and which should be left to the inept and the elderly; we should never be content with ourselves and our lot in life, or we won't strive to better ourselves, I thought. Or think. I'm not sure. (That is the question.)

Ambition is a central concept to Chinese (even Asian) culture and outlook. Chinese parents foster ambition in their children in ways which seem brutal to those with a more Western outlook. I understand this, and hold no ill-will towards mine. My mother was ever watchful for and quick to quash laziness and complacency in her daughter. Through my elementary schooling, she rode me hard to achieve academically, and nothing was ever good enough. I remember breaking down in tears in class over test scores as high as 99%. My concerned or incredulous fellow students thought I was exaggerating when I explained how angry my mother would be, but I wasn't paranoid. I held back tears as I met my mother at the school gate, and when I showed her my exam, the first words out of her mouth would be "Only 99%?" I knew the rest of the evening would be spent listening to tirades about how careless I was and how much harder I needed to study. Even if I scored full marks, she'd never show any outward pride or affirmation, instead reminding me of past mistakes and counseling me not to become too confident lest I slip up the next time.

Here's the worst thing my parents ever did. I tell you this not to feel sorry for myself or shock you, but to illustrate how the will to achieve is forced upon kids by the culture in which I was raised. When I was three or four, I threw a tantrum because I didn't want to study. My parents tied me up, stuffed a tea towel into my mouth, and put me in a sack. I remember the smell and taste of the cloth between my teeth, and the tears running down my face and pooling under my cheek. The sack was made of some kind of polyester, which left me stifled and hot as I struggled and tried to scream. While I lay on the floor, they talked within earshot about how useless I was if I didn't work hard, and how they might as well dump me in Musgrave Park to be raised by Aborigines, who would make me drink metho.

This abhorrence, fear almost, of my laziness extended into my adulthood. When I was 24, for example, my mother and I had an enormous fight on the phone because she accused me of being lazy and having fun instead of working hard. At the time, I was working fifteen hours a day at three separate jobs.

I don't think this is particularly unusual for Chinese parents; it's far from the worst story I've heard (I was never kicked across a room, or threatened with amputation, or chained to a toilet). The point is that my parents, like many of their culture, deliberately and systematically undermined my self-esteem to engender ambition. I worked hard because I didn't want to be useless, and they worked hard to make me believe that uselessness was always a possibility. I wanted to make them proud, and they worked hard not to show they were proud so I would keep on working. They did this because, within their culture, doing so is an act of love. They believe that giving a child that unquenchable thirst for achievement is the best thing one can do as a parent, that the result might be the next Einstein or Mozart. It might be hard on your children in the short term, but in the end, they'll thank you, or if they don't, you'll at least know you did what needed to be done.

What makes people do great things? What drives individuals to earn more money than they could ever spend, or practice an instrument until they are the best in the world, or train until they win an Olympic medal, or ignore personal relationships for art, or kill themselves studying radium? It seems common sense to me that many of the most successful people in the world are driven by the same kind of neurosis, stamped upon them by parents or circumstances in the same way. We're never good enough, we have to try to be good enough, we keep trying, sacrificing everything. Some succeed, some don't, but success on that level isn't possible without that abnormal drive. If genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, the greater part of genius is the ability to make the effort.

(Not that I'm a genius. Logic - cats - four legs.)

But this affects us in other ways too. We catastrophize. When your whole life is spent imagining the worst in order to avoid it and capitalizing on the intoxicatingly potent power of self-hatred, it can be hard to turn that off. Unfortunately, while such a schema might succeed when you're finding the motivation to improve a test score from 99% to 100% or impress people with your myriad accomplishments, it might mean that you assume the worst in personal relationships, that you're crippled by feelings of inadequacy. The very thing that makes you do the great things you were programmed to do necessitates terrible insecurities that sabotage happiness.

I'm trying to figure out where my priorities lie. What do I want out of life? Is it OK to be content after all? Should there be compromise, and where should the compromise intersect the opposing viewpoints? I'm struggling with that question. There's a large part of me that still holds contentment in contempt and believes in the schema. But another part sees the damage that it causes and wonders if it's worth it. I don't know what the answer is, or what will come of it. We'll see, I guess.

• New dresses at dadadress urrr urrrr want want urrrr


• On Saturday, I'm seeing Encounters At the End of the World. <3 to Werner Herzog.

Labels: psychobabble

To help me get through what has been, to put it mildly, a trying time, I am focusing a lot of my energy on a wall. Months and months ago, Matt and I (with help from Chris and Stefania) exposed a brick wall in our house by painstakingly chiseling away hundreds of pounds of dilapidated horsehair plaster. The bricks were never meant to be seen -- they were chipped and broken and covered in plaster dust, and century-old mortar oozed all over them -- but an exposed brick wall was tantalizing. There's a beautiful exposed brick wall at National Mechanics, for instance. But gee, it seemed like such a lot of work. I often wondered if it would be easier to just paint over it, though that would ruin the effect of the natural brick. Months and months passed.

In the last week, though, I took it on as a kind of therapeutic project. And gee (again), were we ever right about it being a lot of work. I chipped all the extruded mortar away by hand. I painstakingly sanded each brick until it was clear of plaster and cement remnants, covering the interior of my house in dust and probably giving myself cancer in the process. I grouted until my fingers were raw from pushing slop between sharp brick edges. I brushed sealant on the cracked surfaces like a hermit painting delicate watercolors. It has been a labor of love and devotion. Every time I felt overwhelmed, I forced myself to get up and work on the wall. The nervous shake in my fingers and arms became the somewhat more bearable tremor of fatigue. Sometimes working on the wall took the place of eating and sleeping properly (like tonight).

The wall drove me crazy; the wall kept me sane. I told the wall secrets and listened for a response. I made bargains with the wall, convincing myself that it was a kind of talisman that would bring me luck. My mind filled with metaphors about stripping away facades and repairing the substance beneath until it was beautiful.

It's nearing completion, and I think it is going to be beautiful. Not perfect, and it won't solve any of my problems, but beautiful. Tomorrow, if the last of the grout dries properly, I'll finish sealing and put up the trim around the two doorways through it, and then I'll show you pictures. I'm afraid, though, the way I get when I'm nearing the end of a good book. What will I do when my friend the wall doesn't need me anymore?

Labels: House, psychobabble

Labels: psychobabble

Today (yesterday), I crashed my car.

This week is up there. Really up there.

I'm fine. The car is going to need some work.

I want to fall down a hole and never climb out.

I can do nothing but cry and cry, and wish and wish. Wishes are agnostic prayers, I suppose.



The rift between the levels of success in my personal and professional lives continues to broaden: the Broad Street Review loved Pericles, and said some lovely things about me.

Labels: acting, psychobabble, travel

And if that weren't all bad enough, my mother back home has lost her mind again. In the wrong season, too. Most strange. Most rare.

Mixed in with my dread of the inevitable crash is a measure of envy. Her insistent late-night/early-morning voicemail messages are quite mad, but at least she's having a good time, being in the grips of a full-blown joyous mania which is making her happier than any normal mortal can be without the assistance of methylenedioxymethamphetamine.

Here's a direct transcript of her most telling message to date, left at 5:52am on Tuesday. Her voice starts off loud and gets steadily louder. By the time the phone cuts out, she is screaming.

"Hello, Melissa. Hello, Melissa? Hey! I'm very happy. You know what I found out? Hey? Ah hahhhh! The America tried to kill the communism, and all the communism is the animals, you know? The monkey - you. And the lamb, Matt. And I am ... I am the mother of you, so I am monkey! Hahahah! And then, we join together, and kill the human beings! That's the American! Understand, Melissa?

"Melissa? Melissa? I love you! I love you, sweetheart! Listen to me! I want to tell the whole world that I LOVE YOU! NOBODY CAN TAKE YOU AWAY FROM ME! OK, DARLING? LISTEN TO ME, I--"

Labels: psychobabble

Things fall apart. The center cannot hold.

In a matter of months, six at the most, I've thought myself into a black hole. With nothing but brainwaves, I've turned a life of near perfection into a quagmire. I hate myself for it. I don't know what to do.

I'm so afraid of being alone. I always have been. Yet, for the first time, I also feel like I need to prove something to myself, by myself. My dismal scene I needs must act alone. Something like that.

Fuck. It's a selfish thought. It's not just my life. For the first time, I baulk at the idea that my life is not entirely my own. I have never been in this situation. I don't know why I'm having these thoughts now. I don't know where they come from. They are destructive and disastrous. I shouldn't be having them. I shouldn't be writing them down.

I don't know what to do. I don't know what would be best for everyone. Maybe, in a few days, I'll bleed and stop being so goddamn dramatic. It could all be nothing, just so much bullshit in the mind of a woman with bad genes who is becoming increasingly right-brained as she ages. (Stupid aside: which way do you see the dancer turning? I stare as hard as I can, focus my eyes every which way, and I can only see her going clockwise. If I scroll down so I can only see her foot, can make her go the other way, but blink hard, and it's clockwise again.)

This is so awful. I feel like I'm in an abyss. What am I doing.

Labels: psychobabble

A review (of Pericles) (a nice one).

A poem (of Yeats) (an excerpt).

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

• Life Before Death - This sombre series of portraits taken of people before and after they had died is a challenging and poignant study. The work by German photographer Walter Schels and his partner Beate Lakotta, who recorded interviews with the subjects in their final days, reveals much about dying - and living.


• Ministry is touring for the last time ever. I hope to be at the Philly show on April 29.


• What's up with me and poetry today? T.S. Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'.

Labels: acting, psychobabble

Things you may not know about me, since I have been so slack in blogging, I haven't mentioned them.

Months ago, I got a free 30Gb Zune as a result of doing promotions for Zune at the Tweeter Center all summer. It is pretty boss, although I think the software is a little buggy and non-customizable. Still, I prefer it to iTunes and I rather enjoy shunning membership of the iPod borg.

I did get that job teaching theater at my local YMCA, and it's a load of fun, although after factoring in (a) the money I spend out of my own pocket organizing costumes for the performances because HOLY CHRIST HOW DO THEY EXPECT SMALL CHILDREN TO PERFORM WITHOUT COSTUMES, (b) the hours I spend putting together lesson plans and writing at least two scripts per semester, and (c) the fact I have zero time to take advantage of the free Y membership, I am actually losing money in the enterprise. But the kids are great.

Yesterday I called in sick to the YMCA because I was running a fever and had a sore throat from hell, and the woman in charge of youth programs had the hide to get tetchy and borderline rude about it. Like I have some sort of obligation to ignore debilitating malady for a $9-an-hour job.

I've decided that one day, when all my other ideas have dried up, I'd like to open my own drama school, where I can teach my own (AMEB/TCL) way. They'll start with learning how to recite poetry properly, then move onto monologues, and they'll get a good grounding in the physiology of voice production. I'll even run an eisteddfod, old-school-Australian-style. My graduates will land every theatrical and cinematic child role in Philadelphia, because nobody is teaching the next generation of actors how to audition, nobody.

Last night, thanks to an unexpected windfall, I did the UNTHINKABLE. I bought a guitar. A GUITAR. This is all thanks to an anti-Ron-Paul punk song* I wrote at the end of last semester. I discovered that my hands are too small to comfortably play bar chords, so I began looking into smaller guitars. My next revelation was that guitars are, on the whole, too heavy and would probably kill my neck after prolongued playing, so I searched for something lighter. Finally, the cheapskate in me wanted a great deal. Behold:



Daisy Rock's Stardust Retro-H semi-hollow electric guitar has been discontinued, so it's possible to find them for only $150 delivered. It's ordered and on its way.

Apparently I am going through a fulfillment phase of gear lust, because I also recently became the proud owner of one of these:



Years ago, I heard Brian Eno play with a Korg Kaoss Pad in a radio interview, improvising Autechre-style beats. Covetousness was instant. Two weeks ago, Matt found one on Craigslist for $200.

WRONG MAN = flowers and/or chocolates for Valentine's Day. LAME.
RIGHT MAN = Kaoss Pad 2 for Valentine's Day. YES.

Last year, after deciding that enough was enough, I decided to give antidepressants a try, specifically fluoxetine, as I was (am) pretty sure my SADS is getting worse. It was an interesting experience, sometimes negative, sometimes positive. On the negative side, I was neurotic and anxious for the first few weeks, my sleep patterns went haywire, and I continually had mildly disturbing dreams. On the positive side, my PMS disappeared. In fact, when I told Matt one day that it was that time of the month, he was stunned by my complete lack of symptoms. On the I-can't-decide-if-it's-good-or-bad side, Prozac took the edge off my drive. I didn't feel like I had to kill myself to do well at school, for example. This perhaps resulted in some substandard work, but I also allowed myself to relax more than I usually do, which some people claim is a healthy way to live.

We're coming into spring, and the dreams were becoming annoying, so I took myself off them. No side effects of cessation to report so far. The dreams, which I will document in a later entry, have gone away. A recent study says Prozac is useless, which is interesting.

I'm about to head into tech week for Romeo & Juliet. As previously mentioned, I am sick as a dog.

• Machines "to match man by 2029". I have been watching the dreadful Sarah Connor Chronicles on Hulu, so this headline gave me the giggles.

*I did actually record this, though it seemed stupid to put it online after Ron Paul received his expected drubbing in the primaries. Still, maybe I'll post it for lolz sometime.

Labels: acting, gadgets, jobs, music, psychobabble

It seems while I was away on vacation, Mum was committed again. Great.

No other details yet. Trying to call Trevor (who left voicemail messages), but he's not picking up.

Labels: psychobabble

Apologies for the minor meltdown late last week.

My mother has bipolar disorder. It's nice to type that on a blog, where I can't gauge my readers' reaction and feel the level of discomfort in the room rising. Having a mental illness in the family is unpleasant for many reasons. One of them is that the social stigma attached to mental illness is so strong that I can feel people desperately looking for a conversational escape route as soon as the words "my mother has bipolar disorder" leave my mouth. I'm sure if the words were "my mother is blind" or "my mother has multiple sclerosis" or even "my mother has Alzheimer's," they wouldn't react in the same "Jesus, get me out of here" way. I wouldn't have to watch their gaze dart or their feet shift or their hands squirm if I revealed my mother's diabetes or my dad's death from prostate cancer*. People have a problem dealing with mental illness.

And so do I. My problem is that I am 10,000 miles away and there's nothing I can do about it, and the guilt is sometimes overwhelming. Another problem I have is that perhaps the only person in a position to do something about it - my mother's boyfriend Trevor - is schizophrenic and possibly also in the midst of an episode.

My mother's mental illness first manifested in 1987, when I was seven years old. It's not the regular, run-of-the-mill bipolar disorder, but a severe type exhibited by only 1% of all bipolar sufferers; even with constant medication, she suffers from recurring episodes, usually annual, which land her in psychiatric wards for between two weeks and three months. She's been doing particularly well in the last four or five years, with episodes limited to only two every three years; unfortunately, these have seemed to coincide with Matt's visits to Australia, with the result that every time my husband has met his mother-in-law in her home country, he's had to visit a mental hospital. Yes, there is a dark humor in the situation.

I grew up with bipolar, the always looming fourth (or perhaps fifth) member of my not-so-nuclear family (nuclear in a different sense of the word, maybe). It complicated everything. Perhaps the only uncomplicated moments I spent as a teenager with my mother were when her episodes became obviously intolerable and easily diagnosed, and I marched her into emergency wards to have her committed.

I don't know if she's definitely having another episode. She's definitely been having some relationship issues. Last week, she called to tell me of Trevor's erratic behavior, and followed with a few erratic conversations of her own. "We are one!" she bellowed at me. "If you die, I die. If I die, you die. Say it!" "Yes, Mum, we are one," I said in despair, and I felt my gaze dart and my feet shift and my hands squirm as they gripped the phone, desperate to hang up and escape.

I talk about my mother because she affects me every day, even when I don't speak to her, and right now, she's affecting me more than usual. When I mention her mental illness, I don't want my audience to feel pity for me or react with shock. I don't want them to fidget and change the subject. I wish my mother's (and therefore, my) problems were as unworthy of comment as a broken arm or a stolen car, that people would understand the appropriateness of simply saying, "Eh, that sucks," and letting me speak.

When I was a teenager, I noticed a trend among my closest friends. "Troubled," I called them. They were intelligent kids who all came from backgrounds with some sort of enormous hurdle. Unbelievable parental abuse. Spectacularly broken homes. Sexual trauma. Unconventional sexual or gender issues. It didn't really matter what the hurdle was, as long as it was being dealt with in some way**. It was like one-on-one group therapy. I could say to my friends, "My mother threatened to kill me with an axe," and I wouldn't be met with pity or shock, which only make me feel worse. I would just be met. "Oh yeah?" they'd say, and they'd laugh with me, because sometimes all you can do is laugh.

I guess I moved somewhere very different when I came to America. I have the most wonderful stable home life possible. I don't have to take care of anyone. Nobody is actively undermining my self esteem. Perhaps as a result of all this stability, my friends in this hemisphere are remarkably untroubled in comparison to my Antipodean friends. The downside is that when my past comes knocking, I am no longer surrounded physically with people who will only say, "Eh, that sucks," and maybe throw in a few horror stories of their own to make me feel better.

So, in part, I think the meltdown I had in school last week was about that. At least I managed to keep it fairly private; there is nothing more pathetic that a woman pushing thirty weeping in a building populated mostly by teenagers. The catalyst for the meltdown was being bullied into performing on the cello without notice in a masterclass -- immediately after a lengthy conversation about Schumann's bipolar disorder. I probably would have gotten along very well with Schumann's kids.

Feel free to post "Eh, that sucks," in the comments. Throw in horror stories if you have them.


* For Jason's sake, I should probably acknowledge that "my mother caught HIV from teh gay sex" would probably be worse, but dammit, this is my bitching session.

** In retrospect, one of the pre-requisites for obtaining membership of the Troubled club seems to have been dealing with hurdles by succeeding in an extraordinary way in one (or many, or every) other area of life.

Labels: psychobabble

I am so freaking emo right now. I spent half my day at school crying and the other half trying not to cry. If I were any more fucking lame, I'd be cutting myself and listening to My Chemical Romance.

Labels: psychobabble

This morning I had a nightmare that I got a B in one of my courses.

I am not even kidding; that was the entire gist of the dream. I was mortified.

I am so embarrassed by my pathetic psyche.

Labels: college, dreams, psychobabble

I was thinking about school shootings today. Has anyone else noticed how there seem to be a disproportionate number of mass shootings in March/April?

My mother is bipolar, and during the 15 years she was on Lithium, she most often had psychotic/manic episodes in September. When we realized there was a definite pattern, we discovered seasonal affective disorder. The changing of the seasons from winter to spring can trigger mania (and accompanying psychosis) in people prone to it.

Of course, spring comes in March and April in the Northern Hemisphere. Here's a list of school shootings. I looked at the last ten years of data, from 1998 to 2007. I removed one incident which was not in the Northern Hemisphere (Argentina). I removed an couple of incidents which were accidental. The list also includes foiled plots that didn't materialize into actual shootings.

63 incidents. 27 were in March and April. Maybe there's not enough data, but that seems to be 42% of the incidents in only 16.6% of the time.

Incidentally, the Argentinian incident was in September.

Labels: psychobabble

Man, I have felt wretched the last few days. Spring, I'm ready. This is your cue. Please to be making with the sun 'n' happy shit now.

In the interest of staying positive, here are some neat things that have happened to me recently.

I've decided to rehearse So You Want to Write a Fugue for the Prairie Home Companion talent competition. Garrison Keillor is sure to eat it up! I really don't see how this plan can fail, unless I lose motivation in the next three weeks, which might happen if there isn't some decent sunshine soon.

Matt and I decided to buy a Paia theremin. We'd been talking about it for years. I will put my soldering talent to good use and afterward create spooky noises in mid-air.

I recently visited the Composing Thoughts blog at WITF, and was consumed by an urgent need to hear all the interviews. But how? Their airdates had passed. And transcripts aren't available. Inspiration struck. I volunteered to transcribe them all for the WITF website. It will take up a good bit of time, but when I'm done I will know the interviewees pretty intimately, which is awesome, since they include Corigliano and Elfman and Crumb.

I found a Kung Fu school nearby (not Karate or Tae Kwon Do, but actual Kung Fu) and I'm thinking about maybe taking that up again in the summer, if budget allows.

I was invited to participate in the honors society at WCU, which is unlike many other honors societies in that it's actually a college. To graduate with an "Honors Supplemental Certificate," I'd have to take twelve extra credits of honors classes, which are mostly about leadership and helping the community, with some obviously politsci courses thrown in for good measure. I'm thinking about it. There's an honors trip to South Africa in Spring 2008 to volunteer in an AIDS orphange, which sounds incredible. The only downside would be the politsci-type courses, which are probably full of politsci students.

Oh, also, for the application, I have to write an essay about which three famous people, living or dead, I would invite to a dinner party. Sort of makes me feel like I'm a contestant in the Miss America pageant. There's no way I'm choosing Jesus or Gandhi, but I was thinking about John Simpson (it's a toss-up between him and Helen Thomas), Oscar Wilde, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali (see below).

• Jack Chick! Click on the testimony link for a hilarious story about the real Bad Bob who set his pants on fire in jail! So much hilarity!


• Ayaan Hirsi Ali - my hero? I should read her book. I'm hoping she only joined the Enterprise Institute to subvert it.


• American Shaolin. I heard Matthew Polly on the radio the other night, and should probably read his book this summer too.


• Complaints Choirs of the World

Labels: college, gadgets, psychobabble

Christ. I leave my motherland for a few years -- a blink of an eye, really -- and things go to shit. My father (biological, not my late stepdad, obviously) is in court over something really sordid, and his wife is calling around looking for money to cover costs. My mum received a phone call.

I know my father's wife meant well, but come on. Don't call my mum. She has enough issues, one of which is being easily upset because she has a fucking terrible case of bipolar disorder that lands her in psych wards once every year or two (and whenever Matt comes to Australia). She's trying to get her life together with Trevor. Don't bother her. I think I'm more disgruntled that they tried to drag her into it than I am about the sordid stuff itself.

Add to that good friends who are (or have been) getting mixed up in a drug scene they really should be fucking smart enough to avoid. For fuck's sake. How old are we all again? Maybe I'm just mad because I'm on the other side of the world so everything I know is filtered over 10,000 miles of cable and gloss. But even if I were there, there's fuck all I'd be able do about it. People get off drugs in their own time. I'm not anyone's mother - and none of us should need mothers.

Then, this morning, I wake up to this:

Is this some sort of joke by the gay community or something? This can't be real. I mean, these aren't real Australians, right? They're American plants or Scientologists or something, aren't they? Please?

The following proliferation of links has been brought to you by the fact I just realized BlogThis is finally working with Blogger Beta.

• Igudesman and Joo - I am completely in love with these guys after seeing Rachmaninov Had Big Hands on YouTube. They need to come to the USA so I can express my adulation in person with a ticket purchase.


• ALIEN VS. PREDATOR MOVIE PLUSHES


• Catster: the cat lovers community to share pictures, stories, and information. Here are my cats!


• Music from Mario, performed via hand farts.


• Tridentine Latin Mass - Plymouth Meeting, PA. We are just learning about chant in Music History, and my professor mentioned that he thought there might be a monastery in Paoli. I couldn't find that, but I did find a church sort-of nearby that does traditional Latin Masses. I want to go! Come on, they have a guide to black square notation on their website. That's pretty cool.


• So You Want to Write A Fugue? My composition prof told me about this a while back, and it came up in conversation again yesterday. That was good enough for me. I bought the sheet music online, and as soon as it arrives, I'm going to tackle it with some friends from school.


• George Takei on Tim Hardaway homophobic rant. George Takei is the fucking man.

Labels: politics, psychobabble

Everyone is having babies.

I know, I know, people are supposed to make babies, propagation of the species and all that. But ... babies. I think the almighty creator missed an ingredient when he was intelligently designing my maternal instincts, because I don't know what to do with larval humans. No idea. And no real desire to have an idea. I like to give them gifts, pull faces at them for a few seconds, then slowly back away to do something carefree and adult, like drive a car in the opposite direction while listening to an exceptionally dull and in-depth NPR report, or drink scotch silently by an open fire with a copy of American Psycho.

Some of the recent bumper crop of babies I'm experiencing obviously has to do with being of a certain age. I'm 26. People my age have babies. But ... I know older people having babies too. And younger people.

If Douglas Adams hadn't made the joke already, I would write an endearingly hilarious monologue here about a non-maternal woman who didn't know she was a fertility goddess.

The only real downside to my opinion vis a vis babies is that my mother is utterly convinced that, according to my Chinese astrological chart, it is vitally imperative that I give birth during the year 2010. I need to have a baby in the Year of the Dragon, or all hell with break loose; my marriage will fall apart, my uterus will fall out, and the sky will no doubt fall down. A few years ago, she was grudgingly satisfied with my assertion that I might consider the possibility of maybe adopting a child who was born in that year ... perhaps a few years afterwards, when said child would be able to form complete sentences, recognize subtle irony, and appreciate cyberpunk fiction. Now it's give birth in 2010 or face the apocalypse.

As far as I can tell, I'm damned either way, so I may as well not drag children into it.

In the meantime, I am seriously considering becoming involved with the local Cat Angel Network, despite their newsletter, which makes them sound ever so slightly like crazy cat ladies. Cats are awesome. They bury their own poo.

And ... uh ... congratulations to all you procreating people out there. Better you than me.

• One step closer to updating the RAM in my brain.


• Daniel Radcliffe in Equus. [Insert noise of surprise and curiosity]

Labels: cats, psychobabble