"Anyone who sends me another email saying the website doesn't work...will be shot."
"Comparative advantage means what you suck at least. It's not what you do best it's what you suck least at. Someone told me that in a few years everything will be made in China and the US will go broke. An absurd argument, of course, but the Chinese do everything better."
"Markets didn't evolve because a despot said, [funny voice] 'I like to watch these markets. I find them very intriguing. They give me knick naks, and such!"
"The special thing about Europe was there was a market for ideas, so if someone was kicked out of England he could go to a university in France and they could advertise - the famous heretic will be giving a lecture tonight, and you'd all go to that one, right?"
"The state is like a toaster."
"It's clear that some people's lives were far less affected by Katrina than others, even though it's never nice losing all your shit."
"You buy the ability to use something, not the thing itself. For instance you don't buy a dishwasher just so you can go around bragging to everyone that you OWN a dishwasher. And you don't have unlimited control over it; you don't go around selling shares of the dishwasher to family members, or to other people in the neighborhood."
"One of the main tragedies for political economists is that the people who really increase the growth of an an economy are so much less sexy than the people who, in fact, ignore the rule of law and the protection of property rights and thus promote an unfavorable environment in which to do business. Have you seen 'Pirates of the Caribbean'? Well, the love interest, the blacksmith Will Turner, played by Orlando Bloom, is a business owner, somone who will have an increasing marginal value (? can't remember what he said here... some econ babble) and her father is therefore quite right to support the marriage, but all the attention goes to Captain Sparrow, played by Johnny Depp, even though his activities greatly increase the risk of investors in trading ships back home in England and the likelyhood that a profit would be made on the transaction. And this is really emphasized in a scene at the end when Elizabeth, played by Keira Knightley, decides to marry Will Turner and he says 'I'm only a blacksmith' and the last line of the film is 'No, you are a pirate!' So that's very disheartening for us."
"The mercantilist partnership is the trading pants of capitalism."
"You probably have an image of the industrial revolution in your head as being a time when everyone was poor and exploited and the streets of London were crowded with pickpockets and grubby urchins and the factories with their black smoke polluting the air, a very Dickensian vision, when...when everything was just knee-deep in shit."
"The world was so sparsely populated, imagine a dorm, you're duking it out with your roommate whenever you want to have sex, but there's all the other rooms in the building available for your use!"
"Capitalism is about doing business with strangers because when we see people from far away speaking with funny voices with different color skins our initial reaction is to make fun of them, and to kill them."
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Monday, October 10, 2005
Title?
I have exactly 1,000 messages in my inbox.
Just wanted to share.
Still trying to get in my mother's good books - with limited success. If goal of living in the dorms is to be achieved next quarter, I'll need more than that.
Now, need to go and write my thesis topic. AAHHHHHH!!! Five pages! I mean, really! I'm such a procrastinator, I could have done this over the summer. But whenever a topic starts seeming interesting, it all of a sudden seems... not-interesting. Funny, that.
Just wanted to share.
Still trying to get in my mother's good books - with limited success. If goal of living in the dorms is to be achieved next quarter, I'll need more than that.
Now, need to go and write my thesis topic. AAHHHHHH!!! Five pages! I mean, really! I'm such a procrastinator, I could have done this over the summer. But whenever a topic starts seeming interesting, it all of a sudden seems... not-interesting. Funny, that.
Thursday, October 06, 2005
I got my period and I'm a little puffy feel like a man
This occured almost an hour before I got my bus, but I still didn't get home until 6.15. Apparently it wasn't an isolated incident; the gentleman has climbed traffic signs and draped banners over the freeway once before.
Also, in Germany, where HP #6 has just been translated, an impatient fan got violent: "'Suspect said he could not stand the suspense of not knowing who the half-blood prince was,' a Hanover police spokesperson said." I feel his pain. When I got home from Liz's house on the morning after the release, my dad drove me to his friend's house. I was helping them move. I did about an hour of work, went home, ran gleefully to the front porch and... nothing. Only a note saying that they were instructed not to leave books when nobody was in the house. I was in such distress, tears were shed. I called my parents, who were at Costco at the time, and they bought me another copy. I turned on the TV and paced back and forth between the kitchen and the living room, calling my parents every fifteen minutes ("What are you doing? Is Costco so interesting?") until my mother came back and gave me the book. At which point it seemed like I had all the time in the world on my hands. I went upstairs and started reading, almost skimming it, because I had waited so long for the book I wasn't even believing that I actually had it in my hands. I missed a lot out. I wonder what I'll be like for the seventh. I'll probably cry. I've never cried at a Harry Potter book before (not when Sirius or Dumbledore died) but just the prospect of it being all over is quite daunting. This woman I know says she's going up to her beach house, alone, to read it. I don't have a beach house but maybe I'll go to a park. Who am I kidding, I'll read it in bed as always. The seventh Harry Potter, that will be an event.
My mom thinks I'm fat. She keeps telling me to exercise, it's incessant, and when she's not offering me pie or making me dinner, she's criticizing my diet. And doing things like poking me in the stomach when I'm standing in a weird position against the wall and (when I express confusion) saying "I was just wondering if that was really you." Or giving me meaningful looks and being all bitchy when I outgrow two pairs of pants - wait, scratch that. I didn't outgrow them, she bought them for me, unasked, they're sizes 4 and 6 and I'm an 8 so they never fit. It's strange how I can love and respect my mother, but at the same time, really, really loathe her sometimes. I mean, as if she couldn't stand to lose a little weight herself, not that it really matters. Apparently it's more important for me because I'm young, but really, is that the way to go about helping your daughter to be healthy? I don't think so. I really, really don't think so.
Auditions tomorrow. Whoop-de-hoop. I wrote Greg a Director's Guide and helped him copy the scripts. I'm actually auditioning, for the smaller female parts. Felicity, Dawn, and Minnie, I think. I might actually have to act.
My immigration prof is incredibly boring and I just don't like her at all. She has the most horribly irritating habits and she doesn't treat students with any respect. She's one of those black-tights-and-skirts female professors, all she did the first day was read out the entire fucking syllabus (oh, nice learning experience there), she's fond of "multiculturalism," and she just... the class just doesn't work. It needs something more, from her, mostly. It's not as if immigration is a dry subject, there are lots of possibilities. My dad was thinking of teaching a course on immigration last year (he eventually decided on revolutions instead) and he came up with plenty of ideas in about an hour so it's not as if reading the syllabus out loud or taking up four hours of class time writing different theories on the overhead (that's all we've done so far) are the only options.
I'm completely just procratinating on doing my reading, here. For some reason all I want to do, when faced with reading this quarter, is stare into space and different time in the future when I can do the reading, other than now.
Also, in Germany, where HP #6 has just been translated, an impatient fan got violent: "'Suspect said he could not stand the suspense of not knowing who the half-blood prince was,' a Hanover police spokesperson said." I feel his pain. When I got home from Liz's house on the morning after the release, my dad drove me to his friend's house. I was helping them move. I did about an hour of work, went home, ran gleefully to the front porch and... nothing. Only a note saying that they were instructed not to leave books when nobody was in the house. I was in such distress, tears were shed. I called my parents, who were at Costco at the time, and they bought me another copy. I turned on the TV and paced back and forth between the kitchen and the living room, calling my parents every fifteen minutes ("What are you doing? Is Costco so interesting?") until my mother came back and gave me the book. At which point it seemed like I had all the time in the world on my hands. I went upstairs and started reading, almost skimming it, because I had waited so long for the book I wasn't even believing that I actually had it in my hands. I missed a lot out. I wonder what I'll be like for the seventh. I'll probably cry. I've never cried at a Harry Potter book before (not when Sirius or Dumbledore died) but just the prospect of it being all over is quite daunting. This woman I know says she's going up to her beach house, alone, to read it. I don't have a beach house but maybe I'll go to a park. Who am I kidding, I'll read it in bed as always. The seventh Harry Potter, that will be an event.
My mom thinks I'm fat. She keeps telling me to exercise, it's incessant, and when she's not offering me pie or making me dinner, she's criticizing my diet. And doing things like poking me in the stomach when I'm standing in a weird position against the wall and (when I express confusion) saying "I was just wondering if that was really you." Or giving me meaningful looks and being all bitchy when I outgrow two pairs of pants - wait, scratch that. I didn't outgrow them, she bought them for me, unasked, they're sizes 4 and 6 and I'm an 8 so they never fit. It's strange how I can love and respect my mother, but at the same time, really, really loathe her sometimes. I mean, as if she couldn't stand to lose a little weight herself, not that it really matters. Apparently it's more important for me because I'm young, but really, is that the way to go about helping your daughter to be healthy? I don't think so. I really, really don't think so.
Auditions tomorrow. Whoop-de-hoop. I wrote Greg a Director's Guide and helped him copy the scripts. I'm actually auditioning, for the smaller female parts. Felicity, Dawn, and Minnie, I think. I might actually have to act.
My immigration prof is incredibly boring and I just don't like her at all. She has the most horribly irritating habits and she doesn't treat students with any respect. She's one of those black-tights-and-skirts female professors, all she did the first day was read out the entire fucking syllabus (oh, nice learning experience there), she's fond of "multiculturalism," and she just... the class just doesn't work. It needs something more, from her, mostly. It's not as if immigration is a dry subject, there are lots of possibilities. My dad was thinking of teaching a course on immigration last year (he eventually decided on revolutions instead) and he came up with plenty of ideas in about an hour so it's not as if reading the syllabus out loud or taking up four hours of class time writing different theories on the overhead (that's all we've done so far) are the only options.
I'm completely just procratinating on doing my reading, here. For some reason all I want to do, when faced with reading this quarter, is stare into space and different time in the future when I can do the reading, other than now.
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Saturday, October 01, 2005
My Inferiority Complexes
I have an inferiority complex. In fact, I have several. I have an entire colony of inferiority complexes, going about their business, copulating and forming knitting circles inside my head. I have an academic inferiority complex: I no longer have the capacity, it seems, to read so-called "enriching" books and stick with them, every time I get a good grade something tells me that it was a fluke and I won't be able to repeat the performance, I feel anxious about my future (jobs, experience, qualifications) and yet I am only seventeen. I'm a senior in college, but more importantly, I'm seventeen. This is supposed to be a time for fun, not for Embarking Upon the Rest of Your Life unless you know exactly what you're going to do with it.
I also have a social inferiority complex. This one's more complicated. But something inside me prevents me from opening up fully with people who I don't trust. Yet how can you ever learn to trust people when you don't give them a first chance? I'm worried that EEP was a bad choice for me socially, that I might have been better in high school, where there are lots of options, at least, for friends, and then starting college in a structured, freshman sense, living in the dorms with ready opportunities for friendship. I don't have the kind of social initiative that going to school in Seattle but living in Tacoma, and at the same time being only 17, really demands. Yet when I'm thrust into close contact with people and almost forced to make friends, I usually do quite well - because I can listen, maybe. In orchestra, for instance, I thought the dynamic was better than EEP which is quite ironic if you think about it. But I look around at the EEP Lounge and see people full of bombast and in love with their own sense of being cool and "on the edge." They're loud and unrelenting and when you talk to them you think that somewhere inside of them they're laughing to themselves about how boring and young you are. They're always laughing and forming plots and gossiping and I wish that I had the...what? Intrigue? Ready supply of personal anecdotes and salacious information? to participate, because I tell myself I like people with a sense of humor and I'm not one to be a stony-faced spoilsport, but I can't, just can't, because I am an introvert, and I do prefer quieter friendships. It's not that I can't be crazy and loud when the occasion demands it - and I like gossip as much as the next teenage girl - but when it's unrelenting and always seems to exclude me, and it's practiced by the people who are, basically, my primary social circle of friends but most of whom don't care about me at all, it's nothing but frustrating. Because these are the people I'm around, but if I was gone they wouldn't notice. And I need a better social circle than that.
I suppose I was struck when Asian Chris came into the lounge yesterday, actually remembered me, treated me like someone worthy to talk to and was pleasant and self-deprecating and all around sweet, because you see very little of that in EEP guys, generally. Generally, in fact, they're too impressed with their own self-importance to take real care in social interaction. So as I watched Asian Chris listen to White Max's lengthy anecdote about a backpack, a mountain and a rogue car, without interruption or boasting, I thought to myself: "Must get to know more people like this. Because listening without sensationalising is something I value in a friend."
So I find myself lonely and unfulfilled, if you can use that word in a very mild, teenage sense, rather than an alone-in-the-world tortured-artist sense, wanting urgently to move on, to be in a position to fully enjoy this period of my life without having to compromise myself to fit in with a social culture which is frankly a little scary, sometimes. Not all the time, and I actually think many of the people I was referring to earlier are genuinely friendly and good people, but for me, maybe not right. Also, it's not like I don't have good friends in EEP - namely, Liz and Greg - but that's about it. And as friends, they're about as funny and as sweet as you can get, especially Liz, but it's not enough, two people, is it? Even Sinclaire, in TS we were like twin peas in a pod, as the expression goes, but now she's becoming harder and harder to talk to, really. I never know where I am with her - whether she's interested in what I'm saying or just dying for a pee - and when Liz is there as well, she's fun, but by herself she's a little hard to take, because she doesn't seem to give anything to the friendship, just asks general, aloof conversational questions and then gives me no help when I attempt to answer them. But then I'm being harsh because it's probably me, too, I've helped lead to this decline in our relationship.
So steps need to be taken to take the edge off my social inferiority complex, to stop it from establishing huge metropolises in my inferiority colony, and I'm thinking that drastic action might be necessary: moving into the dorms next quarter. I'm wary of raising this topic with my mother, for fear of starting a shouting match.
With my family I have no inferiority complexes, although there are a host of other psychological issues involved in our interaction which I have no interest in discussing here. God. Parents!
I have an appearance inferiority complex, but really, it's no different than most other teenage girls, excluding the ones who are rather self-satisfied with their own appearances. Oh, don't we all hate the pretty girls. It's not really as prominent as the academic or social complexes (at least I don't have acne anymore), but it's there, in the back of my mind, and I'm generally able to not pay it too much mind, because really, you can be a contented person without being a beauty. And sometimes - if the lighting's right and the makeup's carefully applied - which is VERY rare - I'm not that bad. I could, at any rate, be a lot worse. Liz mentioned a Turkish bear-woman a few weeks ago.
I'm not religious, so I don't have a spiritual inferiority complex. But sometimes I think of the possibility that God DOES exist in the way that I believed perfectly in Jewish-Sunday School, and I think, "Damn!" But to be fair to my secular self, those occasions are quite rare and hardly able to be described as a true complex.
I have a musical inferiority complex, but that's just because I don't practice enough and have no plans to make a career of violinning. The Carnegie Hall experience pretty much made it all worthwhile, though. Proof of the complex is evident in nightmares about performing, and being reduced to tears before an informal recital that I ended up pulling out of - this from a person who hardly ever cries, although I cried quite a lot when I was younger.
I don't have a theatrical inferiority complex because I directed A Midsummer Night's Dream. I think it will be good for Greg to be director this year.
I have a creativity inferiority complex. When I read something truly original, whether it's comedy or tragedy or poetry, it always seems so startlingly... obvious is the wrong word, but so simple to come up with, I think how come I couldn't have put that on paper first. Because I've always been The Writer, when I was younger I was always, always the Reader and Writer, but I just don't have any ideas, so when I find that a good one's been taken up, I think, "Oh, shit. One less floating out there." I wish ideas were like wildflowers in an untouched field, but actually, you have to really work to create, don't you? Maybe I can find a niche for myself where I can come up with things naturally, freely, and that's what I'm hoping for.
Romantically, I don't even know if I can claim a complex, because I haven't had any experience, and there's something about the idea of connecting so completely and intimately with one other person, and a male person no less, that seems scary to me, and I'm just not sure how a relationship could start out at the moment, especially since I've sworn off all EEP guys forever.
So, in summary. I would like to be intellectually...er... curious. And I would like to be able to talk about the things I read and learn about in an interesting, intelligent way. And I would like to have friends to whom I can discuss important things without pretention - just because they're interesting. But not things like etymology, and where the Phoenicians came from, and military strategy. They just aren't interesting.
I would like to be, socially, like my parents' friend Mary Ellen: a good listener, able to make conversation and make the other person feel respected, which is what she's so amazingly good at. To just look at you, start talking and make you feel like what you say, no matter how pathetic it is, is funny, fascinating and worthy of comment. (Well, she does that if she likes you, anyway. And she likes me). That would be a good skill to have.
I would like to have made my peace with God, who probably doesn't exist but possibly does (oh - sorry God!) and to be able to perform musically without having a nervous breakdown. I'd like to write something original. And, on the beauty front, I need to learn how to maintain my eyebrows (they're already growing back) without being at the mercy of Liz, my Personal Eyebrow Maintainer. And on the romantic front... oh, God... (sorry God).
I also have a social inferiority complex. This one's more complicated. But something inside me prevents me from opening up fully with people who I don't trust. Yet how can you ever learn to trust people when you don't give them a first chance? I'm worried that EEP was a bad choice for me socially, that I might have been better in high school, where there are lots of options, at least, for friends, and then starting college in a structured, freshman sense, living in the dorms with ready opportunities for friendship. I don't have the kind of social initiative that going to school in Seattle but living in Tacoma, and at the same time being only 17, really demands. Yet when I'm thrust into close contact with people and almost forced to make friends, I usually do quite well - because I can listen, maybe. In orchestra, for instance, I thought the dynamic was better than EEP which is quite ironic if you think about it. But I look around at the EEP Lounge and see people full of bombast and in love with their own sense of being cool and "on the edge." They're loud and unrelenting and when you talk to them you think that somewhere inside of them they're laughing to themselves about how boring and young you are. They're always laughing and forming plots and gossiping and I wish that I had the...what? Intrigue? Ready supply of personal anecdotes and salacious information? to participate, because I tell myself I like people with a sense of humor and I'm not one to be a stony-faced spoilsport, but I can't, just can't, because I am an introvert, and I do prefer quieter friendships. It's not that I can't be crazy and loud when the occasion demands it - and I like gossip as much as the next teenage girl - but when it's unrelenting and always seems to exclude me, and it's practiced by the people who are, basically, my primary social circle of friends but most of whom don't care about me at all, it's nothing but frustrating. Because these are the people I'm around, but if I was gone they wouldn't notice. And I need a better social circle than that.
I suppose I was struck when Asian Chris came into the lounge yesterday, actually remembered me, treated me like someone worthy to talk to and was pleasant and self-deprecating and all around sweet, because you see very little of that in EEP guys, generally. Generally, in fact, they're too impressed with their own self-importance to take real care in social interaction. So as I watched Asian Chris listen to White Max's lengthy anecdote about a backpack, a mountain and a rogue car, without interruption or boasting, I thought to myself: "Must get to know more people like this. Because listening without sensationalising is something I value in a friend."
So I find myself lonely and unfulfilled, if you can use that word in a very mild, teenage sense, rather than an alone-in-the-world tortured-artist sense, wanting urgently to move on, to be in a position to fully enjoy this period of my life without having to compromise myself to fit in with a social culture which is frankly a little scary, sometimes. Not all the time, and I actually think many of the people I was referring to earlier are genuinely friendly and good people, but for me, maybe not right. Also, it's not like I don't have good friends in EEP - namely, Liz and Greg - but that's about it. And as friends, they're about as funny and as sweet as you can get, especially Liz, but it's not enough, two people, is it? Even Sinclaire, in TS we were like twin peas in a pod, as the expression goes, but now she's becoming harder and harder to talk to, really. I never know where I am with her - whether she's interested in what I'm saying or just dying for a pee - and when Liz is there as well, she's fun, but by herself she's a little hard to take, because she doesn't seem to give anything to the friendship, just asks general, aloof conversational questions and then gives me no help when I attempt to answer them. But then I'm being harsh because it's probably me, too, I've helped lead to this decline in our relationship.
So steps need to be taken to take the edge off my social inferiority complex, to stop it from establishing huge metropolises in my inferiority colony, and I'm thinking that drastic action might be necessary: moving into the dorms next quarter. I'm wary of raising this topic with my mother, for fear of starting a shouting match.
With my family I have no inferiority complexes, although there are a host of other psychological issues involved in our interaction which I have no interest in discussing here. God. Parents!
I have an appearance inferiority complex, but really, it's no different than most other teenage girls, excluding the ones who are rather self-satisfied with their own appearances. Oh, don't we all hate the pretty girls. It's not really as prominent as the academic or social complexes (at least I don't have acne anymore), but it's there, in the back of my mind, and I'm generally able to not pay it too much mind, because really, you can be a contented person without being a beauty. And sometimes - if the lighting's right and the makeup's carefully applied - which is VERY rare - I'm not that bad. I could, at any rate, be a lot worse. Liz mentioned a Turkish bear-woman a few weeks ago.
I'm not religious, so I don't have a spiritual inferiority complex. But sometimes I think of the possibility that God DOES exist in the way that I believed perfectly in Jewish-Sunday School, and I think, "Damn!" But to be fair to my secular self, those occasions are quite rare and hardly able to be described as a true complex.
I have a musical inferiority complex, but that's just because I don't practice enough and have no plans to make a career of violinning. The Carnegie Hall experience pretty much made it all worthwhile, though. Proof of the complex is evident in nightmares about performing, and being reduced to tears before an informal recital that I ended up pulling out of - this from a person who hardly ever cries, although I cried quite a lot when I was younger.
I don't have a theatrical inferiority complex because I directed A Midsummer Night's Dream. I think it will be good for Greg to be director this year.
I have a creativity inferiority complex. When I read something truly original, whether it's comedy or tragedy or poetry, it always seems so startlingly... obvious is the wrong word, but so simple to come up with, I think how come I couldn't have put that on paper first. Because I've always been The Writer, when I was younger I was always, always the Reader and Writer, but I just don't have any ideas, so when I find that a good one's been taken up, I think, "Oh, shit. One less floating out there." I wish ideas were like wildflowers in an untouched field, but actually, you have to really work to create, don't you? Maybe I can find a niche for myself where I can come up with things naturally, freely, and that's what I'm hoping for.
Romantically, I don't even know if I can claim a complex, because I haven't had any experience, and there's something about the idea of connecting so completely and intimately with one other person, and a male person no less, that seems scary to me, and I'm just not sure how a relationship could start out at the moment, especially since I've sworn off all EEP guys forever.
So, in summary. I would like to be intellectually...er... curious. And I would like to be able to talk about the things I read and learn about in an interesting, intelligent way. And I would like to have friends to whom I can discuss important things without pretention - just because they're interesting. But not things like etymology, and where the Phoenicians came from, and military strategy. They just aren't interesting.
I would like to be, socially, like my parents' friend Mary Ellen: a good listener, able to make conversation and make the other person feel respected, which is what she's so amazingly good at. To just look at you, start talking and make you feel like what you say, no matter how pathetic it is, is funny, fascinating and worthy of comment. (Well, she does that if she likes you, anyway. And she likes me). That would be a good skill to have.
I would like to have made my peace with God, who probably doesn't exist but possibly does (oh - sorry God!) and to be able to perform musically without having a nervous breakdown. I'd like to write something original. And, on the beauty front, I need to learn how to maintain my eyebrows (they're already growing back) without being at the mercy of Liz, my Personal Eyebrow Maintainer. And on the romantic front... oh, God... (sorry God).
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