So You Think You Can Dance...dance...dance...dance!

I have a small (read: giant and possibly unhealthy) love of the show So You Think You Can Dance. Aside from a prolonged love affair with the Real World(s): Boston, London and Miami and Flava of Love, I don't watch reality TV. Actually, since I don't and haven't had cable for about two years, I don't watch TV at all except for what I can get Wes to DVR and watch with me at his house. But I looooove So You Think You Can Dance and I got to watch last week and this weeks episodes last night. I have some comments:



#1. If I looked like any of the competitors, specifically Melissa: -->
I would never ever wear clothes. I would just be nakie all of the time.


#2. Person I think I would be most likely to be star struck by: Ellen Degeneres. She's funny. She's irreverent. She dances every day on her talk show. Somehow, dancing every day on her talk parlayed into her being a guest judge on So You Think You Can Dance. Brilliant!

#3. Sometimes, it reminds me why I do what I do.

#4. I love music but I suck at finding it on my own. SYTYCD has given me more new songs for my running playlists than is probably normal. Ruby Blue, She Wants Revenge, Pitbull...even songs I didn't like the first time I heard them on the radio, I love them when I see what was choreographed to them. And then I love them forever.

#5. Unitards have joined skinny super low rise pants, banana hammocks and fanny packs in my almost-always-a-poor-wardrobe-decision category. If you look good in a unitard, you will look way better in pretty much anything else.

Clean Sheets

One of my favorite authors, Frank McCourt passed away this past weekend. Frank McCourt’s memoirs Angela's Ashes, 'Tis and Teacher Man reminded me that small things, like clean sheets, are something to be grateful for.

I often find myself irritated with people reminding me to be grateful for what I have been given in life mostly because said reminders often exclude the things that I have earned. I have no difficulty recognizing and embracing that the warmth, comfort and love that I was born into is something to be grateful for. I do have difficulty when people expect me to apologize for it.

Frank McCourt reminded everyone who read his books of the small things we take for granted and the even smaller things that we bemoan as unfair or awful. It’s all about the small things. Like freshly laundered sheets and a soft bed. Thank you. :)

Sotomayor and Benjamin

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Epic Doodle

Ava or Rebecca? Or...schizo?

What if you actually GOT amnesia? I know that amnesia doesn’t exactly work the way it seems to on House but wouldn’t it be kind cool if it did? If you didn’t know who or what you were, where would you start?

I’m going to go ahead and skip straight over the whole the essential elimination of all good relationships and happy memories, the emotional trauma and potentially stunting aspect of it because…well, that’s just not fun to think or write about. And really, if I could or wanted to accurately imagine and record that, I’d be writing a novel. No novel. Blog.

Skipping over all that then we get to the fun part: the do-over. If you don’t remember anything then you are in fact, as an adult, not the sum of your experiences because you effectively don’t have any. Does that mean that you get to choose yourself? I suppose this could boil down to a nature vs. nurture debate. For example: my vehement dislike of horror movies, nature or nurture? Would Slate-Wiped-Clean Anna like horror movies? Or would she simply suffer though I Am Legend because she doesn’t know that perseverance and ‘happy’ endings won’t make her feel better? And the debate rages on…. So not only would you get to rediscover sushi, trampolines, the ocean and vanilla lattes, but you also find yourself free from assumptions about yourself that formed way too early to have a basis in truth. Assumptions like, “I’m not athletic.” Or “I’m the smart one.” Or “I’m the quiet one.” Assumptions that really only hold us back, because nobody is the athletic one, or the smart one or the quiet one all the time. So, if I didn’t know that I’m uncoordinated or un-athletic, maybe I’d not only be brave enough to try but also confident enough to succeed. If I didn’t know that some people just don’t listen to me when I speak, maybe I would speak in a way that would make them want to listen. But if everyone around me still knew these things about me, would that alone have the power to shape me back into the same person?

The ultimate solution to all these maybes though is to discard what we know about ourselves without risking traumatic brain injury. It is so tempting to define ourselves with what we have been and what we have done. Maybe we just need to remember that we don’t really know much about ourselves because there’s so much that we haven’t done yet.

Homework: define yourself by the things that you will do rather than the things that you have done.

Insult to Injury

One of the most ridiculous things about working in the health care industry with absolutely no health care training is the development of acute onset hypochondria. I (and my other non-nurse researchers) are constantly finding new and exciting things to fear / be grateful I have not yet (and will hopefully never) experienced. C. Diff, PICA, necrotizing fasciitis, prolapsed orifices and all heme malignancies top my list of health complications that I pray to be spared each and every time I pray. When I worked in sleep research, I learned that there have been incidences in which progressively worsening insomnia resulted in the complete inability to sleep, which within weeks can result in death. This was also shown on House - it was very dramatic. Needless to say I have pondered over this extensively when I find myself awake during the wee hours.

So lately, while not dying though possibly a little punchy from lack of sleep, I've been back on the insomnia train. This is much like Mary Murphy's Hot Tamale Train, with just a little less enthusiasm and not so much grace or coordination. Also, where as people are dying to get ON the hot tamale train, I'm begging to get off the insomnia train. On second thought, it's nothing like the hot tamale train.

While parts of my day are spent in a soporific haze, this may be balanced out by the expanse of time free time formerly dedicated to sleep. This morning, up and at 'em around 5 am and rather than lay in bed and curse whatever damage is keeping me from oh so amazing sleep, I decided to get up and be productive. I got up, did some laundry, made my bed and headed out to the gym to take a run. While it would have been lovely to run outside, it was still dark and still July in Florida, which means hot, humid and a titch smelly in the mornings. So I go the gym, get my music rockin and CNN on silent and I get to runnin.' And this is when it happens. The woman next to me on the treadmill crop dusted the gym. I was gassed out of my run by the massive (or series of massive) toot(s.) One word: wrong.

Now this is just insult to injury. I'm 25 years old, I'm awake before 6 am, I'm NOT hungover and being heart healthy by getting in some cardio before going to work where I will do my part in curing cancer. Do I really deserve this?!? I keep running. I don't say anything because I have to assume that this assault is not malicious in nature. The implications of premeditation and the effects that it would have on my confidence in human kind are far to profound and expansive for me to consider at this point. But I'm still running, and because I'm still running, I'm still breathing. Hard. There's no avoiding it, but do I breathe through my mouth or my nose! (We've discussed this dilemma before in regards to elevators (What's it like to always have your feet firmly planted on the ground.)

Overall - just a poor way to start the day.

SoMuchToSay ponders: Nature or Nurture?

So…I’m generally not a fan of nurture vs. nature debates, much like questioning whether the chicken or the egg came first, I find it pointless. Never the less, I’m going to have to raise one: is the mysteriously advance ability and aptitude of boys/men/males to find some of the most obscure and random pornography on the internet a result of nature or nurture?

As a freshman in college, I lived on a coed dorm floor and the skills that guys had in locating porn on the intranet was astounding. I’m not talking about your basic run of the mill site that can be located by Googling your favorite smutty word and clicking around until you give your computer a virus (better the computer than yourself.) I’m talking about disturbing (and at times bizarrely intriguing) websites with web addresses don’t even closely resemble anything I would recognize as a web address. This is the point in my internet education where I learned that www. isn’t necessarily a requisite prefix for a series of letters and numbers that direct your browser to a site. I’m reasonably computer savvy, but I would never have thought that “ dbrl;g;fjdaskl;dddbewdod.weohne///asdklafj;” would possibly lead you to a website with nothing but videos of donkey shows.

So…do they teach this to boys in middle school? Possibly while the girls are stuck doing step aerobics in gym class while the boys ostensibly “wrestle,” or while we’re in home economics and the boys are theoretically in “shop.” This was originally my thought, thus making this propensity towards finding obscure internet porn a nurtured skill. Until it was pointed out to me that when I was in middle school the internet was just becoming a big thing – something that only the rich people had. Even if you were rich enough to have AOL, it was all dial up which mean that if you were surfing for nakie pics you’d have to wait 20 minutes for it to come up, thus highly increasing the chances that your mom would walk in on you. Probably a decent deterrent I’m thinking. So…clearly this wasn’t taught to my generation in middle school, it’s as skill that they picked up later…say…naturally?

One might argue that males “naturally” have a greater predisposition to seeking out porn because they are “naturally” more visually stimulated and hormonally charged. Thus they “naturally” develop these preternatural internet skimming abilities. I don’t know about this one though. I have some pretty sketchy female friends that put most of the guys I know to shame in regards to wretched language, perversion and kink. Wouldn’t one think that these chicas would have the same location skills as guys? Yet they don’t.

I just don’t get it. Is it nature or nurture?

Coffee-crack is proven ineffectual

So it appears to me that Starbucks employees are becoming resistant to said coffee-crack as California baristas have brought a lawsuit against the company for tip-share fraud. Apparently the barista association (who knew one of those even existed) has girded up their legal loins and broached the oh so pertinent question of: who deserves tip share? Monetary losses in the twenties of dollars are at stake for each individual barista being represented in this ground breaking case.

Say slowly with me: ooooovery litigious society...

My advice to Howard Schultz: up the coffee-crack or risk the demise of your sunshiny, dental veneered coffee empire.

What DO they put in that coffee?

I stopped by Starbucks this morning on my way to work for a Happy Friday iced coffee for Leslie and myself, sometimes a little over-priced caffeine is just plain necessary. I left the store jazzed about my giant coffee but also asking myself the question: what kind of drugs do they inject their employees with because I WANT it!

I was in line for mmmm…say 1 minute and waited for my delicious beverage for another 2 minutes. In that short period of time the three employees remembered “the usual” for probably 75% of the customers. While this is probably more indicative of the frequency with which certain people stop for coffee – that’s damn impressive! They’re smiling, joking and remembering people’s drink orders at 7:15 in the morning. At 7 am, I may or may not know if I’ve brushed my hair yet much less be brightening people’s days with caffeinated beverages and toothy grins.

So…the coffee may be (and when I say “may” I mean “is”) overpriced, and Starbucks’ board of directors may be placing stores on every street corner possible (not to mention the Charlotte, NC airport which has 7) in a devious and single-minded bid for world domination, but it is clearly whatever kind of hybrid crack they are feeding their employees that is making it such a success.

Oddly Opinionated Liquor Store Guy

Ever have an encounter with a relative stranger, walk away and think:”What? Did that seriously just happen?!?”

I hear of these things happening mostly from my friends with kids. As a non-parent, I’ve always operated under the assumption that there’s nothing more obnoxious than a non-parent giving parenting advice. On the obnoxiousness scale it probably falls only slightly above a parent giving another parent unsolicited parenting advice, but none the less it is above it. So, in the endeavor of not being obnoxious or offensive in general, I have placed giving parenting advice on my list of things to not do without a significant arsenal as backup. Oddly, but probably not surprisingly, there are a number of individuals who do not share this philosophy and feel entitled to comment, intervene or otherwise involve themselves in others’ parent-child interactions. There is the random stranger in the store who stops and stares disapprovingly at the parent who just gave their kids butt a whack for running away in the store/parking lot etc. (The best response to this stop-and-stare judgment came from my friend Christina: “what? You want some too?”) Then there’s the unnecessarily helpful stranger playing Capt. Obvious. Example: “excuse me, did you know that there’s no child in that stroller?” A well-intended albeit probably needless comment, though the humorous response from the person pushing the stroller (“Yes, I left her here last night and am now coming to pick her up”) was not well received. If you’re going to ask a borderline stupid question, you need to be prepared for a borderline stupid response. While often well intentioned – it’s just odd the degree of involvement that some people tend to feel is appropriate in the lives and actions of complete strangers. This brings me to my point: Oddly Opinionated Liquor Store Guy.

There is a liquor store directly across the street from my apartment. It is slightly over-priced but convenient (walking distance) and endeavoring to be quaint by adding a P and an E to its sign (making it a Shoppe instead of a Shop.) The selection, while not excellent is decent, there’s an odd medicinal smell that makes you think that bottles of liquor are broken regularly and there’s always the same guy behind the counter, a reasonably innocuous looking Indian gentleman in his late 30s, early 40s. Every time I go into the store he has an odd, sometimes not very nice comment to make. The first time I went in, he refuted that it was actually my ID based on the height noted on my driver’s license. (I had on high heels – thus apparently making me unacceptably taller than my form ID claimed I was.) The second time I went in I was all dressed up for a Bachelorette Party and Oddly Opinionated Liquor Store Guy felt compelled to tell me that I was wearing too much make-up. The next time, my wine choice was disgusting. The time after that, no guy would date me if I drank beer. WTF mate! Every time I leave the store thinking…”what?!? Seriously?!?!” I just wanted the alcohol!

I wish – oh how I wish that I were quick enough on my feet to come back with a zinger. Something oh so clever and zippy that would end the commentary. Sadly all I can come up with is something not so quippy like, “mind your own business and give me my vodka fuck-face.” It’s not a very good come back – so I simply smile politely, grab my bottle of whatever and make for the door.

So-Much-to-Say is not a rebel....sigh....

Overall I would say that I am a fan of the quirky, happy-go lucky peeps who roll with two different sized tires and keep my day to day life from becoming mundane. In truth, I wish that I was more idiosyncratic. Or maybe I just wish that my idiosyncrasies were cute and endearing enough for public consumption. Sadly – every time I straighten my hair, put on a pair of GAP khakis and a white button down shirt and roll out to my 8-5 job I am struck by the futility of that thought. But I digress.

There was a lady in my Zumba class once – Pink Lady. Pink Lady started about 3 months after the class started, so combine noobie-ness with a knee prosthesis and a complete disregard of rhythm, and you have something truly spectacular. But I liked Pink Lady. I liked how when we shuffled to the left, she flailed to the front. When we gyrated to the back, she flailed to the right. She only really had one move (a move that didn’t really resemble any dancing that I’ve ever seen before,) but damned if she didn’t work that move to the max! She truly was a testament to people who “dancing to their own drum.” I don’t know exactly what drum she was listening to, but she was having a fabulous time doing it.

Flash forward to last night at the gym and enter Camel-Toe-Shorts Lady. Much like Pink Lady, Camel-Toe-Shorts Lady marches very much to the beat of her own drum. While the rest of the class is punching, kicking and jumping to the rhythm of the music, Camel-Toe-Shorts Lady is also punching, kicking and jumping, just at about 1/3 of the speed of everyone else. Now, I give her mad props for being there at all and I recognize the bitchyness of resenting her out of sequence self but doooood! She’s not a noobie and I’m actually pretty sure that she knows that she’s supposed to be going faster, she just really doesn’t care. Perhaps it’s the sweat combined with oxygen deprivation during class that so unexpectedly provokes my ire, but whereas I have a soft spot for Pink Lady, I'm just annoyed by Camel-Toe-Shorts lady.

I get that you can go whatever speed you want, but must you buck the trend in the very front when off to the side would do just fine, not to mention decrease the chances of someone accidentally kicking you in the head because you’re still squatting while the rest of us have moved on to kicking? She’s really no different from Pink Lady – just movin’ to her own little beat, but where as I felt warm and fuzzy to Pink Lady, I feel nothing but cold pricklies for Camel-Toe-Shorts Lady.

My new side business

I've started a side business.

It's a relatively innocuous and non-threatening side business. For me. Though I suppose my clients could experience some mildly serious ramifications should our little game be exposed. Said business could be likened to a lawyer defending a client but never actually having to go before the court. It's something like that. People do this for each other all the time and label it "help."

Does being paid for something make it worse? I know that this is true for sex. Consensual sex between adults is generally considered not to be a crime. (Unless you're Catholic and using birth control of course...but if you don't enjoy it, then it's fine.) Add in a little monetary compensation and.......BAM! Prostitution. Illegal. Bad. Not somewhere I ever care to go.

My problem however, is that this side business of mine, well, it pits two sides of me against each other. The teacher in me is horrified and can't believe that I would ever do such a thing. Sadly the under-paid researcher in me just plain doesn't care.

Am I doomed to the depths of the Pit of Despair? or am I merely deserving of a short period of respite in the Fire Swamp?

Oh moral compass...won't you leave me alone!?!

Frustrated on a Friday

“I wish to be as I am and not as the world would have me be. For that reason, I am a feminist.”

I know that through this blog I’ve gotten a bit of a reputation. I talk a lot about feminist issues, about inequity and about relationships. People may and probably do assume that I am a raging feminist, that I am overly serious, over-reactionary and possibly have too much time on my hands. All of the above may be true, but when all is said and done, I don’t think that I am wrong.

Someone commented last night that they didn’t understand my feminist rage (there had been discussion as to whether the term ‘slut’ is more derogatory towards women than men or not) when the men of our generation “fear” their girlfriends more than anything. Fear, is not respect. It is not equality and if anything, it’s most likely condescension. I feel bad though because I rather jumped down this person’s throat over this comment. It was a reaction that they did not deserve as we were simply having a conversation, not to mention the fact that they had done nothing but be very kind that day, and the previous week for that matter.

It was once argued to me that my feminist agenda and belief that sexism is still prevalent both professionally and in society at large, could not possibly be legitimate since a woman (Hillary Clinton) was a viable candidate for the Democratic Presidential nominee, and yet another woman (Sarah Palin) was the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee. While that is great and it was good to see women visible in the political arena – it doesn’t negate everything else. It doesn’t change the fact that, all qualifications and experience being equal, a man will be hired to a job position over me. It doesn’t change the fact that my male peers make more money than I do for the same work, and that earnings discrepancy will only increase over time. And every time a man has a strong reaction or gets angry at work, nobody will peg them as ‘emotional’ or wonder if ‘it’s that time of the month.’

I know that I may come off sounding angry and very single-minded on these issues, but today, I find myself more distressed and worried than anything else. Where do I go from here? How do we fight these stereotypes and still get to be who we are? I have emotions. They do not affect my ability to be excellent at what I do. Yet those two things, emotions and professionalism seem to be mutually exclusive to each other in the mind of society.

A friend of mine finds herself in a situation at work, where her work is being openly attacked by a male co-worker in a condescending and inappropriate way. This co-worker has disrespected her as a peer, calling her derogatory names behind her back and spreading unfounded rumors. He has currently taken it upon himself to be involved in the development of a project (her project) that has nothing to do with him. Any man in a similar scenario would have lost it by now, told the guy to back the f off and keep his hands of his research and then gone on his merry way. Such posturing does not work for women. She’ll be pegged as emotional, as paranoid and as irrational. She finds herself at an impasse. Having been the bigger person, ignored the rumors and not engaged in petty in-fighting only to have this behavior continue she still cannot fight back and defend herself. So what are we to do? Accept that despite excellent work quality and professionalism, we will still be targets of rumor, gossip and professional attack. Accept that self defense in this scenario will only result in the reputation of being emotional and ‘crazy.’ Refuse to engage? Then you’re cold and bitchy. It’s a lose lose.

I think that it is watching a friend go through this, and realizing that I don’t know what to do about it is what has gotten me so disturbed. This isn’t something in the past. This isn’t some abstract concept of inequality. Sexism has become increasingly less pervasive in past decades but that doesn’t mean that it is gone. If anything, the fact that people want to believe its gone can make it even harder to fight against. It frustrates me that I can never lose my temper at work. It frustrates me that my potential as an employee is less for the next two decades because of the latent possibility that I might want to start a family and that might interfere with my work. I hate that if/when I do have a family, I’ll face criticism from society whether I become a stay-at-home mom or a working mom.

So…I’ll keep going to work each day and I’ll do my best to prove that my gender is not a check in the minus column. I just wish that I didn’t so helpless against it sometimes.

Bitch and Moan By-Laws: Rule #2

I find myself at an impasse. I have two irksome things to complain verbosely on today...but sadly the complaints are conflicting, same issue just two different sides. However, rule #2 of The Bitch and Moan Club clearly states that "nothing is ever too small or to petty." Viola - insta-justification for the wenchy-ness that is me!

What's with the leaving the "H" out of John when you shorten the name Johnathan? Jon? It makes no sense to me. It's already there and it doesn't do any harm. It doesn't add a syllable. If anything, it makes writing said name in cursive much more fluid. Still, some people persist: Jon. Add to the argument that I don't think that I've ever me a "Jon" that I enjoyed. I worked with one once, he was a head case who somehow procured my phone number...it took a while to get rid of that one.

But what if the person's full name was spelled "Jonathan," without the h in its full form? Would Jon still annoy me? It makes no sense but I am compelled to say yes, it would still get to me.

Do annoying Johnathan's tend to spell their name without the H? Or does the name itself make them annoying? Could Shakespeare have been wrong when he said "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet!?!" I enjoy Shakespeare, the prospect of this rocks my world.

And now for the hypocrisy. On the full, far other end of the spectrum is the name Thomas and those who shorten it to "Thom." Where as I am a strong advocate for retaining the H when shortening the name Johnathan, I am fully opposed for allowing it to remain the shortened version of Thomas. Thom just looks....pretentious? Creepy? As if the possessor of said name also has unnaturally long pale spidery looking fingers and shifty eyes?

This much is clear, Thom's and Jon's and I just can't be friends. It isn't in the cards.

No-poo lifestyle and go-gurt

I read an article online this morning about the "no-poo" lifestyle, in which one completely stops shampooing their hair. Apparently 'no-poo-ers' are returning to the time before Farah Fawcett started hawking Suave Shampoo in the 70s, when most women only washed their hair once a week. Go back about a half a century and nobody was really talking about washing their hair at all. Now I don't know that I could survive (or remain employed) during the described "2 - 6 week adjustment period" in which you do not wash your hair, yet it continues to produce the same amount of oils as it would if you were still washing. Still the argument being made (despite its magnificently dreadful moniker) combined with the pictures and testimonials were pretty convincing for why it might work for those who can excuse themselves from society for the duration of "adjustment," and who are looking for a more natural, economic and environmentally friendly personal hygiene regimen.

So this got me to thinking...if we can do without shampoo, what else could we do without?

#1: Gym clothes. I was just thinking about how I needed to go shopping for new work out clothes when a woman in khaki shorts and a t-shirt hopped on the machine next to me. Clearly - she was working out just fine without the benefit of "work out attire." Not that I'm about to give mine back - but I can't help but wonder when exactly we decided that regular clothes were just not right for exercise.

#2: Go-Gurt: yogurt on the go! When did yogurt (individually packaged with a foil lid) become labor intensive and binding enough to warrant the new and improved, 'go-gurt?'

Okay...so I only have two at the moment. I'm sure that more will come to me :) But alas, its time for my recently shampooed and gym-clothes clad self to go work out :)