One More Fucking Month of This Shit March 31, 2008

It’s raining outside.

I got a UPS package today from my mother, who sent me all my tax crap.  I’m doing my own taxes this year because I decided to be responsible and adult-like.  The adult world kicks my ass.  I hate dealing with all the bureaucratic shit that comes with things like taxes.  I have back taxes too, because my dad insists on fucking me over financially, and I just. can’t. deal. with all of this.  I’m pretty sure that no one will ever let me buy a house or a car.  They’ll take one look at my financial records and they’ll point me to the nearest cardboard box.

Despite the desire (realization of duty) to be an adult, I can’t make the rent this month because Corporate Crap only scheduled me for 10 hours last week and 14 this week.  Due to the fact that I’m a student, there’s not much I can do about having a crappy part-time job.  I keep telling myself that I’ll look for another job, but between school and things like taxes, I’m just mentally drained.  I simply don’t have energy to find a new job at this point.  Either way, I’m fucked.  So I had to ask my dad for rent money this month, which is just another thing that I have to worry about at this point.  Plus, when I’ve talked to him about it, he sounds really put out, like “how dare she ask me for money” which just makes me feel shitty all over again.

But dammit, my mom sent me money to pay some of my other bills and to get my hair cut.  So on Thursday night, in addition to getting smashed, I’ll get my hair cut and go shopping at Target with the gift card she sent me too.  Amazingly, my mother listened to my whining about being an adult without getting angry at me or lecturing me, and she actually encouraged me and made me feel better about my shitty financial situation.  The world really is messed up right now.

I’d like to forget that I exist and find a dark place to listen to Bon Iver.  Thank God for lexapro, or I’d be in a bad place right now.  March seems to be a sucky month for me in general.  I should avoid it.

You know what else is fucked up?  The fact that I schedule my nights to get smashed.

I Don’t Think I’ll Need to Show up to the English Awards Ceremony March 30, 2008

I’ve been working on my thesis today.  As usual, I have put it off for a few days.  All the while, it haunts my waking and sleeping hours.  When I actually start working on it, I think, “Oh, this work really isn’t as excruciating as I thought it was going to be.”  And then I kick myself for putting it off.  You’d think I would learn after doing this for the past three months.  Alas, old habits die hard.  I finally got the last revised version from the first reader of my committee.  I had gotten the revised versions from my chair and second reader about two weeks before I finally got this one, and this reader wants me to reorganize the whole thing again.  I tell her I already did and my thesis chair likes the reorganization, so at least I don’t have to do that.  But I was already kinda pissed because I couldn’t get the damn thing done and given back to the committee to go over again because I was still waiting for her.  Now I have about a week to finish the whole thing.  It must absolutely be done and signed off by all my committee members by Thursday at 3:35.  Small edits will happen after that, like MLA crap and typos and whatnot.  But it has to be done by then.  My first reader even wanted me to read another whole book and integrate it into my thesis.  I also told her that was not happening.  (Why didn’t she tell me when I gave her the proposal a year ago?)  Some of her edits were kind of annoying, but most were very helpful and toned down the cumbersomeness of my writing.  My own writing is rather annoying at times.  I can usually write my sentences a lot simpler than I do.  So I’ve been working on that.

I just know that I’m really glad this thing is going to be over in three days and that I can be done worrying about the whole thing.  On Thursday night, I’m getting drunk.  That’s all there is to it.  I’m just gonna get plastered and stop thinking about my topic.

Evangelism for the Lost March 25, 2008

My mother sent me an email from Focus on the Family explaining why Obama should not be president.  I love when she sends me these email forwards instead of news articles.  One time she sent me something from  a “general” who was explaining why the war in Iraq is necessary.  I guess I’ll have to get used to these things, considering my viewpoints.  I know all these things: that Obama is pro-choice, against bans of homosexual marriage, interested in raising taxes, against the war, and yet I still support him.  That’s because I want to support those things.  We could use a little balance to the disaster that has been the past eight years of our country’s history.  I would really like to email my mom detailed analysis of what I think of the whole thing, but that would probably not be wise.  I’ll just ignore it and hope that she doesn’t keep doing this.

Trying to Find Direction in the Post-”insert-word-here” World March 23, 2008

I have been going to an Episcopalian church every Sunday for the past few months.  This confession of sorts has elicited worried remarks from my mother, who is very wary of anything liturgical.  I’m not sure she knows why.  She grew up in a non-religious household and was saved after her mother died and became part of the Mennonite Church.  Later, after I was born, she and my father became part of a nondenominational church.  Therefore, I grew up in a church which lacked tradition.  The closest thing we had to tradition was having a missions festival every April.  I grew up in what could be described as the most disconnected church body that is possible.  Their doctrine was fine, and I probably still agree with most of it.  I’m actually still a member of this church; I became one when I was baptized when I was 16.  But doctrine is not the foremost problem of my current religious life.  Sure, doctrine forms the basis for the problems that I face, but it is not the foremost problem.  Protestant religions of all denominations share the same basic beliefs: the physical and historical death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the belief that the Bible is the word of God and is at least authoritative (if not inerrant), that God created the world by his own hand, that salvation is for those who believe in Christ, etc.  The difference is in the emphasis of these shared truths.  Also in the experience of salvation.  So, despite all of these shared beliefs, why is it that my mother becomes worried for me when I tell her that I am going to an Episcopalian Church?  Why is she afraid of liturgy?  Why do I think that Episcopalians think me odd when I tell them that I go to Evangelical Institution and not Secular Woman’s College?  Why are Evangelical Churches so ugly?

I think this has a lot to do with how they look at the self.

I don’t know much about the Evangelical tradition in an academic sense.  I don’t know much about its history or reasons for existence.  I do know my own experience within the Evangelical Church, both in my nondenominational church growing up and my experience at Evangelical Institution, the bastion of the Evangelical movement within the past 30 years.  While I do not think that personal experience or small and personal encounters with other Christians should determine my beliefs in God, I do think they determine my religious experience, and thus, the church tradition I choose to align myself with.  For example, I would not reject a belief in God based on a specific church (not Church, capital “C”) or a specific person or specific life experiences.  I believe deeply in certain transcendent truths which mean more to me than experiences.  But I would reject certain ways of believing based on experiences with a church and its members and leaders because the Church is part of the religious experience.  What I see on a day-to-day basis affects how I experience religion, and the way I choose to worship is part of my religion.  Thus, there are certain truths that unite the Church, but the experiences are widely different and the emphasis placed on each is different.  I don’t think that certain ways are more right or wrong than another (I don’t think that Catholics aren’t true Christians, as many Evangelicals seem to believe; I remember a missionary coming to my church to explain how to evangelize Catholics, which now strikes me as very odd and divisive) but I do think that emphasizing religion one way or another can be harmful to the religious experiences of many Christians, causing them to leave the church.  I don’t think that I can say with any authority here how things should be done, but I can say how they could be done.

My own experience with Evangelicalism has been both ardent and cynical.  Growing up, I was a “good little Christian” girl, and I was pretty conservative in my religious practice.  At least Evangelicalism, with its emphasis on a “personal relationship with Christ” and its insistence on the God-You bubble, can be beneficial for teenagers, who are trying to forge their own path through everything anyway.  But once you get past that teenage fervor, what is there to lean on?  If the self loses its faith and passion, what do you have to lean on?  Of course there is the rest of the Evangelical Church, but it seems that this church is just a bunch of selves getting together with each other, and so there’s still not much to go back on.  The other thing that Evangelicals seem to hold onto is the “reasonability” of their faith.  They all need a reasonable explanation for what they believe.  I think this has something to do with the reactionary nature of Evangelicalism.  The “Culture Wars” and whatnot.  This also has a lot to do with the extreme focus on the self and the independence that Evangelicalism has.  We have the Bible, but interpretations of that text can differ from generation to generation.  This focus on the self has a lot to do with the scorn of liturgy and tradition.  The reason why my mom is afraid of tradition and liturgy is because she thinks that it steals the self-determination from religion, as if reciting liturgy is something that will prevent me from thinking on my own and make my religion become  routine rather than meaningful.  I’ll answer this shortly.  The other problem I have with Evangelicalism is its insistence on pulpit politics.  I don’t think that my worship experience in the Church should be muddled and adulturated by discussions of politics.  Yes, my political decisions should be based on my religious beliefs, but my pastor shouldn’t be the one who is telling me who I should vote for.  Those three things are the main problems I have with Evangelicalism as it exists today: its reactionary nature, its extreme emphasis on the self (which causes the reaction), and its insistence on telling me who to vote for.  These things may work fine for other people (mainly the people of my parents’ generation), but they don’t work for me, and I suspect, many other people who are also struggling religiously.

The lack of tradition in the Evangelical Church is frightening to me.  Growing up in a nondenominational church, I knew absolutely nothing about Church tradition, which forms the basis for the beliefs of Christianity.  I had no clue why, during lent, there are crosses with purple cloths draped on them which turn white on Easter.  I had no clue what all those weird letters on banners in front of the Church are or what they mean.  I didn’t know any creeds.  I knew hymns, but they were largely replaced by sappy choruses by the time I was a teenager.  But my understanding of this lack of knowledge didn’t come about until I came to Evangelical Institution (EI), where I saw many of these things and started learning about them.  I was out of the nondenominational bubble which took pride in its independence from every single tradition that ever existed.  I’m not kidding about that.  Symbols and traditions that exist in other churches were not found in mine growing up.  You can’t learn about these things from the Bible.  So, I came to EI and was confronted with tons of experiences that I was not prepared for, because my church based everything on the self.  So when I started having problems, I reacted to those by distancing myself from the church and becoming cynical about it.  I had nothing to fall back on.  But now I realize how incredibly important these traditions are.  I don’t think that knowing what the color purple means will somehow prevent me from rejecting Christianity, but the way of religious experience which emphasizes traditions and symbols allows the individual Christian to cope when there are questions.  It also adds to the richness and meaning of the religious experience.  I remember that, after communion every first Sunday of the month, everyone in our church joined hands and sang the third stanza of “How Great Thou Art.”  The beautiful organ swell of the music and the human contact and sense of something bigger than myself always made me cry.  Every single time it happened.  It was the same every single time, but each time it made me cry.  Each time was meaningful to me.  When they stopped doing that, I felt a loss.  I’m sure that if that could happen again, I would still cry.  There was no other tradition in our church. 

When I go to the Episcopalian Church, I feel both bewilderment and a sense of belonging.  I feel bewilderment because there are so many things that happen which I don’t know the meaning of.  People wear robes and they say things every week that everyone except me seems to know.  Luckily, I know the Lord’s Prayer, but that’s about it (although I am learning).  People kneel on little benches that unfold from the bottom of the pew.  There are symbols all over the place that I don’t know about.  But in this way, I feel belonging because of these routines.  They are deeply meaningful, even because of their mystery to me.  I know that people have recited these prayers and sang these songs for hundreds, even thousands of years before me.  And in that recitation, their truth is confirmed.  And every week, the priest says the same things, which remind of what it means to be a Christian every week.  I don’t have to rely on myself for everything, because I have time-confirmed tradition to remind me that I am not the only one who is having these struggles and that I am not the only one who has been a Christian. 

The Problem With Being a Romantic Who Thinks She Should be an Academic March 12, 2008

I can’t deny my romantic tendencies.  I am actually thrilled to be taking a year to myself next year, so that I can indulge myself by reading whatever the hell I want and spending time staring out the window and thinking.  My plans also include a lot of trekking through nature and on walking bridges over rivers.  As much as I want to be involved in an academic life, I’m on academic overload as it is, and I need to take some time off from what is required of me.  I’ll have a job and whatnot (at this point the job itself is not clear to me) but I want to spend a year floating, with no apparent responsibilities that weigh on the rest of my life with their urgency and importance.  I don’t care if I end up being a secretary or a waitress or working some other inconsequential job, but I just want to have a life which can be light and free for a little while, until I have to get back to getting on with the rest of my life.  The thought of picking a school and a specialization and having it affect the entire rest of my life is frankly terrifying.  There is a part of me that wants nothing to do with a life where you constantly have to prove yourself as worthy of attention and respect.  Part of me wants to do something which would be equally as fulfilling and challenging but without the pressure of proving myself to anyone.  I’ve never been very good at the politics game, and my personality and feelings are very plain for anyone to see.  People used to value this honesty in me, but those people liked me, and they appreciated by translucency.  Now, I think it is something I hate, because in the real world, everything is fake and everyone has to pretend to be something they’re not in order to succeed.  For some people, this works out because they’re genius and everyone respects them anyway, or they’ve always been the kind of person who can fake personality and emotion in order to get along wherever they are.  I’ve never been this kind of person, and sacrificing my frankness for political salience is not my strong suit.  In fact, I hate it, so I end up hating myself in some ways for being so honest about how I feel all the time.  I hate personal facades.  So the thought of having to put one on for the rest of life sounds exhausting.  Maybe for a year I can feel somewhat free with myself and feel like I have no one to impress.  That would be so refreshing.

My honesty is so debilitating.  The last time I tried to be completely honest with someone and bear my messy soul to him, the gesture turned around and bit me in the ass.  Last night I wrote a letter which was tempered by the time that I didn’t feel I had to be someone different in order to make him love me.  I don’t think I’m going to send it; it was merely an exercise in self-expression which I think is some of the most beautiful and passionate prose (dare I say honest) I have written in a long time.  The time that I could be in solitude from him without the pressures that accompanied his presence really allowed me to heal and to think in a way that I don’t think I would’ve been able to otherwise.

 Not even to mention the crisis of academic writing that I am having at this time.  I think the reason why I loved fall semester of my junior year so much and the reason why I found the work I was doing to be so fulfilling was that it felt like I was doing something groundbreaking and important (not that it really was, but hey, a girl can dream).  Epiphanies abounded, and my writing was pretty good.  Dr. H insists that the reason why I don’t feel this way anymore is because I am reaching maturity as a student; I am becoming more of a teacher rather than a student.  But I’m not so sure.  Part of the joy of writing some things in those days was that I felt like it was a part of me.  That I was writing this academic paper for myself.  I wrote one of those this semester about evangelical feminism and whether or not the Bible completely fucks women over, and it turns out that I lost sight of my audience and it was probably an ok paper.  But the thought that passion has to be subordinated (or something) really is kinda blah.  Maybe it’s because I haven’t found something in literature yet that I can latch onto with complete passion AND write good papers about.  But in the end, if academe makes me retreat into myself and my own solitude (as Willa Cather so depressingly yet weirdly satisfiedly pointed out to me in The Professor’s House) then I’d like to be in love with my subject and have some passion about it.

And yet.  I read all these blogs from academic people who basically go through the same shit over and over again, blog after blog, and none of it really sounds appealing, because they talk about parts of them dying and whatnot, and that sounds really scary.  Plus most of them are hopeless at friendships and relationships and yet they keep doing the academic thing and they don’t know why.  It’s almost like I can see where my life is headed and I have no fucking clue why I would want to do all of that to myself and yet I keep heading straight for the abyss.  The abyss mostly involves eternal insecurity, loneliness and losing parts of my being.  There are romantic reasons for getting involved, and yet the academic part of it is supposed to squash all of that out of existence.  Damn, damn, damn!  I don’t know what else to do with my life, so this seems to be the clearest road.  Plus, I’m already a hopeless social retard, so I might as well enter the life that fits.  The only other one seems to involve building a hut on Walden Pond and hoping that I don’t find that I have not lived.

Fucking Moron March 8, 2008

Last week, this article appeared in the Washington Post.  The blogosphere has been going nuts about it, and rightly so, because it’s absolutely appalling.  It was written by Charlotte Allen, and after the uproar about her awful article, WaPo said that it was meant to be satiric.  It was most definitely NOT satiric.  I read the article a day or two after it came out, and I sent an email to Ms. Allen.  Granted, my little undergraduate mind can’t compare to a Harvard and Stanford grad, but I’m sure she was surprised to hear such vehement anger from an Evangelical Institution student, if she’s ever heard of the place.  Well, turns out she actually emailed me back, and here’s the exchange:

Ms. Allen,

This is a response to your article entitled “We Scream, We Swoon.  How Dumb Can We Get?” in the online version of the Sunday, March 2nd edition of the Washington Post.

My first question is: is this a serious article or some kind of satiric piece on the idea that women are naturally worth less than men because of their scientifically-proven smaller brains?  If it is the latter, I am not picking up the cues from your writing.  I’m going to assume that you, a woman, actually mean every word of what you say.

I think you’re writing from the premise that women are essentially sentimental and are constantly consuming books and entertainment that is worth less than what men consume.  Since this is one of your assumptions, how can you possibly admit that you admire a woman such as Elizabeth I, who, according to you is naturally dumber than the men she was commanding?  These “outliers” you talk about were actually part of their culture, not monastics who could create their own reality by separating themselves from their peers and culture and pretending to be a man.  I think you need to look into your literary history a little more, especially when you talk about Richardson, who happened to be a man writing a sentimental piece which was read by men in clubs who cried over it.  Don’t forget Dickens, who was also a man writing sentimental novels.  And who said that sentimentality has to be a bad thing?  Harriet Beecher Stowe got the United States to understand what slavery was like and she humanized the bodies being bought and sold.  She also created huge social and pragmatic change.

Also, you belittle your own academic career when you say that”I have coasted through life and academia on the basis of an excellent memory and superior verbal skills, two areas where, researchers agree, women consistently outpace men.“  You don’t think at all that you, as an individual, and not some evolutionary example of femaleness made your own way in your career?  If you think you should make a house a home, then why are you writing articles for the Washington Post?  Why do you even bother with a career at all?  Could you perhaps be using the idea that woman are naturally stupid as an excuse to publish a really awful article?  Even by admitting that there are some feminists who don’t know what the Oprah Winfrey Show is, you admit that there are women out there, despite their mental incapacity, who don’t go for the sentimental and generally stupid.  If you know who Mary Wollstonecraft is, you might understand that sometimes women’s tendency toward the “dim” is because they are trained to be that way by their culture (by articles like yours) even when they could be better.  Your article is actually making more stupid women, not to mention justifying all the misogynistic tendencies of the men who think that women should stay barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.

People have fainted at Hillary rallies, too, and I’m pretty sure the fainting at Obama rallies was because of the heat, not because of Obama worship.  Don’t forget the 10-year-old child who fainted in California when Schwarzenegger was up front.

I support your effort as a woman to write and be heard in a nationally-recognized newspaper.  But, I do not support a poorly researched article which is counterproductive of your efforts and to all women with goals and with brains.

Ms. :

I don’t think you’ve read my article very carefully. We’ve had almost 40 years of movement feminism, indoctrinated at every level of education, so it’s difficult to understand how you can blame the “culture” for women’s acting dim. The culture of dimness has, alas, been created by women themselves.

Charlotte Allen 

I sent her an email back saying that, oh yes, of course she’s right; not only am I stupid, but my uterus is the reason why I can be passed off as hysteric when I have a real concern.  My ovaries secrete stupid hormones all day long.

Oh trust me, I read your article very, very carefully, and I got exactly what you said.  That’s why I was so angry.  “I don’t think you read my article very carefully” is a classic excuse for “I suck as a writer and don’t realize that my words can be interpreted differently than what I intended.”  She says that there’s nothing in the culture that allows women to act this way, but then she goes to say that women “created the culture of dimness.  What the fuck?  In other words, women are stupid.  I read your article carefully.  I can’t say the same for one of my profs, to whom I sent the article.  That particular prof, Dr. P, didn’t get it.  The other prof I sent it to was just as freaked out as I was.

Seriously, google Charlotte Allen and see how crazy this woman is/how pissed off the rest of the world is.

There Are Times When I Think Eugenics Would be a Good Thing March 6, 2008

I hate being in public spaces with stupid people.  Most of the time when I hear people saying moronic things, I want to either slap them across the face or yell at them and tell them never to speak again.  But alas, I am too nice or at least timid to do or say such things, so I just sit there and get angrier and occasionally direct angry faces in the stupid person’s direction.  I’ve been told my stare has powerful qualities, but most of the time the stupid people are too busy spouting off idiocy to notice.

 Evangelical Institution has masses and masses of stupid people.  I was on the campus-run bus line today and overheard two horrible conversations.  One was from a rather fat and ugly guy in glasses with a beard who, as I overheard him saying in a very loud, stupid voice, is a Communications major.  He was talking about how he wants to write a book by the “Common Man.”  According to him, his book would not even be original: he would just take a book by an “educated, learned” person and reinterpret it so that the “Common Man” would understand.  It would be his very own interpretation and he apparently doesn’t care if he is right or if no one agrees with him.  Who needs those educated people, right?  They’re just pompous windbags (much like this stupid person who was speaking) with nothing to say to the common folk.  Why not take some Derrida and make it his own?

The worst thing about the asinine conversations of stupid people is that they always think they need to talk as loud as they possibly can so that everyone in the room/bus/store can hear their brilliance and dedication to higher thought.  I swear that the volume is directly proportionate to the stupidity of the speaker.  You could even chart a z-line which would indicate the level of religiousity of the speaker.  Most stupid people at Evangelical Institution are some kind of major which involves religion.  Bonus points for being in seminary or other graduate institution related to religion.  I would rate the above stupid person among the highest echelons of stupidity based on his volume and the fact that he is applying to Evangelical Institution’s seminary if “nothing else works out.”

Now I must listen to possibly the most stupid professor who was ever given a doctorate degree.

Oh, The Thesis March 5, 2008

I am currently working on my undergrad honors thesis, and the second draft is due tomorrow at 11am.  I have about 45 pages of what is probably crap at this point, and about 30 pages left to revise, plus some more revisions that my thesis chair asked me to do.  I have been putting it off (although I have done work on it since the last draft) and now I wish I hadn’t, but I have been so busy with school and Corporate Crap that by the time I get some time to spend on the thesis, I no longer have energy.  Thus.  Here I am.

I had grand intentions for the research part of my thesis last summer.  I had plans to have the whole thing knocked out before the summer was over.  That did not happen, of course, and I had to do a ton of work at the beginning of this semester, which left me with an ok paper and an epiphany half way through writing it more than a week after the first draft was supposed to be in.  I’m worried now because I have potential grad school recommendation writers to impress, and I just want to graduate, dammit.  I think that the paper will end up being good, but all my stupidity along way may hurt me.

I tend to get overwhelmed when things get big and seemingly out of control, and that’s what this thing felt like all summer because I put a lot of pressure on myself to write something *genius*.  So I put it off and procrastinated because I didn’t have confidence in my own abilities as a student.  I annoy myself so flipping much.  It’s kind of like when I started crying today for no good reason and then was yelling at myself while I was crying which made me cry more.  I keep trying to convince myself that Yes, you are capable (you stupid bitch) you are capable of writing a good thesis!  And living up to everyone’s expectations!  And impressing the shit out of those people who will write recommendations for you!  And making it through two more months of the most emotionally tumultuous years of your life!  My counselor told me that what I believe about myself will ultimately shape my actions, and blah, blah, blah, which was good and something I needed to hear, but I think I’ll stay on the anti-depressants, too, thank you.  I’m worried about my mental state post-Lexapro.

 I think what it comes down to is that I’m too. damn. hard. on myself (duh) and that I need to chill out and just do my best.  Ultimately, my thesis chair thinks I have a good paper, and I still have one more draft to go.  I can turn out a good paper, and I can make it through two more months without reverting to heavy drinking.  But seriously, can I graduate yet?

Justifications, Introductions, General Rambling March 5, 2008

I think my life can be generally classified at this point as really, really, lame.  So I’m starting a blog that my friends have and I’m writing on it so that I can have some decent “human contact” for once in my life.

I used to write on xanga.  But I pretty much stopped, and no one reads it anymore, so I’m starting a new one.  There’s something about freshness and an actual audience that makes me want to write.  Plus, the old xanga one was being stalked by people I don’t want stalking me, I started in in high school and most of what I chose to write on it were lame, and I have a desire for internet anonymity.  The fact that one of my old friends came to visit over the past few days made me realize how much decent human contact I don’t get anymore.  Most of my days are spent hiding somewhere and reading  a book/studying, going to work at my part-time job at Corporate Crap while I finish my undergraduate education at Evangelical Institution, and sleeping/eating.  My phone conversations with my parents have consisted of “Well, nothing new going on except five new pages in my thesis” and generally I don’t talk on the phone at all with anyone else for reasons I am not sure of.  This leaves me with more than 3,000 rollover minutes and a sense that I am hopelessly and irretrievably socially retarded.  Thus the hopeless recluse.  I have come to believe that, actually, my life is really not that exciting and no one would really want to hear/read/know about it, but my old friends are on here and maybe they can help me out with some intelligent blog banter.  Thus the blog.

I live in Lameburg, and no one at Evangelical Institution is anyone that I can actually have a decent conversation with.  It’s really quite annoying, because I think that the perceptions that everyone has about me make it impossible for them to relate to me or want to hang out with me anymore.  I am several things which are not normal at my school: liberal, feminist, interested in doing well, intelligent (I think).  Additionally, I am socially retarded, which makes it hard to have friends.  Most of my attempts at socializing leave me feeling lame and out of the loop.  Hell, my idea of a good Friday night is sitting on my couch with a beer reading a book.  The other night I watched the New York Philharmonic’s North Korea concert on public television for fun.  I can only hope that at some point in my life I can meet other people like me and live in a world of fellow liberal reclusives.