• I grew a beard, then shaved it off, then grew it again, over and over and over again.
• I moved from my apartment in Cleveland Park to an apartment I’m sharing with my friend, Drew, in The Center of Cool DC (i.e., the 14th St. Corridor between Logan Circle and U St.).
• I obsessed over Foursquare and Twitter and Google Reader (and, related to these things, Fojol Brothers, ChurchKey, Google Wave, and Android). These obsessions have yet to wane, and indeed I have managed to infect many other people (but not enough!) with them.
• I went to Spain and ate all of that country’s pork and foie gras.
• I listened to the same music as ever–Daft Punk, Kanye West, Chromeo, Ratatat, the Old 97′s, Lily Allen, Lil Wayne, and Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”–on a continuously rotating basis.
• I relished the most recent seasons of Lost and Mad Men, and have so far found the current season of Top Chef to be a very enjoyable return to form. Dollhouse was as good as it could possibly be, but that actually wasn’t very good at all–it was a fundamentally flawed show that richly deserves cancellation.
• The Redskins went 2-6 against the easiest first-half schedule in the history of the NFL, because the owner refuses to hire professionals to manage the team and let them make football decisions. But then they won one game, and now everyone loves them again!
• Obviously, I completely lost the habit of posting anything on my blog. This may be permanent, although I would like to get back to it (even though, as I may explain in a forthcoming blog post, Twitter + Google Reader have essentially replaced whatever meager benefits I used to get out of having a blog).

And… that’s all, folks. See you again in 2010!

I was lucky enough to take a couple of classes with David Wallace at Pomona. I had already read Infinite Jest and a bunch of his non-fiction by then, and I fought for a place in his literature and writing classes. I’m glad I did, because he was as thoughtful, diligent, and smart as a teacher as he was as a writer. I learned a lot from him about writing (among other things, I learned that I should probably let other people handle the writing), but I learned at least as much about kindness, honesty, and humility. Writing is hard work, but so is literary criticism–and teaching a litter of undergrads either one is surely harder than both combined. I came out of that lucky year with at least as much admiration for Wallace the man as for Wallace the auteur.

In the wake of his death, I’ve been in touch with a few of my classmates from those courses, and we’re all simply shocked–by the death itself, and by the manner in which it occurred. Wallace seemed like a man whose darkest days were behind him; he had stared down many demons, and we all thought he had come out on top. But I guess he taught us better than to accept the superficial without probing deeper.

It’s a terrible loss for the literary world, of course, but for many people it’s much more than that. Through his writing, through his teaching, and through his character, Dave touched a lot of people in a way that belies his (ill-considered) reputation as an ironist. We’ll miss him very much.

Also, does anyone want to buy my futon?

Which is all to say that I’m getting really sick of seeing listings claiming that apartments are three blocks from the metro when anyone who knows the city (or, um, has ever been to the apartment) knows that it’s at least seven blocks away. And that’s a generous calculation. It’s not three blocks, it’s never been three blocks, and unless they pave over Willard, Swann, Riggs, and Corcoran streets, it will never be three blocks. So we’re talking about brazen deceit here, not “putting yourself in the best light” or however we characterize the piddling inaccuracies that riddle our resumes and facebook profiles.

Now, in the bad old days, this kind of thing might have been more effective. But we’re a bit better equipped to assess these claims. Why bother lying, when the truth is so easy to suss out? I Guess We’ll Never Know.

July 31-August 1:
I will be in the Los Angeles area. I don’t know whether I will be able to get into the city, but it is a possibility.

August 1-August 4:
Oakland/Berkeley/San Francisco

August 4-August 7:
Vancouver, Canada (WHAT IS THERE TO DO IN VANCOUVER?)

August 7-August 10:
Seattle

August 10-August 20:
Detroit and other parts of Michigan (also, possibly, Windsor or other parts of Canada)

August 20-August 31:
Boston (putting everything I own in a box)

September 1-forever:
Washington, DC

What are the ground rules for writing about your kids, especially on the Internet, with its freewheeling meanness and permanent archive? Will my kids be embarrassed by these pieces at a certain point? Will a bully or (perhaps less plausibly) a college admissions office one day use the foibles I’ve revealed against them? Or will the kids just decide they’d have preferred to speak for themselves? Is there a point at which any good parent should stop?

When I write about my kids, I’m not only thinking as their mother. I’m also thinking as a professional writer. Those two identities don’t always align—they just don’t. I like to think that when there’s tension, I err on the side of protecting my kids’ interests, steering clear of any material that’s too embarrassing or private.

The article/column explores these issues adroitly, and touches on a lot of points worth discussing. Can kids even understand this stuff well enough to make an informed decision? Is it exploitative to use your children’s lives as source material?

But I’m going to digress a bit from the topic of writing about one’s children and talk instead about Facebook and the First Amendment.

The article mentions the fact that, now that information is archived on the internet, it won’t fade away like it used to. But what this interesting piece doesn’t really mention is that popular notions of privacy are, at least temporarily, shifting. Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, etc., are creating a situation where nobody currently under 20 will ever be un-Googleable. Yes, there are still a few holdouts, eating baked beans out of the can in their secluded cabins, scrawling byzantine anti-technology manifestos on the walls (or rather, sensible people who don’t see the point of Facebook and refuse to create profiles). But, for the most part, the information about us we all choose to put online dwarfs the information about us that gets online without our permission. And I mean dwarfs both in quantity and in amplitude–what Ms. Bazelon writes about her son now will pale in comparison with the harmless but sophomoric stuff he uploads in high school and college.

And, of course, nobody knows how this will turn out. Who’s gonna run for president in 2025, when everybody has a mile-long internet wrap sheet, chronicling all the idiotic stuff they said and did as dumb kids? Unless we want to limit our public figures to friendless virgins, we’re gonna need a radical shift in cultural expectations. Whether that sounds appealing or not, I believe it’s coming.

Just to be clear, there’s an important distinction to be made here. We all say stupid things, especially within the confines of what we used to think of as our private lives, and once those things are all publicly available I believe that we’re going to have to relax our standards with respect to judging each other. And I think that’s a good thing. Maybe we’ll have a national conversation about what the First Amendment actually means–that it’s not just about you getting to say what you want; it’s about people you don’t like getting to say what they want, too. And that restricting speech is reserved for the most extreme circumstances, not for obscene, indecent, ignorant, or politically-unpopular content.

So here’s the distinction: Doing stupid things will always be more problematic. There’s a spectrum between pure speech and pure action, and I don’t think every action is a big deal. For example, how many people do you know with a photograph online of them in a state that doesn’t even abut sobriety? If you’re like me, the trend asymptotically approaches infinity. Getting hammered and making stupid faces for a camera amounts to (stupid, goofy) speech. In essence it comes down to whether one’s behavior will affect somebody else (and I don’t meant embarrassing your mother at having raised such an idiot).

I’m not going to hold those silly photos against anybody, and I’m not going to hold embarrassing, cloying, internet diaries against anyone. I’m pretty sure doing either of those things would be deeply hypocritical, for one thing. But there’s another type of speech that, while completely legal, will probably always be a career killer–hate speech. “Hate speech” may be too strong a term, because I’m thinking also about the simple prejudicial speech that probably isn’t hostile enough to qualify. The More We Know, the more objectionable I find language that paints an entire group with one brush. It betrays the prejudice itself, which is bad enough, but it also betrays the lack of judgment of saying it out loud. I’m not suggesting we muzzle this stuff, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using it as a marker of someone who shouldn’t be doing anything important.

So, okay, what’s my point? My point is that things are changing. The internet (and the omnipresent gathering of information that accompanies it) exponentially increase the amount of data–numbers, text, photos, videos–about us that will eventually be publicly available. It’s worth doing the same kind of thinking that we’ve always done about invading people’s privacy. In fact, it’s far more important now than it has ever been before. But we need to do some critical thinking about what we take from the invasion itself, too.

The process has already started, I think. My generation–I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s–has gone through an inflection point. When we were in middle school, the internet was a non-factor. By the time we graduated from college, everybody had digital cameras and Friendster profiles. It’s hard to know what things would have been like without the internet, but I do know this: I assume that everyone I meet has at least one photograph of themself, face flushed, holding out a cocktail, and joyfully screaming to the camera. But that’s not all. I assume that everyone under 40 I haven’t met has that photograph, too. So when I read a story about a popular athlete’s drunk party photos getting made public, it doesn’t make me think that he’s a terrible person. It makes me think that David Sarno probably doesn’t have a Facebook profile. I could go on–there’s a book’s worth of writing to be done about how members of “old media” don’t understand how things have changed–but you get the idea. Whether we like it or not, the world just got a little smaller.

The adage “those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” has always been pretty tough to enforce. Fortunately, the world wide web is a great equalizer–it won’t be long until we’ll all have glass houses.

Now that I’m a month and a half away from graduating, I find myself unmotivated. It’s not that I don’t have much to do (quite the contrary, actually–I have a ton of work to get done), but I’ve been spending a lot of time screwing around on my computer–keeping up with my RSS feeds, playing solitaire, and, germane to this post, getting reacquainted with my old friend, Minesweeper.

Which is all a long way of saying, rather than write anything new today, I think I’ll just recycle that post. Enjoy this look back at July of 2005, and forgive my younger self’s ornate, doofy prose!

So the point is, I got pretty good at it*. Good enough to scare people who saw me playing, my stupid mousehand flying around clicking and clicking and clicking. Good enough to develop fairly complex analyses of the intricacies of the game. So here’s my intermediate strategy guide to Minesweeper:

First of all, you’re gonna have to stop using the ? mark. Disable it, it’s just wasted clicks. If you’re not sure, don’t mark it at all. Your time is better used elsewhere.

2008 edit: Something funny is that because I had to reupload all these images (and update the links in the html), it probably ended up taking me as long to do this as it would have to actually write something new. But the key thing is that I didn’t waste the time on my schoolwork.

That’s the end of our voyage into the deep past. Hope you enjoyed it.

3/11:
I packed extremely light for this trip. One pair of jeans, one hoodie, a long sleeve shirt, some t-shirts/underclothes/socks, and a jacket. I managed to fit everything I needed for the week in a backpack and a shoulder bag, which at the beginning of the trip felt light as a feather. Anyway, off to the airport.

I had a flight that was supposed to leave Boston at 8:45pm. I got to the airport way too early, and then they told me that the flight had been delayed. So I got to spend an extra 5 hours at the airport. I read about 400 pages of my book between 7pm and takeoff–1:00am. A bit of an ignominious start, but whatever. I didn’t get much sleep on the six hour flight, and then landed around 11am on…

3/12:
London Heathrow’s customs is a mess. I spent half an hour waiting in what should have been a very short line, because a) there’s a complete lack of line management–it’s chaos; and b) they stop every brown person for extensive questioning. Literally. But anyway, I eventually got through security and made my way to London’s historic Underground. It took me a couple of hours to get through the three trains I had to take to get to East London, but I did it.

Okay, I just read that last paragraph, and from now on I think I’ll just skip over the lengthy description of my transportation woes from here on out. Suffice it to say, getting everywhere took forever.

Once I got to my friend Jamie’s place, I took a quick nap, since I hadn’t slept in a day and a half. Bizarrely, my undergrad school happened to be holding an alumni get-together in London that night, so I jumped on the “tube” and went to a cheesy fake-spanish bar, La Perla, near Charing Cross in downtown London. The first thing I noticed was that drinks were super expensive (another theme I would be exploring in detail throughout the trip). The second thing I noticed was that I spent the entire evening talking to other Americans. Kinda weird (sad?), but it was pretty cool that there were so many of us converging 6,000 miles away from the place that we all had in common. Anyway, it was a somewhat awkward night (since I didn’t know anybody else there), but I had a good time anyway.

In other news, just about everybody in London works in finance. So the evening was pretty much just like visiting my friends in New York.

3/13:
Sightseeing day! Jamie and I walked all over town, starting at Parliament and continuing past Westminster Abbey, the Horse Guards (I dunno… it was a pretty nice looking building), the War Department (guess what they do there!), St. James’s Park, Buckingham Palace, the Wellington Arch, Hyde Park, and finally the Victoria and Albert Museum. The big news is that I remembered I had a camera. Here are a couple representative pictures:

This is “Big Ben.” It’s a clock.

This is Westminster Abbey. It has flying buttresses.

We also stopped into Harrod’s, looking (hilariously) for a book. For those of you who don’t know it, Harrod’s is an enormous, garish, repulsively-expensive department store. Probably the only thing you need to know about it is that they offer a 185,000 pound (about $400,000) cell phone. It’s basically a Nokia, covered in diamonds (including a very tasteful gemstone-based snake). Harrod’s also has a lot of expensive food, including a sushi bar, a gelato stand, and an American diner. We didn’t buy anything.

Next we had some lunch ($16 for a falafel wrap and a soda–cheap!), then continued our aimless walk until the rain forced us into the first touristy place we encountered–the Victoria and Albert Museum. We had very low expectations–as long as the roof didn’t leak, we would have been satisfied–but V&A is actually pretty neat. It’s an art museum with an emphasis on architecture, sculpture, and craftwork (at least, that’s what we looked at), and they have a bunch of really cool stuff. Naturally, this is the only picture I thought to take. Nice work, me.

At any rate, my favorite thing in the museum was probably the Cast Collection, which is an enormous set of plaster casts of really awesome art. I didn’t read this essay, but on that page there are a bunch of images of some of the really cool stuff. Trajan’s Column was the highlight for me–pictures can’t really capture the scale and intricacy of that thing. And the fact that all of these pieces were cast in plaster and shipped across the world to be reassembled in England makes it all the more impressive.

There was a lot of other stuff, too, including housewares and clothing dating back centuries. It was very interesting to see how people (the richest .05%) lived in the old days.

After the museum, Jamie and I went to a restaurant near Waterloo. Cubana is basically the Hard Rock Cafe of the Cuban resistance movement. There are old guns and communist propaganda all over the walls (like a T.G.I. Fridays, but social justicier). The food was pretty good, though I think it was about as authentic as Del Taco, and the happy hour drinks were pretty cheap, though watered down to the point of absurdity. But after dinner, a couple of Jamie’s friends showed up, and we had a pretty fun time hanging out at the bar downstairs. The best part for me was drinking a Cuban beer.

That reminds me, though, of a peculiarity of London. It’s a huge, cosmopolitan city, filled with people from all over the world. It has great restaurants, great bars, all the trappings of a sophisticated, lively town. But almost all the bars close at 11pm! There are, as you might expect, after-hours clubs and a handful of bars that stay open later, but it’s tough to find a quiet pub to have a drink at after 10:30 or so. And although this used to be by law, apparently it’s now perfectly easy to get a liquor license that goes later. But the drinking culture in the city is such that it’s hard to make money staying open that late, anyway. It’s very strange to me. Digression over.

3/14:
Goodbye London, hello Cork. We spent a couple of hours getting to Stansted (another London airport), then another couple of hours flying to Cork. We met our friend Sarah at the hostel, and headed out on the town for dinner. Our original plan was to have pub food, but after a lot of wandering we had failed to find any pubs that served food. That’s not to say that there weren’t any, but we didn’t see any menus up and eventually just gave up. So we stopped into a restaurant with African decor, generic “world music,” and a truly miserable menu. It wasn’t bad so much as it was dreary. Every dish seemed to combine potatoes, cheese, tomato sauce, and ham (or no ham if you’re a vegetarian). I guess this is what eating out used to be like everywhere in the British Isles, before they discovered haute cuisine.

After dinner we wandered around some more, looking (again) for an authentic Irish pub to have a drink. There didn’t seem to be too many of them around, although, as I pointed out then, any place in Ireland that serves alcohol is an Irish pub. Nonetheless, we did eventually find a hole in the wall filled with townies, and sat down to drink some $6 beers. We had a lively talk with some locals about Obama’s chances (the betting odds are well in his favor, they said), and then went home to sleep in a room with ten strangers who like spending the night clomping around in hobnail boots and latching/unlatching suitcases.

No pictures from this day.

3/15:
We started the day with all-you-can-eat toast and tea at the hostel, then tromped off in the freezing rain to see the Cork City Gaol. It was incredibly cold in there, but we did a hilarious audio tour (in which you walk around wearing a fifteen year old cassette walkman, listening to descriptions of the miserable conditions the gaol’s inmates endured. And at the end there was a video!

Then we walked back to the hostel and waited for our friend, Sara (not to be confused with Sarah) to arrive. She eventually got there, and we all went to have lunch at the official cafe for the Cork Butter Museum. Sadly, I didn’t get to see the museum itself (“It really is worth a visit” – AA Essential Ireland), but the cafe was pretty great.

After that, and after a brief but excellent stop in a pub filled with old men watching rugby, we headed to the Jameson Distillery. It was awesome:

We took the bus back to Cork and had dinner and drinks til the wee hours (we found a pub, the Slate, open til 2am–this was critical in the next couple of days).

3/16:
Tried to take a shower, but the water was far too hot to actually stand under. Had to huddle in the corner and carefully cup my hands, then pour the water on my body. After I recovered, we had toast and tea.

We wanted to drive around County Cork a bit, so we rented a car, which was thrilling and terrifying. First of all, as you may have heard, people drive on the left there. Second of all, drivers sit on the right side of the car (which makes sense). Third of all, all rental cars are manual transmission (not really, but the only one they had available to rent was a manual). Fourth of all, we couldn’t buy additional insurance on the car, so in the likely event of a catastrophic accident we were liable for any damage up to 600 Euros (about $1000).

Oh, right, did I mention that although England uses Pounds Sterling, the Republic of Ireland uses Euros? Yeah. That was annoying.

Anyway, despite my comically-intense reservations about the many ways it could go badly, we rented the car. The first place we drove was Blarney Castle, which was awesome:

The Castle.

The Blarney Castle is, of course, home to the Blarney Stone. If you kiss it, you’re supposed to gain in eloquence. So here I am, newly eloquent:

It’s just too bad kissing the stone doesn’t make one a better driver. Ah well. At any rate, after we all kissed the stupid rock and none of us fell off the castle, we got back in the car and drove to Kinsale for lunch.

This is about as good a place as any to emphasize how truly frightening it was to drive around Ireland’s country roads. Aside from the largest highways, everything was single lane (at most–the smallest roads were really just one shared lane for cars going in both directions). Yet the speed limits were up as high as 100km/hr (a little under 65mph). And these speed limits might as well have been minimums, the way the natives were driving. Although I value my life, I do tend to be a pretty aggressive driver, so even though I was scared out of my wits half the time I still ended up trying to keep up with the other drivers on the road. But, as you can see, I didn’t kill myself (or anyone else), so I guess all’s well that ends well! Okay, back to the trip:

Kinsale is a town on the water on the southern coast of Ireland. It used to be a military port, but now it’s more of a yachting community. We were told that it’s the “gourmet capital of Ireland.” I don’t know about that, but we did have a really good and absurdly large lunch there. I would have liked to have spent more time there (and it would have been nice if it had been a little warmer, so we could walk around the water a little more), but it was well worth stopping there.

After lunch we got back in the car and drove through Bandon, Clonakilty, and Skibbereen (and lots of smaller towns). At one point we were speeding crazily along one of the tiny roads, when over the bend we came upon first a handful, and then a mob, of people, trudging quietly down the road. The crowd filled the entire street, from hedges on the left to hedges on the right, and I didn’t know what to do. It looked like zombies, out to harvest human brains for supper. As they saw me approaching, though, they gestured to me to just go on through. Reluctantly, I settled into first gear and tried to make my way. At first it seemed like the people weren’t moving out of the way at all, but gradually it became clear that they were simply edging around the slowly-advancing car, the mob melting around us like the T-1000 around prison bars. And, almost as fast as the crowd had appeared, we were through it, and back up to 100km/hr. I still don’t know where they came from or what they were doing, but crawling through that pack of zombies was certainly memorable.

We pretty much just drove aimlessly, making our way along the coast. We stopped here to sit on a bench and look out over the water. It was pretty nice. Come late afternoon, we decided to start heading back to Cork, so we headed north, then east, going through Dunmanway, Shantaragh, Cappeen, and Crookstown, before finally getting back on a big highway to get us back to the hostel.

After a really good meal at a restaurant downtown, we went back to the Slate (the pub open til 2am). But it was much more crowded this time (probably because nobody had work the next day), and much less fun for yours truly. But after it closed, things got much more entertaining.

First, we met Michael, a nice guy from Bandon who gave us a bunch of suggestions on where we should go for St. Patrick’s Day. We talked with him (and his creepy, old, severely drunk friend) for a while, until some very friendly Italian dudes came over and started square dancing with us. It was pretty weird. Also, their English was mediocre, and none of us spoke Italian, so we ended up having a truly ridiculous conversation in English, Spanish, and French. I’m pretty sure nobody successfully communicated anything at all. But they seemed like nice enough guys, and after a while we all got bored and went hometo McDonald’s.

Yes, McDonald’s. Some members of our party (I’m not going to name names, but they were female) had to use the bathroom, and McDonald’s is the only place in Cork open at 3am. So off we went. This is what things looked like outside, where I was waiting for the bathroom crew to return:

Ah, American culture sure does bring class and sophistication wherever it goes.

Also, Jamie decided to get a Big Mac.

We finally went home and woke up all of our roommates trying to get ready for bed. Then we slept.

3/17:
ST. PATTIE’S DAY! GREEN BEER AND PUBLIC VOMITING!#$@!

Oh, wait, that’s what happens in America. In Ireland, there’s a street festival with good food, then a bunch of people have a relaxing, fun time drinking moderately.

We woke up early, forewent our tea and toast, and had a traditional Irish breakfast. Then we went back to the hostel to relax before heading out again for the festivities. First we stopped by this street food area, where Sarah and Sara got some lunch and left me and Jamie standing around waiting for them for an hour (not that I’m still mad about it).

Then we found a quiet pub and did this for six or seven hours. After we got tired of that place, we went to the Washington Inn around the corner, drinking there until they kicked everyone out at midnight. That’s where things got just a little messy. So anyway, like I said before, most pubs close early. But it was St. Patrick’s Day, and we were not ready to call it a night, so we headed back (for, yes, the third night in a row), to the Slate. There we made numerous friends (and one of us, I’m not saying who, made more than a friend) and drank Irish beer and Irish whiskey until closing time.

Then we went home (managing, this time, not to stop at McDonald’s).

3/18 (putting the date change here is somewhat arbitrary):
Sara went straight to the airport for her early flight, and the rest of us got a quick two hours of sleep before heading off ourselves.

Jamie and I said goodbye to Sarah, who had a different flight, and then we got on our plane to head back to London. We slept from takeoff to landing, which was awesome. Then I said goodbye to Jamie and took a $40 shuttle bus from Stansted to Heathrow. Then I waited around for a bunch of hours before finally flying back to Boston.

The end.

Anyway, I updated the blogroll for the first time in about two years, which I suspect will matter to nobody at all, and I added this google chat badge thing on the right, which I suspect will be a complete waste of time. And that’s about it. The rest of my time has been spent reading, writing, and filling out paperwork for various bureaucracies. It’s a pretty exciting life I lead.

Bye, computers!

Bonus: here’s a photo of the Christmas tree my neighbors just threw out (on our front lawn, mind, with lights and a tree stand still attached) a couple weeks ago. As you would expect, it is still sitting there.

Here’s the Cliffs Notes¹ version:

¹ First I thought it was “Clif’s Notes,” then I thought it was “Cliff’s Notes,” before I finally got it right.

Well that’s interesting. Apparently you can bring them a photograph of yourself as you actually appear, and then they’ll “tweak” it so it looks like you, but BETTER.

Now let’s see what things CVS thinks people might find unsightly enough to have removed from their photos:

So okay. Elements of Ugliness:

• Glasses
• Braces
• Freckles
• Blemishes
• Tattoos
• Fatness (Face or Body)
• More!

Terrific. Now I know which things about myself to hate (even the tattoos I presumably got to make myself look that way!).

That’s great, but it’s a little hard to get the central point of this service.

Ah, now I see. A few simple changes and–bam! Your photograph rules.

I think we can all agree that CVS, by making our photographs more attractive, is doing a great thing for America. Of course, there are some problems. Like, for example, I’m not a big fan of my face. It’s sort of homely and when I have a beard in certain lights it looks a bit “terroristy.” I’d like CVS to offer me the ability to replace my face with Matt Damon’s, or Robert Goulet’s (RIP). And in light of our current Middle East Conflict, I’d really like to be able to paste an American flag into all of my photos–in the background, or maybe as a lapel pin, or something like that.

Here’s a mockup of what I mean:

Now we’re talking. What a handsome, patriotic guy I now am! Thanks, CVS, for giving me the courage to make my photos depict the guy I really am, in my own mind!

If I were a woman, the prospect of being subjected to this kind of abuse (or, worse, the kind of abuse it forebodes) would scare the hell out of me. I wouldn’t feel safe. And the fact that for half of my friends and family this is not idle, hypothetical speculation–that it is, for all women, a very real problem–that really horrifies me.

This is all compounded, in Catherine’s case and that of other people who’ve written about this on their blogs, by the seriously idiotic harassment of misogynist commenters who swing by just to essentially reinforce the impression that men, especially men masked by anonymnity, are clueless and/or malicious jerks.

The internet commentary runs the gamut from well-meaning (e.g., “you should take it as a compliment–they think you’re attractive” or “dealing with the occasional jerk is par for the course in a big city”) to ignorant (“This is caused by a small minority of men“) to delusional AND misogynistic (“Now if she really wanted to teach this kid a lesson she would have walked up to him and said if you ever want to see, and touch big beautiful breasts like mine you better learn how to talk to a woman properly, saying nice titties will not get you the titties.“).

There are plenty more examples out there–the ones I linked came from a more or less random scan of this Yglesias post (some fun comments also available at an earlier post of Catherine’s here. What I find most amazing about the comments that attack or undermine the suggestion that street harassment is a serious problem is: how can anyone seriously argue that? Sometimes it’s relatively mild (a whistle or a suggestion that a woman “smile!”), sometimes it’s vile (“nice tits” or much worse), but in every case it’s objectifying, childish, insulting, and shameful. It reflects so poorly on men that this kind of behavior seems acceptable (or even admirable) to any of us–and it’s so much worse that the general reaction online from men seems to be condescension or an echo chamber of chauvinism.

I mean, I’m hardly the most sensitive guy in the world, and this stuff makes me crazy. I think of my female friends, and how much bullshit they have to put up with because this behavior is generally tolerated, and now I go online and read about how it’s women’s fault because they aren’t coming up with good enough ways of repelling it? That is seriously fucking stupid, my internet friend.

I don’t know how to fix street harassment. But I think that writing about the phenomenon, over and over and over again, does at least confront people with the fact that it’s not a rarity, it’s not limited to bad neighborhoods, it’s not women’s fault, and it’s not okay.

Doing something is better than nothing.

Not sure whether it’s better to replace your gas-guzzler with a hybrid or a high-mileage hatchback? The important thing is not which one you choose, but just that you choose one, now.

It’s not clear what the best way to deal with the myriad of problems chronicled in Al Gore’s powerpoint presentation? Don’t spend years debating whether to incentivize reduced corporate polution or to just mandate it–just pick one and run with it.

There are so many options for keeping track of your schedule–Google Calendar or Yahoo Calendar or a paper Moleskin? I think you guys know what I’m getting at here.

It’s so easy to find oneself paralyzed by the choices, and do nothing. I do it all the time. But most of the time

Um, that’s where I left off on writing this entry. On June 29, 2006.

I guess I’ll just have to figure out a way to disable something else annoying. It’s a tough decision: Carlos Mencia, or people who stand on the left on escalators?

As a student without a whole lot of equity, cheap eating is a priority for me, so I’ve been a frequent two-for-one burgerer. It’s a great deal and two blocks away–sure beats cooking. My favorite burger to order is the grilled cheeseburger, which is exactly what you would expect–a burger patty in the middle of a grilled cheese sandwich. It’s a real insider order, too, since it’s not listed with the rest of the burgers (I guess because it’s not on a regular bun)–it’s under the “Sandwiches” heading instead. Anyway, it’s freaking delicious, and you don’t have to waste any valuable chewing time on vegetables.

Okay, so on to the story. (Incidentally, this story is pretty boring for a while, but I encourage you to stick with it. Two-thirds through I turn into a real dickhead.)

My friend and I walked into Our House and a girl who looked to be in the appropriate age bracket for Baby Einstein videos welcomed us and asked how many were in our party. Apparently she was our waitress–it wasn’t, in fact, Bring Your Middle-School-Aged Daughter to Work Day.

Anyway, my friend and I sat down and the waitress came over and handed us menus, then she walked away, without getting our drink orders. She came back a minute later and asked if we wanted drinks. We ordered whatever we decided we wanted, and off she went again. Based on the weird behavior and some awkwardness in the ordering process–not to mention the fact that she could have passed for a bat mitzvah–my friend and I speculated that it might be the waitress’s first day. We were old hands, though, having eaten there many times, so when she came back with our drinks we were ready with our order. I asked for my usual, the extremely tasty grilled cheeseburger.

The food came, and it was greasy and delicious as always. So far, everything had gone pretty smoothly. The waitress still seemed sort of nervous and awkward, but–and let me emphasize this–at this pointI hadn’t made anyone cry.

But then the check came. I noticed that the bill was approximately double what it ought to have been. Of course, I figure it out pretty quickly–the waitress hadn’t given us the discount. So when she came back for the check I explained that, because it was happy hour, burgers were two-for-one. Her face fell.

“The grilled cheeseburger doesn’t count for the two-for-one–only the burgers listed in the ‘Burger’ section are half-price.”

Of course I told her that there must be some mistake, since I had ordered it before.

The waitress said that it was her first day working there (just as I suspected!), but she thought that the grilled cheeseburger wasn’t part of the two-for-one promotion. But she wasn’t sure, so she went off to check with the manager. She seemed shaken, but I guess this kind of stupid conversation is not what you want on your first day.

A minute later, she returned. She said she had checked with the manager. He had, apparently, confirmed that the grilled cheeseburger was not part of the two-for-one promotion.

I explained my perspective to her in a little more detail: I was a regular customer, and I’d ordered the grilled cheeseburger many times, and had in fact gotten the discount–had, just to be crystal clear, asked my waitresses to confirm that it was eligible for the discount before I ordered. Now it’s important that you understand my tone throughout this back-and-forth. I had been civil, friendly, and dispassionate. I wasn’t yelling or arguing, just trying to get some clarity. Unfortunately, things were about to get a little more complicated.

I was happy to pay full price if that was the policy, I stressed–I just wanted to know why I had gotten the discount every time I’d been there before.

Okay, time out. There’s something else you have to know about me for the rest of this story to make sense. In person, I’m very difficult to read. The line between sarcasm and sincerity, in terms of my tone of voice and my expression, is Nicole Ritchie thin. People who have known me well since the last millennium can’t always tell that I’m joking. So you need to understand this–what I did next was not serious. I was making light of the situation by affecting a caricature of customer immaturity. I swear.

Having just explained my confusion–why did I get half off before yet get charged full price now?–I slammed my fist down on the wooden table. The glasses and dishes clattered. “Your policy is inconsistent!” I said. Well, maybe I kind of exclaimed it. I’m almost positive I didn’t yell it. But the important thing is, I was just kidding.

In a cloud of dust, she fled the table. Before I knew it, her manager was leaning across the table.

“Listen, pal. The grilled cheeseburger isn’t part of the two-for-one, and it never has been.”

First of all, I think we can all agree that “pal” doesn’t get unironically used nearly enough. Anyway, I was game for another round of this, so I explained again that I was happy to pay full price. I just thought, since I’d been told as much several times prior, that I’d get half off this time, too. He told me, awesomely, that if I’d ever gotten half off, my waitress had had to cover the difference out of her paycheck.

Now aside from the fact that you might expect that this would have gotten the point across to the staff, precluding them from telling me it was half off, it also struck me as the wrong attitude to take with a paying customer. What the hell, eat the $2.50 loss and give me the stupid discount. It’s not like the sandwich costs the bar any more than the regular burgers–in fact it’s cheaper, since they don’t have to pay for rancid month-old lettuce or tomatoes. Don’t try to guilt-trip me with images of my former waitresses bankrupted by my cruel burger-eating. Just build a little goodwill and tell me that I get the discount this time, but from now on it’s full price. But that’s not the direction in which the manager opted to go. Instead, he decided to pick a fight and imply that I was a niggard. I felt it was a curious choice.^**

At any rate, the guy was quivering with rage, so I acquiesced and told him that I’d pay full price. And of course I left a generous tip, because why should the nice waitress get screwed when it’s her boss who’s the antagonistic moron?

Incidentally, although I told the story like it happened yesterday, this actually all went down last June. I haven’t been back since. And I will NEVER go back. You hear that, Our House manager? You lost a loyal customer for eternity. And if the waitress somehow finds this post, I apologize. I didn’t mean to yell at you, and I would take it back if I could. But by now I’m sure you’ve had occasion to agree with me–your boss is a dumb asshole.

^* I’m not sure that she cried but it did look like she was about to.
^** On the other hand, I had just, from his perspective, screamed at his waitress. I can see how he might not have been predisposed toward the “customer is always right” attitude at that moment. But I assure you, as an impartial person who just happens to have been tangentially involved, it was entirely his fault–I am a blameless victim here!

So what am I getting at, here? Is it possible that buying more crap actually doesn’t make me happier? No, that’s not true. Lots of crap does make me happier. Books make me happier. Music makes me happier. Electronic equipment that I’ll have to replace in two years makes me, inexplicably, happier. Good food (either in the Vichyssoise category or the Bagel Dogs category) makes me much happier.

So what’s wrong with the other stuff I’ve been buying all my life that it doesn’t make me happier? Would it be better if I had some more tax cuts? I don’t know. I think the problem is that when you buy something to fix a problem it just emphasizes the fact that life is filled with small annoyances, and these little stopgaps don’t do much to address the fundamental problem: you spend most of your time dealing with problems that you don’t want to have. So the occasional item that does more than try to fix a problem another possession created–be it a baguette, a Justin Timberlake album, or a pair of jeans that have been artfully “pre-weathered” such that they appear to have actually been worn by a steamboat coal-shoveler for twenty years–demonstrates how big and interesting the world can be.

Of course, friendship and family and the sheer exhilaration of new experiences make me happy too. But c’mon. Actual stuff is pretty great, too, sometimes. You know you love surround sound and ice cream.

In a related story, it’s Sausage Week over at Dethroner and I couldn’t be more excited.