RE: An older promise.

I said I would try to get my hands on a essay from an ethical theory class that I read, rebuking[is that the word?] moral egoism and whatnot.

Got my friend Briane to send it to me, since she's in the class.

Stocker_TheSchizophreniaOfModernEthicalTheories.pdf


There it is. I promise it's not porn.

I hope this isn't too illegal.
Cheers.

YOWZA!

I just hurt my hand by punching the door.

Fuck.
Excuse my French.

I'm so fucking trite.

EDIT: Twice.
Let's see if I can break my hand.

EDIT: Three.
Anybody got any pain killers? Haha.

I now have an empty picture frame and no picture to put in it. Maybe mine.

In other news, I am incredibly glad I only have my poli sci seminar paper due Thursday, my advisor from Japan coming tomorrow, and an old friend also from Japan, coming Thursday.

If I were actually scheduled to take my LSATs, I'd probably bomb. And why did I punch a solid door with my writing hand?

Stupid, hilariously naive me. If I knew I was going to be upset, I wouldn't have had that sandwich.

I always feel like vomiting when I'm upset. Here's to holding it down!

[Alright...no more edits.]

A week from grace.

My birthday is in a week.
I've been toying with the idea of taking my birthday off of facebook-- I don't want to sort through the birthday messages.

Nine years from thirty...

So, I've got papers upon papers upon papers this week and the following week. I didn't register for the LSATs or the JLPT on time, which were both major errors on my part.

There's a school trip to Ghana that I think I want to apply for. I mean...while I can get financial assistance? Why not?

I'm out of things to say.

EDIT: And then I read the Ghana application and realized they wanted a completed letter of recommendation by the deadline.[Today, coincidentally]

I'm really dropping the ball, these days.

I'm no Nietzche.

So, I teared up today. It was the first time in about two years that I've come close to crying.

Actually, I teared up a little in leaving Okayama. So I guess it hasn't been that long.

That's all.

Another old face in the gayborhood...

BREAKING NEWS: Clay Aiken, of American Idol fame, is GAY!

Color me surprised and shocked!

More at seven. Back to you, Jim.

While I'm at it...

I thought I would post something from a philosophy seminar I'm taking this semester.

In a reading last week, we covered Galen Strawson's Basic Argument:

1. We do what we do, in a given situation, because we are what we are.
2. In order to be ultimately responsible for what we do, we have to be ultimately responsible for what we are — at least in certain crucial mental respects.
3. But we cannot, as the first point avers, be ultimately responsible for what we are, because, simply, we are what we are; we cannot be causa sui.
4. Therefore, we cannot be ultimately responsible for what we do.

Ultimately, I wound up having to capitulate. At least until I find a working solution.

Just thought I'd throw this out there, since I don't think any of my readers philosophize regularly.

Cheers.

A Lesson in Irresponsibility

So, instead of reading or studying for LSATs, I watched a Devil Wears Prada on recommendation from my baby, Jeremy.

Normally I don't take movies seriously-- normally, I don't watch movies period. But why not take it seriously? Why not take everything seriously?

Anyway, good movie-- not something I'd consider a favorite, but fun to watch. By the end, I thought the movie repudiated what Miranda stood for-- or not repudiated, perhaps, but at least made clear that there were concessions she'd made for her fabulous life. A life without love, without knowing how to be altruistic or to ever do anything without expecting something in return.

I almost wanted to go into a "what is love?" shpiel, but I forgot that I don't believe in it.

I immediately thought of Atlas Shrugged after I finished the movie. AS is definitely one of my favorite books of all time, if not my favorite, but I don't know that I find Randian characters to be ethical.

I talked about the movie with Jeremy afterward, who disagreed with...more or less everything I thought about the movie, I think.

Perhaps I'm wrong. I want to try out this little experiment.

A life of no-nonsense, of very little patience, of a lack of compassion to everyone who hasn't broken their backs to earn it.

I suspect at the end of the day, I'll be dissatisfied-- that this lifestyle isn't categorically valid, but...let's pretend I'm going to test this unbiasedly.

I'm pretty sure I read some things trashing this type of egoism in an ethical theory class. I should look those up again.

Cheers.

Incorrigible Implants.

Woah, it's been a doozy.

Hello, family. Another post, haphazardly posted from my room.

I'm back at Tufts. It's been over two weeks, in fact.

I had this entry planned about how hellish Friday was-- or perhaps more bizarre than hellish-- but that was all on the condition that Friday was the 13th. My computer's set to Japanese time so I was sure that the day's worth of frustration was due to it being Friday the 13th, but Jeremy tactfully informed me that it wasn't. Now my Friday the 13th post is ruined and I'm not sure my petty, bourgeois annoyances are even worth relating.

I can talk about Revolutionary Road. To be honest, the book has a great beginning and a great end, but the middle sort of dragged for me-- though I figured it would be this way. I still really adored the book; Yates has a great way with language and crafting pathetic but sympathetic characters that's really engaging.[Did I just write that sentence?] But I guess one thing I did notice is that unlike James Baldwin or Haruki Murakami, Richard Yates doesn't really inspire me to write. He just leaves me feeling kind of sad, I guess.

I do recommend this book. It's essentially about a married couple in the 1950s, idealistic and flawed and unsatisfied, and all the foibles they have as parents and people and everything. A couple who shouldn't be married, who shouldn't live where they live, who shouldn't have children, who shouldn't have the friends they have. Perfectly dysfunctional.

I don't know how to go further without spoiling the book, but the book is moving: the husband is such a manipulative, self-satisfied sort of man and the wife is...more complicated. I feel bad for her at times, that she's a little too confused to know what she's doing. And there are sexist overtones at points in the book-- read at your own risk.

Some quotes:

Cute exchanges like this:

"I happen to be very annoyed with Maureen at the moment,"she was saying. "This vacation mix-up is only the latest in a long line of foolishness, but that's beside the point. The main thing--" and here she looked at him keenly--"The important thing, is that I'm very deeply concerned about her too. I've known her a good deal longer and I believe I know her better than you do, Mr. Wheeler. She's a very young, very insecure, very sweet kid, and she's gone through a lot of hell in the past few years. Right now she needs guidance and she needs friendship. On the face of it-- and I hope you'll forgive my speaking plainly-- on the face of it, the one thing she definitely does not need is to get involved in a pointless affair with a married man. Mind you, I'm not-- please don't interrupt. I'm not interested in moralizing. I'd much rather feel that you and I can discuss this thing as civilized adults. But I'm afraid I must begin with an awkward question. Maureen appears to be under the impression that you're in love with her. Is this true?"
The answer was so classically simple that the framing of it filled him with pleasure. "I'm afraid I don't think that's any of your business."
She leaned back and smiled at him in a canny, speculative way, letting little curls of smoke dribble out of her nostrils, picking a flake of cigarette paper from her lip with the lacquered nails of little-finger and thumb. He was reminded of Bart Pollock at lunch saying, "Let me see how good a judge of character I am," and he wanted to reach across the table and strangle her.
"I think I like you, Frank," she said at last. "May I call you that? I think I even like your way of getting angry; it shows integrity." She came forward again, took a coquettish sip of her drink, and propped one elbow on the table. "Oh, look, Frank," she said. "Let's try to understand each other. I think you're possibly a very nice, serious boy with a nice wife and a couple of nice kids out there in Connecticut, and I think possibly all that's happened here is that you've gone and gotten yourself involved in a very human, very understandable situation. Doesn't that about sum it up?"
"No," he said. "It doesn't even come close. Now I'll try, okay?"
"Okay."
"Okay. I think you're a meddling, tiresome woman, possibly a latent lesbian, and very definitely"-- he laid a dollar bill on the table--"very definitely a pain in the ass. Have a nice vacation."
--
Fights like this:

[Frank and April, on why she's been in sleeping in the living room]
"All right," she said, backing away another step. "It's because I don't love you. How's that?"
Luckily the bland psychiatrist's smile was still on his face; it saved him from taking her seriously. "That isn't much of an answer," he said kindly. "I wonder what you really feel. I wonder if what you're really doing here isn't sort of trying to evade everything until you're-- well, until you're in analysis. Sort of trying to resign from personal responsibility between now and the time you begin your treatment. Do you suppose that might be it?"
"No." She had turned away from him. "Oh, I don't know; yes. Whatever you like. Put it whichever way makes you feel the most comfortable."
"Well," he said, "it's hardly a question of making me comfortable. All I'm saying is that life does have to go on, analysis or not. Hell, I know you're having a bad time just now; it has been a tough summer. The point is we've both been under a strain, and we ought to be trying to help each other as much as we can. I mean God knows my own behavior has been pretty weird lately; matter of fact I've been thinking it might be a good idea for me to see the headshrinker myself. Actually--" he turned and stood looking out the window, tightening his jaw. "Actually, one of the reasons I've been hoping we could get together again is because there's something I'd like to tell you about: something kind of-- well, kind of neurotic and irrational that happened to me a few weeks ago."
And almost, if not quite, before he knew what his voice was up to, he was telling her about Maureen Grube. He did it with automatic artfulness, identifying her only as "a girl in New York, a girl I hardly even know," rather than as a typist at the office, careful to stress that there had been no emotional involvement on his part while managing to imply that her need for him had been deep and ungovernable. His voice, soft and strong with an occasional husky falter or hesitation that only enhanced its rhythm, combined the power of confession with the narrative grace of romantic storytelling.
"And I think the main thing was simply a case of feeling that my-- well, that my masculinity'd been threatened somehow by all that abortion business; wanting to prove something; I don't know. Anyway, I broke it off last week; the whole stupid business. It's over now; really over. If I weren't sure of that I guess I could never've brought myself to tell you about it."
For half a minute, the only sound in the room was the music on the radio.
"Why did you?" she asked.
He shook his head, still looking out the window. "Baby, I don't know. I've tried to explain it to you; I'm still trying to explain it to myself. That's what I meant about it being a neurotic, irrational kind of thing. I--"
"No," she said. "I don't mean why did you have the girl; I mean why did you tell me about it? What's the point? Is it supposed to make me jealous, or something? Is it supposed to make me fall in love with you, or back into bed with you, or what? I mean what am I supposed to say?"
He looked at her, feeling his face blush and twitch into an embarrassed simper that he tried, unsuccessfully, to make over into the psychiatric smile. "Why don't you say what you feel?"
She seemed to think this over a few seconds and then she shrugged. "I have. I don't feel anything.
"In other words you don't care what I do or who I go to bed with or anything. Right?"
"No, I guess that's right. I don't."
"But I want you to care!"
"I know you do. And I suppose I would if I loved you; but you see I don't. I don't love you and I never really have, and I never really figured it out until this week, and that's why I'd just as soon not do any talking right now. Do you see?" She picked up a dust cloth and went into the living room, a tired, competent housewife with chores to do.
"And listen to this," said an urgent voice on the radio."Now, during the big Fall Clearance, you'll find Robert Hall's entire stock of men's walk shorts and sport jeans drastically reduced!"
Standing foursquare and staring down at his untouched glass of iced tea on the table, he felt his head fill with such a dense morass of confusion that only one consecutive line of thought came through: an abrupt remembrance of what Sunday this was, which explained why the kids were over at the Campbells', and which also meant there wasn't much time left for talking.
"Oh, now listen," he said, wheeling and following her into the living room with decisive, headlong strides. "You just put down that God damn rag a minute and listen. Listen to me. In the first place, you know God damn well you love me."
--

And then fights like this:

"Oh," she said. "Oh, Frank, you really are a wonderful talker. If black could be made into white by talking, you'd be the man for the job. So now I'm crazy because I don't love you-- right? Is that the point?"
"No. Wrong. You're not crazy, and you do love me; that's the point."
She got to her feet and backed away from him, her eyes flashing. "But I don't," she said. "In fact, I loathe the sight of you. In fact if you come any closer, if you touch me or anything I think I'll scream."
Then he did touch her, saying, "Oh baby, lis--" and she did scream.
It was plainly a false scream, done while she looked coldly into his eyes, but it was high, shrill, and loud enough to shake the house. When the noise of it was over, he said:
"God damn you. God damn all your snotty, hateful little-- Come here, God damn it--"
She switched nimbly past him and pulled a straight chair around to block his path; he grabbed it and slung it against the wall and once of its legs broke off.
"And what're you going to do now?" she taunted him. "Are you going to hit me? To show how much you love me?"
"No." All at once he felt massively strong. "Oh, no. Don't worry. I couldn't be bothered. You're not worth the trouble it'd take to hit you. You're not worth the power it'd take to blow you up. You're an empty--" He was aware, as his voice filled out, of a sense of luxurious freedom because the children weren't here. Nobody was here, and nobody was coming; they had this whole reverberating house to themselves. "You're an empty, hollow fucking shell of a woman..." It was the first opportunity for a wide-open, all-out fight they'd had in months, and he made the most of it, stalking and circling her as he shouted, trembling and gasping for breath. "What the hell are you living in my house for, if you hate me so much? Huh? Will you answer that? What the hell are you carrying my child for?" like John Givings, he pointed at her belly. "Why the hell didn't you get rid of it, when you had the chance? Because listen. Listen. I got news for you." The great pressure that began to be eased inside him now, as he slowly and quietly intoned his next words, made it seem that this was a cleaner breakthrough into truth than any he had ever made before:"I wish to God you'd done it."
--

And sexist exchanges like these..
...
"Oh, Frank. Can you really think artists and writers are the only people entitled to lives of their own? Listen: I don't care if it takes you five years of doing nothing at all; I don't care if you decide after five years that what you really want is to be a bricklayer or a mechanic or a merchant seaman. Don't you see what I'm saying? It's got nothing to do with definite, measurable talents-- it's your very essence that's being stifled here. it's what you are that's being denied and denied in this kind of life."
"And what's that?" For the first time he allowed himself to look at her-- not only to look but to put down his glass and take hold of her leg, and she covered and pressed his hand with both of her own.
"Oh, don't you know?" She brought his hand gently up her hip and around to the flat of her abdomen where she pressed it close again. "Don't you know? You're the most valuable and wonderful thing in the world . You're a man."
And of all the capitulations in his life, this was the one that seemed most like a victory. Never before had elation welled more powerfully inside him; never had beauty grown more purely out of truth; never in taking his wife had he triumphed more completely over time and space. The past could dissolve at his will and so could the future; so could the walls of this house and the whole imprisoning wasteland beyond it, towns and trees. He had taken command of the universe because he was a man, and because the marvelous creature who opened and moved for him, tender and strong, was a woman.
--

In other news...
I'd like to think it's my strep throat but I've been feeling really aggressive lately-- argumentative, angry, wanting to hurt people's feelings. I've been feeling a sort of obnoxious sense of self-pity-- that kids at this school don't deserve my kindness, that I've been playing with kid gloves a little too long, that I should really be more callous.

I think I just need some more down time. I think I'll be better in the morning.

Cheers.