I picked up the first book intending to read only to the bit where the vampire sparkles. I was told this occurred early in the book, but I was misled. After wading through 200 pages of Bella and Edward exchanging significant glances and Bella’s internal monologue about Edward’s perrrrfect sillhouette and deliiiicious-smelling breath (seriously? a vampire? shouldn’t he smell like blood?), Edward finally sparkled. I was so close to the end that I finished the book, but first I bought sparkly gel pens and left my opinions in the margins. I then proceeded to mark up the second book and got halfway through the third before nausea left me unable to read any further. (I am now enjoying The Scar by China Mieville.)

I don’t expect teen romance novels to be beautifully written, but the messages these books send are flat-out apalling. Bella has no interests aside from Edward, scorning human friends unless she needs something from them. In the first book, Edward snuck into Bella’s room every night and watched her sleep–she finds out after a couple months and is of course flattered by his attention. Later on, Edward forbids Bella to see her werewolf friends, even disabling her truck so she can’t disobey. The Cullens basically keep her as a pet–seriously, they carry her around. Oh, and did I mention that the whole reason Edward is so fascinated by Bella is because she smells like the tastiest walking dinner he has ever encountered and he has to constantly battle desires to drain her of blood? As of now, her only plans for the future consist of becoming a vampire and living happily ever after.

My eventual plan is to finish, ahem, annotating the books, include warning signs of abusive relationships inside each cover, and release them into the wild, possibly through Bookcrossing.

I read for fun. This is hard to do in grad school; my weekdays are filled with homework and projects and the half-time job that pays for my education, and on weekends I try to get outside and see friends as much as I possibly can without compromising my grades. I can’t imagine what life will be like once I start working on my thesis in a month or so. After squinting at words on a computer screen all day long I can’t bear to read anything that isn’t compelling. Lately my two genres of choice have been domestic fiction and cyberpunk. Between May and September last year I plowed through the complete adult works of Jane Austen, William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy, a handful of Discworld novels I hadn’t previously read or didn’t remember, and the first Jason Bourne book (haven’t picked up another). Then I devised a challenge for myself: how long could I go reading only women authors? Twisty’s sci-fi thread served as my initial source of authors and aside from a brief Discworld lapse I haven’t really looked back. I have finally decided to devote this little piece of internet real estate to my exploration of woman-authored science/speculative fiction.

Coming soon: Marge Piercey’s Woman on the Edge of Time.

I’m a classic introvert, according to my mother, who just finished reading Upside-down Brilliance: The Visual Spatial Learner by Linda Kreger Silverman. I’ve been perusing the introvert chapter and she’s definitely right. As an introvert, I don’t hate people–I just find the majority of folks exhausting because I don’t know* or trust them. I also want social interaction to go as smoothly as possible and project a public face in order to mask what’s really going on in my head so I can get the hell away in a polite but efficient manner. This mess is based on a rabid desire for privacy, and not just in terms of knowing I’m the only one who reads my email or looks in my sock drawer. Physical privacy is necessary for my happiness but I’m more protective of my thoughts and feelings and concerns, only talking seriously to a few close friends. Everyone else deals with the public face’s cheerful banter. I only relax when I’m at home, and if I don’t trust who I’m living with or my home is constantly invaded** I get a bit twitchy. If I have nowhere else to go, nowhere I can be comfortable or alone, I become desperately unhappy.

Silverman writes, “The American dream is to be extraverted. We want our children to prefer to play outside with their buddies rather than retire with a good book Our concept of being “well-adjusted” means making friends easily and having lots of them, liking parties, being eager for new experiences, being good risk takers, being open about feelings, being trusting, and loving to be with people all the time. Anyone who doesn’t fit this gregarious pattern is viewed with some concern….Introverts must feel very misunderstood and unacceptable in an extraverted world.” In short, I’m a Bad American.

I’m also a Bad Woman. “I find that many gifted women are “closet introverts.” With their astute social awareness and imitative abilities, they’ve learned the language of extraversion very well, and the face that they present to the world is quite outgoing. Gifted women may be so good at feigning extraversion that they believe their persona is who they really are. The feminine role is incompatible with introversion. Women are supposed to be other-oriented, to be caretakers, to be aware of what other people want even if unspoken, to be selfless. If you’d much rather read a book than talk on the telephone, there must be something wrong with you.”

This is me. If I was a dude, introversion would be jolly good. Women are not supposed to be strong and silent–we’re supposed to be giggling and hugging and patting children on the head and happy happy HAPPY. I wonder how often dudes are asked when they’re having children? No one believes me when I say I don’t want kids and the question comes with increasing frequency now that I’ve finished my undergraduate degree and I’m in a committed relationship with a man. Other women, especially if they’re pregnant or toting a baby around, assure me that children are the coolest thing ever and if I don’t have five I’m missing out. I tell them I’m not committing to anything until I finish my PhD and as I’m just starting a MS program that usually shuts them up. Their life’s work will be mothering, which is certainly an important job, but not one that I want.

I blame the patriarchy for expecting bubbliness and selflessness from people based on their crotchmeat when they’d rather be left alone to think in peace.

*I’m not talking about knowing their name–I know lots of names which are attached to faces, but I don’t know the people behind the faces, and until I know the people the faces scare me.
**Living with my parents this summer, invasions come in the form of 4-H kids, relatives, and neighbors–people I do not trust and don’t want to see at home.

“‘Gay’ is his new favorite adjective.”
“As in, he assigns sexual orientation to inanimate objects?”
“No, ‘gay’ as in bad or undesirable. The meaning has evolved.”

I was speechless, which is unusual. I literally could not think of anything to say to counter my mother’s assertion that it was perfectly okay to use homosexuality as an insult. She certainly speaks up whenever the person in question uses femininity as a slur–somehow calling something or someone a ‘pussy’ or ’sissy’ is horribly wrong, but blatantly using ‘gay’ in a derogatory way doesn’t even register on her radar. Looking back, I should have suggested this comparison.

‘Cunt,’ ‘pussy,’ ’sissy,’ etc. imply weakness or dirtiness because of femininity; in my mind, saying ‘that’s so gay’ when you could say ‘that’s so bad’ is similar. No corresponding male- or heterosexual-based insults exist; ‘cock’, ‘dick,’ and the like spring to mind, but those words are associated with meanness or arrogance. Le sigh.

I love my Economics of the Developing World class and I am going to miss it greatly when the semester ends. The professor is a very empathetic Indian man and his favorite saying is, “You’ve got to have some compassion with your passion! Have a heart!” He admits that markets fail on a regular basis and doesn’t bellow about free trade creating wealth when someone mentions fair trade or, gods forbid, the unprivileged proportion of the global population which does not see any of said wealth up close. At my lower-end* undergrad university the majority of the economics faculty are blatantly right-wing neoclassical, a philosophy I bought as a wee impressionable sophomore because professors are always correct, right? but puked back not long after my first economics course. As my degree requires a sizable handful of economics credits, I have suffered through five semesters of overly-idealized efficiency-oriented poo, so this class was a relief. I enjoy shitting on classical economics from a great height** at least three times per week. The conversation in my head goes something like this…

Me: But, free-market economists, free markets do not actually exist and your ridiculous assumptions do not hold up on even a very small scale!
Adam Smith: *plays with the Invisible Hand*
Me: Property rights are not enforced in the developing world! Externalities are common even in the developed world! Technology is not constant, competition isn’t perfect, and I need a nap.
Adam Smith: *forms the Invisible Hand into an extremely rude gesture, which I ignore because the Hand is, well, Invisible*
Me: I’m going to find a great height from which to shit and while doing so I will think about the government’s role favorably and it won’t just protect private property rights and sometimes mess with interest rates!
Adam Smith: *lurches away, dragging the invisible hand, as zombie economists of yesteryear will*

And now for that nap…

*Some programs are decent, some are impressive, some are understaffed and sad. That’s what happens when the state decides public universities aren’t worth funding.
**Phrase blatantly stolen from another favorite faculty member. Say it with a Scottish accent if you want to be a happier person.

Gilmore Girls is finally ending, hooray. Since I’ve been watching that show with reasonable faithfulness since it’s inception and I am approximately the same age as Rory, you might expect a little more wistfulness. However, Gilmore Girls warrants increasingly high scores on the Irritation O’Meter. I originally enjoyed the show because Rory and Lorelai were so snippy, smart, and independent, but over the last few years they’ve slowly spiraled into madness characterized by troubles with OMG MEN. Additionally, women keep getting pregnant, and everyone’s all, “But you’ll love being a mother! You’ll be great!” No mention of, oh, I dunno, not squeezing out a kid just because one started growing in your uterus, even though you don’t really want it and can’t really afford it. Irresponsible reproduction is not something intelligent women should promote.

One of my biggest complaints about the series is conspicuous consumption. Between ever-expanding vast wardrobes, ordering takeout, and eating at restaurants, their single income household should be bankrupt–particularly as Lorelai also owns a business. Statistically speaking, estimating the amount of money spent on food shouldn’t be too difficult. My sister owns the first five seasons on dvd, so if I were to stratify by season and watch a few random episodes I could come up with a reasonable tally of how often Rory and Lorelai eat restaurant food or buy massive mugs of coffee on a daily basis, and calculating estimators is deceptively simple after data has been collected. If I can just get through finals week, success will be mine…