DISQUS

It's kind of a scary time to embark on a new business but if anyone can make it work you can!

Good luck!*hugs*

Aw! Happy birthday, Chris's "baby" brother!

I wish my sister and I could get along better too. Probably a lost cause though. *shrug*

I absolutely love hummingbirds. It always makes me smile to see the blur of their tiny wings as they zip around the flowers at school.

Gosh, it would be tempting to go back and fix mistakes in my past. But I'm sure I'd fuck up something else. I'm in an okay place now and I wouldn't want to make it so that Sarah didn't exist or something. Besides, I'd be afraid to do some kind of butterfly-stomping thing like in that "Sound of Distant Thunder" story.

And it would be cool to see the future. But only if there is one. If I went and found out that the world gets blown up in 20 years it would make it really hard to get out of bed in the morning.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm a wuss and I'd just stay here.

*sigh* That's such a sad story!

I wish Eric and I had been able to get his grandma's old car. (Ford Taurus) We loved it and had driven it to Vegas and San Francisco in the past.

Instead one of his cousins got it and totaled it like a week later. Now THAT's sad.

This is exactly what I've found with my family. I'm trying hard basically to overcome the way I was raised, although it's difficult (particularly when it comes to my obsession with having enough money, since I'm terrified of being homeless again someday.) That makes it tough to talk to my mother, who sincerely believes that she never made a single mistake in raising us. Still, at least she is content to let me live my life and even expresses pride in how far I've come.

On the other hand, my sister, who knows how to push buttons I didn't even know I had, constantly accuses me of, basically, not "keeping it real" in terms of our culture and way of life as a family.

And that hurts, since I am very consciously trying to create a family life for Sarah that reflects both her cultures...which means holding on to the things I believe were positive about our upbringing, and letting go of the rest.

So she hasn't really bought totally into my latest reinvention of myself any more than she bought into the others. In fact, it always seems like she's trying to strip away the layers of reinvention I've built up and turn me back into the scared little fat girl who cried all the time that she was always so contemptuous of and knew she could bully with impunity.

To make a long story short (too late), I know what you mean.

If they made you happy it's like remembering a dream. I cherish the memory of certain dreams I've had, although they weren't "real."

And, surely, even remembered dreams of happiness would be preferable to crying to nobody for eternity about your crappy fate.

Look at the bright side: Perhaps death would create a different mindset which would prepare you for the new environment.

And anyway, life is really too short for you to totally mindfuck yourself worrying about what happens when you die. You'll find out soon enough.

With memories, I suppose.

Which would mean it is important to live as fully (and make as many interesting memories) as possible--not too bad an idea in any case.

No (I'm probably dangerously close to insanity as it is), but I would probably be tempted to look in the index for just a few answers.

I like the little letter. Cute! Where'd you get the picture?

Eek, now I feel on the spot. The crisis of masculinity, as I and others perceive it, is the disconnect straight American men feel from the traditional masculine model of their fathers and grandfathers because of the threat posed to it by women's and gay liberation, and the difficulty of trying to redefine their own masculinity.

Okay. Here's the short version. Lester feels unable to express his masculinity because his wife Carolyn dominates him financially and emotionally. Because she denies him sex, he seeks out unsuitable love objects (Angela) whom he can, in turn, dominate and who will not question his masculinity. In doing so, he also sublimates his incestuous desires for Jane.

Ricky serves as Lester's doppelganger, the mysterious double every person supposedly has and who, in folklore, heralds one's own imminent death when one sees him. To Lester, Ricky represents his own free younger self. Ricky provides Lester with both a conduit to his freedom (by selling him marijuana and introducing the idea of simply quitting one's job) and a suitable (non-incestuous) sexual partner for Jane of whom Lester can approve. Of course, Ricky also fulfills his folkloric role by introducing Lester to his father the Colonel, who eventually kills him.

The Colonel is the latent homosexual who channels what he perceives as illicit desire and his fear at being discovered into an intense homophobia. His choice of the military as a career both lampoons and reinforces the military as a male charade (a performance of masculinity for a global audience) and haven for closeted gays. His own wife does not work, portraying the traditional homemaker role as a prison which reduces her to a ghost.

There is no happy medium between the roles of the Colonel's wife, who keeps an immaculate house but has become less than human, and the "bloodless, money-grubbing freak" Carolyn has become.

Lester eventually arrives at a new definition of masculinity, sensitive without being gay, sensual without being sexually threatening, and resolves his incestuous feelings by reminding himself of the vulnerability of Jane and Angela. Of course, in so doing he renders himself abject in the diegesis of the film--he can no longer fit inside the confines of his world, and so must die.

Therefore, the film offers the not-very-comforting idea that to resolve the crisis of masculinity is to become a new sort of person that cannot fit into traditional American life, meaning you must be expelled from the community.

Whew! Hope you don't think that's too weird.

My husband maintains that the film is a sort of Zen text, which the filmmakers kind of validate in the DVD commentary. So I guess I did all that thinking for nothing. Ha.

I thought that was a great article, particularly since I read an expose of sorts on the "wimpster" in my last BUST magazine. Of course, they hit the nail on the head when they mention the underlying misogyny that makes the wimpster a threat.

There's a big difference between being genuinely honest and sensitive and merely using the appearance of honesty and sensitivity to manipulate women into making it "all about you."

That being said, I am really obsessed with what I perceive to be the crisis of masculinity in postmodern America so I read this kind of stuff all the time. I think it might be starting to annoy my husband, especially since I offered my critique of "American Beauty" (which I just recently saw) as a work that explores the American crisis of masculinity through the themes of the doppelganger, the threat of femaleness and the homophobia/latent homosexuality of the American male.

Weird, that. All the only children I've known have been insufferably spoiled and self-centered, but I don't think that's necessarily "sick."

I am, for my part, very concerned that Sarah should not be an only child, so we're planning to try for another baby soon. But that's mostly because my mother always said people who had only one child were asking for trouble: what if something happened to that only child? You'd have nothing left to live for. So I guess it's like not putting all your eggs in one basket.

The LA Times recently had an interesting article about the problem of China's only children being insufferably spoiled and self-centered. It was called "The Little Emperors" or something like that. So I guess the world is aware of the problem.

Love the new look.

Is it Norma Shearer?

Believe me, I know what you mean about death. I had to deal with losing both my father and maternal grandfather (okay, I hated him, but still) during my pregnancy, and continue to be faced with the gradual deterioration of Eric's maternal grandparents, whom I love dearly.

I'm sorry about your poor little cat. I still miss my beloved guinea pigs, which died several years ago, and my dwarf rabbit, which my ex-husband had put down practically immediately after I left him. *sniffle*

Thanks! We love her lots. And she just gets cuter every day. :)

P.S. I went back to classes yesterday, 1 week after surgery. Boy, I'm tough. Not smart...just tough.

No, unfortunately my family can't afford the trip from Texas, so we're taking plenty of pictures.

Eric's family all lives fairly close though, so it kind of evens out.

Oooh, firefly larvae! Never seen those. That sounds cool.

...Hey, by the way, did you get the e-mail with the pictures of my new baby?

...mmm, I don't know, it seems like one of those things that could either be really cool or really lame, depending on how it was used.

Probably people would just use it to display sports team logos or something equally lame.

*laugh* Sorry! Didn't know I was so wild, did you Chris?

Ah, it's all good fun...I love a good set of boobies as much as the next guy, I guess. Ha.

Oh, how I miss strip clubs. I hate to go to them broke though, so I'll have to wait until I have some money saved up and a suitable babysitter before I can go to one again.

Interesting, but really not too surprising...I mean, it makes sense that even animals want to be treated fairly.

Now, to teach them sign language for "take this job and shove it."

I, too, love looking at the wild mushrooms that sprout up in the park near our house. They're the flat brown kind though, not nearly as dramatic looking.

I always used to sleep starfish style (which is not so nice for whoever shares the bed with you.) But, since I've been pregnant I've had to sleep on my side--that's the rule. I can't wait until I can sleep however I want again!

*shrug* I don't know, I figured out it was James Dean at first brief glance before looking at the pic to the side or the description.

You definitely have the lips and cheekbones right. Just my $.02