Learning to Chew

Whenever I tell people I'm studying to be a chemist, they seem to immediately assume (as one british woman recently put it) that I "must be very clever!" I, on the other hand, have some serious doubts.

For starters, is science really more "intelligence demanding" than the humanities? This is a tricky and debatable subject so feel free to disagree. But by my own personal definition of intelligence though, it kind of is. Intelligence is technically defined as "capacity...for mental activity" which seems about right. Personally though, I think of true intelligence as creativity within boundaries. If you have a blank piece of paper you can do anything too, then well, anything can do anything to it and it's not all that special. If you have to figure out a way, say, to turn that paper into something specific while working within a variety of limitations, then that clearly takes a lot more thought and cleverness. The reason a lot of people think that art is easier than science, is probably because (technical drawing and rendering skills aside) progress art is all about creativity, and progress in science is all about creativity within an ever increasing number of limitations (AKA Problem Solving). It's also very common to find someone who is good at humanities but bad at math, but (in my experience) much rarer to find someone who is the other way round. But rarer doesn't always mean better, so please, feel free to prove me wrong. Of course I'm going to propagate the idea that science=smarts, because I'm a science student, and this is very flattering to my ego. Besides, Being good at studying something is can be very different than being good at doing it.

But asides aside, back to my nagging personal insecurities. Intellectually, I've always found myself in kind of an awkward middle ground, and I never know how smart I should consider myself to be. My SAT scores were good but not perfect. Sometimes I was in the top 10% of my highschool class, sometimes I struggled for hours to get a B-. People think I'm smart because I'm a science student in a nice college, but my grades are mediocre and my college is no MIT. My highschool English teachers thought I was brilliant, but my PreCalc teacher practically had to feed me answers on a regular basis. In middle school I once developed a math formula for checking answers that my teacher had never heard of, and one day she even asked me to go over HW infront of the class for her when she had to leave abruptly; but I often have the memory of a goldfish and need to study for really long periods of time. My highschool class voted me "most intelligent girl," but nowadays I am a dark horse wannabe doctoral candidate if there ever was one. After two semesters of "biting off more than I could chew" one thing is clear: I'm going to need to learn how to chew more.

Personally I think grades are mostly based on how a course is graded, and have little to do with the actual material of the course. My teachers always tell me that I'm very smart and blame any inconsistency between my supposed intelligence and my grades on lack of organizational skills and effort. But I often wonder if they're just confusing intelligence with the ability to express myself well, learn from a book instead of a teacher, and act with confidence (which is sometimes pulled out of my ass), instead of panicking and demanding immediate babying. Maybe I'm just good at acting smart?

Well, we may soon actually find out. The more time I spend studying chemistry, the more I find that a) almost everything I like about chemistry involves physics, b) I like a lot of things about physics too, and c) Both chemistry and physics are based on a lot of math. The obvious course of action then, is to take more classes in math and physics. Which is what I'll be doing. All at once. And (hopefully!) in an Ivy League University. If there was ever a time that I could admit to feeling "math anxiety" this is probably it.

Oh, and If I fuck this up, then I might as well forget about gradschool. Let's hope that'll get me to class on time.

The Penis Monologues

So I was eating Dinner the other day and reminded that this blog exists and that I should probably write something.

So in honor of the play I saw on this very Red, Pink, and Heart-Shaped weekend (In which my two friends did an AWESOME job) I'm going to propose a Brilliant Idea: The Penis Monologues.

No Really, I'm dead serious.

It seems women love to talk about sex for a variety of reasons.

1) We were oppressed and denied any recognition of having sexual desires for years, and even once that passed we really couldn't talk about it as much as we probably should. Feminism, etc. etc. blah blah blah, by being able to talk about these things frankly we are making a political statement that is both empowering and encourages health and awareness surrounding vaginas.

2) Female bonding patterns. Maybe it's a stereotype, but it is apparently far more common for girls to use their friends more as a support network and group of confidantes than men do, at least at younger ages. Where dudes might shy away from the personal, chicks apparently dig talking about it ad nauseum. Where some girls get together and have sex toy and vibrator parties (I'm not kidding- My mother actually did this recently, and my college has hosted at least a dozen. ) some guys will probably just hide their porn in some secretive subfolder on their hard disk and try to bring as little attention to it as possible.

And this is exactly why we need the Penis Monologues. The truth is, men and their dicks probably have just as much pressure put on them by society as women do, they just don't talk about it as much. In fact, they're probably not even encouraged to talk about it nearly as much as women are just because they lack the two resources listed above.

And of course, the final reason clearly necessitating this play's existence, is that I personally think it would be really entertaining. I mean, I have a vagina, a play about it will be entertaining and heartwarming (though honestly it's not my favorite piece) but not terribly informative. Let's see how the other side lives a bit, OK?

PS- I may have mentioned this earlier, but I realize that every time I blog about sex (which is a lot) I tend to explain things in a very gendered and stereotypical way. PLEASE let me know (all 4 readers I have) if you feel that I am just entirely misinformed.

Hello, Old Friend

So I'll be honest with you- I had kinda given up on blogging. But then two things happened:

1. Apparently Dan and Slav still read this. And apparently drunken-Slav proclaimed that my fuck buddies article "changed his life" (or at least got him thinking in a way he hadn't before) so I guess this blog is worth something after all. But wait, what's this? Real names on Blogger? Nonono. Nicknames will be needed. From now on, I dub thee: ...Oh fuck it, Dan and Slav.

2. So sometimes when I'm feeling bored and nostalgic I roam the interwebs for the digital debris that we inevitably leave behind in our lifetimes. And by that I would usually mean "I read all of the blogbuddies old blogs" except today I remembered something special and new: ISK had a blog. Yup, remember her? Indian Sex Kitty? JV's flirty Giffle that we all thought would move on to OSK after graduation? The girl that basically moved into my room Senior year? justanotherteenblog101.blogspot.com?

In reading her old stuff with about 3 years of distance, it reminded me of a theory I have. Guys are to Girls as Sports are to Guys. Guys are the safe, go-to conversation topic when there's nothing else terribly interesting to talk about, similar to the way guys talk about football or baseball. One of the things I was never crazy about in my high school group of female friends (with some exceptions, of course) was that sometimes I felt like no matter how much we had in common, this all got shoved aside because we were too busy talking about our guy friends. "The triangle" was literally the top of the pyramid, and we were the third row following them around. On the other hand, I always felt closer to the guys anyway (as did the other girls, I think) so if anything I only added to this and probably shouldn't complain. Especially seeing as I'm likely the only one that still talks to any of them anyway. This was actually one of the (very few) reasons that prompted me to favor a women's college over a coed one when it came time to pick. I wanted to feel just as bonded with and excited about my female friends as I did my male ones.


Then again, to a certain extent it's always been that way for me in particular, and not necessarily everyone. I'm used to not having a lot of material things in common with most of my friends to begin with. We talk about common people, feelings, experiences, goals, and injokes; but only rarely hobbies, books, TV shows and movies, or games. (I guess I've always had kind of oddball taste. Or maybe just no life.) One of the things that I initially found really refreshing about having a male group of friends on highschool was the clear shift in focus (well, at least before 1am), and I always wondered if it made the conversation somehow more valuable or the bonds between the people somehow longer-lasting.

The obvious answer I guess is any friendship requires a solid balance of both- and it would do everyone well once-in-awhile to make an effort to avoid the "go-to" conversation topic (whatever it is for your gender, or group of friends, or just that particular relationship) and pull in something new.

Oh, and if you were wondering, even at women's college, we still manage to happily devote a a large chunk of time to talking about dudes. Then again, we also devote a hefty amount of time to talking about basically everybody, so I'd like to think there's a happy balance in there somewhere.

Nature

Rhino: Dude, I'm telling you. They abducted me, flew me far, far away, and performed a variety of strange tests on me in my sleep in their large, metallic bases. They've planted a small device in my horn- I think it's to track me. They could be coming back for us at any minute! Run! They're coming! They're Coming!


Other Rhinos: Schitzo...




I gotta say though- I'm not sure how I feel about all of the efforts in existance to help 'save' endangered species. Are we fighting a futile fight? And yes we mean well in helping the species as a whole, but think about the individual animals. How would you like being abducted and relocated into a new home halfway around the continent? Away from your family and friend Rhinos? No wonder some animals don't breed well in captivity. Maybe they're just depressed and don't want to subject their kids to it.


Fun Fact: a large group of Rhinos is referred to as a "crash"

Fun Fact: Almost a month off of the internet and I come back blogging about Rhinos. Wow.

< /Lull >

So I've been playing Neverwinter Nights basically nonstop after work for the past week (comparison to WoW coming at some point...maybe) when once again a technical nuisance from the gods forced me to quit and reinvest my liesure time back in the real world. (though I'm also looking forward to getting more than six hours of sleep tonight, damn video games.)

Anyway, I was reading through Gavrich's new blog/tumblr/facebook hybrid...thing and figured I should probably throw a bone to all 2.5 readers I probably have left.

So I'm going to talk about.... Dudes. Yes that's always a good one. Dudes.


The truth is, everything your mother told you about men is a lie. Namely this phrase:

"Men are sleazeballs and a guy will say absolutley anything just to get in your pants"

See, our mothers came of age in the 1970s. I wasn't alive back then, and for all I know maybe nothing's changed at all, but here is my analysis: In history class, we're taught that while the 70's 'looked' very much like the 60's, they lacked the genuine desire for cultural change and world peace. In other words, people weren't getting high to "expand their conciousness," they were just doing it for shits and giggles. By this time, I think, dudes had forsaken the "Free Love" ideals of the Sixties, but were by no means beyond taking advantage of the results of the movement to score with anyone they wanted to sleep with. The development of the pill had finally given women some control over contraception use, making it even easier and more satisfying for everyone to sleep around (even condom free...until they discovered HIV). And let's face it, every popculture rendition of the decade today basically portrays it as a giant, coke-induced orgy. While one would think that this would lead to sleazyness on both sides of genome (and in many ways it did), older overarching ideas were still strongly influential. Women could work in almost whatever field they wanted, but kicking through the glass ceiling of promotions and responsibility was another question all together. They were still freshly escaping life as merely their husband's wives, and in many ways lacked the simple respect as equals that they are given today. I'm not saying that every man who dated during the 1970s was a douchebag- but if he wanted to be, he could certainly get away with it.

Enter nowadays- Obviously people have lied to get laid. You've surely read the TFLN "I haven't gotten laid so easily since I told a girl I had cancer" and in one memorable episode of Sex and the City, Miranda (a top notch lawyer) claims to be a stewardess. I'm not going to deny that there are a fair share of sleazeballs out there, But two major things have changed. For starters, we have. While girls of the 70s were raised in the shiny suburbs of the 50s to expect perfect loving marriages and Norman Rockwell-esque turkey dinners (after they got their degree, of course), we've been raised with rape-reports almost nightly on the news (probably not PC enough for the fifties crowd?) and explicitly and frequently told to never to be too trusting in the opposite sex. Where our mothers were dissapointed, perhaps, we're not all that surprised. Over twenty or so years of this has actually (and somewhat ironically) created a stigma around Men. Upon hearing of a straight guy majoring in SWAG, my initial thought was "He is so just doing that to get laid." A friend of mine once had a guy friend who hit on her alot when he was drunk. She thought he was just drunkenly after sex and made nothing of it (like any girl nowadays would). One day he got so frustrated with her lack of serious response that he got angry, and months later she learned he was actually really into her. Obviously Beer Goggles exist, and this story is maybe more the exception than the rule, but it's undeniable that guys today do have to go just that much farther to literally 'prove' that they are genuine about something or someone, and don't just have base ulterior motives. The first time a guy ever said he had strong feelings for me, I basically said something along the lines of "No, you're probably just confusing this with my DDD breasts." (maybe a little harsh, but hey, I was 14.) Infact, with this stigma so prominent in society, it's not unusual for guys to complain about it, and even go the extra mile to be nice and considerate just to prove it wrong. (Though not to be confused with "Playing the sensitive card.")

And then there's the second factor- women as stronger peers. Now more than ever, men and women form solid and meaningful platonic friendships in coed groups. While single sex friend groups make it easier to objectify, and be generally be more reckless in, encounters with the opposite sex, a coed friend group sets a standard of decency that applies equally to everyone. Girls might not want their guy friends and coworkers to think they're a slut, and guys don't want their female friends and coworkers to think they're too much of a sleaze. Obviously many people of either gender will still be friends with someone regardless of how awefully they treat their 'conquests,' but the influence can still be pretty strong and does have an effect on society as a whole.

and here's another myth:

"As a woman, you will automatically develop strong feelings for the first person you have sex with."

The problem with that logic is it's actually circular. True, in women's brains sex is said to release large amounts of 'bonding' hormones, but is it enough to literally act as a love potion for any guy lucky (?) enough to hit home first? And is it to the same degree for all women? I suppose in my case it was...for a whole 24 hours. Yup, for 24 hours I thought it'd be pretty neato if we actually got to know each other. That's it.

This is how I think the myth started. For most people, the first person you have sex with is someone cared about to begin with, or at least is better than the average hook up. After all, they've "merited" your virginity, so clearly could not have been all that aweful to begin with. If you have sex with the first person you fall in love with, then it's probably the loss of "love virginity" (for lack of a better word) that keeps you attached, not the physical act. And as for the random hook-up method of deflowering (inwhich case maybe they weren't too special to begin with) I don't think that ever lead to one person overnight having serious feelings for another. If the former virgin is really ecstatic about a second encounter, then chances are they just want to have sex again...



And while I'm apparently on a fucking roll, let's analyze something else about people that's always confused me.

"The One Time Deal."

I was watching the most recent episode of The Guild the other day, where The-Douchebag-Antagonist-Played-By-Will-Wheaton (of course) tells Codex that the sex was great, but he only does one time deals. To me, an assertive "it was good but I'd prefer it not happen again" after a fling with someone you have nothing to lose with has always been a masked insult. Sex is good. Sex with other, real people is sometimes dissapointing, but often even better. If the sex was genuinely good, and if since said sex you've learned nothing about them to make them less appealing, and if the relationship is not exclusive, why not? Why so surely and immidiatley set on never repeating the incident no matter what life throws at you? There is no reason. Actually there are a few exceptions to this,* but outside of those I simply do not understand turning down a good thing so long as it continues to be good. The only possible conclusion is that you really just were kinda bad...

*The Exceptions:

1. Guilt. 'It was great but illicit and I feel really bad about cheating and want to put in a genuine effort not to"

2. Someone else. 'it was really enjoyable, but there is someone else who I'm banging who's even better, so they win the booty call award'. This doesn't even fully merit a permanent defacto rejection though, if you ask me, as it could easily become 'I'll put you on the backburner if this falls through.' A variant on this is also Stud. As in 'so many people clamour for my body that I literally have a new awesome person every time I want to fuck.' But I honestly don't think anyone outside of Hollywood gets that much sex. And if they do...well fuck you. And you should probably get tested.

3. Beer Goggles. 'You were really hot after that 8th tequila shot but this morning I'm just not feeling it' Then again, this isn't even a logically permanent rejection either, because you'll probably be up for it next time you have another eight tequila shots.

4. Vacation sex




So much for getting more than six hours of sleep...

Confessions

This is probably a little personal for a blog post, but I'm intrigued to see what other people think about it.

Once upon a time, when I was about 12 or so, I was having a conversation with a friend's mom and a little voice in the back of my head wondered "What would happen if I just randomly punched her in the face?" I had absolutely no desire or reason to do this, but for some reason at that moment the thought and its likely uber awkward aftermath just strongly occured to me.

Though these kinds of random and inexplicable thoughts don't plague me too often (or at least didn't for the longest time) I'm slowly coming to learn that I was actually pretty lucky back then. You see, when I was growing up, I was pretty (perhaps too much, even) assured in myself and my actions. Save a few rare exceptions, I was always more or less in control of everything that went through my mind and how I reacted to it, and it was all pretty logical. Furthermore, If I wanted to do something, I did it, and external forces were usually the only problems I had to overcome. Unlike many other people my age, I was never hindered by major insecurities about body image, 'fitting in,' eating disorders, sexuality (though that did come later), or a whole host of other things that probably contributed to making some people I knew at the time legitimatley suicidal.

But back to the 12 year-old punching anecdote. Sometimes I wonder what would have happen had I actually told a psychiatrist about this. Would they have been concerned? Would I have found myself in years of therapy when really I still would have been perfectly healthy otherwise? If everyone was put on a shrink's couch long enough, and forced to recount every single intimate thought that had ever occurred to them, would anyone be normal?

I doubt it. The more people I talk to about the past, the more I learn about the problems I never knew they were dealing with. Furthermore, as I get older, and more self aware, and gain more life experiences, I am coming to terms with the fact that no one can really be in control of everything 100% of the time. Infact, there are a lot of parts about ourselves: what makes us laugh, what turns us on, the way we think, the random thoughts that occur to us, emotional reactions, sometimes even just the mood we're in, that we really have no control over. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like it's just simply a part of the human condition.

When I was in highschool, I developed a mild tendency towards anxiety and hypochondria (for both physical and mental illnesses) that stays with me to this day. As much as I can calm myself and reassure myself that I'm being silly, It's still pretty annoying and causes me lots of stress for no reason. It's probably one of the first times I've ever had to say to myself "I really wish I wasn't like that" but really all I can do is accept it and try to deal with it as best I can. Twice in my life as well, I have been randomly, spontaneously repulsed by something entirely innocent that I would normally even like at any other moment in time. Weird, but true.

They say that the true key to happiness is to know yourself, accept yourself, and love yourself. Call me crazy, but I guess I never really knew what they meant until I realized that, oddly enough, 'yourself' isn't always as simple as what 'you' would like it to be.

...I wonder if Cavemen had to deal with this?

Selection: The Enemy of High Fashion?

Bien sûr, je fais du blogging actuellement du café !

Having found myself alone with time to kill in the world's fashion capital, I decided to do one of the few activities that is actually fun alone: go shopping. As I gazed up in awe at the stained glass ceiling of the infamous Galleries Lafayette, and then proceeded to wander through an unending seven floors of pure decadence, an epiphany occurred to me: Selection is the enemy of high fashion.

Allow me to elaborate: Let's say you are a wealthy consumer looking to wear only the best in fashion. You enter an expensive store that sells all jeans, but only one pair is embroidered and the rest are plain. If you prefer a touch of creative flair to your jeans, or even just anything colorful, you will likely try on and consider buying the embroidered pair. The nature of the embroidery itself is not important. It could be any design, but the important thing is that the jeans are embroidered and looked unique, at least in the context of that store and the few others comparable to it. Now, if there were several pairs of embroidered jeans available, you would inevitably become a more picky consumer: judging them by the nature of the embroidery to select between pairs. This brings your attention to the embroidery itself, and thus, leads you to possibly turn down hypothetical purchases because of a detail that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.

This may initially sound ridiculous, after all, if the embroidery is not exactly what you want then why not wait until you find another, fully perfect pair? Unlikely. After all, you've constrained yourself to just the nicest of stores, which isn't a lot, so the likelihood of finding embroidered jeans to begin with may not be so high, let alone another pair that you prefer. By providing you with just one pair of embroidered jeans instead of several, the designer is actually manipulating you into making a less informed decision, and buying that one pair.
Louis Vuitton is a perfect example. Would you like a large bag? OK, we offer a selection of styles, but almost all in the exact same print. When Louis Vuitton does offer things in different colors, the product immediately looks more appealing to a consumer simply because it's more unique and creative, while in reality the designers only had to change a simple detail to generate extra interest, and ergo, an excuse for extra profits.

This fact becomes obvious when looking at the bigger picture: expensive boutiques and top designer stores are small- selling just a few items that rarely come in more than one or two colors. Larger and less expensive stores however, often have entire racks of the exact same sweater in 20 different colors, hoping to draw in and please as many consumers as possible. One might even refer to it as democratized fashion.

This discovery also fits perfectly into the classical irony of high fashion. Every good designer knows that fashion is never simply a question of what outfit is the most form fitting and appealing; it's always about personal identity and expression. The classic irony of high fashion then, (in my opinion) is that top designers often draw their inspiration from sub cultures and less glamorous lifestyles. Where would fashion be without beat, hippie, army/navy, agricultural (think ripped jeans), or punk inspirations? Ultimately, you have people shelling out $200or more for a plain, subtly floral shirt that says "look at me, I'm just a simple farm girl." Clients who wish to express their personality in a certain way while sticking only within designer circles are immediately cheated of the selection they would have if they dropped their airs and headed down to Marshalls, which many are unlikely to do, insisting on nothing but the "best" quality. To return to the first example, If you want to dress well but also look like a hippie, and there is only one pair of embroidered jeans available, you are almost definitely buying those jeans.

But what about the embroidered design itself? Does that mean anything? Allow me another anecdote. A few years ago, I became a fan of the color brown. Not only was it my top choice school at the time (har har) but it was warm and neutral without being as impersonal as black or grey. Since Pink had been a favorite color of mine for awhile, I went shopping for bed sheets hoping to find a combination of the two colors. Low and behold, it seemed that Target’s entire bedding collection had gone brown and pink that year. No joke. As great as this was for me, the brown-and-pink-desiring consumer, I couldn’t help but be a little freaked out. Was this just a coincidence? Or were there other forces at work that had somehow subconsciously driven me to desire specifically brown and pink bedding?

While Target arguably falls on the more "democratized" side of the fashion spectrum, this is still very much related to the question of the nature of the embroidery on the jeans. By being ambivalent as to the specific type of embroidery on the jeans but buying them anyway, the consumer is, in fact, propagating the style chosen by the designer even though they have had little say in what it is. (Imagine voting for a party but only understanding half of the platform, who knows what could fill the other half?) Shall sparrows be big this year? Ok, the embroidery will be sparrows then. Flowers? Hearts? Brown and Pink? It's subtle, but it's very possible.

And this of course brings us to the ancient paradox: are the designer chickens controlling our eggy taste in fashion? Or are the tastes of the people hatching designers that better "suit" our needs? Are such decisions best left up to us, the average consumer, or the "talented" fashion designer? I'm not quite sure, but one thing is: if you've actually bothered to read this entire blog post (making you awesome, by the way) shopping may never be the same again...

Fuck Buddies

(Or "If I'm Ever Asked to Give a Speech Inwhich I Impart Deep, Life-Learned Wisdom upon Youth, This will Surely Be It")

Today I was talking with a friend of mine who was faced with a common decision: should she or should she not make plans to hook up with someone, despite the fact that she had been consistantly sleeping with someone else almost everyday for the past month. While the obvious answer is "yes, why not, you're just sleeping together," it provided me with the opportunity to do some serious thinking about the term "Fuck Buddies" and it lead to some pretty startling revelations.

I have always been an advocate of the great, clean cut simplicity that the term "fuck buddies" or any variation thereof seems to offer. While most people argue that just trying to keep things at that level will ultimatley fail- either resulting in a more meaningful relationship or one person desiring a more meaningful relationship and being sorely dissapointed, I disagree. Call me an idealist, but I honestly believe that it is possible in this world for two people to maintain a steady sexual relationship, and even maybe a simultaneously normal one too, without having things get too messy.

But why do things get messy? I think I've figured it out. You see, even though both parties will gladly acknowledge that they are each others' "fuck buddies" (or booty call, or FWP, or what ever they've decided to call it) and honestly admit to anyone else that they're using the other person to at least a small degree, they would hate to really think the same thing of themselves. It all depends on the way each person looks at it. While most people have no problem with "they're physically attracted to me but for some reason or another have no desire to be in a relationship" (the core basics of your average fuck buddy/FWP/BC situation) they may well have a problem with "When they're really feeling desperate and have run out of all hotter options, that's when they call me up!" or "They have a medical condition where they're just really horny all the time and have to take it out on someone!" (both of which may well be hidden or not-so-hidden details in such a relationship). In sum, It has very little to do with how much you like your fuck buddy, but very much to do with how much you think your fuck buddy likes you.

The key then, to maintaining an ideal and long lasting fuck-buddy relationship, is not nearly as simple as one might think. It requires either a.) a thorough, and at least semi-respectful understanding between two people that may actually not be so easy to find with just anyone, or b.) an intricate and careful manipulation- a balance of feeding the other person's ego just enough so that they'll enjoy sleeping with you and not feel like a tool, but not excessively so that they think you might actually want something more out of the relationship. In the latter sense, the ideal fuck-buddy relationship, therefore, might actually be a surprisingly challenging thing to maintain. Furthermore in the latter case, an ideal and lasting fuck-buddy relationship actually never lets its members see it for what it truly is in too much detail, even if they both well know the basics what's going on.

To conclude, while sex drive is obviously a key factor in perpetuating a fuck-buddy based relationship, ego and self-esteem can actually be just as important.




Hm. Fascinating.