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the latest
waddle: good morning, wordpress - 10:36 a.m. , 2009-07-03 elaborate murder attempt - 2:56 p.m. , 2009-07-01 building a tractor in the basement - 10:42 a.m. , 2009-06-19 ask no questions tell just a few lies - 3:17 p.m. , 2009-06-09 my long lasting flavor really lasts long - 1:10 p.m. , 2009-06-04
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HOORAY FOR BLACK HOLES 1. Last night LT and I watched a television program on black holes. I love black holes. This was on some science-oriented cable channel, and their tag line before going to commercial was "We're expanding your universe" which really started to irritate me given the subject matter. No! I wanted to yell. In point of fact you are collapsing my universe! You are compressing it to a singularity! 2. I liked the black hole program a lot because it assumed you already knew something about black holes so it didn't waste a lot of time. However, they did talk about Isaac Newton a little bit. At this stage Newton showed no great talent. His scientific genius emerged suddenly when the plague closed the University in the summer of 1665 and he had to return to Lincolnshire. There, within 18 months he began revolutionary advances in mathematics, optics, physics, and astronomy. As LT put it, "Damn. What have I done in the past 18 months?" 3. Every time the program used the term "event horizon" I thought: I should throw another party. 4. I like nature stuff (little baby animals), I like physics (especially black holes), and I like technology (especially big giant tunnel boring machines, earth movers, and submarines). Therefore, perhaps the perfect, get-all-your-TV-viewing-over-with-in-one-shot program for me would be about a very cute turtle that heroically drags itself up on the deck of an aircraft carrier to lay its little turtle eggs. Then the aircraft carrier could somehow get shot into space. Yes please. MADAME BOVARY I AM NOT There is a good, if somewhat glib, article in the latest issue of Bitch about female infidelity. It makes the point that all the literature, both feminist and otherwise, tends to "problematize" (oho! And I didn't even go to graduate school!) women's cheating: Both well-meaning feminist pundits of pop psychology and those who just want to police female behavior insist that when women cheat, it is a sign that there is something terribly wrong with us, our men, or our relationships. In other words, monogamy is our "natural" state, in contrast to men, whose desire for multiple partners is framed as sociobiologically inescapable. There is no room in either view for someone who is neither fleeing domesticity, looking for love, nor wishing to find a more suitable mate. In reality, women cheat for the same wide range of reasons that men do, whether it's for excitement, understanding, love, or simple sexual variety. And a relationship, even with the best-suited partner, does not erase or transform these desires. Of course, me being me, I kind of wish that this article was framed a little differently, or rather I wish for a separate, other article that discusses notions of monogamy and "cheating" and whether they (the notions) are natural, desirable, or even well-defined. I am married, and I love LT and I love being married. At least for me, though---as long as our relationship remained strong and healthy and fun and humorous and affectionate and sexual---if the occasional other party were to be introduced to the equation (and if the very reasonable criteria that synthetic zero sets out [scroll down] were met), I would be very hard-pressed to see what the big deal was. Wow. That was a fucked-up sentence. I'd also like society to stop thinking about monogamy as an all-or-nothing affair. In the same Bitch article, this statistic really bothered me: "At least 8% of female respondents in a survey on infidelity conducted by the English magazine Woman's Journal said that even lustful thoughts constituted cheating." Okay, it's a minority opinion, but still! And I personally know other women who have felt ashamed about fantasizing about someone other than their partner. (Um, that's why it's called fantasy.) TALK TO ME BECAUSE I AM CURIOUS What do you consider infidelity? Is it sneaking around, hotel rooms on the secret credit card, and cinematic garter-belt sex? How about kissing someone else a little too long at midnight on New Year's Eve? How about looking at pornography? How about having a best friend that you tell everything to, things that you don't really want or need to tell your partner? How about that really sexy smart girl you knew in high school, and you are in orchestra together and you both have boyfriends, but you spend a couple of afternoons at her house watching movies and the next thing you know you and she are making out on the couch like crazed minks, and you never talk about it in school or indeed ever again? (Damn. I always say too much.) How about lustful THOUGHTS, for crying out loud? (Here is where I have a pang of self-referential worry that you are right now moving Mimi Smartypants from your mental "Nice Girl" column and placing her into the "Freaky Weird Ho" column. I always learn the hard way that I don't have to post everything I think about or read.) THANK YOU FOR CLEARING THAT UP Snorkel box snorkel box snorkel box. If you need me, I'll just be over here in the corner thinking about the snorkel box. ---mimi smartypants revels in the dips when her backbone slips. back/forward |
