The only time women can be happy is when they get to play the victim-hero. There is nothing more amazingly worthwhile in womens’ minds than to have had cancer, “overcome” it, then saved another person from cancer… or to have been raped, “overcome” it, then started a rape center… or had their home burn down, “overcome” it, then joined Habitat for Humanity.

It’s part of our cultural myth about women, the thing we tell them to aspire to. Women should be weak and frail and dumb and helpless enough to be a victim at some point, otherwise they aren’t feminine but masculine. But they must also be curative or act as a caretaker or crative/generative agent, so once they have demonstrated their femininity by getting victimized in some way (and thus feeling that they are worthwhile according to men), they have to them turn it into some kind of mystical, vagina-as-flower-of-creation “heroism” (which makes them feel worthwhile in the eyes of other women). Only through the victim-hero trope do women in our culture feel whole both in the face of masculine and feminine critics.

This is why women never know what they want, especially with regard to things like breakups. If a girl tells a guy to get lost and he does, she’s unhappy; she wanted him gone, but his ability to make a quick departure forces her to face the terrifying, identity-destructive possibility that she wasn’t attractive enough (i.e. feminine enough) to be victimized. She secretly wants him to be so unable to live without her that he calls her night and day crying, stalks her, and eventually rapes her. In spite of the violence of the act, the reinforcement of her femininity is ultimately good for her self worth, since she can then identify herself as irresistibly attractive to men. And of course after such an act, the other important component of the performance is that she can then call the police and become the survivor who protects other women from this monster of a man, thus becoming heroic, generative, and positive to other women. Only by becoming a victim and a hero can she look both men and women in the face without shame.

Make a note, men: either way she’ll be unhappy. She doesn’t want you anymore, but if you just go when she asks you to take a hike, she’s not gonna leave you alone. (Sound familiar, guys?) She’ll keep trying to get back with you until you turn stalker and on her, thus giving her the satisfying victim-hero breakup that she wants. She doesn’t give a damn about your feelings, it’s all about her femininity and her heroism.

As you always suspected, it’s all about her.

I’m apprehensive about today.

I don’t know why, I can’t quite put a finger on it.

Integrity. Tough thing to have.

They tell you that integrity is the most important thing.

They tell you that if you want to have integrity, you have to pay your bills and support yourself. That means that you have to have a job. They also tell you that if you want to have integrity, you have to tell the truth, to play it straight, to always say your piece and never pretend to be anyone else.

These two do not go together.

You can’t a) be honest and b) hold down a job so that you can pay your bills.

So, based on this oh-so-incredibly astute observation, fsck all of you and your integrity. I’ve been had, but no longer. I refuse to deny my own individuality.

I am here. I have opinions. I don’t like everything. I won’t die for any company. I don’t care about the shareholders. I’m in it for myself and those who comiserate with me, not for my supervisor’s bonus.

—

Also, they can take your money out of your accounts whenever they like, but you can’t stop telling them about your accounts because in order to exist or to have a job in our world, you need:

– Mobile phone
– Insured, gassed, working automobile
– Home computer or laptop computer
– Internet service and email
– Clothes that “demonstrate a basic level of professionalism in representing the company”
– A home address so that you can prove you’re not a vagrant

—

I will win, and when I do, it won’t be pretty. To all of you who are in love with the non-academy, who thought that the profit chase sounded good:

Yeah, I know you hate us.
We’ll put you against the wall, like we’ve done before.

Wait for it.

Always challenge yourself. Always bite off more than you can chew. Always. That is the key to life. Lack of prudence is the key to life.

Every time you take on a job that you’re well qualified for, or enter a relationship that you know you can handle, or begin a picture that you know you can paint, you waste your time. You know the outcome before you begin; you learn nothing, and in the grand scheme of things, you earn nothing — or at least, nothing that matters — no respect from others or from yourself, no accolades for having performed miracles or tamed beasts, no place in history for having faced insurmountable odds and won.

There is no winning in the business of guaranteed victories.

In order to win, you must begin by being almost certain to lose.

—

Every now and then, I get it.

There have been times in my life where the air seemed to crackle and swirl deliciously around me, as though it were heavy, saturated with hope and possibility. I can’t even begin to express how much I miss that feeling. I felt it my first year at Utah, as a fifteen-year-old kid on a snowy campus full of professors, theatre companies, and supercomputing institutes. I felt it again when I was re-admitted in 1993 and just discovering film, critical theory, and the Language Revue. I felt it coming back from my Odyssey of road trips in 2000, when I had spent weeks and weeks on the road, some of that time alone and in absolute silence watching the landmarks and trees fly by. I felt it my last year at Utah, along with the sense that I was already secretly a stronger, wiser man whose soul was walking somewhere across the sand in a far-away desert. I felt it my first year at Chicago, sitting in the elevated trains in one of the world’s great cities, watching the ice shimmer on the steel girders on the platform outside.

I expect to feel it again sometime during the fall of 2006. Maybe more strongly than ever.

I’m hungry for it.

But it’s a long time to wait.

other things:

i’m pretty lonely right now
i don’t know anyone here
i can’t afford a soda or a beer
i have a lot of work to do
people are going out of their way to make it hard to do my work
business people are stupid and academics are really smart
but the business people think it’s the other way around, haha

it’s hard to feel embarrassed for them, though, considering how well they milk it

First time I’ve used my own computer for more than three or four minutes at a time in nearly two weeks. I’ve got a pile of mail and SPAM to sift through. I feel like I’ve all but abandoned my blog in any substantive way.

This’ll all change, though, because I’ve taken on a moonlighting project, just in case I wasn’t fscking stressed enough already.

But truth is truth, and the truth is that I have – many – debts that need to be taken care of, so the more money I can earn at the moment, the better. Anyway, I’m living in a world of no guarantees and nothing expediently easy to live for, so I may as well burn it at both ends for a moment and try to collect some cash.

I really hate the thought of myself as a careerist, though. And after doing some resumé-reading of my own recently (having to classify them “yes, we’ll do business with them” and “utter loser”), I’m acutely aware of the deficiencies in my own career qualifications… because they’re similar to many of those that I came to see in others.

Oh well.

I gotta get me to work. But before that, I gotta spend ten minutes and relax.

—

Side note: my first paycheck from the new job is Thursday. I’m officially broke until then. As in, stone cold, can’t make a phone call at a pay phone, can’t afford a drink of water, can’t afford to step outside the house.

I’ve grown accustomed over the years to being the only person alive in a room — or a building, or even a town — that is otherwise full of dead people. (The exception being in the world of academics, where most everyone is alive.)

Now I’m one of the dead people, too. It’s not as lonely… but it’s still somehow worse.

I’ve said it once or twice before, but methinks it bears repeating…
…

…when it rains, it…

…
…

…

—

yeah

—

I thought 2003 and 2004 were pretty fscking busy, but 2005 and 2006 are gonna make those others look like a cakewalk. By the time 2007 starts, I will be a completely different person in every way.

this is where the dollar burns
this is where the end begins
i am faded white like a only
a only and days and days gone by and it
i remember

i remember

I am still trying to uncompress from last week and yet in just a few hours I have to start a new week.

🙁

life: strange, unsatisfying

i wanna i wanna i wanna
but i never do
or can
😐

I am always right.

Everyone else is completely stupid.

Corporate America = burn money instead of giving it to someone who
a) Has probably earned it
b) Could demonstrate, if allowed, that he was a bigger asset than anyone else
c) Needs it

(all me, BTW.)

I rule. They suck. As usual. And somehow, I’m still the one that gets the short end.
Fucking capitalist plots.

send transmission from
the one armed scissor:
cut away! cut away!

—

rotten, rotten dreams and undue physical discomfort all night