Never Be Broken...

Okay, I need to confess a dirty little secret. It's embarassing... and something I hesitate to admit. I love Sex and the City. Yes, the HBO series about four women and their relationships set in New York City. Normally, I believe such programs are damaging to the collective female self-esteem by promoting ideas that women should attain unrealistic, commercially produced physical "beauty" and that they should strive for autonomy while remaining culturally submissive. This conflicting self is what drives many women to obsessive relationships with terrible men, compuslive shopping, eating disorders, and the like (read Appetites: Why Women Want, by Caronline Knapp).
However, I (personally) don't get that feeling from Sex and the City. I actually feel better about myself after watching the show. I feel empowered. Not only does it promote female power, but it suggests you can still be feminine and powerful (i.e. Miranda). It also postulates that a woman can be successful and have a wonderful sex life without yielding to society's pressure to be part of a monogomous 'husband and wife' pair, in which the female partner invariably loses her identity, i.e. Samantha. Even Carrie offers hope to the female sex. Although she has entered into bad relationships and tends to let her feelings about men cloud her judgement, she is on a quest to find herself and her compliment (rather than her master*). The only character I have a difficult time tolerating is Charlotte. She embodies all of the characteristics expected of women that I strive to rebel against. However, I believe that including her character is important because it completes the range of personalities on the show, which reveals the depth and dimensionality possessed by women around the world.
Anyway, I digress. I wanted to reference a specific episode that I recenlty watched - Ex and the City (Series 2, Episode 18). In it, Carrie finds out that her ex (Big) is engaged to a younger woman. She can't understand why Big left her, and why "it wasn't [her]." In the end, she reaches the conclusion that the reason he left her was because he couldn't "break" her... she was too complex for him. The idea sprang from a Sydney Pollack movie starring Barbra Streisand (Katie) and Robert Redford (Hubble) - - "The Way We Were" (1973) - - a love story based on a mismatched couple who can't be together because they're too different. Streisand plays a politically active Jewish woman and Redford a 1-dimensional, WASPY man. It was probably one of the first truly feminist hollywood films of it's time. Not only did the idea help Carrie deal with the lost relationship, but it made her stonger.

Carrie: Your girl is lovely, Hubble.
Big: I don't get it.
Carrie: And you never did.

I love it! This concept embodies many of my relationships. Most 'men' don't "get" me because I refuse to behave in the stereotypical, traditional manner of a western woman. It confuses them and they either think I'm not interested, I'm a bitch, or I'm a lesbian. That's fine. I enjoy my solitude, I have great friends, a wonderful family, and I don't need a partner. That's not to say that someday I won't find my compliment. I just view it as a possibility, instead of manditory.

Never be broken.

* Women, look up "master" in the dictionary. One of the definitions is "husband." Then, look up "husband" in the thesarus... in Merriam-Webster you'll find: Synonyms hubby, lord, man, master, mister, Mr., old man. Please!

La Cucaracha (Sept 28)

I was sitting in my apartment a few night ago imparting mass genocide on my brain cells by watching a nondescript, superfluos show on the boob tube. My cats were lounging around (as usual) like piles of clothes strewn across the floor. Suddenly, there was movement! Karma (my Siamese) jumped to his feet and stared intently at the window. I knew it either had to be a serial killer with a bloody knife just on the other side... or a bug. It was the latter. But, it was no ordinary bug. This was a cockroach. The King Kong of cockroaches!

Anyway, so this "bug" looked right at me and said: "What ju looking at beech?! Ju jus try to take me on. I'll whoop jor @ all up an down dis place and eat jor fat cats for dinner!" *gasp* I was appalled... the language! How offensive. So I told the roach he must die for his sins, and for invading my home and giving me the heeby-geebies. He wasn't too happy at the thought of imminent death, and put up a pretty good fight. My original plan was to squash him with a notebook. Of course, he knew of my deathly, irrational fear of having a cockroach in my hair, so he crawled up the wall to a point where I could just barely reach him. But, I summoned my courage, climbed on top of my coffee table and threw my notebook at him with all of my might. He flexed his muscular wings and laughed at me, saying "is dat all ju got? Ha! I've toppled grown men flat on der dirty backs for jus trying to step on me!" Then he jumped off the wall in my general direction, which of course, sent me screaming into the other room. {On a side note, my cats at this point (thinking that I've gone completely insane) were hiding under my bed planning their escape once the cockroach won.} Upon hearing the dirty bug laughing at me for running away, I timidly went back into the living room to look for him. He was hiding under the couch. Not to be outdone, I moved the couch away from the wall to squash him once and for all. Bastard! He'd figured out my plan and was holding onto the couch as I moved it. I couldn't get to him, so I gave up. I had no other option but to let him kill me in my sleep. But wait.... Later, after the events of the night had subsided, the war temporarily on hold... my cats decided to come out from under the bed. I guess they figured the crazy lady had calmed down and they were safe. I don't know why, but Mr. Cucaracha decided to come out from under the couch. I think the tasty temptation of fat cat flesh drew him out, but I could be wrong. Anyway, I caught him offguard as he was stalking Marshall's fat butt and SQUISHED him hard with a box of facial cleanser. "HA ha! DIE bastard bug."
Wow. It's amazing what an oversized, smack-talkin' bug can do to a pacifist vegetarian. I rarely ever kill anything, and though he was a foul-mouthed, dirty roach... I kinda feel bad for Mr. Cucaracha. I hope he didn't have a family.

Rest in peace.

The criminal practice of price-gouging has been brought to the forefront of American news in recent history.

1. Haliburton and Iraq http://www.propagandamatrix.com/240104haliburtonwins.html
2. Energy suppliers and California's energy crisis http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/West/11/16/california.energy.ap/
3. Gas prices and "The War On Terrorism"
4. But the most devastating, and most recently noted (by this author) is the price of cream cheese at Einstein Bros bagel stores.

Yes, the sad fact is that Einstein Bros is participating in the unabashed gouging of bagel consumers around the country. Here are the facts:
The Einstein Bros bagel shop at the Georgia Institute of Technology Student Center in Atlanta, Georgia charges $0.75 for a bagel. A little pricey, but for a hot, delicious, 'everything' bagel... I'm willing to sacrifice 3 quarters. But wait! How much is a bagel with cream cheese? A bagel with cream cheese is TWO DOLLARS! DOS DINEROS! ZWEI DOLLAR! TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY JAPANESE YEN!!!!! Excuse me? Did you say $2 sir? But a bagel is only $0.75! So, a dab of cream cheese costs $1.25? Are we importing the cream cheese from Iraq? Is that why it's so expensive - - because of the current wartime situation? Yes, I realize that a "dab" of cream cheese at Einstein's is equivalent to roughly 14 daily servings, which is why I generally scrape off more than half. So, why don't they offer a lesser helping for those of us who love our cream cheese, but in moderation?.... Some of us aren't willing to give up drinking coffee (the magical elixer) with our bagel because we can't afford the freakin' cream cheese!!!!!

Give me a break Einstein Bros! Anyone with half a brain and the salary of a graduate student can tell that you are price-gouging the hell out of the bagel and cream cheese lovers of America. What is our world coming to?

Yes, that IS David (9-15)

Okay...
Let me clarify something. Yes. That IS David Hasselhoff in the photo, and NO I'm not really dating him. *sigh* If only... he's so dreamy. Have you seen his website? (www.davidhasselhoff.com) I mean, who can resist Michael Knight and his awsome talking car - - or Lt. Mitch Buchannon in his tight, red, lifeguard shorts? David even has several albums out!!! (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/artist/glance/-/156939/002-8212868-5416857) I bet you didn't know THAT! How could I NOT pine after such a talented, sexy, diverse man.
Okay, okay... so SOME people may think he's the AntiChrist (http://www.esquilax.com/baywatch/index.shtml), but I don't know anything about that.

I'm just a starry eyed girl, lying my ass off right now. But I hope you enjoyed the Hasselhoff humor!

To quote Dan Gaffron: "If people take me seriously...THEN I'll be scared."
(No I don't know who Dan Gaffron is.)

What I'm doing right now (Sept 9)

I'm currently sitting in a computer lab with an undergraduate in the Ecology Project Lab that I TA (teaching assistant). She's counting the number of eggs on female Rotifers (http://www.rotifer.com/) that reproduce parthenogenically, which means they don't need a man to have babies. The rotifers carry the eggs on their backs like giant balloons taped to their butts. The undergrads are running a life history experiment to see how food concentration (algae, Tetraselmis - http://microscope.mbl.edu/scripts/microscope.php?func=browseAlpha&letter=T&taxa=Tetraselmis) affects reproduction and survivorship of rotifers. So far (as expected), it appears that the rotifers with higher concentrations of food have a significantly higher rate of reproduction. Hmmm, can this research be correlated with the ridiculous population explotion of the most pesky parasite to infect this planet (homo sapiens) and the fact that a McDonald's can be found on almost every street corner of every country in the world? (http://www.populationconnection.org/About_Us/).

Food for thought.

A favorite poem...

This is one of my favorite poems. I think it aptly describes graduate school.

Lodged
by Robert Frost
The rain to the wind said,
'You push and I'll pelt.'
They so smote the garden bed
That the flowers actually knelt,
And lay lodged--though not dead.
I know how the flowers felt.

This is my new boyfriend. He's got a really rad car. (ha ha!) 

The harbor in Suva. It doesn't do the mountains justice. They were beautiful. However, it does catch the essence of Suva... rainy. 

This was the market in Suva. You could buy 5 eggplants for a dollar, along with many other fruits and vegetables (and seaweed). I didn't buy any oysters. 

This was the site where I did most of my work. There was a deep channel to the right that was 20 - 50 feet deep. At low tide all the corals and algae were exposed in the shallow areas. 

I'm next to Ratu Jim (yellow/black tie) in my fancy sarong. This was taken just after church and right before Kava.