The Best Lie I've Ever Told

This was originally written as a contest entry in the hopes of getting $20 in store credit to spend through Groupon Seattle. (PS: I love you, Groupon Seattle.)

I sleep in a centrifuge so I'm full of energy and violent confusion when I first wake up.

Instead of using an alarm clock, it just stops spinning at 6am every weekday. This launches me into a swimming pool full of foam rubber effigies of famous spokespersons. This helps psychologically prepare me for the day. Once I've figured out which direction is up, I use this knowledge to stand up, walk, get dressed and brush my teeth.

Next, I ultra-charge the day to the max by dressing a whole litter of kittens up like Batman and chasing them around the living room. Then, steak and eggs breakfast for everybody! Even for the kittens!

My Featured Comment on Qewz News About "Female Viagra"

My compulsive writing problem got me a little bit of positive attention this week!

An excerpt from my response to a Qewz News post on Facebook is today's featured quote on their main news website:

The whole response this line was taken from may have been overlong and brimming with potentially crackpot hypotheses (one of my specialties), but I think the part they took was alright. A little offensive perhaps ("dumb kids") but still OK.

Here is their original question:

Qewz News: A "little pink  pill" to solve women's sexual  problems probably won't be hitting  drugstore shelves anytime soon. But  that doesn't mean discussion of  the need for it, or lack thereof, is  likely to end. Is this a  legitimate public health concern, or is the  drug company  manufacturing a disorder?

Here is my original, gigantic response in its gorgeously, playfully unwieldy entirety:

What a fun question!

1. Until dumb kids start sneaking their parents meds and doing themselves serious medical harm (see Viagra), I like the idea of medical science trying to produce better aphrodisiacs. I'd also like to see science try to build a better roller coasters, too. Why not?

2. PTSD is a prime example of how an unsavory cultural experience CAN lead to legitimate medical problems. Stress-induced insomnia and constipation are other, perhaps more appropriate examples. Sometimes human bodies lock up and stop working properly when the external social conditions aren't psychologically healthy.

3. I've heard mainstream American culture referred to as "drenched in sexuality," but haven't seen convincing examples of this.

[Look out! From here out it kind of turns into an essay, but I couldn't figure out what to cut so I just posted an overlong response. Sorry everyone!]

It's true that American pop culture gives a lot of attention to the concept of the budding, sexually eager virginal teen who's finally ready to be looked at in his or her underwear, but that's not actually sex.

What sexually healthy adults do once they move past that fumbling, unskilled, virginal stage is too frequently kept a mystery in American pop culture.

Instead, adult sexuality is most frequently depicted in one of the following, rather asexual ways:

* Two lonely coworkers who try to repress their feelings of sexual tension by cracking wise and maybe kissing once, after years of chaste simmering.
* Asexual marriages.
* Marriages in which the couple initiates sex by hugging, making a wisecrack and chastely kissing just before the end credits roll.
* Single adults who don't spend enough time with any one sexual partner to really experiment or figure things out. This might be a lovelorn single adult character who rarely dates or this might be a promiscuous single adult character who specializes in one-night stands, and who doesn't have to learn how to keep things hot once the initial novelty of acquaintance has worn off.
* Sexually wise adults--whose experience often serves as a punchline--in which sexual references are delivered in such an absurd-sounding fashion that the "normal" adult characters in the scene are baffled, and little or no real wisdom is passed down.

This is all OK subject matter, but it doesn't really help to foster an environment in which adults who have long-term, frequent access to the same partner can work on refining their shared sex life.

Instead, American pop culture gives off the general impression that studying the idiosyncratic sexuality of oneself and one's long-term partner is just explicit, "icky" and something to be terribly, horribly afraid and ashamed of. Not something that anybody worthwhile would actually do.

That fear CAN'T be healthy. I'd be shocked if it DIDN'T contribute to sexual dysfunction!

Quick Paraphrase About China's New Energy Policy

Because I got that urge once again, here is a quick but reasonably thorough paraphrase of the updates in Chinese energy policy, as reported by Keith Bradsher in the New York Times today.

It looks like China's government is willing to keep using coal because coal can be mined in China. It looks like they're hesitant to become too dependent on imported oil because importing oil carries a lot of security risk. Like their current problem of frequent pirate attacks on incoming oil freighters on top of the more famous issues associated with depending too heavily on at-war countries.

Essentially, it looks like the immediate issues of becoming self-sufficient and autonomous as a developing country are more important to the Chinese government right now than are long-term, global concerns about global warming. (I'M still worried about global warming, for what that's worth.)

But China's not anti-green, in spite of this continued reliance on domestic Chinese coal. Chinese energy officials are also looking forward to the development of new clean energy technology, and hope to cherry-pick the best ideas as they're invented and tested in already-developed countries like the US.

That concludes the gist of what I learned from Bradsher's article. Here are my thoughts:

OK, America (and the rest of the developed world), it's time to invent some clean energy options that are SO efficient and SO cheap that even China's coal-dependent energy economy can't say no.

It's time for some Star Trek technology!

Can't Games Be Art? Can't Art Be Addictive?

This blog post is a slightly reworked version of a socially awkward, overlong response I wrote a few minutes ago to the recent Slate article Are Video Games a Massive Waste of Time? Tom Bissell's Extra Lives asks whether games are art or an addiction. Also posted as a Facebook note before I remembered I have this blog.

I feel a very weird mixture of pride and shame towards myself for writing so damn much in a socially frowned-upon context. (The ultra-long comment.)

But what the Hell. That's who I am, right? Someone who writes tooooooooooooooooooooooo damn much. Just an overstuffed bag of squirming words disguised as a girl.

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1. Video games are just as capable of being "art" as the rest of art is.

a. Interesting shapes, color and physical movement--PARTICULARLY in ways that challenge human reflexes--can still be legitimate art when used for something other than storytelling. What about non-narrative ballet?

b. The game Shadow of the Colossus has such powerfully effective emotional content that I can't stand to stay in the room when someone's playing it, let alone play it myself. To borrow an idea from the TV show Friends, I might hide the disk for this game in the freezer like it was an upsetting novel. Shadow of the Colossus elegantly, subtly and tortuously imparts a sense of madness, moral doubt and self-disgust that increases over the course of the game, right up to the conclusion of the storyline. I can comfortably lump it in with the play Titus as a masterwork that I am uncomfortable with. It's also gorgeously illustrated and animated, for what that's worth. Animation counts as art, doesn't it?

c. The first two games in the Fallout series had flawed, rather slow and buggy gameplay but clever writing and fun plots. They did well! I happily replay those games from time to time like I reread favorite books. They leave me with a Douglas Adams feeling and I love them for it.

d. The third Fallout (the recent game for the 360) is TOTALLY art. If nothing else, Malcolm McDowell's "patriotic" radio station was amusingly written and his deadpan delivery of those lines was perfect. I can still get a little laugh reminiscing about his performance. And the interactive, Rod Serling-style interlude towards the ending of the game's storyline? That was awesome! Better than plenty of movies. Fallout 3 is a gem.

2. Who's to say art is completely non-addictive?

a. I DO have an addiction-like problem with the TV series Twin Peaks. Some friends recommended it to me about a year ago and insisted on loaning me their DVD box set. I put it on a to-do list and forgot about it for a few months. But inevitably, I cracked it open and tried the first episode. And then another. And another. And another. I neglected chores and stayed up too late on work nights. Damn you, Twin Peaks!

Now that my husband and I have finished watching Lost, I have begged him to re-watch Twin Peaks with me so I can talk about it with him. I just finished watching this show about a month ago! I'm ready to watch it again? Overeager, even! I'm embarrassed with my own sense of "he HAS to see them all in order and then watch the last episode" urgency. But I'm in thrall. Maybe it's not a cocaine-sized problem, but it's certainly a Grand Theft Auto-sized problem.

b. My biggest addiction-like behavioral problem is creative writing. With an open schedule, I can sit down with an idea and lose whole days. Months. The better part of a year once. My senior year of college I decided to brainstorm an idea about comic books to relax when not being a science nerd. Five months later, I had over 220 pages of extremely detailed brainstorming.

This is still NOTHING compared to the project I adopted as a high school dropout just before college, to try to write down every thought I had as I had it. I pretty much just typed for a year and was definitely more bizarre (and meditative?) by the end of the project.

I am often so preoccupied with the desire to write down new ideas that it negatively affects my ability to function like a normal person. I once actually wrote amusing sentences in pen ON MY OWN LEG WHILE DRIVING so that I wouldn't forget them. While driving! Who does that?! It's creepy and inappropriate.

This might actually be a cocaine-sized problem, and the addictive substance in question is the production of work within a long-recognized art form.

3. In closing, I argue that video games CAN be art and art can have addictive properties.

Getting Weird Again: Aversion, Culture, Philosophy and Dancing in the Grocery Store

One of the most interesting things to me is playing with the flexible parts of aesthetic preference.

To borrow a few words from my favorite behavior theory textbook, the term aversive stimulus refers to any sensation that an organism will avoid. The term appetitive stimulus refers to any sensation that an organism will seek out. To borrow a little bit more, some sensations are intrinsically (from birth, without prior experience) aversive and appetitive and some have to be conditioned, taught.

The majority of cultural preferences are conditioned, and fashion particularly so. I’m not sure that what I’m thinking about this morning counts as fashion, though. I’m thinking about dancing in the grocery store.

I was raised by one of the most charismatic, rebellious people I can conceive of. Although I can’t approve of every decision my father has ever made and I certainly don’t agree with all of his politics, I am grateful for the sparkling, revolutionary brilliance in his personal philosophy. My dad is captivating. The fastest way to describe him is to say that although my dad looks and sounds like George Carlin, he behaves like a general amalgam of Bill Murray characters should such a meta-Murray be a lax survivalist, a one-time, sometime chef, a recovering New York Irish Catholic, a dedicated, freshly minted recreational sailboat captain and the doting father of two eccentric, young adult daughters. (My nearly retired and reasonably healthy father earned his captain’s license a few weeks ago and looks forward to finally getting to be Captain Ron when he grows up.)

That last paragraph might have been a small digression, but I want you to be able to really picture my dad when I explain to you that I was raised to dance in the grocery store. My father is very much of his generation. There is an important, neglected wisdom in the Summer of Love insistence that people think critically about the traditions and taboos they were raised with. More fulfilling, healthier lives can be mindfully created when we reject the unnecessary chains (the counterproductive culturally conditioned aversions and preferences) that weigh us down.

For example, the taboo against dancing in the grocery store should come to a swift end. It is a taboo that serves no positive function whatsoever. By replacing innocent whimsy with unnecessary shame, it reduces our capacity for true human connection. Shame isolates. Whimsy connects. Sharing joy and through it, unconditional acceptance on a regular basis is necessary for real love, strong families and lush and functional communities. I have tasted this life and know it to be true.

My sister and I make a point to dance in the grocery store when shopping together. Nothing fancy, nothing too appealing, but if nobody’s looking we may break into The Twist. I even bob from side to side musically when shopping by myself. Were a family a country, my fierce dedication to perpetuating light-as-a-cloud whimsy could be called patriotism.

On this anxious and incomplete Saturday morning, I sit and worry about my legacy. I am female, in my late 20s and I do not have children. I have a currently uncomfortable, opposites-attract marriage that is still sorting itself out. I am currently living too far away from my parents, sister and handful of supportive, resolutely bizarre friends to feel like I have the proper neighborhood or in-home community necessary to raise a child.

My biological clock is telling me to build a community based on my father’s best principles of whimsy. I want a tribe. I want a real home. I feel nostalgic and sad for the culture that I grew up in, because I don't find much of it in the big outside world. I feel like a salmon. Because I am in the late-middle of my short reproductive window, my body is telling me to "get back to where I once belonged."

It is a strange thing to be a 28-year-old woman and crave the constant presence of likeminded adults instead of just craving an infant.

Larry King Clip: Laura Bush in Favor of Gay Marriage & Abortion

If I wasn't already pretty familiar with riding out cognitive dissonance, I think this clip might have given me a nosebleed.

I feel like Freddy Kreuger just gave me a kiss on the cheek and $200 cash.

The ethical questions about her history of silence on these human rights issues aside, I have found myself in the intensely surreal position of suddenly identifying with one of the last people on Earth that I had expected to identify with. It's disorienting.

Poem: The Little Girl who Mistook Herself for Dennis Hopper

by Lindsay Meagher-Swanson
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There once was a girl who is otherwise proper
who can up and replace herself with Dennis Hopper.

Though peacefully friends with both puppies and snakes
this brave little spitfire has what it takes.

The apple of eye of her most-violent dad,
she goes all "Hulk crazy" whenever she's mad.

When in argument and she's ordered to yield,
she might put a TV right through your windshield!

Never mind all the expletives! Boy, how absurd.
"Go stuff your grandmother like Thanksgiving bird."