is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I USED TO BE A SODA BOTTLE. And: but this is an outfit!
I just got home from being at APSA, the conference for the American Political Science Association. 7000 people were there. Huge conferences are bizarre. But huge conferences full of political scientists are a different kind of bizarre from huge conferences full of philosophers. Of course I find myself hanging out only with political theorists. And political theorists are pretty marginalized by the rest of the world of political science. The difference between the two camps can be described in many ways but tends to come down to an attitude about what constitutes proof. A political theorist inhabits the world of ideas; a political scientist wants to know what methodology was used to gather the data that leads to the conclusion. This means (largely, and reductively) that a political scientist is talking about what already is, whereas a political theorist is talking about what might be, or what�s wrong with how things are, and so on. Not that political scientists never get around to talking about what�s wrong, etc. Just that there is a tremendous suspicion ranging about the halls of an APSA convention about the place of IDEAS in human life.
Which is why I was nervous about giving a paper that had ended up being a full-fledged philosophy paper at APSA. However, it went over very well, and lots of strangers told me afterward how much they liked my paper. I suppose I was insulated from some kinds of doubt by the kind of panel I was placed on: it was a panel about a novel from the 50s written about Stalinist Russia (it�s called Darkness at Noon, by Arthur Koestler. It reads like 1984, except that it�s largely a true accounting of the Stalinist purge trials). So already that might be a bit too strange in the world of data-gathering to merit an audience of scientists.
After my early morning panel I needed to go pick up my registration packet. One of my co-panelists, a well-known philosopher who writes about Rousseau and Nietzsche, told me to �walk down the first fascist hallway, take a left, follow the second fascist hallway, and you�ll see the impersonal computer stations where you can print out a name badge and then wait in line to be called." Ha. It�s not that the halls were full of fascists (at least as far as I know), but that they were designed such that they could have made an appearance in Leni Riefenstahl�s Triumph of the Will.
Upon registering, I got the obligatory free tote bag with contents. Inside was my huge 8.5x11 600-page conference program, aka �the backbreaker.� I also got a water bottle from Cambridge University Press, a pen from APSA, my nametag, and two lariats that say �Cambridge Journals� on one side and �I USED TO BE A SODA BOTTLE� on the other. That�s right. I was in a huge convention center full of political scientists wearing nametags hung around their necks on lariats that said, over and over again around the neck, I USED TO BE A SODA BOTTLE. I thought this was hilarious. I used to be a soda bottle. But now I�m a political scientist. (And, really, as an idiom the phrase �used to be� is supremely strange anyhow, no? � I � used? � to be? � a soda bottle�? All strange.)
It gets stranger. (Oh. �Gets� is also strange as an idiom, no?) Every time I made a little joke about how I used to be a soda bottle, I�d get blank stares. NO ONE HAD EVEN GLANCED AT THE WORDS THEY WERE WEARING AROUND THEIR NECKS. So, over and over again, because apparently I couldn�t help myself (literally), I�d have to point out what the lariat said and that it was funny. And mostly I�d still get blank stares, except from Tom Dumm who admitted right away that maybe it would have been better to stay a soda bottle rather than playing his current role as political scientist. CLICK HERE, press the button, and don�t forget to tip your waitress!
On Thursday night I got to have dinner with the awesome Jennifer Culbert, who wrote an amazing book on the death penalty that isn�t really about the death penalty (as in, it�s not pro or con) but rather uses the death penalty as an example that shows us the changing ideas about judgment in general in the U.S. She�s smart. We were talking about how strange APSA is and how strange academia is, and how strange it is to be an aging woman who isn�t married and doesn�t have kids, how there is a, well, strange invisibility attached to it. And we also drank wine and talked about lots of other things, like papers we�d seen presented and whether there was good shopping in Boston. And also that it was funny that, as POLITICAL SCIENTISTS, we were skipping a night of Democratic-Convention-Watching (and really, I don�t need to hear Bill Clinton speak ever again. Never. Really.) to eat Ethiopian food. (However, I did make sure to watch Michelle Obama, Hillary, and Obama.) Then, when I got back to my hotel I switched on the TV and found that my favorite-ever episode of Sex and the City was on, one that was a perfect cap to my evening�s conversation: Carrie shows up at a friend�s third baby shower (for her third child, so at this point Carrie has bought this woman a wedding shower gift, a bachelor�s party gift, paid to travel to the wedding, a wedding gift, and three baby shower gifts, totaling roughly $2000, we find out later in the episode) and is told to take off her brand new shoes, as it is a shoe-less house. She�s all, �But this is an outfit!� Ha. Her shoes are $480 Manolo Blahniks. And. When she goes to leave the party later that evening, she finds that someone else has left with her shoes. Her hostess seems unconcerned and says they�ll probably turn up. Carrie calls her a bunch of times to check on the shoes. Her friend basically calls her shallow and wasteful to care so much about shoes and spend so much money on them. Carrie points out that she used to do such things, and her friends says something like: �that was before I grew up and got real responsibilities.�
OH NO SHE DIDN�T. She did. She forgot that women who are single and without kids may or may not be that way by choice�and either way, it�s just fine. And she forgot that a life that isn�t lived according to the norm can be and often is still a life full of real responsibilities, deep meaning, important relationships, and hard choices about what to spend money on.
Walking down the street with Miranda, Carrie lists all the gifts she�s bought for her friend over the years, and talks about how, since her college graduation (many many years before), there has been no occasion in her adult life where friends were required to buy her gifts (birthdays don�t count because everyone has them). No showers, no weddings and births. No group travel events to celebrate her accomplishments. No diamond rings and fancy kitchenware. And so she buys herself some luxuries, because at some point in time waiting for someone else to do it is just foolish and totally out of tune with the world�s realities, no? Or perhaps it just is supposed to be the lot of single women to wait. And wait.
Right now I�m sending a Michelle-Obama-style terrorist-fist-jab in the direction of whoever wrote that episode. (Though Michelle Obama was at pains to let us know that she is Totally Momtastic not to mention Daughtertastic and Wifetastic just the other night. This society's expectations are insane.)
Just to be sure: I'm not saying that being single is harder than having kids, or vice versa. I'm saying that either way there are difficulties... hardships, chosen and unchosen. But one way of life gets valued more than the other by the society I find myself living in.
PS: Once I went to a New Year�s Eve party in New York, long before this SATC episode, long before SATC, and was told I had to take off my shoes. My response was the same as Carrie�s: �But this is an outfit!� (Coupled with �but there�s beer all over the floor�. Ew!) I was wearing my rare robin�s egg blue Fluevog knee-high suede boots (with a translucent skirt wired with electric lights. Oh, what an outfit that was!). Anyway, no fucking way in hell I was going to leave those shoes at the door amongst a pile of winter snowboots for some opportunist at a huge drunken party to steal on her way out the door. So I walked into a back bedroom and stashed them under a bed. And then checked to make sure they were still there like once an hour. Laugh or sigh if you will, but I�ve had those boots since 1996 and THEY STILL LOOK GOOD. People still stop me on the street to talk about them.
PPS. OH! I�m finally back home. That means I can start my Flickr diary of BEST-EVER clothing items. Nice.
1:03 p.m. - August 31, 2008
josiah leet - 2008-09-01 16:51:16
Dude ! 'instant rimshot' is AWESOME... and well placed in the joke-a-logical context of the story too...cheers !
-------------------------------
js - 2008-09-03 01:20:58
my sister just pointed out that the thing you wear around your neck is called a lanyard, not a lariat. a lariat is a cute necklace, or something a cowboy uses.
-------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
