The Nine Inch Nails Tailspin

Studies of suicidal whoevers reveal an upped listening to depressing music with simple beats. Similar studies of successful geniuses (genii? Is this word of Latin or Greek extraction?) show Mozart and bach were piped directly though the sonogram machine.

Meaning I will neither be genius nor suicidal. I listen to both. They don't even effect my mood. No, there is a new study:

The Kiddo Study of Existential Music Enhancement

Whereby when I am nervous I have to listen to something like Marilyn Manson to blow the nervous energy right out. When I am joyous it must be something I can sing with. When I am bored, something complex – a little fugue or bluegrass. When I am angry it could flip between various Goldfrapp albums (ie a smattering of genres to distract, expunge, and calm). W

hen I am concentrating silence is distracting, as is music I know pretty well and enjoy a good deal. It's a tricky balance. I have to like it, but can't know it too well or or too little. Like Best of the Beach Boys. I know it so well it flows through me without distracting. Or any stoopid little indie band I haven't heard yet, I'll like it probably, but know nothing about it – it will flow through like water and leave me free to think.

The best though, and the hardest to hit on the head, is the inspirational. When I

am being wholly creative the music must be as fertilizer to my little thought bubble seed. Often this results in my repeating a song.

Like last week, I listened to Closer by Nine Inch Nails 10 times in a row driving from Frederick to Ellicott City and the thoughts I had were sublime.

Yep. Considerations.... Choices. Informed choices for personal gain and enhancement. I recommend it.

Knitting and Other Hobbies

I am confused by things deemed girl activities and boy activites. Girl hobbies and boy hobbies. Why people buy into the segregation, or why they don't. Where the divide is between sociological and genetic say on the subject. Why some people are cool with being guys with girl habits, girls with guy habits, and why some girls need to actually BE guys to continue the habit. Where and how sexual attractiveness stems from these things. Are boys or girls more creative? Are boys or girls more active? Where is the divide between mental and physical activity?

At the end of the brain tangle I conclude that “Who gives a fuck?” and I carry on collaging, playing guitar, baking and reading comics. Then I see people everywhere buying into the segregation. I see it dissapate as chick soccer takes over the suburban world. I receive (not yet, but they are promised!) hand knit leg warmers from one of the cutest chicks I have the pleasure of calling friend.

Then I see another woman I adore confine herself to cupcakes and pictures of them and using the word “cute” as often as possible. I see fashion aprons springing up all over the place, and gourmet pastry shops taking over the coffee cup.

And then I realize, these are not things women are doing because it is that or be be

aten and shunned as unaccomplished. It is individual after individual choosing, in their spare time to create on their own steam something to give pleasure into their immediate surroundings. They are paid in approval, money and simple feudal trades (the leg warmers, for instance, I will pay for in Via coffee packs).

Etsy.com is the epitome of this.

It feels like the prudent side of third wave feminism, and is scary as heck to me, but it is also irresistible. Am I a product of my time, or do girls really just need tiny lacy things to make them squeal?

The Great TV Catch Up

Moldovan winters are like those experienced by Napoleon and Hitler in their respective bids for world power. This generally means hibernation for citizens. Usually active from dawn until dusk, Moldovans laze around the house and dig preserves out of cellars right before they eat them. No muss, no fuss. It's great. Maria loves it.

What this means for social time is negation. Socializing is cut to bare, bearable minimums away from televisions. A combination of high-speed internet and zero laws on downloading blends to keep savvy teens and the volunteers who love them up to date with just about any movie or TV show—if you don't mind it maybe being fuzzy or off center or in Russian.

Let it be known the following things can be in Russian and awesome and completely understandable:

Animaniacs

Ghost Rider
Leaving Las Vegas
Gone in 60 Seconds

• Anything starring Nicholas Cage

Tomb Raider
The Terminator
Jaws
American Idol
Dancing with the Stars

So, the things I saw, may be pertinent to culture, but are no way entertaining or life-enhancing. Except The Terminator. That's always good. Point being, coming home bombarded me with all the shows that the fam had seen and I had heard of distantly: Fringe, Chuck, Sex and the City, Dollhouse, Community...

At first I was unemployed, and then I got a night job. I pay rent in doing chores (as described) and have little else to do during the day. Picking up the gym habit takes an hour and a half (with washing included) and segues perfectly into laundry. Laundry and ironing take about an hour and a half. These things are static. So is the photo organizing project I picked up.

All my little hobbies and chores become centralized in front of the netflix hook-up flat screen, and whammo: TV Time Commence.

I can't get enough of Fringe. I can't get enough of Dollhouse. Sex and the City becomes stringent after 4 episodes, but I have never learned so much about women's problems. There are more documentaries than I ever thought possible for free, the academy has voted on some truly splendid movies, Sean Connery and Michael Crichton have made some truly boring movies (Great Train Robbery), and it turns out the Charlotte Gainsbourg version of Jane Eyre is better than the Mia Wachkowski.

It's kind of annoying that my family makes as much dirty clothes as they do, but it has afforded me a slice of enforced TV Time, without the misery of cold or the dicey implications of downloading.

Now, if only there were an activity I could do while reading, I'd finish Atlas Freaking Shrugged in a hot second!

The Jane Austen Pick-Me-Up

Why we watch and read Jane Austen things – comfort? Is the romance like a placebo for post-orgasm chemicals or milk chocolate?

The promise of worlds where even the bitchiest people are civil, and all people have purpose. It is not simply that Romance wins in the end, but also that all the characters know where they are in the world, and how to achieve their goals.

True, marriage is often the key to everyone's purpose. In deed, it seems the only purpose anyone ever has, unless it's to spite some one. But those are normally gentle spoofs on the culture. And, the new adaptation Lost in Austen explains it best as a desire for not the marriages, but the style of polite, vibrant life.

Point is, they lose their purpose every once in awhile, regardless of whether it's marriage or not. They turn down marriage proposals, they lose estates to prettier prospects. If Carrie Bradshaw loses a marriage, she drinks a bunch, hangs out in Cancun, and hires an assistant. If Elizabeth Bennett loses a marriage she sits and listens to her screaming relatives for months and months. She loses hope. Her purpose is taken, and it, unfortunately, is not one that can be existentially rectified.

It is not the situations, necessarily, but the emotion characters go through. When Carrie has to pull herself up and go DO something in her darkest hour, Elizabeth honestly cannot. The comfort of powerlessness, of being a victim, is the comfort of fatalism. If that emotional stage is not on the recovery checklist, it should be.

Which is to say, read Pride and Prejudice the fairy tale, then watch Sex and the City. If you're anything like me, your summer will look suddenly much brighter, and that move back to America, joblessness, friendlessness, zero health care, driving, lack of recognition/prestige, family, and the inability to tune one's guitar properly due to pressure changes.

Don't worry, though. My sister says pianos take a year or more to adjust to climate change and hold their tune—guitars surely will after six months.

Buck's gas passing notwithstanding.

Doggy Vocab

Moldova tended to kick their dogs a lot, and frequently let them die out of neglect, but they were always a necessary player in the home farm balance. Even Renata, who really didn't want a dog, was obligated to keep one alive in her yard.

Americans, we all know, are quite different. Not only do dogs make up a natural part of suburban life, but parts of those lives start revolving around The Dog.

Walks, food, vet visits, family vacations, babysitters, chasing when they run away, worrying they've been in a car accident – dogs quickly turn into an adolescent child. At least they don't have the opposable thumbs to open our liquor cabinets.

Which is not to assume our dogs in suburbia are dumb. Even if we haven't seen Lassie, we know our dogs should save us from falling into wells. We buy / rescue the best of the best of the best, because who wants less than that if they can help it?

Buck, my family Jack Russel Terrier, is one such example. Crazy smart, highly alert to danger. Eager to please at all moments. Would raid the doggy liquor cabinet of Pupperoni if only he could manipulate the handle on the door.

He's not trained for life saving, or cadaver sniffing, or even for pulling rabbits and foxes out of holes, but for cuddling and tearing apart stuffed animals.

Buck is so smart in fact that he has a vocabulary in English:

Bone

Ball

Rope

Squirrel

Rabbit

Alien

These are the things that we throw for him and he enacts kills for us.

He also know domestic chore words:

Kennel

Up

Down

Upstairs

Downstairs

In

Out

Stay

And practical things:

Sit

Leash

But, really, what is at all cool about Buck is that he speaks in full sentences. We don't just bark these words at him. That would be normal human-dog interaction: dictated by our wants and his vocabulary. No, Buck is the ultimate suburban house pet.

Where is your bone?

This food is not for you.

Drop that dead alien.

Buck, you stay here.

It's pretty superior. I'm pretty sure my dad, trainer and alpha male, treats Buck like he did my sister and I when we were 4. Although, he just took pictures of us, while he made Buck a facebook page and updates it for him.

Where does suburbia go from there?

OCD

Medical terms like “OCD,” “ADD,” and “manic-depressive,” may be overused, I certainly overuse them.

I like things organized. I like neat and aesthetically pleasing environments in which I put minimal effort existing. Like coffee cupboards. Who the hell would keep coffee cups, coffee beans, and coffee accoutrement (filters, french press, grinder) in different cupboards? No one who likes to drink coffee in the morning, that's for sure.

To optimize the grouping, employ easy grabability! Don't all the cups in front of the big can of coffee! That's not easy!

Put fancy little cups on the next shelf up – you don't use em!

Ok, most people don't think this hard about this, because it's simple and straightforward, right? Yea. Either that or they are lazy. This is a shameful form of Laze. I love being lazy. If you let me, I'd sit and drink tea / coffee all day and read books, maybe watch a movie for change of pace. If you wish to be truly lazy, a little forward thinking goes a long way. Like, keeping the things you use all the time in reach, and the tiny little VanGogh design demi tasses on the higher shelf, but not as high as the beer steins—we're a wine drinking family and all the wine glasses are right next to the wine rack. Duh.

So – I think about these things. All the time. All the time I am surrounded by things that could lead me to be optimally lazy. When I have a spare half hour (working nights, I have many during the day) I wring out the trash (what are these dusty toothpicks doing?) and separate the least used things (fine jade china tea cup with matching china strainer and lid) from the most used things (big chipped mug from New Orleans).

Pretty normal.

It's when I get too into that I start throwing around medical terms.

I found those toothpicks and needed to know from whence they came.

The party cupboard.

Full of shot glasses, boston shakers, napkins of all sorts of design, swizel sticks, more shot glasses, and a menagerie of beer cozies, to-go coffee mugs, christmas things, those copper circle you put on wine glasses to mark them as YOURS, little plastic animals, and glow-in-the-dark ice cubes... Oh god. It was a mess, like the last party's aftermath was shoved in there in the same array someone's mind was in. I hope Whoever got some green tea and Back to the Future.

Now... Well, it would take 1500 words to describe the fun time I had sluicing through all that and more, and the ripple effects finding 10 to-go lids had on the coffee cupboard, and the odd martini glass in plastic had on the wine glass collection, and the hour it took to wipe everything down, and how I really could not finish until all three places were clear of debris and pretty.

OCD?

What does that mean, anyway?

The Great Quest for Employment

ahem.

There is a problem with society.

There are few jobs.

What should we do?

Distinguish ourselves, and take no prisoners?

Ok. How?

I think it is interesting that protests are cropping up against the private sector, and not the government. It's a new twist. What I'm unsure of, however, is what people want to gain from their protests. They see a problem, and instead of making a solution, they gum up the streets with awareness of problems.

If there is one thing that killed my optimism in Moldova, it is the constant attrition of solution based thinking. Pointing out solutions, having them knocked down; leading people through questioning to their own solutions, then having them not picked up bangs ding after ding into my American steel deflector shield of progress.

Coming home and hearing people my own age (none of my friends thank Thor—they keep calm and carry on. I applaud my people-judgement skills) whine, actually whine, about all the woes beset them – it drives me a bit distracted. They even whine on national television.

If the effort put into making oneself an “individual” were put into making oneself employed, new solutions might be found.

Just saying. I didn't want to go back into the service industry, but it keeps my learning curve up, and keeps some cash in my pocket. How much do bongos go for these days? Kids on Wallstreet know.