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I love a good story. A good character, good dialogue, good plot, good pacing, good timing, sigh … I love all of that.

However, I am also a stickler for continuity. I’m an editor, for crying out loud. I can show you in several reference books why a comma goes (or doesn’t go) where it is or how to properly credit a source. When a character in season two of a tv show says their sister’s name is Laura, and then in season eight, their sister turns up, if her name isn’t Laura, I’m going to have a conniption. Consistency is how you reward your fans.

So, I’m having a serious conflict. This has been brought on by watching a certain BBC television show called “Dr. Who.”

The BBC had previously charmed me with the lovely and amusing “Top Gear,” wherein I fell madly in love with three smart guys who act like idiots while driving cars — sometimes very nice, expensive cars and sometimes cars they buy off the internet for $1,000. Then, “Sherlock,” and since I’m a freakish Sherlock Holmes nerd (really, ask me anything*), I was taken right in. I had also recently rewatched (what I believe to be the canonical episodes of) “The X Files” on Netflix instant, and the gods in the machines decided to recommend me “Dr. Who.”

I am also a fan of David Tennant’s face. So why not?

The thing is, I’m guessing, when you keep a show on the air for a million years (nearly 50, plus spinoffs — “K-9″ (about a robot dog), “Torchwood,” “The Sarah Jane Adventures,” “K-9 and Company” (robot dog again)), through multiple variations of actors and developments of special effects and filming technology and all that, there’s a point where you sort of have to throw some semblances of continuity out the proverbial window. There comes a point where you just have to say, oh, this is like this just because IT IS and I DON’T HAVE TIME RIGHT NOW TO EXPLAIN and just CAN YOU DEAL WITH IT PLEASE. And typically, you can, because the story is good and the character is good. And I guess that’s sort of what those English people are known for, just, moving on when things are complicated or unusual (or like their whole country gets bombed or whatever, just, moving on).

The special effects are often laughable, and I get the vibe sometimes that probably the show is for children, but that’s OK, because it’s still a lot of fun. It’s entertaining. And at the end of the day, sometimes, I don’t really want to call into question my deep emotional meaning relative re: Earth and existence. I just want something I can sort of look at and get distracted by.

As much as I sort of want it to be throwaway entertainment, it’s endearing in a way I can’t really enumerate. So what if sometimes there are strange continuity problems? So what if that’s not entirely how particle physics works? So what if they just decide sometimes, hey, forget logic, this is “Dr. Who” and we can do whatever we want? Underneath, it’s just this story of a lonely dude who wants to distract himself from being 900 years old and pretty much homeless (apparently his planet exploded, I think, I’m not really sure, I get distracted by the shiny robots sometimes).

And that’s the whole universal story — trying to find where you fit, whether just in your own existence or in the infinite possibilities provided by being a time-traveling alien. So I guess that’s how it’s OK. If the story is good enough, I’m willing to overlook nearly anything.

*Fact: I read all the Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories as a kid, and I sort of thought they were kid’s books, and that when people grew up, and became adults, everybody was as clever as Holmes, and just so you know, it’s been quite a disappointment that assumption isn’t entirely true.

I’ve had a crush on Stephen Malkmus since I was about 14. Basically, 90s indie rock bands defined my taste in men. See also: Jeff Mangum, Elliott Smith, Thurston Moore, Thom Yorke, Beck. (Of course, I don’t actually have crushes on these boys since I don’t know them; I only have crushes on imaginary romanticized ideas of these boys, but isn’t that every celebrity crush?)

And what happened to these boys? I remember in the 90-00s you couldn’t go to see a band or a record store or a diner and not see at least five or so achingly tall, skim-milk skinny, basement-apartment pale, 30-year-old boys. And all I could think was how I couldn’t wait until I was older and then I could have one of them as my boyfriend.

So where did they go, and why can’t I find any of them now?

Daniel Bernoulli came from a math family*. Lots of stuff is named for them. Bernoulli numbers are named for Jakob, who also figured out probability. Nicolaus II worked on differential equations. Johann invented that dismal mess called calculus. Daniel, though, worked on some of the easiest-to-understand stuff: fluid dynamics.

Fluid dynamics describe relationships among velocity, density, temperature, pressure, energy, etc. in space and time. Bernoulli’s principle is the basic support for flight. (Wing shapes, lift and drag are all functions in aerodynamics; the flow of air around a wing (faster above than below, creating a pressure difference) is what keeps it aloft.)

Fundamentally, these laws state that sums of potential and kinetic energy (as well as other things) are constant in a system. (Example: A plane goes fast, then achieves lift.) (Related: Newton’s second law: force = mass x acceleration, aka flying = plane x fast.) If something changes, other things change relative to that change in the system. If something in the system goes up, something else comes down. Not quite as poetic as chaos theory with its butterflies, but very mathematically sound and supremely logical.

While I believe these things are true in science, and in all the things of life which can be proven empirically, I do not believe they are true in reality. Reality is governed by more depressing maxims like “If something can go wrong, it will,” and “When it rains, it pours.”

So, dear Mr. Daniel Bernoulli of 18th-century Switzerland, I would appreciate your attention to the concern of my recent workload, and some consideration into certain unequal pressure without respective changes in density, energy or speed. When could I expect these things? July? December? Or, should I ignore your postulating and just accept they won’t, and my system has become non-Bernoullian, and move on with figuring my own laws to govern its specific mechanics?

Also, a little study could be done with my personal lifting and dragging, too, I suppose.

*I don’t come from a math family. All actual math persons please excuse my haphazard and ugly explanations of your careful and beautiful concepts.

I do not play golf. This week in the state where I live, there is a large golfing tournament of some kind. Beers are $2. You can also get egg salad sandwiches. The winner gets a jacket.

People pay exorbitant amounts of money to go stand around and watch this happen.

Today, at my grandparents’ house, this was on television. And at their house, it was technically on an array of televisions, in every room, rivaling an actual sports bar. And apparently, it’s the only thing you aren’t allowed to be smart-assed about.

All of my families are brilliant smart-asses. There is nothing sacred. I’ve been mocked for not having a job (though I have three), having brown hair, having gray hair, wearing pants, wearing a dress, wearing glasses, not wearing glasses … like I said, nothing is sacred.

So, imagine my shock at the table today, when I got the blankest of stares for mocking golf. GOLF ON TELEVISION.

Me: So, it’s expensive, to go?
Cousin: Yes, but it’s so amazing. The grounds are just beautiful. Every blade of grass, every flower, is perfect.
Me: I can see that. From here. On the TV.
Cousin: You don’t get it. You don’t play golf. I bet you hate going to baseball games too.
Me: No, I love going to baseball games. You get to sit down and there’s big pretzels and if you sit in the right part of the ballpark they bring the beers to you.
Cousin: Just, trust me. It’s a lot more fun to play than to watch.
Me: It better be.

My dad has zero sense of humor about it as well. He texted me last week to tell me he was going and I should watch for him on TV. I texted him today to tell him I didn’t see him, but I saw a couple hundred other middle-aged fat guys.

The only thing more boring, I think, than golf on television is tennis on television. Seriously. Nearly 75 years of technological breakthroughs in broadcast television and the best thing they can put on is a bunch of dudes in white on some nice grass smacking balls with things.

The summit of Mount Everest is 29,029 feet high. Tibetans call it “Chomolungma,” which means “Mother Goddess of the Earth.” From the top, you can see Tibet, India and Nepal, and the first people to get there were Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, in 1953. They were the ninth expedition to try.

Actually, apparently, some other people could have gotten there first (Andrew Irvine and George Mallory), but they disappeared.

About 4,000 people have tried to follow them, but only about 660 have made it. On the way, 219 people have died. Roughly, only one in six people make it to the top, and one in four people die. It’s difficult to retrieve bodies, so corpses stay where they are, up on the mountain. People also leave their garbage. (Mostly, empty oxygen bottles.) There’s apparently even a controversy amongst serious climbers and alpinists about using bottled oxygen at all, but the truth is, above about 26,000 feet, humans get very fragile, and conditions get very terrible. More oxygen = better decision-making = less dying. Less oxygen = bad decision-making = lots of dying.

So, it’s pretty dangerous.

It’s also very expensive — about $65,000 to train, get there, hire guides and people to help you.

It’s pretty safe to say I’m never going to do it. Aside from all the things I don’t like about it (it’s outside, you have to camp and wear ridiculous clothing, it’s cold, there’s snow and to get there is a really long flight), I probably also won’t do it because there’s a very very real chance I’d die.

Another thing I don’t do because it involves things I don’t like and possible death: large outdoor music festivals. Since 2002, ten people have died at Bonnaroo. Now, I’d love to go to Bonnaroo. I love music and I love a lot of the bands they get for the Bonnaroo lineups every year, but have you been to Tennessee in the summer? It’s roughly 150 degrees all day every day. (For comparison, in 24 years only one person has died at Glastonbury, the big English music festival, and only one person has died at Coachella in the 13 years it’s been around. I don’t know what it is about Bonnaroo, but it’s dangerous.) About 70-80,000 people go to Bonnaroo every year, so the mathematical chances of dying are slim, but I don’t trust myself. I don’t trust my self-preservation skills on water-drinking and sunblock-applying and all those things. I’d die and then my corpse would bake.

I’m incredibly pale, out of shape, prone to dehydration and fainting, plus in my lifetime, I’ve already been to (and worked at) my share of oppressively hot outdoor music festivals. I’ve finished with that.

Anyway, lots of people go to these things, and love them. But if it’s so dangerous, why aren’t more people just climbing Everest instead? Danger, physical exertion, scarcity of water/food/survival amenities, it just costs way more and Radiohead isn’t going to be there.

But what’s the difference? How do people choose their preferences? What determines whether someone goes go Coachella or goes to Tibet? If I had to pick one, at gunpoint for example, I’d probably pick Everest, just because I hate crowds, and there’d be a good statistical chance I’d die and then never really have to do either one.

In my MFA thesis* I wrote a chapter about “Kid A” by Radiohead, and how when it first came out it made me furious. I love rock music, and I wanted another Radiohead rock album, and this wasn’t it. I wanted stuff I could put on in my ridiculous car and play loud with the windows down while I drove around my college town at night by myself. In the essay, I wrote about how my furiousness was really about the fact I was getting older, I wasn’t a teenager anymore, and my ridiculous teenager’s car was ridiculous, and my life was ridiculous, and really I just wanted it to stay 1997 forever where my biggest worry was algebra.

I won’t rehash that essay here more, but I have something to add to it. If I’d not been who I was then, then I couldn’t have enjoyed “Kid A” later, in 2003, when I really needed it. In 2000 I was a junior in college at a big state school, in the journalism college (in that split-second moment where people were starting to think the internet was going to do wonderful/dangerous things to journalism but didn’t quite know exactly what/how). I was too far along to quit, but I didn’t know at all what I could do. I didn’t at all know what I wanted, because I had absolutely no idea what I was good at. I hadn’t tried anything except high school and then journalism, and journalism is just telling people what happened. It isn’t expression or interpretation or explanation, it’s just narrative and the material is dictated. You just copy it down.

In 2003 I was at art college, and was taking three elective classes in studio art in three different programs—graphic design, bookbinding and painting—I’d never attempted before. I had zero experience in studio art. I was working as the news editor of the college newspaper, and DJing and as promotions director for the college radio station. I lived in a beautiful garden apartment in a Victorian house in Savannah. And I was happy.

Just that I would even attempt the coursework, and the hours of effort and practice to get good enough at doing it just to accomplish the work for the classes, plus the extracurricular stuff, plus I probably had a better social life then than almost any other time of my life. I was constantly amazed at myself. I didn’t give up. I worked my ass off. I got straight As. (I did lose part of a finger though in a tragic utility-knife accident, but no big deal.)

I’d never thought I could do art; I never thought I could hone a craft-skill to a good-enough level and then simultaneously have something good enough to express with it. That I could try it, and that I could try it in such a wholehearted way, was an incredible chance to take, and I did. I chose to do the hardest things.

And when I’d come home, tired and sweaty and hunched over, I’d lie on the beautiful wood floor of my apartment and put “Kid A” on and just zone out. In “In Limbo,” Thom Yorke sings “You’re living in a fantasy world.” I was.

So, now, “Kid A” has this nostalgic*** quality for me. I’m nostalgic for a time in my life where I thought for just a short time that I had something to say, and that it was worth saying. And when I listen to it, sometimes I cry a little for that feeling because I miss it so much and I may never have it again.

*I think everybody/anybody who begins anything with “in my thesis” should be punched in the face. Especially in something as self-indulgent as a blog post. Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes**

**I didn’t write that. Walt Whitman did, and he’s a much better writer than I am.

***You probably know this, but the Greek root words for the word “nostalgia” mean “homecoming” and “ache.” Whoever picked that out was a genius.

A few months ago, I had my Porsche 928 in for some services at the Atlanta Porsche service conglomerate, which is part of the super-conglomerate that owns the Volkswagen place where I get my normal, practical-person car worked on. (Also, let me re-note here that while, technically and legally, it is my Porsche, it isn’t really my Porsche at all. I registered it and take it to the service place and if it was parked illegally I’d be the one getting the ticket, but it was and will always be my grandfather’s car. He picked it out, he bought it, he kept it, he just happens to not currently be alive in human form.)

Anyway, while I was there, at about 7:30 a.m. on a weekday, another Porsche owner was dropping off his fancy, newish 911. He was a snappily dressed, mid-40s guy with an English accent, and was pacing around waiting to check his car in after mine. I was answering really sexy questions like “And what’s the RPM when it changes into third gear?” and “Does it squeak always, or just from a cold start?” and “Do you really need a back window wiper?”

“Hey, is that yours?” Mr. Snappy asked me.

“Yes.” I didn’t want to get into the entire family history. I hadn’t had coffee yet.

“Nice.”

“Thank you.”

“Did you buy that new?”

I am thirty years old. Three-zero. In fact, when I was dropping this off, I was still only 29. It’s a 1989 Porsche. I was born in December of 1981. So, this guy was basically asking me if I had $80,000 as an 8-year-old and decided a ridiculous 4-seater Porsche was a smart investment. Actually, if I’d had $80,000 as an 8-year-old, I probably would have bought a swimming pool full of gummy bears.

I tell you this story to tell you this other story. Last Friday, I was getting coffee and a muffin on my way to work at a coffee place. After I’d ordered, the lady ringing me up took a deep breath.

“You can’t get offended,” she said. “But how old are you?”

“Thirty.”

“You have a LOT of gray hair!”

I really didn’t know what to say, so I just waited patiently for my muffin and then went to work.

So, in conclusion, I am 10,000 years old.

I never thought my debit card/bank account would be broken into because, basically, I never have any money, and certainly never enough to make any of it worth stealing.

Alas, today, cleaned out.

My bank called me about twenty minutes after I called them, to tell me there was fraudulent activity on my account, after I had already told them there was fraudulent activity on my account. I still have to call their claims department after all the charges are processed and finalized before I can even start the process to get my money back. And they cancelled my debit card, which doesn’t matter much, because there’s no money in my bank account to be debited out anyway. I’ll get a new one in the mail in 5-7 days, but probably won’t have money again until later than that.

So, the appropriate reaction here is to 1) take a credit card then, 2) go to the liquor store and 3) buy everything and then 4) drink it. But here’s the thing: my favorite local booze emporium* gives a cash discount. Seriously. Anything you buy in cash or with a debit card costs $1-2 less than if you buy it on a credit card. Getting drunk as a reaction to my debit card being stolen/bank account being emptied is now MORE EXPENSIVE because I must use a credit card.

Life is unfair, yo.

*I’m talking about the jumbo liquormart in the parking lot of a local supermarket, which is famous because in 2002, a passerby noticed the smell of rotting flesh and called police, and then police found a dead body in a car in the parking lot. So it’s called Murder Kroger. It even has its own Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/MurdrKroger.

Interior bar. Day.

JESSICA, 30, enters and sits. BARTENDER approaches.

BARTENDER:
Hi. Can I get you a drink?

JESSICA:
Yes, please, Skyy and tonic.

BARTENDER:
I’m sorry, we don’t serve alcohol until after 12:30.

JESSICA looks at her watch.

INSERT CLOSE UP, WATCH READING 12:20.

JESSICA nearly cries.

JESSICA:
Sweet tea, please.

BARTENDER:
We only have unsweet, but I can bring you some sugar.

JESSICA:
(stunned silence)

BARTENDER:
Will you be eating at the bar?

JESSICA:
No, I’m waiting for my parents.

BARTENDER steps away, comes back with tea and a globe of sweetening packets, none of which will properly dissolve in iced tea.

BARTENDER:
Also, we don’t stock Skyy anymore.

JESSICA looks at her watch again.

So, last night at the circus (yes, I went to the circus, and yes as will become clear, I went last year too). This is the Universoul Circus, a multi-cultural circus with performers from all over the world, a hip-hop soundtrack and a positive family message. Cirque-du-Soleil-ish Asian girls hanging from the ceiling, contortionists, elephants, tigers, ponies, a little person ringmaster, funnel cake, nachos and other circus accoutrements.

There were a few acts from last year that weren’t in the show last night that I missed (the guys who ride motorcycles in a spherical cage), but a lot of new acts (ponies!).

There is, however, something that confused me last year that again, confused me this year.

There’s an acrobatic act called Russian Swing, performed by the Zhukau Acrobatics troupe. I did some research, and discovered these guys are from Belarus, a landlocked former member of the Soviet Union tucked between Russia, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine. Their act involves two platform swings which face each other. A big hulky guy gets on the back of each and swings it, while a little guy gets on the front and jumps from one to the other, while they’re swinging, really fast, and sometimes they do flips and stuff, and sometimes two go at once, crossing each other.

I’d like to note here that it’s terrifying, and I can’t really watch it. I spend most of the act looking at the floor and listening to people gasp. I’m too worried there’ll be an accident and I get worried so I can’t look. (A few years ago I went to Cirque du Soleil’s KA in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand and spent the first half in panic mode, looking around thinking of all the terrible accidents that could happen and all the different ways I could see someone break his or her neck, and so my complaining sparked my mother to purchase me a 64-ounce alcoholic slush beverage during the intermission, and then I drank 3/4ths of it and fell asleep, I’m guessing from the combination of exhaustion and grain alcohol.)

So, here’s the confusing part. They wear sort of Bono-esque black patent leathery outfits with sort of tied-on mis-matched plaid wrap skirts. Their tops are sleeveless, but underneath they wear those flesh-colored long-sleeved shirts with fake tribal-tattoos on the arms (not really Celtic, but more like a George Clooney in “From Dusk Till Dawn” sort of look). In between terrifying acrobatic bits, they sort of dance and jump and twirl and yell, and the whole thing is set to sort of Riverdance music.

To drive from Edinburgh (the capital of Scotland) to Minsk (the capital of Belarus), it’s 1,751 miles. You go through France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland. If you were to fly a straight line, you’d cross Denmark, Poland, Lithuania and that little separated bit of Russia between Lithuania and Poland.

What I’m trying to do here (besides show off my ability to read a map) is show you the cause of my massive confusion. Why are these guys, billed with an Eastern-Bloc-y name and coming from an ex-Eastern-Bloc-y country, doing this pretend Celtic thing as part of their Russian Swing act? And why is it so weirdly non-authentically Celtic? What’s with the tattoo shirts and the patent leather? What’s with the Riverdance music?

So, in the middle of my circus experience, twice last year and also last night, I’m having this mental breakdown, while staring at the floor of the big top circus tent because I’m terrified I’ll see some Belarusian guy accidentally break in half, because I took basic European history in college and have a giant mental conflict over what does Belarus have to do with Scotland, and why is this connection being made and why aren’t other people yelling out in the crowd “What in the hell is going on? Don’t you know you can just be Belarusian? It’s all exotic and wild to us because we’re in a tent in a parking lot in Atlanta, Georgia.”

I realize I’m trying to apply logic here to something that is obviously, and incredibly, resistant to logic. But nobody else seems to be as unsettled by this as I am, so I feel obligated to say something.

So, officially, for the record, there it is. I have some concerns (well, one concern really), but now I’ve documented them and can move on, I guess, because everybody else seems to have done so.

So last weekend I stayed with my mom at her house from Friday evening until Sunday afternoon. She had to put our dog down on Friday morning, and my stepdad was out of town, and I didn’t want her to have to be alone. Unlike me, she doesn’t really enjoy being alone, so I took off work early Friday and went out there.

We saw on the news that the Powerball jackpot was more than $300 million, so we had to get dressed (we had already put on our jammies) and go out into the freezing cold (it was 29 degrees, and this is Georgia, so yeah, we call that miserable arctic death) to the local stop-n-go for lottery tickets. Standing there, ticking off our lucky numbers, we started spending the money.

I want a Ferrari 275 GTS and a Porsche 911 GT3 (plus seven or eight other ridiculous cars, like a Triumph, and a DB5). Mom wants a house on the beach in Costa Rica, a house on the beach on an island someplace without any other houses and a house on the beach on top of the house on the beach she already has. Then, we probably want some fancy custom-made clothes (I want about 20 shirts long enough for my ridiculous long torso). Some fancy Oprah shoes. I’d definitely get a housekeeper once a week and go to acupuncture more. Maybe I’d get a chef. I’d also give a bunch of it to literacy charities.

But while we listed off these to-buy-once-we-get-this-giant-heap-of-money items, Mom said she wanted to go on a boat trip around the world. “I can’t go,” I just blurted out. “I still have to work.” She just rolled her eyes at me.

Last Saturday’s Powerball jackpot was $336.4 million, and the winning ticket was sold in Rhode Island, but so far, nobody has come to claim it. Probably, he or she is busy talking to lawyers and financial advisers and accountants and banks and trusts to figure out exactly how to actually say, hey, I’m here for my $336,400,000, and these guys are here to see you don’t totally hose me.

But, I can’t fathom a reality, or any sort of jumbo Powerball jackpot (even presented on one of those ridiculous oversized poster-checks), where I’d just up and quit working. Maybe I’d start my own business (even a business like a magazine, which would basically be guaranteed to fail in this economic climate). Maybe I’d buy a bunch of soon-to-be-foreclosed-upon businesses. But, seriously, I have to do something. There’s only so many episodes of so many BBC shows for me to get obsessed with and watch all of. There are only so many movies, only so many restaurants, only so many beach houses and Ferraris and 911s and chefs I can have before I’d just get bored, and down on myself for not producing anything, and I just wouldn’t be able to take that. I’d have to do something with my time besides just indulge in enjoying stuff I’d bought. It wouldn’t feel real. I wouldn’t have earned these things, really, just been lucky. And I’d probably just get bored and give more and more of it away and go back to work and scraping by on my paychecks as I could.

Except for the Ferrari 275. I’d definitely have to keep that.

Typical daily agenda for the past month:

4-5 a.m.
Wake up early for no reason. Wait patiently until my alarm goes off at 7:06 a.m.
Finally get sleepy.
Hit snooze two or three times.

7:24-7:33 a.m.
Get out of bed.
Drag ass through cereal/shower/dressed/drive-to-work procedures.

8:30 a.m. – 7-8ish p.m.
Work at work, at the work where and at which I work at.
Hopefully eat lunch or just subsist on candy/snacks in my desk.
Stay late because things aren’t done because being interrupted is my primary responsibility and I take that seriously.
Take stuff home to work on.

8-11 p.m.
Work at home on more stuff — freelance, stuff for other people.
Work on stuff I brought home from regular job to work on.
Most likely, finish nothing before I hit wall of diminishing returns on effort/quality ratios.
Probably eat a Pop Tart.

11 p.m. – 2 a.m.
Lie in the dark trying to go to sleep.
Worry about things.

2-4 a.m.
Sleep.
Dream about losing teeth, abandoned supermarkets, food I don’t have time to eat.
Wake up with nosebleed and furious at my humidifier.

So, in aesthetics there’s a concept called “The Uncanny Valley.” You can read about it on the internet in a lot of places. It basically says that if you chart the relationship of “realness” to likability of something, instead of it just steadily going up there’s a drop when something is very-real-but-not-real. In robotics, specifically, there’s a huge dip in the likability of very realistic artificial things. For example, artificial limbs that move on their own are really creepy. “Toy Story” is great, but “Polar Express” gives you the willies. Instead of being better, they’re so good they’re worse.

Anyway, I think there’s a similar thing for the relationship of cuteness and reality. Case in point: do a Google image search for “morkie.” A morkie is a dog that’s half-Maltese half-Yorkie, and it’s so cute it looks artificial, and therefore isn’t cute at all, it’s just terrifying. See also: Ryan Gosling. So good looking it’s actually unbelievable. Blows my mind. I just don’t trust those people/things.

B-plot of this blog post: Wednesday someone asked me if I was engaged. I wear a ring I got for my 25th birthday on my right-hand ring finger that does kind of look like an engagement ring. (I like to think of it as a ring with which I could do serious damage if I punched somebody). Because of my total ineptitude with, you know, talking to other humans, I said no, and then when she asked me “Don’t you want to get married someday?” I said no because I don’t really like people.

More B-plot: My mom tried to guilt me into going to a baby shower yesterday by telling me that if I didn’t go, then nobody will come to my baby shower. I cackled laughing. What do I care if nobody comes to my baby shower? What does it matter? What would I do with a diaper cake? (Note: Diaper cakes are a real thing. It’s a sculpture of a cake made of diapers. This is something people want to get at baby showers.) In this imaginary future where I’m pregnant who says what I’ll care about or not care about? What kind of threat is that? Nobody will come to your baby shower. Ha. It’s like saying nobody will come to my funeral — what do I care? I’ll be dead.

Barely functional metaphor: I’m OK with all of this because it is all so far out of my realm of reality I can’t even begin to comprehend. A dolphin isn’t stupid because it can’t drive a car — it’s just not a problem a dolphin faces ever.

C-plot: Today I went to a lighting store. If you’ve never been to one (which, for thirty years, I hadn’t), it’s incredible. Completely overwhelming. First of all, it’s packed, wall-to-wall with lamps, sconces, mirrors and hanging light fixtures of ever imaginable shape, size and material. Indoor and outdoor, stuff made of metal, wood, plastic, mirror, crystal, painted-metal tulips, wicker, straw, glass bubbles … just, everything. And some of them are gigantic — like they belong in a humongous ridiculous castle house. Like I wrote, it was completely overwhelming, and I was completely overwhelmed. I just sort of doped around, wide-eyed and confused. I couldn’t remember the difference between anything I saw. I could only remember the lamp or dangling fixture I’d last seen. After about 40 minutes, I had to leave.

I started to have serious doubts about myself. I’m a 30-year-old woman. This should be the kind of thing that makes me all, I don’t know, happy or excited or something. It doesn’t. Do I have the wrong priorities with my life? I don’t care about lamps, just like I don’t care about babies or being pretty because I just want to be good at my job and work hard and get older and die proud of what I did. Why do I need a lamp for that? Why do I need to care about a lamp for that?

Would I be happier with my life/myself/the world if I was more interested in lamps? Are my lamp-shunning priorities ruining my existence?

Act three, where it all comes together: Fuck it. Lamps. And if they can’t handle it, let them riot. I’m not going to be pressured into caring about you. LAMPS. And if I don’t have to care about lamps, do I really have to care about all that other crap? All these things I’m doing “wrong” with my life. No. Not really. I don’t have to choose to waste valuable molecules of caring on stuff that doesn’t matter to me.

Resolution/takeaway message: Don’t threaten me with your beautiful-people-baby-lamp club problems, they don’t mean anything to me.

There are, at the least, about a quarter-million distinct English words. If you count distinct senses, inflection, words not yet added to the dictionary, obsolete words, derivative words, plus words from technical and regional vocabularies there are about three-quarters of a million. (For example, this second count would include every unique way one could use “like.”)

When people ask me if I’m paid by the word for writing, I wish I could say yes. I write you X number of words, I get Y dollars, we go on our magical separate ways. Too bad nobody is paying for just words. They’re paying for a specific selection and combination of words. They’re paying for my skill of selecting and ordering them. It’s a finite set of options, and there are finite ways of combining the selection, plus a ton of rules that govern how they may be combined and ordered, which, somehow, I feel should make it easier.

Comparatively, for example, there are about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, 206 bones in an average adult human and 118 named elements on the periodic table. If you just looked at it by the numbers, an astronomer would need to know a lot more than an osteologist, who knows slightly more than a chemist, so it should be easier to be a chemist than an astronomer or a writer or an osteopath. Of course, this is wrong, but something I’d like to tell my doctor sometimes.

I will never discover a galaxy. I will not synthesize a cure for cancer or treat someone’s degenerative bone disease and improve the quality of his/her life. (I mean, I guess I could do these things accidentally, or on purpose if I decided to go back to school and pursue advanced degrees in hard sciences or medicine, or whatever — it’s not relevant to my argument here.) The best I can hope to do is choose a handful of words from a scant quarter-to-three-quarters-million and put them together in some order that captivates attention for as long as I’ve requested. A lot of the time, that’s hard work enough.

“Have you got any soul?” a woman asks the next afternoon. That depends, I feel like saying; some days yes, some days no. A few days ago I was right out; now I’ve got loads, too much, more than I can handle. I wish I could spread it a bit more evenly, I want to tell her, get a better balance, but I can’t seem to get it sorted. I can see she wouldn’t be interested in my internal stock control problems though, so I simply point to where I keep the soul I have, right by the exit, just next to the blues.

-Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

In journalism-land, at the end of your copy/story/press release/whatever, you add a —30—. If a story is not finished, you write “No 30″ at the end to say you’re submitting more material.

My first journalistic experience, and where I learned this, was in seventh grade, at my jr. high newspaper. I was 11- or 12-years old, and have been generally a practicing journalist (scholastic, professional, otherwise) ever since.

To me, 30 means the end.

Tomorrow is my 30th birthday. If I don’t wake up, you know why.

Tonight I am watching the West Wing pilot, eating an entire pizza and drinking an entire bottle of wine. Once you’re 30, I don’t think you’re supposed to waste time like that. But what do I know? I’m still 29.

Will: I came in to show you the spots and to tell you I think we should run a counter-ad. I don’t have an idea for one.

Toby: Well get one. Have an idea. Don’t come in here with half a thing and not be able to … you know … after you walked me to the brink, and say “We’ve got to do this. It’s important, though I have no earthly idea how.” Like one of those guys who buys a big new thing, but doesn’t really know how to get the most out of it.

Will: Toby, either get Andy to marry you, or kill yourself.

Toby: [beat] Yeah.

Sometimes I help out with cool things. Case in point: this ad in The Economist for Zinio.

At one point this week, because I had to put my 2007 Volkswagen in the shop (I’m still making payments on it), I was carless. However, across the street, my grandpa’s 1989 Porsche 928 was ready to be picked up from the shop.

Because my family who lives near me works, and travels, and can’t be bothered to come all the way into the city just to give me a ride, I just had the VW guy drive me over to the Porsche dealership. Fewer than ten minutes later, I walked out with the keys. But that was it. Here, lady, have this Porsche. Technically, no, since this was the Porsche dealership, I didn’t walk out with keys, I walked out to where a guy was standing by the open door of the already-running car to help me into it because I am a delicate lady driving a ridiculous muscle car.

And oh dear. The thing has muscle. 5.0L, 316 hp of fine-tuned German-engineered muscle; 0-60 in less than six seconds. The back-seat-and-trunk area is comically small, and the front is ridiculously long. It’s hard to pull out and really see oncoming traffic, but thankfully, you can just romp on the gas and pull out in front of somebody and they’ll only notice you for a split second.

But you have to hold on for dear life. The thing is a beast, and it wants to go how, where and when it wants. My noodly little arms do the best they can to hold the thing in my lane, and a three-point turn is a bicep/tricep workout. Compared to this, driving my super-sensitive power-steering VW is like playing a video game, or the difference probably between flying a cute Cessna to your golf resort and slamming an F-18 Hornet off an aircraft carrier into a vast blue sky.

This car is not mine. My name is on the title, and the insurance. It’s registered to me. Barely any of its 33,000 miles were driven by me (seriously, I KNOW). This car is my grandpa’s. He loved cars. He loved cars that were made especially for the driver’s enjoyment. And I know that, because I’ve ridden in the ridiculous back seats of some of them.

He had this Porsche specifically because he was tall, and big, and in order to drive it, basically had to push the driver’s seat all the way into the back seat. A lot of people don’t realize it’s tough for really tall people to own regular, two-seater sports cars. You simply can’t get the seat back far enough to really fit in there comfortably. I feel like hunching over when I drive it and I’m only 5’8″.

My mom is currently driving his Mercedes S600. In reality, if my mom was not my grandpa’s daughter, my mom would be driving a normal mom-car. A Subaru wagon. A Toyota Rav-4. She would never have researched and purchased something like an S600, ever, on her own. But because he died, and we are the ones who like driving fast, fun cars, we are driving these cars. But we don’t think of them as ours. They’re always his. I’ll always feel bad for eating in one, or driving in high heels (it ruins the floor under the pedals), or leaving something in the back seat (like a jacket or an umbrella).

Coincidentally, I read somewhere that the No. 1 thing women consider when buying a car is cup holders. Amount of and easy access to cup holders. You know how many cup holders are in the 928? None. Unless you count the way you can sort of wedge a cup between the gear shift and the radio, but you still have to hold it or it spills. When I picked it up, I rode 20 miles in bumper-to-bumper traffic holding a 20-ounce coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts because there was simply NO PLACE to put it. And the whole time I was thinking, Why do I have this coffee in here? The car obviously doesn’t want me having coffee in here. Why am I going three miles an hour? The car obviously doesn’t want me doing that either.

I do love driving it. I love the sound and the feeling and the rumble that says “HEY, you. Yes, you, Nissan Sentra in the left lane. Get THE FUCK out of MY way, pleaseandthankyouverymuch.”

It feels a little like I stole it. Or I’m in a dream sequence. It makes me think of that Talking Heads song. “You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?” and then “You may say to yourself, my god, what have I done?”

So many coincidences and happenings and chances and one-in-a-billion-billions had to happen for me to be zooming down the highway in that 22-year-old German land-locked rocketship, but they all happened. From the big bang to now; 13.7 billion years of wild, strange accidents have led to this. So, thanks universe. And thank you too, science. And thanks Germany, even though that whole WWII thing happened, you still make incredible cars. And thanks Grandpa for sharing your toys.

P.S. Here’s someone’s gallery of a similar car. Same year/make/model. The one I’m driving is bright silver with gray leather inside.

When I lived in Washington D.C. I didn’t know a lot of people. Everything was expensive and I lived in a very pleasant residential area without much I could conveniently walk to for entertainment. I’d walk to Eastern Market and buy $7 tomatoes sometimes just for the trip. I didn’t fully realize it at the time, but I spent most of my second year there in a major depressive episode. Because of that, and the stress of the job I had there, on weekends, I only wanted to be in my apartment, away from all other humans, watch movies and eat junk food.

One Thursday, I was having a particularly bad week, it was snowy and icy and it got dark an hour or so before I’d even leave work. I got to thinking I should do something for myself. To cheer myself up a little. Something nice. An indulgence.

I decided I wanted one of those big cookies from the mall. And that I would order it and pick it up on Friday after work and then be at home all weekend and enjoy it. Treat myself.

I called up the closest one, but then I started to panic. How pathetic am I? They’re going to know. They’re going to see me and say “How pathetic this girl is buying this entire party-sized cookie to take home on Friday night and eat alone in her basement apartment.”

I decided I needed to get “Happy Birthday” written on the cookie in frosting. Instead of pathetic, it’d be more like “Hey! This girl is popular and is taking this cookie to a party! How cool!”

While I was holding, I decided it would be even better if I had them put a name on it. A guy’s name. So not only would it look like I was taking this cookie to a party, I was possibly taking it to a party where there was a gentleman with whom maybe I had a relationship. “Hey, this girl is going to a cool party with cool friends and her cool boyfriend! Cool!”

I ordered a $45 cookie for my imaginary gentleman friend’s non-happening birthday party. I got the one that’s two cookies and a layer of frosting in between. I know how to imaginary-party.

This is, by far, not the saddest or most pathetic thing I’ve ever done.* And, it had the bonus upside of eating delicious cookie all weekend. I also think about doing it again sometime, only, I think I’ve grown, I’ve worked on my confidence and personality enough that now I could probably just get it to say “Congratulations!” and eat it while pretending I’d achieved something amazing. “Congratulations Nobel Laureate Jessica Clary.” “Congratulations Emmy Award Winner Jessica Clary.” “Congratulations Astronaut Engineer Jessica Clary.”

*Also, when I lived in D.C., I bought a ticket for a weekend matinee of “Toy Story 3″ right when it came out. Friends who had already seen it told me it was sad, and that I’d probably cry, and I was OK with that. But when I got into the theater, it was packed full of wide-eyed innocent children, and I decided I could not be that 28-year-old woman weeping openly in a crowded theater alone watching a Pixar movie at 2 p.m. on a Saturday. I count that as the most pathetic thing I’ve ever done.

So, a few years ago, my entire family went on a trip to Costa Rica. Entire family meaning my grandma, my mom and stepdad, my mom’s two brothers and two sisters, her brothers’ wives, her sister’s husband, the twelve grandchildren, the one great grandchild and the couple who used to live with my granddad. If you’re counting, that’s 25 people.

The first day, everybody was to gather on a plane flying from Charlotte, N.C. to San Jose, Costa Rica. My mom and stepdad flew in from Atlanta, and I was to fly in from where I was living in Washington, D.C. at the time. The night before, my car had broken down, so I had it towed off to the dealership and booked a shuttle ride for the hour trip out to Dulles airport in the suburbs. I got up around 5 a.m., got on the van and rode out to the gorgeous Eero Saarinen-designed terminal of Dulles, where things started to unravel.

I was not allowed to check in for my flight because my passport would expire within 30 days of my return flight. This was not great news. My mom’s passport would expire the same day, and one of my cousin’s would expire even earlier. I assumed they were going through the same thing. I rebooked myself on the same flights for the following day and started furiously trying to call my family to tell them why I was not present for the airplane rendezvous.

Nobody had cell phones with them. After enough calling, I reached a compassionate ticket agent who put an alert in the system so when my mom checked in for her flight, sirens went off and lights flashed and she’s told to immediately call her daughter.

About an hour later, she called me. I explained to her what happened (she says it’s bullshit and I should demand to be let on the plane), I told her they may not let her on the plane either, and then she could just book herself a ticket up to D.C. and we’d go over to the State Department passport emergency office and get new passports together. But no, everyone else is on the plane. My entire family, 24 of the people I love the most in the world, were in one metal tube full of jet fuel bound southward and I was not there.

Since I’m a problem solver, I rented myself a car, went to the State Department, hung out most of the day and paid a significant amount of money in rush fees for a new passport. I went home, slept, and then returned the rental car to Dulles the next morning to get on my rescheduled flights. Of course, since my family was already in Costa Rica, they didn’t know any of this. I can’t call them. I had just told them to send me some kind of ride from the airport to the house.

I got to San Jose, waited an hour for my luggage and then finally found my van driver, who spoke no English. My Spanish is limited to simple statements about the weather, cheese and butter. I got in a large 28-passenger van with him after a conversation via mime.

The day before, a different van driver had loaded my entire family into a similar van and they had ridden this trip together, singing songs and talking and drinking beers. Apparently, also, this trip was about six hours over a mountain. With no common language skills, it was silent.

We eventually made it to a gorgeous rental house where my family was waiting for me, having managed to get, on my own, from D.C. to Manuel Antonio National Park on the west coast of Costa Rica. I went inside the house and start eating everything I could find.

Eventually, my mom showed me to my room. It’s sort of a studio apartment tacked on the back of the house, like a maid’s quarters or something, but nice. You went outside into the yard, around a little walkway and then inside the door to it. Everyone else was too scared for it to be their room. I was too tired to care. I put my stuff down and then I saw a huge spider. To me, all spiders are terrifyingly big, but this one was about the size of a quarter, plus legs. It was against the wall near the door, so I just figured I could open the door, sort of softly kick the wall behind it and it would run outside.

This is what I did. The spider did not respond as I had imagined.

Instead, she (or he, cause I don’t know much about spider mating and parenting customs) exploded into about a hundred teeny baby spiders, who ran in all directions, like someone had dropped a bag of marbles on the floor.

I was finished.

I am generally pretty independent. But after 48 hours of independently fighting an airline agent, visiting the U.S. State Department, and traveling to a foreign country, I was done. I am a single girl who has lived alone since 2005, doing pretty much everything for myself, but this was the last straw.

I calmly walked upstairs, found my stepfather and told him what had happened. He went to take care of it while I leaned onto my mother’s shoulder and basically wept from total exhaustion. He returned, having battled, and I could finally go to bed. The room smelled like bug-killer, so I left the windows open.

This moment, the spider moment, where one thing happens that would be only minorly stressful on its own, instead happens at the end of 20 or 30 other minor and major stress things happening back to back, is a defining kind of thing. Some people just flip out into a rage. I, like probably many introverts, just shut down. Can’t process. Spider explosion is outside of my range of expected possibilities. It’s like when you try to make a calculator divide something by zero and it just says no. Incalculable.

The past month has been a long version of the 48 hours leading up to the spider moment, and it’s still going. I don’t know what the moment will be, or what my reaction will be, but I’m trying to prepare.

Is there a word like “misanthrope” for when you don’t like anything, not just limited to people? Not like “nihilist,” because I still acknowledge the existence of stuff and things and people and places and situations, I just don’t really like them anymore.

So, since the work shakeups, certain things that were never previously a hassle are now a huge big deal. And then other things that were a big deal are huge hassles.

After two weeks of not sleeping, barely eating and working 15-20-hour days, I went to see a doctor. It isn’t a secret I have some medical issues with anxiety and high blood pressure, and then when external stressors pile up, things get easily overwhelming. It starts to affect my body, and comes out as 36-hour headaches, digestive problems, extreme blood pressure swings (190/90 isn’t unheard of). So I have to turn to modern medicine to get myself back to normal.

All of this is to say that possibly one of the greatest meals of my entire life, up there with Le Cirque and In-N-Out Burger and that place I went in Mexico with the prawns and Cafe Gray and those steakhouses where everything is a-la-carte and dudes punch other dudes, is microwaved pizza rolls and valium. And sitting in bed, in my jammies, in the afternoon, eating pizza rolls, watching tv on the internet is just about the best therapy out there.

Today was the first day of fall quarter classes at the college where I work. Today was tough, and long, and I had a ton of things to do. I worked yesterday. I worked Saturday. And Friday. And Thursday I worked, closed on buying my condo, and received some difficult and challenging news about some reorganization at the college.

I’ve read all that stuff about how difficult times are when people worth their mettle shine through. And how things that are hard are tests of character and blah blah blah. But sometimes, things are just hard. On Thursday morning, a friend asked me to make plans for Saturday night. I told him I was closed to new problems or questions. My brain was full. And then 10,000 things happened and pretty much, my brain has overloaded. Now it’s crashing.

I feel like at any moment, I could just go catatonic. Mentally bluh out on being able to comprehend even just one more thing. I do not feel like I’m getting stronger, or my character is developing or this is a chance for me to shine. I feel like this is a chance for me to eat an entire box of Cheez-Its. The time for my ability to drink red wine to be tested and proven. An opportunity for me prove my mettle as someone who can get her blood pressure up to 190/90 and not be fainting. I’m incredibly good at maintaining a sort of walking panic attack and still just plodding through.

I’m completely overwhelmed, but I’m doing the best I can.

Four years before I was born, during a period of unique planetary alignment, two room-sized contraptions were launched into space on indefinite, infinite trajectories. Not really aimed at anything, really, but aimed to pass near some things and photograph them, and then keep moving. They’re Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, and since I first learned about them, in middle school, I’ve been fascinated.

Here’s a list of things about Voyager that make me all gooey and idealistic inside:

1. They have no destination. They just go … away. Out there. Way, out there.
Eternally out there unless it accidentally hits something. What foresight, to plan how to shoot something out so that it can pass everything and not hit stuff so it can just keep going.

Voyager 1 passed Jupiter in 1979, and Saturn in 1980, and then flew past Titan (Saturn’s humongo moon 50% bigger in diameter than our moon and something like 80% more massive). Titan’s gravity pulled it out of a path where it would pass Pluto to photograph closely. in 1990, it had photographed everything, and it is the farthest thing we’ve shot out there that can talk to us. It’s the fastest probe and nothing out there right now will ever pass it. And right now, it’s leaving our solar system.

Voyager 2 passed Jupiter in 1979, Saturn in 1981, Uranus then Neptune. It discoered Neptune’s Great Dark Spot, and more information about why it’s blue. In 2007, it passed the heliosheath, and in 2010 was twice as far from the sun as Pluto.

2. They carry stuff meant to be found by extraterrestrial beings of other worlds. And who picked out this stuff? Carl Sagan. The “stuff” is carried on a gold phonograph record (don’t worry, the probe also carries a record player).

“This spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space-faring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this ‘bottle’ into the cosmic ‘ocean’ says something very hopeful about life on this planet,” Sagan said.

It carries recordings of greetings in 55 languages, animal sounds, photos of mathematical and scientific ideas, people, animals, food, music by Stravinsky, Mozart, Beethoven and Chuck Berry. On the cover are diagrams explaining how to play the record, as well as a map of pulsars showing where our sun is. And a drawing of a hydrogen atom in two states to show the time scale used.

And the opening line, from then-president Jimmy Carter, is eloquent and simple: “This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours.”

What Sagan said is right. The message of hopefulness and optimism, opportunity and excitement is something amazing and beautiful about our culture. About what it is to be a human citizen of this planet. If I think about it too hard, I feel like crying.

NASA and Sagan knew there was an incredibly small chance actual extraterrestrial beings would find and hear this recording but they did it anyway. They did it anyway. They chose to do something extra, something more, because of the hopeful, uniting message it gives.

That’s how I think about all of NASA: they did it anyway. Building rockets was dangerous and killed people. Sending humans out there into that bleak mystery was terrifying and expensive and took the combined efforts of thousands of people, working hard and at the highest levels of thinking, engineering and technology at the time. But they did it anyway. The moon was out there, so they went. And it took years of planning and testing and retesting and exceptional execution but more than anything it took the willingness to try to go. To do the hard work. To do whatever would take, without knowing what exactly that would entail, to achieve something incredibly idealistic and indulgent. And they did it. Despite everything, they did it.

3. Last year, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (the company that basically does all NASA R&D, where my aunt’s dad works) revealed that a bit had been flipped in the transmission from Voyager 2. One single binary piece of computer code, which could be represented as 1 or 0, had changed. What had happened?

Was this an alien race’s peaceful, non-destructive way to say hi? Was this something else? Actually, it was nothing, but for a few days, before JPL was able to reset it, there was a sense of fantastical wonder, not just from the possibilities, but also the excitement and potential of not knowing.

You know the feeling you get when you read a mystery, or watch a good thriller, and there’s a feeling in the not-knowing of excitement and anticipation and knowing that SOMETHING is coming but you don’t know what yet, and it’s … well, it’s something. And nothing else does it. And for a little bit, that wonder has been able to captivate our country, our planet, all of us, and there’s something to be said about that. Some credit to be given for captivating five billion people with just the simple idea of going out there.

So, recently, some of my “crazy, backwoods, Southern-person views” were called into question. I argued as best as I could, but without research (the debater’s best friend) I couldn’t convince my discussion-partners of my point. Now I have researched. Though I’m sure nothing will change their minds that they’re right and I’m wrong, I at least can say I have a well-developed argument.

My position:
I think American citizens should be allowed to own and use guns. I do not think that most gun-control efforts would work to reduce the amount of violent gun crimes in this country, and I think that any revenue and time from abandoning said gun-control efforts would be better spent in cultural and educational ways to reduce violent crimes of all kinds.

Yeah, I like guns. I like guns because I like freedom and personal responsibility. I like guns because I like the first amendment and my protection to say what I want. I like the third and fourth amendments for protecting my home and privacy, the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth for giving me a fair trial and protection from excessive punishment.

I would also like to point out that I do not own a gun. I have fired guns recreationally, and in my mother and stepfather’s home, I know where a loaded handgun is kept in case I need to defend myself against an intruder when I’m there.

My supporting research:

First, the text, “the right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” By the governing document of our country, citizens’ rights to keep guns and use guns can’t be challenged.

Second, I previously had unrealistic ideas of how many people die in gun-homicides per year. I downloaded a complete copy of the National Vital Statistics Report on Death for 2007 (link is a PDF) (a lengthy, serious document chronicling all causes of death of the 2,423,712 persons who were reported to have died in the U.S. in 2007). On the front page, the 15 leading causes of death are listed, and right there, at No. 15, is Assault (homicide).

To me, as probably the simplest, most efficient way to kill another human, if one were to desire, would be to get a gun and shoot them. So, I made an assumption that yeah, I guess there must be a lot of people getting shot. For the past few years I’ve lived in cities that, for some reason, have higher-than-average levels of gun-related crimes (Savannah, Ga., Washington D.C. and Atlanta), and I’m constantly flooded with local news coverage of gun crimes and gun homicides. In my head, people were killing each other with guns a lot. If I had been asked to estimate, just off the top of my head, I probably would have guessed closer to 750,000 or a million people died from gunshots per year in the U.S. And dang, would I have been wrong.

And I kept reading. And I learned I didn’t make a really smart assumption. If you total the numbers for deaths from Accidental discharge of firearms, Intentional self-harm (suicide) by discharge of firearms, Assault (homicide) by discharge of firearms and Discharge of firearms, undetermined intent, you get 30,873 deaths from guns. That’s still a lot. But the breakdown is surprising, or at least, it was surprising to me.

• Accidental Discharge of Firearms: 613
• Intentional self-harm (suicide) by discharge of firearms: 17,352
• Assault (homicide) by discharge of firearms: 12,632
• Discharge of firearms, undetermined intent: 276

I was surprised that the number of gun-related suicides was so high, but more surprised that the number of gun-related homicides was so low.

(Of course, in reading the report, I saw some other interesting big, and small, numbers. 46,844 people died from motor-vehicle accidents, 562,875 from “malignant neoplasms” aka cancer, 30 from Salmonella, 2,644 from malnutrition, 411 from influenza, 769 from pregnancy and childbirth. For context, I tried to find other causes of death that caused a number of deaths near the number of deaths caused by gun homicides; roughly, these included HIV, esophageal, stomach, kidney, brain, bladder and ovarian cancers, multiple immunoproliferative cancers, and emphysema. Most of the heart diseases kill way more, most other things kill way fewer.)

What I’m saying with all these numbers is, and this is just as cold as it will sound, because it’s simply based on columns of figures and not thinking of those figures as human beings and sons and mothers and wives and grandchildren, is, on the whole, if you’re going to die, it’s not really likely it’ll be from being shot with a gun. And if you are shot with a gun and die from it, it’s more likely you do it to yourself.

There are a lot of things out there killing people we should be more furious and more outraged about than guns. Personally, those 2,644 who starved to death makes me pretty furious. People dying of curable diseases (pneumonia, hernias, tuberculosis, meningitis, syphilis, measles, etc.) makes me furious. And honestly, both make me more furious than even my imagined-number of gun-homicide deaths could make me.

Next, not a lot of guns actually are used in crimes. Here’s an interesting number from the National Academy of Science. Of the approximately 70 million handguns in the U.S. (in 2004) only about 7,500 a year are used in gun crimes. That’s .011 percent of handguns. Which means that 99.989 percent of handguns in the U.S. are never used to commit a crime. Never.

In debate, I would call this “no link,” because statistically, most handguns aren’t used in crimes. If you took all of these 70 million handguns away from their owners, you’d only be getting rid of about 7,500 guns that actually were used illegally.

Plus, think about the effort involved there. The effort to collect those 70 million handguns would be a colossal undertaking that would probably cost a lot of money and a lot of time. However, to collect just 7,500 guns wouldn’t take so long or cost so much, and really, if your goal is to prevent crimes, only 7,500 handguns are used in crimes in a year. Shouldn’t you just focus the utmost effort on just getting those 7,500 guns that are used in crimes, and not all 70 million? Wouldn’t that solve the problem AND have the added bonus of being very efficient?

OK, next research point. In the friendly discussion I had about my “crazy” views on guns, it was suggested that guns should be taken away from people, and not able to be purchased legally. High-profile voluntary gun buyback programs have been put on across the country and statistically, well, they sucked. People gave up their old and broken guns, and then took the cash and bought newer, nicer guns.

But what has worked to deter gun crimes? Police and penalties. Cities that put lots more cops in locations where lots of people got shot saw gun homicide rates plummet (re: Boston’s 1996 Project Cease Fire). Likewise, places that made crimes with guns highly punishable, more than just a regular crime (i.e. robbery vs. robbery with a gun), saw fewer gun crimes.

So, bottom line, based on proven attempts to deter gun crimes: taking away guns didn’t work, but preventing and prosecuting gun crimes worked. Wouldn’t it make more logical sense to then channel problem-solving efforts related to gun crime into the proven methods of reducing gun crime, instead of the wasteful methods that are proven not to reduce gun crime?

Here are two more statements, ones that don’t have as much research, but are to be considered, I think:

• Criminals do illegal things (you know, like crimes). If we make having a gun a crime, I doubt it will matter much to a criminal. He/she is already going to commit a robbery or a homicide or whatever crime, so I doubt he/she would gasp “Oh! But getting a gun is illegal!” Plus, there are already illegal ways of getting guns, and guess what, people get guns illegally. People also get guns legally, and then use them illegally to kill people. Obviously, the legality here is not the issue.
• This is just my opinion, and I didn’t research it, but I think making guns illegal would just make them some kind of worse fetish property. It would raise the glamour level of guns. It would make people who had guns somehow sexier, cooler, and then it would make gun crimes seem that way too.

Similar research has been done on other stuff like this. Like, kids who were raised in strict homes and not allowed sweets, or had big stigmas about alcohol, go off to college and eat junk food and get fat, or binge drink. Reactionary. Push one way and it only makes the other way happen.

Conclusion:
I think making guns illegal would be a waste of considerable time, money and effort. I also think that using that considerable time, money and effort on things that deter gun crimes would be an infinitely better solution to any gun-related-crime problem than criminalizing simple gun ownership.

OK, so, sure, call me a crazy, red-state-dwelling weirdo. I believe what I think on this subject is practical, rational and logical. I also have plenty of ideas and opinions that would not fit my crazy, red-state-dwelling weirdo persona (ask me how I feel about legislating my uterus, or about my public school education, or school prayer, or school vouchers, or, I dunno, like a million other things that explain why I’m registered to vote democrat in a state that never does).

If I want a gun, if my friend or mother or neighbor or son or daughter or husband or wife or whatever wants a gun, they should decide for themselves if having one is right for them, not the government. Likewise, the government should not take broad, inaccurate generalizations to make legislation to remove freedoms under the false guise of personal safety. (Plus, if it turns out anything like how airport security did, it’ll be totally FUBAR and won’t really make us feel that much safer.)

OK, New York. You and I are fucking finished.

This is the last straw: A bus driver dies and sits in an idling bus at Port Authority for five hours.

Before this, I read a story about how the city uses subway cars to transport garbage sometimes. Cars in trains that are IN SERVICE at the time. The story included a quote, from a union president, that ends ” … if you walk close to a bag, a rat could jump out right on top of you.”

And then, the one that started it all. The Chinese-food sex doll story.

Now, I realize that things like this probably happen everywhere, and that there’s probably a Chinese-food sex doll right in the very building I’m in while I type this. And I realize that people die all the time (and probably yes, some die at work, and some people work driving buses, so I get that this whole scenario isn’t astronomically mathematically impossible). And, you know, I believe in rats, and yeah, I understand trash has to get moved around somehow.

As a child, I dreamed of living in New York and being a writer. Frittering away on a typewriter and smoking on my fire escape. I didn’t hit the lottery at 11, though, so that dream became financially infeasible. Now though, I mean, if I wanted to badly enough, I could get my shit together and move to New York and work and go to parties and do New York things.

But I’m not going to. Because, seriously, New York, you’re disgusting.

I read a lot. Voraciously would be an accurate description. Copiously. Obsessively. There are five books on my nightstand right now and I’m in the midst of reading all of them (two nonfiction, two fiction, one Best American series collection). When I download a book on my iPad, I usually finish it in a day. Plus, I subscribe to 10 or so print magazines, have another 10 or so through Zinio on my iPad. I follow about 200 different news/etc. blogs and sites on my RSS reader.

And I read everywhere. If I’m in the bathroom brushing my teeth, I have a magazine, or a book, or I’m desperately searching for some text on a shampoo bottle to read. If I’m desperate, I’ll read my old day planners. That’s how bad it is.

I try to read without guilt, in that I should be doing other things that are more productive, or lucrative (I read about twice as fast as I write, and nobody pays me to read). Learning is responsible, though, I guess. (Right now, for example, I’m taking an online 100-level American literature course — free from the college I work at — just for fun. Likewise, I sometimes consider going to law school for fun, and also to spite people who think I’m stupid.)

Anyway, I must bring attention to something that bugs me. Occasionally, when my friends and acquaintances share stuff on their blogs/google reader/etc., they preface articles with “WTLR.” This means “Worth the long read.”

It’s insulting. Seriously insulting.

To anybody who would be actively searching for something to read, to even go to lengths of reading articles recommended by friends who are also always looking for things to read, something being long, if it’s good, shouldn’t matter. Ever. Good is always worth reading. No matter what.

So, yeah, everybody, you can quit warning me that something is long. Why don’t you just tell me it is, so I’m even more excited to read it.

So a while ago, some students and another adviser and I were driving back from the Savannah Record Fair to Atlanta. I was piloting a huge silver minivan full of two radio students (the general manager DF and the music director MB), the Connector A&E editor (MM) and my radio co-adviser MD. MD and I had been discussing relationships and high standards and how it’s tough to be a smart, single lady blah blah blah. The students were all asleep and we were rolling through someplace like Twiggs county.

Apparently, our yakking woke the guys, and DF announced he needed a bathroom stop. He didn’t specify urgency, so I assumed a stop was immediately imperative. I took the next exit and drove toward what I figured would be a cute little town with ample restrooms and maybe some kind of cookie store. I could have used a cookie right then.

We passed nothing. Some rundown houses, burned-down barns and fields. Finally, I saw something that looked promising: a painted wood sign directing us down a dirt road to a raceway park. Cool. They’d have bathrooms. And maybe also nachos.

The dirt road was deceptively long. As we got farther and farther into Twiggs County and off the interstate, we started playing that one-up crazy conversation game. Abandoned racetrack. Abandoned haunted racetrack. Abandoned haunted pig racetrack haunted by dead pig ghosts of yore and yesteryear. The road was basically one lane, red dirt and gravel. We didn’t see any other cars, so I just drove down the center.

Eventually, we came to the track, which was exceptionally well-maintained and fresh-looking, but also, you know, EMPTY. We rounded the dirt road and finally came upon something that looked like a concession stand with bathrooms. DF hopped out and went in cautiously. No lights were working, so I pulled ahead a bit so he could have a little privacy even with the door open.

MD asked me why I didn’t put it in park. I explained I wanted to be able to make a quick getaway in case things got all Deliverance in here. DF got back to the van safely and we scooted off back toward the road. He told us there had been no real plumbing, but he took advantage anyway. We laughed a bit about what would have happened if he was attacked by ghost pigs or some creepy caretaker type, and then we went on.

After a few minutes, DF proclaimed I probably, at this point in my life, wouldn’t make the greatest mother.

I agree.

He reminded me that I keep a desk drawer full of candy, and when students complain of headaches or stomachaches or anything, I offer them candy. It’s basically the 100% opposite of what an actual mother would do.

I’m just trying to make people happy. Here, have some Rollos. Need to pee? I’ll stop this van wherever we are, safety be damned. However, I think because of these things that make me a bad mother-figure, I’m a decent adviser. What, you have a problem that can’t be solved with candy or a pig racetrack? Well, you probably should try to figure it out for yourself. I can help you, but my immediate solutions aren’t going to be very helpful. Rollos do not solve much of anything (except, you know, wanting a Rollo).

If I gave out answers like I gave out candy, I really wouldn’t be preparing students for anything but asking for answers and getting them. That isn’t good enough for me, and it shouldn’t be good enough for anybody entrusted to teach students of any type or age or status. Problem-solving skills are the most valuable thing we can help students with, and they have to be practiced and exercised and coached all the time. I’m thrilled to be better at coaching somebody through solving their own problem than I am at solving their problem myself. (Especially when my solution is to let it fend for itself in an abandoned haunted pig racetrack or just give it candy.)

This is a conversation I had a while ago:

Me: I’m thinking about things I can do for fun.
Person I know who is smart, level-headed and not impulsive like me: Oh, like a hobby?
Me: No. Like law school!
Him: Why? Do you want to be a lawyer?
Me: Oh, no way. Him: Then, why would you think about going to law school?
Me: To prove to people I’m not as dumb as they all think I am.
Him: So, spite. You’d be going to law school for spite.
Me: Yeah!

As yet, I have not applied to law school. But, if I ever do, and if I ever go, this is 100% the reason. This is 100% the reason I do a lot of things. Spite. And to prove I’m not as (insert negative thing here) as people think I am. I finished undergrad in three-and-a-half-years, to prove it wasn’t a fluke that I started college at 17. I was a journalism major to spite a high school teacher that said I was a terrible writer. I went to graduate school because my friends thought I couldn’t. I moved to D.C. because I didn’t think I could. I’ll even do stuff just to spite myself. The easiest way to get me to do something — and do it better than anybody else, or at least to do more, go farther, work harder, do whatever it takes — is just to let me think you doubt I can. Forget it. I’ll do dumb stuff. I’ll do stuff I don’t even really want to do, just to say hey, guess you thought wrong, huh?

Except for two years while I was in DC working in media/communication professionally, I have been constantly involved in scholastic journalism (either as a student on staff of a school publication, a student studying journalism or an adviser) since 1994, when I worked on the staff of the student newspaper at my middle school in seventh grade. It’s 2011 now. I have done this for more than half of my life. And I believe I recall someone telling me, back then, in sixth grade or so, that the journalism classes were tough to get into, and I might not make the cut. But I did.

It’s not necessarily a good quality, especially not combined with my unyielding stubbornness, but so far it’s led to positive accomplishments. Hopefully it will lead to a lot more.