"Rules By Which They Could Not Live:" My Bat Mitzvah Drash

Cross-posted to State of Formation.

The parshah I’ve worked on for my Bat Mitzvah is, given my graduate research, apt—and not entirely accidental. My research deals with sexual ethics—and queer sexuality in particular— in Judaism. And as you follow along in your Chumashim, you will notice that parshat K’doshim-Acharei Mot contains perhaps two of the most controversial verses in the Hebrew Bible: Leviticus 18:22—“you will not lie with a man as with the lyings of a woman”—and Leviticus 20:13—“If one lies with mankind as one lies with womankind, they have both committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death.”
In my research, naturally, I have had to deal with these verses, and with possible mitigating interpretations of them. I can tell you the following—first, many such interpretations exist. Second, all of them, to my mind, are some degree of unsatisfying.  There is always the feeling that these interpretations are trying to turn the text into something that it is not. They always, to my mind, fail to erase the stark punch to the gut these verses in their plain sense are to a reader.

At this point, I’d like you to imagine me, at twelve, just starting to realize that I like girls, reading Leviticus for the first time.  And then I would like you to imagine, after that experience, how you, as a twelve-year-old, would respond to the suggestion that you commit to a faith that holds this text as sacred. These verses are alienating. No matter how we try to turn them, they are disturbing. And if you are queer, like me—no matter the interpretation, no matter the academic distance you may try to put between yourself and your subject—ultimately, they still hurt. Any effective and honest response to them, therefore, must begin by acknowledging that.

Futhermore, such a response should, in my opinion, not attempt to retroactively paint the past meanings of the text as something it is not. We have, as a species, a strong tendency to confuse is and ought. That is, we assume that because a thing is the status quo—because it’s “natural,” or “traditional,” or so on—that it is therefore ethically valid. Or, conversely, we might assume that, because we find a thing ethically valid, that it therefore must reflect the natural or original state of affairs.
But these assumptions are erroneous. Just because a thing is “natural” or “traditional” doesn’t make it right—after all, murder, sexual violence, tribalism, and racism are all natural states of affairs. And just because a thing is right doesn’t mean it reflects some primordial state of perfection—racial and sexual equality, for instance (despite assertions to the contrary), appear to be fairly recent concepts.

Effective advocacy for equality or justice, then, needs to start from the understanding that there is a problem to be fixed—that there is something in the world that is wrong and broken. I would suggest that in some cases, the same is true for effective engagement with religious text. David Weiss Halivni posits that Rabbinic interpretation is generated in response to what he describes as the “maculateness” of the Biblical text—that is, the text, as a result of existing within human history, has problems or inconsistencies within it whose function is to generate interpretive responses. He writes, “When the people of Israel congregated once more—at long last and of their own accord—they found not Moses and the pure and perfect Torah of the wilderness, but Ezra and his composite Torah, mad maculate by centuries of human history.” (Peshat and Derash, vi.)
I’d like to go one step further—the text has actively unethical commands in it, whose purpose is to teach us to recognize them. These texts are meant to reflect and demonstrate the brokenness of the world, and goad us into doing something about it.

I would add at this point that we do not have a very good track record when it comes to responding to such texts. Indeed, a look into the prophetic literature reveals that God anticipates this. In Ezekiel 20:25-26 we find the chilling admission: “I gave them laws that were not good and rules by which they could not live: When they set aside every first issue of the womb, I defiled them by their very gifts”—that is, instead of consecrating the firstborn to the temple they sacrificed them—“that I might render them desolate, that they might know I am Adonai.”

God, in other words, knew that the Israelites would get the commandment tragically, horrifically wrong—and handed it down anyway. Suffice it to note, by the way, that while theodicy (that is, the justification of God in the face of suffering or evil) is not the main focus of this drash, the fact that God would take such action, at such terrible consequence, anticipating our brokenness and fallibility, raises deeply troubling questions about the very nature of God.

Despite our poor record thus far, there nevertheless are Rabbinic precedents for this sort of interpretation. Perhaps the best-known example is found in the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin 68b-72a. This sugya engages the Biblical edict (Deut. 21:18-21) that “if a man has a [stubborn and rebellious] son…they shall bring him out to the elders of his town at the public place of his community…[and] the men of his town shall stone him to death.”

Clearly, the Rabbinic interpreters are deeply troubled by this text. First the mishnah (Sanh. 8:1-5) and then the Gemara restrict the definition of the stubborn and rebellious son to the point of absurdity, until the Gemara finally says, “There never has been a stubborn and rebellious son, and never will be. Why, then, was the law written? That you may study it and receive reward.” (71a)

Notice what this interpretation doesn’t do. It doesn’t say that the law used to apply but no longer does. It doesn’t try to excuse it, or to erase it. It brings it forward in all its bald horror, allows it to punch us in the gut, and then goes about making sure that it will never be carried out. Yet in doing so, it preserves a purpose for the law—it is there to learn from. It is there as a witness, as a thing to study—and we should bear in mind that in Talmudic parlance, there is a very real sense of fighting and struggle implicit in study and learning. (For more on this, see Jeffrey Rubenstein’s excellent book, The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud.)

There are clearly some differences between the Exodus and Sanhedrin texts, and the ones we have in front of us. Against the assertion that “there never was such a son,” there have been, and continue to be, many, many LGBTQ people who have been hurt, directly or indirectly, as a result of the texts we’ll be chanting shortly. And I’d argue vociferously against the notion that there is personal reward to be gained from learning these texts—we should instead be hanging our heads in shame. But as for why the law was written? “That you may study it” may be the only interpretation I can accept.

In studying this text, I am confronted with a world that is so broken that even the Scriptures given to it, even the laws contained within those Scriptures, contain ethical abominations, contain violent and dehumanizing prescriptions. I am also powerfully confronted with an obligation to help fix it. I am reminded that this law was written, not so that I may “study and receive reward,” but to force me to think critically about it, to stir me and make me uncomfortable, to punch me in the gut so that I may “study and DO SOMETHING.” Shabbat Shalom.

This image is used under a Creative Commons 3.0 license and was retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

Building Hedges: What the Rabbis Taught Me About Managing ADHD

(Cross-posted to State of Formation)

The [Great Assembly] originated three maxims: "Be not hasty in judgment; Bring up many disciples; and, build a hedge for the Torah."

-Pirkei Avot 1:1

End-of-year report, first grade:

“Rebecca has the ability to be an outstanding student. She has a tremendous amount of knowledge and is eager to learn. Although she has wonderful ideas, she has produced very little work that would give evidence of this. Her inability to attend to the task at hand and to complete her work has caused her great frustration this year.”


By fourth grade, I have learned to perform reasonably well in school. But my work is disorganized, and I’ve picked up the nickname “Hurricane Rebecca,” reflecting the disaster area that is my desk. 


By the time I’ve reached high school, I’ve learned to game the system. Despite my disorganization and last-minute work habits, the work is easy enough for me that I build up an eminently respectable academic record, and manage to graduate in three years.

I enter college with designs on a biology major, but first-year bio and chem classes prove my undoing; the pass-fail option is my salvation. Religious studies is interesting enough to me that I put serious work into it. But I still start papers at 3 am the day they’re due. I worry that someone will discover that I’m not working hard enough, and as I get more seriously into the subject, the stakes get higher. Somehow, I graduate with high honors. I’m sure it’s just a matter of time until I get caught.


In my second year of grad school—last fall—I meet with my advisor for my independent reading. He tells me to shut the door. “This is not graduate-level writing,” he says. “You’re in graduate school, and you need to get serious.” He pauses. “How many hours a day do you work?”


The jig is up. 


I tell him that I’ve suspected for a while that something’s wrong with me, but that I can’t afford to see a therapist regularly right now. 


“Then sell your books and see one. Your brain is your most important tool. If you were a dancer you wouldn’t make excuses about not taking care of your feet.” He continues, “I wouldn’t be telling you this if I didn’t think you were smart enough to do this. It’s clear that you are. But you’ve got to decide to undertake the discipline necessary. What we do in the academy is a discipline. It’s unnatural. You have to train yourself to do it.”


That February, after spending two months not writing the thesis I need to have a draft of by April first, I finally get my butt to a therapist. I get an official diagnosis of inattentive-type ADHD, and begin a course of Adderall.


The first night I take it, I read and annotate two books in three hours. What’s more, I haven’t wasted energy stalling, so I actually enjoy it. By the end of March, I have a complete draft of my thesis. This semester, ten months later, I haven’t pulled a single all-nighter, because my work gets done on schedule. And for the first time, I’m completing work that isn’t required for my classes.

For the vast majority of this improvement, I have to credit drugs and therapy. However, learning Rabbinic texts (a practice I began regularly this summer) has helped me understand the way my brain works-- and the ways to manage that--much better.
After my first academic taste of Talmud [1] as an undergrad, I seem to recall joking about it being “religion with ADHD.” The way the sages seemed to leap from one topic to another, seemingly unrelated one, was comical, albeit uncomfortably familiar to me. Consider Bava Batra 73a, which begins as a commentary on a mishnah concerned with the proper protocol for selling a ship. By the next page, 73b, we have gotten here:

"Rabbah bar Hanah further stated: I saw a frog the size of the fort of Hagronia. (What is the size of the fort of Hagronia? Sixty houses.)"

Yet, if Talmud was religion with ADHD, it was also religion for the clinically anal-retentive, built upon series of rules and practices that were so obscure and finicky as to be absurd—Mishnah Berakhot 7:3, for instance, prescribes a lengthy and specific blessing for a meal with ten thousand guests. But, if ten thousand and one are present, the prescribed blessing is short and generic. The documents themselves are separated into categories within categories—first, general orders, or sedarim, then tractates within the orders, chapters within the tractates, verses within the chapters. And the methods for commenting on texts within the Rabbinic genre are themselves subject to very particular rules.

What seemed a ridiculous contradiction at the time made much more sense to me once I started learning about ADHD. In their 1994 book, Driven to Distraction, psychiatrists Edward M. Hallowell and John J. Ratey write, “Structure makes possible the expression of talent. Without structure, no matter how much talent there may be, there is only chaos…The ADD mind is like spilled mercury, running and beading. Structure is the vessel needed to contain the mercury of the ADD mind, to keep it from being here and there and everywhere all at once.” (Hallowell and Ratey, 1994, 221)

Talmud, and Rabbinic texts in general, might be understood to work the same way. When one interprets a text, whether a mishnah or a verse of Bible, the order of the day is atomization: each verse is a complete unit in and of itself, and any other verse from the canon is fair game to use as an intertext—that is, a text to throw against it, to react with it, and to generate an interpretation—as long as the interpreter can make it work. Which feels a lot like free-associating, and seems like it could easily disintegrate into interpretive chaos.

But. There are rules in place, structures to contain the madness. There is an end that must be achieved, an interpretive problem that must be resolved. Often, the impetus for the interpretive chaos in the first place is some problem or irritant in the original text, something that doesn’t fit with another text or with a larger principle. In Between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds, Christine Hayes writes, “[a given mishnah may be] ambiguous in the sense that it contains a gap of information. The gemaras must work to fill that gap.” (Hayes, 1997, 57)

The initial stimulus—a problem to be solved—structures the whole interpretive section, reeling it back in at the end to the original text. The discussion may go far afield, but it always has to bring itself back to the text at hand. Eventually, it must come up with some sort of resolution to the task it has set itself.

The quotation at the top of the page, from Pirkei Avot (“Chapters of the Fathers,” a collection of ethical maxims found in Tractate Avot of the Mishnah)—specifically the line about building a hedge around the Torah— is one that has bedeviled me ever since I was introduced to it.

The traditional interpretation is that one must guard the commandments of the Torah from transgression by strengthening them (so, if the Torah says, “don’t go to thus and such place,” I should not even go within, say, a mile of it) I always read it as an expression par excellence of stiffness, hideboundness, of religious or doctrinal inflexibility.

Now, I see an alternate meaning. Building hedges—building limitations around one’s behavior—is a way of structuring one’s day-to-day life. In setting myself a schedule for the day, in insisting I accomplish a certain number of tasks before I can goof off, in creating small rituals (my cup of tea, my morning crossword, the sweatpants I wear to work) around which I structure those tasks—I am building hedges. By limiting my initial options, I increase the number and variety of things I can accomplish.

ADHD forced me to see the need for that lesson. The Rabbis taught it to me.

---

[1] “Talmud” refers to the collection of Rabbinic legal texts, or “Oral Torah”, which has two parts, Mishnah and Gemara. The Mishnah is a collection of legal traditions from the Tannaitic period (70-200 CE); the Gemara is a collection of commentaries on the Mishnah from the Amoraic period (200-500 CE). There are two Gemaras, the Palestinian Talmud (closed c.a. 400 CE), and the Babylonian Talmud (closed c.a. 500 CE).

I have won at Garlic Spaghetti

Crescent Dragonwagon (yes, that's really her name), in her excellent cookbook The Passionate Vegetarian, gives a vegetarian version of Spaghetti Carbonara entitled "The One, the Only, the Greatest Garlic Spaghetti" (p. 864, if you're interested.) And it is awfully, awfully good. I've tried it now several times, and I totally get why she wishes "to have this recipe chipped on [her] tombstone as [her] greatest contribution to human happiness." But I've never gotten it quite right, and I'm a little ashamed to admit why.

See, she tells you:

Don't wuss out on the garlic...or you'll miss out on one of the very best dishes known to woman or man. 

Thing is, she calls for 7 to 8 cloves of raw garlic for a two person serving, and when I tried this the first time I made it, my head damn near flew off.

Subsequent attempts to tone it down a little bit helped only a smidge with the bite, while reducing the depth of flavor. But tonight, I finally got it. The trick, as it turned out, was to use 6 or 7 cloves-- but to saute half of them in butter until they just begin to caramelize around the edges, and use them as you'd use the bacon in traditional (and treyf) Spaghetti Carbonara (I also added some bits of roast, marinated chestnut.) I also added some lemon juice and rosemary to the egg sauce to compensate for the lack of depth from reducing the raw garlic.

The verdict from me & S.? Unanimous orgasm faces upon first bite.

Recipe after the jump. But first, an admonishment of my own-- do not, under any circumstances, try to cut down on the butter, egg, or cheese. As Rachel Maddow said (originally of mojitos), "Yeah, [garlic spaghetti] is not a health food." Trying to turn it into one will make the deity of your choice weep tears of blood.

Also, I have no pictures. We ate it all too quickly. So sorry. Or, you know, not. (Edit: Made it again, and got a picture.)

On Binge Drinking

Recovery Position: So your drunk doesn't pull a Jimi Hendrix. 

Pursuant to my adventure this weekend (short version of the story: S & I assisted a VERY drunk undergrad who had locked herself out of her house)-- some thoughts, in no particular order:

• Should anyone find themselves in a similar situation to the one we were in: if you are even THINKING about calling the rescue squad, CALL THE RESCUE SQUAD. While you are waiting for the rescue squad, here is a guide for how to attend to them.
• Binge-drinking culture is frustrating and upsetting, particularly in its effect on young women.
• I see this culture expressed far more here at [Big State University] where I attend grad school, than I did as an undergrad at [Offbeat Liberal Arts College]. Not that people didn't like intoxication there; they loved it. On the other hand, we had no greek life, pot was probably as popular (if not more so) than alcohol, and if someone was getting trashed, there was a very strong possibility they would be quoting Dostoyevsky in the process. Which is why I occasionally am still shocked.
• I suspect that Dan Savage is largely correct when he says that one thing feeding binge-drinking culture is sexual puritanism: specifically, as long as society frowns on displays of sexual agency (particularly by the female-identified), people will get blackout drunk, have anonymous sex, and then blame the booze.
• Would I have behaved differently if the person who needed assistance had not been a.) female, b.) white, c.) young, or d.) clearly middle class? What is the correct way to balance fighting one's internalized racism, sexism, and classism, while nevertheless maintaining a legitimate concern for one's own safety (the legitimacy of said concern, by the way, extends only as far as male vs. female bodied--much as I may not like it, I'm not exactly Venus Williams, and I'm not sure how much it would be wise to insert myself into a situation with a drunk who was bigger and stronger than I am.)
• Lurid pink drink mixes are a.) representative of a frustrating trend of disguising alcohol as candy and thus encouraging drinking to the point of blackout, b.) specifically targeted at (again) young women, c.) perpetuate rape culture (a term I do not use lightly) by encouraging a breed of sexually uninhibited behavior that is totally divorced from any reasonable notion of agency d.) a barbarous way to treat perfectly good ethanol.
• It is appalling to me that [Big State University] lacks a medical amnesty policy. This is an excellent way to get people killed.
• As countless older, wiser friends have counseled me, there is a smart way to do dumb shit, and then there is a stupid way. I accept that, for most people, only firsthand experience will teach them that drinking to the point of blackout and/or vomiting is not that much fun. This was certainly true for me. However, the handful of times it took for me to learn this, I was in a safe environment with trustworthy people, at least one of whom was relatively sober. I urge anyone who still needs to learn this lesson to do the same.

Image by Rama. Used under a Creative Commons Share Alike 2.0 license.

Cable and Caballos

Says Teresa Genaro (whose writing on the history of horse racing at Brooklyn Backstretch is fantastic):

I have a little media fantasy. Several, actually, but this is the big one, the one in which I get to assemble, as if I were putting together a new laptop, my ideal of a cable system.

I’d get to look at that vast array of choices, and I’d get to pick exactly what I want delivered straight to my televisions: Food Network and Cooking Channel, yes; MSG and Versus, yes; Tennis Channel, yes; PBS and BBC America, yes; NY1, yes. CNN, no; Disney Channel, no; CNBC, no; Oxygen and Lifetime, no and no.

And this path to cable bliss would lead right to my Time Warner bill, which would magically, beautifully go down, because I’d have to pay for only the channels that I actually watch.

This is not actually the main point of her post, which is a thoughtful treatment of the NY Times pay wall issue-- specifically, the tension between the value of information (and the labor and energy needed to make it available), and the principle that no one should be excluded from that information due to economic circumstances.

BUT-- what she said a thousand times over. I do not want to pay for an entire cable plan out of which I will only watch a handful of channels a handful of times. And actually, given that primary season is beginning to ramp up, S. and I were just debating whether we wanted to pay for cable next year. In our current place, it's covered by our rent, so it wasn't an issue. It won't be next year, and so what we're thinking of doing is adding it later, when primaries and debates begin in earnest.

Thing is, there are a handful of things I will want to watch after me move-- specifically the Belmont Stakes on June 11. Streaming something like that just isn't the same-- especially when the stream stalls in the middle of the stretch drive! (I'm imagining the 1998 Belmont Stakes, where Real Quiet looked like he would win the first Triple Crown since Affirmed in 1978, only to be nipped at the wire by Victory Gallop, stopping to load in the last furlong!)

My dream package, I believe, would be very small: PBS, MSNBC (mainly for my undying love of Rachel Maddow), Food Network, Discovery, National Geographic, ESPN (to watch horse racing and other equestrian sports), in addition to the big 3 news networks. Maybe one or two others. That is, at most, 12 channels. I believe that would be a doable cable bill.

And in other horse racing news: no, I have no damn clue who I like in the Derby. So I will simply note a few things:
* First, that regardless of who I actually think WILL win, I will, for feminist reasons, be rooting for Louisiana Derby winner Pants on Fire (jockey Rosie Napravnik would be the first female rider to win the Kentucky Derby) and Risen Star winner Mucho Macho Man (ditto trainer Kathy Ritvo. Also, apparently the super-gay Village People are backing him, in homage to their song "Macho Macho Man".)
* Since as a rule I like horses who come from off the pace, probably the closest horse to topping my list is Arkansas Derby winner ArchArchArch.
* Finally, I'd like to note that the Gulfstream Park Oaks, for fillies, which was run the same day, over the same track, at the same distance, as the Florida Derby (colts), was run more than a full second faster than the latter race. I am therefore sorely disappointed that the winner, R Heat Lightning, is running in the Kentucky Oaks rather than the Derby. If SHE were in the field, she'd certainly be near the top of my list.

Yum.

I've got between 5 and 7 pages to go on my last paper, due Monday. Do I want to be writing it? Of course not. But somehow the deal is sweetened by having the last of last night's artichoke-feta potato latkes.

I can confidently say that this recipe for latkes is the. best. ever. I don't remember where my dad discovered it, but it was several years ago, I think in a newspaper. Over the years I have tweaked it a little, playing with different kinds of cheese and adding rosemary and garlic. No matter-- any way you do it, it's divine.

Artichoke-Feta Latkes
(serves two, with leftovers)

Two large russet potatoes, grated
approx. 1 cup crumbled feta (for a special treat, substitute chevre)
4-6 artichoke hearts, torn up
3 large eggs
Rosemary (healthy shake of cracked dried, or about 1 tbsp chopped fresh)
2-3 medium cloves of garlic, minced
Just enough all-purpose flour to bind
Salt and pepper to taste (note this recipe requires less salt than normal latkes thanks to the artichokes and cheese)
Plenty of oil-- a light, neutral kind with a high smoking point, though it's nice to add a squirt of olive oil for flavor.

Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl. Meanwhile, heat about 2 tbsp of oil in a large, heavy skillet on high. (At this point, turn on the fan and open a window. It WILL smoke, and there's just nothing you can do about it.) Once the oil is hot, deposit batter (about 1/4 cup per latke) into the skillet and flatten out. Cook til golden brown, flip, repeat. Place on a plate covered in a paper towel. Add more oil. Repeat until done.

These really don't require sour cream or applesauce; they're flavorful and moist enough on their own. The cheese makes them delightfully gooey on the inside. They also reheat beautifully in a toaster oven.

Hero Worship

"I don't really know why I care so much. I just have something inside me that tells me that there is a problem, and I have got to do something about it. I think that is what I would call the God in me.
All of us have a God in us, and that God is the spirit that unites all life, everything that is on this planet. It must be this voice that is telling me to do something, and I am sure it's the same voice that is speaking to everybody on this planet — at least everybody who seems to be concerned about the fate of the world, the fate of this planet."
- Wangari Maathai

I think I have a new hero.

Risk and Reward

I don't enjoy exercising.

There, I said it. I-- I who complain that Americans are not active enough, that we live in a culture of laziness, that a big chunk of our CO2 emissions could be cut if we just got up off our lard asses and walked places, that health policy doesn't focus nearly enough on preventative care like exercise-- I am part of the problem.

I was, as you might imagine, the nerdy kid for whom gym class was usually a living hell: scrawny, uncoordinated, afraid of the ball despite a valiant effort in third grade on a kids' soccer team. You could say I found religion in my fervent elementary school hope that we wouldn't, please God!, be playing dodgeball today.

Not that I didn't like being active. I ran all over my back yard, climbing trees and getting muddy. I had a brief and semi-successful middle school track career as a middle-distance runner, and I rode horses from fourth grade all the way through college. And I still like being active today-- I walk all over the place, I enjoy hikes and bike rides, and hope to take up riding again once I can actually afford it.

Yet going running for running's sake, despite my best efforts at attitude transplant, does not inspire me. It feels like a chore. Yoga is fun when I'm in a class, but I have neither the time or money for that right now, and doing it on my own is similarly chore-like. And given my current workload, the opportunities for hiking and bike rides are few. I had started biking to school at the beginning of the semester, but given the hills around here I would flop into my apartment feeling like I wanted to die, and I'd still have dinner to cook and homework to do. So right now I'm not as active as I probably should be, and certainly not, as my dad always used to harangue me that I should be, "part of a physical culture."

To which, frankly, I am surprisingly indifferent.

I realize that the above paragraph is full of excuses, and that if I wanted to I certainly could find time for exercise. But that's just it-- I don't, really. There are other things I'd rather use that time for. And since I still walk a fair amount and eat a fairly healthy diet, I'm a reasonable weight, and I feel pretty physically okay, I'm fine with that.

Would I be a healthier person if I exercised more? Of course. I'd also be healthier, no doubt, if I completely eliminated caffeine, white sugar, and white flour from my diet. But you know what? I LIKE pastries, and eating one once or twice a week happens to make my day that much more enjoyable. When I cook at home, I always use unrefined sugar and at least 1/3 whole wheat flour. I eat a mostly vegetarian diet, with plenty of whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. So I think my semi-regular apple danish habit is just fine.

Of course, I would be healthier if I did X, Y, and Z. But everyone calculates some level of risk to their health against their day-to-day pleasures. Even exercise nuts. When you exercise frequently and strenuously, you run the risk of injury. Presumably if you are an exercise nut, you exercise because it is pleasurable to you, in addition to being healthy. So you too are balancing risk, benefit, and pleasure.

Personally, little pleasures like an apple danish, a cup of earl grey with cream, or some good-quality lounging are important to maintaining my mental health. My body does what I need it to do. If it seems likely at any point that my risk/pleasure calculation is such that my body will stop doing what I need it to do, then I'll reconsider. In the mean time, however, I shall stick to the motto, "Moderation in all things, including moderation."

Laundry woes

Wash (1 load):$1.75
Dry (2 loads): $3.00

Having the washing machine fail to spin or drain, so that you have to wring out every single piece of clothing; having the dryer fail to actually dry your clothes after that; realizing that your clothes are neither dry nor clean; and finally melting your girlfriend's bra with an iron in an attempt to provide her with something dry to wear to work today: priceless (read: FML.)

To Do Today:

-Clean apartment.

-Call Congressman Periello and tell him to support the most robust public option (Medicare rates + 5%) in the House health care bill.

-Call mom and remind her to do the same for Congresswoman Kaptur (surprised she hasn't officially committed yet!).

-Pack suitcase for Chicago.

-Respond to emails.

-Hopefully do some work on Time paper!

How I want to define myself in fewer than ten words

I'm trying to think of a sign to carry at the march on Washington for LGBT equality next weekend. I'm afraid I won't forgive myself if it's not clever enough. Because clearly a civil rights movement can and should be reduced to a pithy slogan scribbled in magic marker on poster board.
I seem to recall that there is an early Dykes to Watch Out For strip in which Mo carries a sign that reads "Subvert the Dominant Paradigm." I'm sort of thinking of doing that to see who gets the joke. I could even wear the Mo shirt I did up (once again, in magic marker) for drag ball.
No matter what I come up with, however, I suspect it will be better than most of the signs carried by the Teabagger crowd.
Heh, Teabagger. Still can't hear that without sniggering.