Now you're cooking with gas...

I woke up with headache and nausea. I felt so gross, I went back to bed. It was only when I woke for a second time that I realized I could smell gas. The burner went out about lunchtime, but the cooler was running so much that I couldn't smell it. It stopped running at night, and while the ventilation is still probably too good for asphyxiation/explosion, it was enough to make me feel like crap.

I've got the house airing out and am going mobile with the new computer, which I am still enjoying, though I'm feeling a lot of schadenfreude about being a Mac owner. I'm comfortable with Mac, (as I've long lived a cross platform existence) it does lots of cool things, and I've poached some highpower layout programs to try out for fun and profit. But I don't want to be a Mac person, even if I am planning on making my own case out of some Marimekko remnants. (Making me, as Brother pointed out, even more of a Mac person. "Are you going to stick your apple sticker on your HondaFit?" he teased.)

I've been pretty quiet lately because I've been feeling pretty blue. I did have a wonderful moment Friday going to the brewery with Linnet & husband. We ran into a whole bunch of other people I knew, but most of them didn't know each other. It was what I imagined my bday being like (for those of you who were there for that fiasco---still much appreciated, btw---) and a total unexpected delight at the end of my day.

So, since I'm not prepared to discuss the issues, I guess it's time for media reviews. I watched the first season of Saving Grace, which was a disappointment with the exception of Holly Hunter's performance and the character assassination episode where they parade a collection of lovers through her office. "That was just Spring. Too bad they didn't bring last fall!" she said as she defended her right to promiscuity. The show definitely improved towards the end where they brought some complexity to her characterization and the whole notion of salvation, before ending the series on a stereotypical note of sexual abuse.

More on Saving Grace can be found here: http://zalena.livejournal.com/781410.html

I also finished Nick Mamatas' Under My Roof, which a number of you have posted about here. The basic premise of this kids' dad assembling a nuclear device out of little bits of radioactivity found in household objects and declaring sovereignty is hilarious. The satire that follows is hilarious, but I can't help but think what would actually happen in this situation would be more akin to Waco. A number of people posted on the difficulty of using the book in the classroom; I can certainly see that challenge and am wondering at what age the appreciation of satire kicks in.

I feel like there's something else I should be posting about, but I can't think of what: any suggestions?

Lessing, FLDS, & Paglia

There's a brief interview with Doris Lessing in the Times, today. She's one of my heroes, even though I don't always like her books and certainly haven't read them all. (I'm currently in the middle of the second volume of her autobiography. The first volume Under My Skin is a major work.)

She's announced that Alfred & Emily---her most recent book imaging the life her parents might have had if WWI had never happened---will be her last book; which to me suggests she is anticipating her death. She's also claimed (though it isn't addressed in this interview) that she wishes she'd never won the Nobel Prize for literature, it has complicated her life.

There is also a photo essay about the women from the FLDS compound in Texas. An image of girls bouncing on a trampoline caught my eye. The FLDS fiasco and its resulting ripples have me thinking a lot about the following idea expressed in a recent essay from one of my other heroes (and protege of Bloom, also mentioned in the Lessing interview) Camille Paglia.

Paglia gave a lecture called Feminism Past and Present: Ideology, Action, and Reform at The Legacy and Future of Feminism conference in which she addresses some of the inherent conflict in feminist ideology and practice. One of her most pressing concerns is the following question:

Feminism certainly has an obligation to protest and, if possible, to correct concrete abuses of women and children in Third World nations. But feminism might look very different in more traditional or religious societies, where motherhood and family are still valorized and where the independent career woman is less typical or admired.

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