<![CDATA[THE CATASTROPHIZER - THE CATASTROPHIZER]]>

<![CDATA[THE CATASTROPHIZER - THE CATASTROPHIZER]]>Thu, 17 May 2012 22:10:44 -0800Weebly<![CDATA[I Shall Wear the Bottoms of My Trousers Rolled]]>Thu, 17 May 2012 16:45:19 -0800http://www.catastrophizer.com/1/post/2012/05/i-shall-wear-the-bottoms-of-my-trousers-rolled.html

The other day, while combing the internet for corgi-fied movie posters and lists of foreign words that have no equivalent in English (did you know that the Germans have a word for "excess weight gained from emotional overeating" that translates literally as "grief bacon"? If you did not know that, were you truly alive until one sentence ago?), I came across a list called 48 Things That Will Make You Feel Old. This list inspired me a) to suspect I might be older than the person who compiled this list, and b) to remember the following three things that recently made me feel aged and "hey kids, did you realize there was a time before the internet when, if you wanted some good, old-fashioned corgied-up movie posters, you had to get scissors and paper and make them yourself"-y.

1) My niece, who was born when I was already basically an adult and is now in JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL, is maybe going to be playing the Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop" next year with the school band. A couple of things about that bother me. The thing I was proudest of in grade seven (besides my battered "journal" full of "poetry", obviously) was my Ramones t-shirt, which I purchased from a Yonge St. head shop (along with a t-shirt featuring a skull wearing an eye-patch that I have since tragically lost track of [the shirt, I mean, not the eye-patch]). I still have that Ramones t-shirt, which makes it twenty two years old. My Ramones t-shirt is nine years older than my niece. Also, when I was in grade seven, my music teacher (who looked almost exactly like James Taylor) made us sing songs like "One Tin Soldier" and "Big Yellow Taxi." They were roughly twenty years old when we sang them. When my niece performs "Blitzkrieg Bop" it will be thirty-seven years old. Of course, my music teacher was much older in relation to the release dates of his songs than I was in relation to "Blitzkrieg Bop", but still. If we'd sung thirty-seven-year-old songs in junior high school, we'd have been singing songs from 1952.

2) When I was in my first year of university, my boyfriend's fifteen-year-old brother purchased Ill Communication and was amazed to discover it wasn't the Beastie Boys' first album and that I had been all of ten years of age when I heard that first Beastie Boys album. That experience of feeling much older than a younger person occurred eighteen years ago.

3) On a recent episode of 30 Rock, Liz Lemon was revealed to have purchased a tiny Princess Leia costume for a daughter she does not yet have. This revelation triggered a sudden, vivid flashback to Halloween, 1982. I was in love, IN LOVE, with a boy named Colin. Colin was emphatically not in love with me. Imagine how thrilled I was, then, when I turned up at school on Halloween wearing my super-awesome Princess Leia costume and discovered that Colin was wearing a super-awesome Luke Skywalker costume (I preferred Han, really, but Colin wasn't dressed as Han; he was dressed as Luke). I proceeded to pursue Colin around the schoolyard (not a winning strategy, by the way), yelping things like, "But you have to love me! I'm Leia and you're Luke! We HAVE to love each other!" That totally underwhelming, slow-moving chase sequence was made possible by the fact that this was 1982, and NOBODY KNEW THAT LUKE AND LEIA WERE BROTHER AND SISTER.

POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.

]]><![CDATA[Three things I would like to say about Game of Thrones]]>Wed, 09 May 2012 17:38:13 -0800http://www.catastrophizer.com/1/post/2012/05/three-things-i-would-like-to-say-about-game-of-thrones.html

The comments I am about to make about the George R. R. Martin books I (and every other person currently not dead) have been reading are not insightful, revealing, or original; they are really just symptoms of the terrible affliction from which I am currently suffering, an affliction which involves me wanting to talk as much as possible about the predictable and unexciting things I have been thinking about A Song of Ice and Fire.

Here are the three things I would like to say about these books (I have just started reading book four, and have not yet watched the series, because each book is 85,000 pages long and so I've been busy):

1) I feel very ambivalent about the fact that each book is 85,000 pages long. On the one hand, that is wonderful, because I would rather read these books than talk to friends (unless it's about how vividly these stories call to mind the murkier, bloodier periods of medieval history), talk to family (unless it's about how hard it is to behave honourably and not get beheaded) or talk to my guinea pig (who is surprisingly uninterested in my reflections on moral ambiguity). On the other hand, I can't take it anymore. It's like The Incredible Journey, if those animals were about to finally get home, but then found their home had been destroyed, and then had to go on the run again, and then were forced to marry a sort-of-villainous dwarf, and then soiled themselves... The lack of closure makes me happy and stimulated and extremely depressed. And the longer the story goes on, the greater the likelihood that the people who don't seem sympathetic but whom you really kind of like will kill someone you also feel that way about and/or get killed in some horrible way.

2) If I were to appear in one of the books, I would promptly die. Not only because I lack physical strength, spiritual courage, and intellectual resourcefulness...but because I HAVE NO IDEA WHO ANYONE IS. I mean, I do, for a brief, clear, shining moment. I know who the Butcher of Khas Dogol is (made up by me) and what happened when the Butcher encountered Durthan the Aggrieved of the web-footed folk (also made up by me - I am, I am not ashamed to say, less creative than George R. R. Martin and the lengthy fantasy novels I am planning feature none of his imaginativeness with all of his people-soiling-themselves-ness). For two or three pages at a time, I can recall who has pledged allegiance to whom, and which coat of arms features eight wizened peas, and which a poxy crab. And then someone else dies in an awful way, or is disfigured, or is betrayed by someone they trusted/didn't trust at all, and I lose track of it all. If I turned up in one of these books, I would almost immediately be killed because I would rush up to some familiar-looking person, forgetting he'd recently changed sides and set fifteen people on fire.

3) Not a chapter goes by without someone shitting himself. When I have the time (because hot damn, I already have the inclination), I will create a version of the series with all the parts that don't feature people shitting themselves taken out, and you'll still be looking at 85,000 pages of classic Martin.

POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.

]]><![CDATA[Happy-looking people having great times]]>Wed, 02 May 2012 14:13:28 -0800http://www.catastrophizer.com/1/post/2012/05/happy-looking-people-having-great-times.html

Recently, doctors have begun to warn of the dangers of "Facebook depression." According to this article, young people can start feeling low because of repeated exposure to "status updates and photos of happy-looking people having great times."

This is a problem not limited to the young, as I can attest. So many people I knew long ago have moved to exciting places, have been to parties, have visited cottages. So many people have jobs and handsome dogs and way more friends than I have. Facebook shows me this, and Facebook cares not.

Then there are the blogs. Oh, THE BLOGS. My friend (who does not even live here but whose good taste defies geography) brought the following blog to my attention: www.asinkremains.com. It's written by a young woman from Toronto and features attractive, light-drenched things. There are photos of gorgeous, delectable meals (from restaurants at which, theoretically, I could also be dining as I live in the same city), and photos of relaxed but hopelessly stylish living rooms (which I could at least be working towards by way of yard sales and a keen eye for sales), and photos of attractive women in relaxed and hopelessly stylish clothes (all my pants are the same colour. Why are all my pants the same colour?). Also, why am I not accompanied everywhere by dancing motes of sunlight?

This kind of blog creates in me a feeling it took me awhile to find an appropriate name for. I considered "envog" (envy + blog), and "blinferiority" (blog + inferiority) , and "bluilt" (blog + guilt), but in the end settled on "blahg." Such blogs make me feel blahg.

But then I thought: "Surely there must be others who stay in on Saturday nights with their best friend Robert Osborne...who will never be comfortable pairing shorts with tights...who will never be in a position to craft their own letterpress wedding invitations..." Surely there must be others who live untidily and unstylishly and in a way that would embarrass blogs and Facebook pages alike.

So to counteract the effect of the blogs that make me feel blahg, I offer the following three photos of my apartment, all totally unstaged.

1 bag of Swedish Berries (empty); 1 bottle of cheapest-available Argentinian wine (not drinking during the day - just neglected to put it away the night before); 1 copy of New York Times (largely unread)

1 bottle of wheat germ (never sure exactly how long that's supposed to last; doesn't yet have the rancid smell the internet warns me about); 1 extremely large and aged bottle of tonic from long ago when my friends came over and we had some with gin; a cucumber for my guinea pig.

1 vibrantly grey sweatshirt-like shirt I got at Old Navy; 1 vibrantly grey cardigan I got at Jacob at some point in the 1990s and continue to wear.

It's not that I want people to stop having beautiful things, and making beautiful things, and looking beautiful; it's just not nice when you think that everyone around you is living a beautiful life while you're busy throwing out some questionable leeks (that you never used because you never got around to making that quinoa recipe) while watching an NCIS episode you've already seen and didn't like the first time.

But if I could convince myself that in living rooms everywhere regrets are cultivated while leeks go bad and Mark Harmon looks weary and worldly-wise, I'm sure I'd feel a whole lot better.

POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.

]]><![CDATA["Everyone who dislikes me is actually intimidated by me." - The Catastrophizer, rationalizing.]]>Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:48:47 -0800http://www.catastrophizer.com/1/post/2012/04/everyone-who-dislikes-me-is-actually-intimidated-by-me-the-catastrophizer-rationalizing.html

I recently read an article that made me feel like a bratty, treasonous, ignoble woman, so naturally, I'd like to talk about it.

I'm referring to "Too ugly for TV? No, I'm too brainy for men who fear clever women", written by classicist and television host Mary Beard in response to some poisonous, unfunny comments from a British television reviewer named AA Gill.

He wrote the following charming, make-you-want-to-date-him things about her after watching her show Meet the Romans:

"Mary Beard really should be kept away from cameras altogether."

"For someone who looks this closely at the past, it is strange she hasn't had a closer look at herself before stepping in front of a camera."

"...because she's this far from being the subject of a Channel 4 dating documentary" (referring, apparently, to The Undateables, a show about disabled people looking for love).

All those comments are repugnant and shallow and reveal him to be the kind of person who probably inspired the coining of the phrase "total prick". But I have managed to be bothered also by her response to these repugnant and shallow comments.

She writes: "Throughout Western history [just an aside: invariably the manner in which the very worst undergraduate essays begin] there have always been men like Gill who are frightened of smart women who speak their minds, and I guess, as a professor of Classics at Cambridge University, I'm one of them."

It is entirely possible that Gill is a disgusting misogynist. Certainly when he watches a show about the Romans, he should be more concerned about its accuracy than the hair-style and tooth-size of the presenter. But just because he doesn't think television presenters should be frowsy and unpolished (and I haven't heard that he thinks male presenters are allowed to be either of things) doesn't mean he hates women; and even if he does maintain a double-standard about the extent to which men and women on the small screen are required to look like realtors or meteorologists, that just means he has issues with women and attractiveness, not necessarily with bright women and attractiveness.

When I was in high school and a boy (contrary to the demands of good sense) insisted on not wanting to date me, invariably someone would say, "It's obvious - he's just intimidated by you." I don't deny that my staggering intelligence and gorgeousness were impressive and fearsome, but that explanation always bothered me. Some people just won't like me. Some people will not like me, and will make fun of me, and will not want to date me, and not because I am brilliant and gorgeous and they just can't take it.

Gill, in an article about The Undateables, described it as a "mocking freak show of grotesques and embarrassments". As far as I know, not all those featured were women, and not all of them were Classics professors at Cambridge. He seems to be an asshole who has an issue with all those who aren't conventionally attractive and conventionally presentable. It's entirely possible he made cutting and unfunny comments about Mary Beard just because he thinks she's funny-looking, not because he's secretly shamed by her intellect. I'm not saying that's any better; it's just a different crappy kind of motivation.

Beard also commented: "...maybe it's precisely because he did not go to university that he never quite learned the rigour of intellectual argument and thinks that he can pass off insults as wit" and with that she managed to bother me even more powerfully. I attended university for approximately eighty-five years, and so I can authoritatively state that anyone who thinks that everyone who goes to university has learned how to argue in an intellectually rigourous fashion and that everyone who has not attended university has not, is a) deluded, and b) almost certainly a graduate of graduate school.

Beard closes by suggesting various ways in which Gill could be punished: he should have to watch her shows - all of them - , he should have to discuss them with her...etc...etc... But as I'm not convinced he hates smart women in particular (although he might), and I am convinced he is for whatever reason extremely bothered by people who aren't conventionally attractive (or don't put the appropriate effort into trying to appear that way) I think the only truly fitting punishment for his crime would be for him to have to appear on television unshaven, unwashed, wearing unfashionable trousers and a hopelessly out-of-style sweater, and sporting a startlingly dowdy bowl cut. I'm sure that would hurt him more than watching Beard's shows or being reminded he doesn't teach at Cambridge.

POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.

]]><![CDATA[I Settle For Less Every Day]]>Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:14:19 -0800http://www.catastrophizer.com/1/post/2012/04/we-settle-for-less-every-day.html

I have some positive qualities: I'm loyal, I'm attentive, I'm generally clean. But I also have some considerable deficiencies. For example, I almost completely lack ambition. Or maybe it's simply that I can't follow through on things, which would mean I lack determination and focus. Or maybe I just haven't come up with any things that are worthy of following through on.

I was recently reading about the fact that that website about thousands of fantastic things is finally shutting down, presumably because there is a limit to the number of fantastic things in the world and now Neil Pasricha plans to spend his time feeling forlorn and deflated. Or maybe he just wanted more time to devote to working in HR at Walmart, which is actually what he does. Given that, the fact that he was capable of identifying even ten awesome things indicates either that he is a) himself an incredibly awesome thing, or b) totally deranged.

Deranged or not, he took a catchy idea and built a modest empire, from which he proceeded to not profit one bit, because he wanted that catchy idea to remain unsullied by greed, or some such thing (just like Walmart).

I read that article about him, and decided that I would like to create a website called "1000loathsomethings" which, because I believe in straightforward and honest website names, would proceed to describe 1000 loathsome things. I'm sure it's probably already been done. How it could not already have been done? I'm not in a position to tell you whether it's already been done, because I didn't bother looking into it. I didn't bother looking into it because a) I didn't want to have to confront the fact that any idea I've ever had has already been had by someone smarter, more ambitious, and more familiar with Adobe Flash, and b) if I did discover it hadn't yet been done, I probably wouldn't do anything about it anyway.

I can't figure out whether I don't pursue such ideas (I had another one just the other day that involved asking telemarketers when they called if they minded being recorded and then trying to tell them about my personal problems) because a) they're stupid ideas and I wouldn't get much satisfaction from trying to realize them anyway, or b) I lack the discipline to realize most ideas.

I suppose all I can do is wait to have an idea I'm particularly passionate about and then see whether I try to put some work into it or become distracted by an NCIS rerun. One of those 1000 loathsome things I'll probably never write about would surely be the process of figuring out whether I'm uncreative or lazy.

POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.

]]><![CDATA[Post Title.]]>Thu, 12 Apr 2012 14:08:06 -0800http://www.catastrophizer.com/1/post/2012/04/post-title-click-and-type-to-edit7.htmlUnder the weather this week. Until next week, please spend your time looking at this mixture of adorableness and reproachfulness (created not in the least by me).]]><![CDATA[ENGL 100: Intro to Espionage]]>Wed, 04 Apr 2012 14:34:26 -0800http://www.catastrophizer.com/1/post/2012/04/engl-100-intro-to-espionage.html

I have always found it incredibly easy to imagine failing at things. I imagine failing at small things, like managing section breaks in Word or developing an effective skin-care regimen, and large things, like various kinds of surgery.

For this reason (and probably also because of my lack of talent and inclination), I never became a lawyer or medical doctor. I could so vividly envision losing a vital case and ruining someone's life, or making a mistake during an operation and ending someone's life. Because it was easy to see myself being given responsibility and messing things up, it was easier simply not to accept many responsibilities.

Then I read the following in a New York Times article about the CIA, Iraq, and Iran:

"After the misjudgments on Iraq, the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies imposed new checks and balances, including a requirement that analytical work be subjected to 'red teaming.' That means a group of analysts would challenge the conclusions of their colleagues, looking for weaknesses or errors. The intelligence community also now requires that analysts be told much more about the sources of the information they receive from the United States’ human and technological spies. Analysts were left in the dark on such basic issues in the past, which helps explain why bogus information from fabricators was included in some prewar intelligence reports on Iraq. And, when they write their reports, they must include better attribution and sourcing for each major assertion." (I include the bold type because you might be lazy and I am most definitely emphatic.)

Now I might not have become a medical doctor, but I did receive a Ph.D. in English (which is basically the same thing in terms of pay and prestige and the likelihood of being asked to attend to an in-flight emergency). I thought that was a good way of avoiding most real-world responsibilities (the fact that I did not view teaching undergraduates all about books as a serious and precious responsibility was one of the reasons I stopped teaching undergraduates all about books). Pretty much all I taught young people was that a) you shouldn't write an essay without first questioning your own conclusions, and b) you should always cite your sources. I thought these were basic, unglamorous, possibly redundant things to teach people. Now I realize that, while I was perhaps right not to trust myself to open up someone else's body with a scalpel, I did myself an injustice: I, and sessionals the world over, might turn out to be pretty good at running the CIA.

POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.

]]><![CDATA[Mea culpa, Pater.]]>Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:04:12 -0800http://www.catastrophizer.com/1/post/2012/03/mea-culpa-pater.html

I owe my father an apology. Not because I forced him to listen to Aerosmith's Pump when I was thirteen, or because I never managed to become a sullen teenager and so talked incessantly about things like Aerosmith's Pump (although I am desperately sorry for both of those things), but because I thought he just had to be wrong about Arizona. Arizona couldn't be that crazy. He had to have misunderstood.

What a fool I was to doubt both my father and the unlimited batshit craziness of Arizona!

Perhaps ashamed of having a doctors-can-mislead-pregnant-women law slightly less batshit crazy than Oklahoma's, one proud Arizonan politician has decided to give all liberals an early Christmas present by telling a constituent that women who want to have abortions should first be forced to watch other women have abortions.

When he told me this, I of course concluded my father must have been watching Keith Olberman while sleep-deprived and high on something that makes people think totally outrageous things about conservatives. But no. Rep. Terri Proud (R! - Tuscon) responded to a concerned citizen's email about an anti-abortion bill with the following:

"Personally I'd like to make a law that mandates a woman watch an abortion being performed prior to having a 'surgical procedure'. If it's not a life it shouldn't matter, if it doesn't harm a woman then she shouldn't care, and don't we want more transparency and education in the medical profession anyway? We demand it everywhere else. Until the dead child can tell me that she/he does not feel any pain - I have no intentions of clearing the conscience of the living - I will be voting YES."

This concerned citizen was not the only one to receive this response, as Proud told her staff to send it out to anyone who suggested she oppose the bill.

When the concerned citizen became even more concerned as a result and sent a follow-up email indicating she was both embarrassed and frightened by Proud, Proud responded with: "You're kidding right?" I can only assume this was also a blanket response sent out to all those who'd emailed back to suggest her last blanket response had been embarrassing and frightening.

So once again, Dad, I'm sorry. I should never for a second have questioned your claims. If you tell me next that a state rep (R!!!) from Oklahoma has suggested women should not be allowed to have an abortion until they have have actually performed an abortion on another woman, I will not doubt you for a second.

POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.

]]><![CDATA[Honk if you're also a racist!]]>Wed, 21 Mar 2012 12:48:04 -0800http://www.catastrophizer.com/1/post/2012/03/honk-if-youre-also-a-racist.html

Last week it was Kansas and Oklahoma. This week it's Georgia. Perhaps afraid of being pigeonholed as "those people who have extremely backward views about women", some right-wingers have decided to prove they have range by reminding us they can also have repugnant attitudes towards race.

Earlier this week, Eric Pfeiffer drew attention to this snappy bumper sticker available for sale on the internet:

In case the smallness of the font or the repulsiveness of the sentiment make the bottom line hard to read, here it is: "Stop repeat offenders. Don't re-elect Obama!"

But wait! If you're thinking, "Boy, that's the most racist pun I've come across in a while," that's only because you haven't yet heard the seller's perfectly reasonable and convincing defense of her product. Paula Smith, of Hinesville Georgia, says the sticker is "not racist" because "according to the dictionary [the N word] does not mean black. It means a low-down, lazy, sorry, low-down person. That's what the N word means."

And when I read that she not only knows black families in her neighbourhood, but has also helped "to guide them in the right direction", I just knew she was a generous, totally un-bigoted person who was being unfairly attacked for being harmless and fun-loving.

I'm now looking forward to hearing from whoever runs (or used to run - it seems to have disappeared) "Stumpy's Stickers". That's the site where the sticker first popped up, and where the discerning consumer could also purchase such gems as a photo of an ape with the caption "Obama 2012", a drawing of a Confederate flag with the caption "If this flag has offended you, then it made my day!", and a drawing of members of the Ku Klux Klan with the caption, "The Original Boys in the Hood".

Because surely they're just as innocent and as fond of a good joke as Paula Smith. Obama and an ape? Why, that's not racist! That's just a hilarious joke about how an ape would be a really bad president, and Obama is a really bad president, so it's like Americans elected a great, big monkey as president! Hilarious. And everyone knows the Confederate flag is all about wholesome Southern pride and nothing to do with slavery. And everyone also knows that any joke involving the KKK pretty much has to be a benign and funny one.

I bet if someone manages to identify the Stumpy behind the stickers, we'll find that he or she is simply a high-spirited, down-home soul who has an unusual dictionary and is just trying to guide us all in the right direction.

POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.

]]><![CDATA[Wrongful doctor]]>Wed, 14 Mar 2012 15:26:00 -0800http://www.catastrophizer.com/1/post/2012/03/post-title-click-and-type-to-edit6.html

So many of the things that amaze and terrify me seem to come from Kansas. I don't know as much about Oklahoma, but I'm not entirely surprised that amazing and terrifying things can be found there, too.

I am amazed and terrified by many things from the American South because I am, of course, a cliché: I am a left-leaning, pro-choice woman who enjoys public-access television programming and locally-grown sprouts. So it's really no surprise that the latest legislative craze to sweep the South is concerning to me.

I'm talking about laws relating to "wrongful births." Wrongful births are what result when women are not given information (related to birth defects, possible complications, etc...) about their fetuses that might lead them to terminate the pregnancy. "Wrongful birth" is also one of the most abhorrent phrases and concepts I've encountered in quite some time, and Michelle Goldberg is right to question it. People going before a court to argue that their child's birth was wrong and something they'd have prevented if they'd only known do not tend to inspire sympathy, except for their wrongful child.

But, as Golberg also points out, that doesn't mean pro-life doctors should have the right to actively conceal disturbing facts from mothers-to-be. Because that's what a law being considered in Kansas and already in effect in Oklahoma would do - allow anti-abortion physicians to lie to patients with impunity. If you're afraid telling a mother her fetus, say, does not have a brain might cause her to consider abortion, you can simply not tell her and let her discover it for herself when the baby is born. And she has no right to complain, because you are protected by law.

What I don't understand is why these doctors should be allowed to deceive mothers only in cases involving medical complications. If you reduce this question to its essentials (keeping in mind that I'm not entirely sure what its essentials are and am probably hopelessly misrepresenting the whole thing), what you're left with is a doctor's right to keep from a patient information that would lead her to consider abortion. What if your patient is a left-leaning, PBS-loving defender of a woman's right to choose when it comes to her own reproductive system? That kind of woman doesn't necessarily consider abortion only when there are problems with her pregnancy; that kind of woman considers abortion because she wants to concentrate on her career, or because she's not economically secure, or because she doesn't ever want to be a mother.

If a doctor is allowed to conceal from a woman facts that might lead to an abortion, and such a woman might consider abortion just because she's discovered she's pregnant, then a doctor should legally be allowed to conceal from a woman the very fact that she's pregnant. He'd just have to be willing to spend a large part of the next nine months convincing her she's let herself go.

POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.

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