My Mess of Motley Musings

WRITINGHANNAH.COM

2009-08-05T16:25:00.001-07:00

NEW HOME OF THIS BLOG:
WritingHannah.com

I'm thrilled to announce, after much laborious FTP wrestling, whining, cookie-nibbling, and Wiki-consulting, the new and improved WritingHannah blog, which can be found at WritingHannah.com. Bookmark it! All the archived posts have been transferred- please subscribe to the new RSS feed. Thanks, everybody.

Love,
H

Aaawkward.

2009-07-29T16:42:00.001-07:00

My cat stepped on the keyboard which resulted in a premature publishing blogjaculation- so for those of you who got excited when the RSS feed popped up with a new post, only to find I deleted it seconds later, my apologies. Might I suggest you ease your woes by calling into the live radio talk show I'm doing tonight in about an hour? Check it out here: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/glassofwin/2009/07/30/Hannah-Friedman

For those of you who didn't get an RSS feed, then you're in good company, because what the fuck even is an RSS feed? Wikipedia tells me that it stands for "Really Simple Syndication" but sometimes "Rich Site Summary," neither of which make any sense to me at all. If it was really simple I think I'd understand how it worked, and my site is far from rich. I think I made like $.08 off of this blog and the youtube over the past 3 months. You kooky internets you... makin' up acronyms to simplify a term which is already too complicated in long hand.

Yesterday I had a very awkward conversation with a friend because I'm telephonetarded. I like to think that it's because I'm such a stunning social presence in person that I simply cannot reach my usual level of conversation sparkle when all those all-important facial and gestural cues are absent. But I'm not exactly a gold medalist in the video-chat either. It's all weird and virtual, and there's too much pressure. At least when you're on the phone you can pretend to be listening but actually be doing something else like painting your toe-nails or reading about insane people in the internet. (like ://www.venomousreptiles.org/, a site where people share their love of deadly venemous pets who almost killed them that one time.)

But then again, at least on video chat you can tell when someone is about to speak, instead of having looong awkward pauses followed by a flurry of clipped interruptions followed by that awful "You go," "No, you go!" "No, seriously, mine wasn't important. You go."

Then I always have to stop myself from saying "Don't mind if I do," and hanging up.

After my awkward conversation, which I was sure was due to my general social ineptitude, my friend revealed , rather sheepishly, that she was very tired when I called and must have sounded like a moron, and that she was sorry she made things so awkward. Which reminded me of the time I visited this guy and had a horrible time and felt like a total wet-blanket, only to realize two years later from several other sources that he's just a terrible host. I spent weeks obsessing over how terribly awkward I was, when really he made everyone feel awkward because he was so awkward.

So to Rusty and 23 & 24, thank you you for supporting the site, and I insist that no hard feelings be felt by anyone anywhere regarding misinterpreted intentions, because I am honored by all of your comments and I think that everyone always feels really fucking awkward.

Like that time I had to go back to class after getting sprayed by a skunk. Or that time I was at an audition and sat on a bee and screamed "A BEE!" while grabbing my ass and dashing out of the building. Or that time I cat-called at a cute guy who turned out to be my boyfriend's father. Eiw.

Do let me know if you have any questions- I'm committed to posting more regularly and I always love a good jump start. Hope your summers are going well and that the humidity has not sapped your spirit to live, at it has for my cat, who has overdosed on catnip and layed drooling on his back in the air-conditioned-den for the past 4 days. Oh no wait, he says that was me. Awkward.

xo
H

Bad Book Reviews and Hot Fudge.

2009-07-27T16:13:00.000-07:00

Someone just left me an oozily sarcastic comment about an, shall we say, irregularity of actual posting activity, as well as a possible proclivity toward purse-posts. Usually I'd respond to such a barb with with something equally as sarcastic, like maybe "the fact that my busy day doesn't allow time for leaving jaunty "you're lazy" messages on the virtual property of some person I 've never even met leaves me aching for a purpose." Or else I'd roll my eyes, but then obsess about the hidden truth of the comment, and then possibly cry, and then definitely call you a bitch behind your back to whomever would listen.

But you know what, wife and husband of 24 and 23 who left me that comment? You are right. You generously support my artwork while I sit around and lament about how dastardly writer's block can be while watching The Office in my pajamas at 2 PM licking the cream out of the insides of yodels.

You two are awesome and I am remiss. I don't even really have a good excuse this time.

The book is done and I've been on this sort of loooong exhale for about two weeks. Very much in limbo. Still completely expecting the first and only big reviewer to piss himself laughing when he realizes how much time he's going to save on the writeup, because it only requires one word.

Everything Sucks:

Exactly.

I've seriously been thinking about that review for a month. But I figure that now that I've written it down, nobody can use it. It won't be original anymore. Haha Snarky McLazyface, the teen-memoir-despising reporter. Incidentally, one of my alltime favorite book reviews comes from grand dame Dorothy Parker, who wrote of The Cardinal's Mistress, "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."

I also have a special place in my heart for Sir Thomas Beechman's candid musical assessment of
Beethoven's Seventh Symphony: "What can I do with it? It's like a lot of yaks jumping about."

But when I start to get nervous about people hating the book so much they will burn the thing, I try to remember Kurt Vonnuget's wisdom: "Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae." God I love that image. And God I love hot fudge sundaes. More to come...

xo
H

The Final Solution and the Most Expensive Purse in the World

2009-07-01T20:20:00.001-07:00

So I needed a new purse.

My old purse was a champion, a good soldier, withstanding harrowing encounters with all manner of weather, condiments, dozens of trans-Atlantic voyages, and (more impressively) frequent assaults by my monkey, who regards any sort of stitch, zip, or button as a personal affront to her desire to make the house into her own personal jungle of disorganization and shit. This purse has been with me through thick and thin. It has concealed more tampax, trashy romance novels, and illegal paraphernalia than I would ever care to admit.

Buckling under the ravages of time and the eight gabillion pennies lost in the lining that I never bothered to remove, the old girl finally gave in at approximately 7 PM EST, just in time for me to get on a plane to Miami. And so I began my quest to find a replacement.

I had no idea when I set out of a dangerous and insidious epidemic which speaks to the very unraveling of society itself, a terrifying cultural phenomenon which pits logic against lust, frugality against taste, and functionality against greed. If I had to boil my sociological observations down into one thesis paper title, it would be this:

Bitches be crazy.

So here I am looking for a receptacle to fling over my shoulder and hold all my crap, and I come face to face with this:

and this:

and this:

Firstly: what the fuck is this? What's with all the feathers and fringe and huge ugly bows? Was I somehow not informed about the new trend of adorning your arm with the grotesque offspring of a bridesmaid dress and a bag lady's kerchief collection? And although the hideousness of these purses kind of offends my aesthetic sensibilities, I'm ready for the reality TV crew to come out laughing and telling me how this is all a big setup when I discover that you too can own all of the above items for around $800 a piece.

$800?? What the fuck does a purse that costs that much money even do? Taxes?? I mean, come on now. Are you really going to spend the equivalent of a third world worker's entire annual wages on something whose function could be carried out just as well by an old sheet and a stick?

And sure, the ol' sheet-n-stick isn't exactly high fashion. But is someone actually going to tell me that this bullshit is chic? It looks like some 3rd grader went slap-happy with big fake plastic rhinestones the color of bile.

And hideousness aside, what the hell can you fit inside this dinky thing anyway? There isn't a chapter book in the entire world slim enough to ride along. Then again, maybe Prada does know their demographics. Because it does look just about the right size for a tube of mascara, a bottle of prescription painkillers, and a toothbrush to help you purge.

I began to think that perhaps this is some sort of elaborate practical joke on consumers. Like the time they got us to pay for bottled water. Except times 800. And instead of hydrating us, the product brands us as a tacky gullible moron with nothing better to do than collect arbitrary symbols of status and vacuousness.

As if it couldn't get any worse, in my attempt to bolster my argument for this post, I stumbled across this beauty. It's the Louis Vuitton limited edition, signature, tribute patchwork purse. And the cost of owning this stunning piece of arm candy?

...
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$52,000.

Hold on, let me give you time to recover your breath and sanity while looking at this picture of an adorable kitty.

Now back to business. Fifty two THOUSAND dollars. For a frankenstinean mess of shiny alligator flesh and gaudy gold rivets that looks like it was made by a sweatshop kid who was so malnourished he was hallucinating?

Here's my new plan for world peace. Are you listening corporate America? Here's your chance to start doing some good. Market more products like this. Hordes of them. Gobs of solid gold neckties and limited edition designer toilet paper. And then anytime someone purchases one of these items, promptly launch them into space. Please. For the sake of humanity. Stop the madness.

P.S. If you're going to pay an assload of money for a purse, at least let it be hilarious. Maybe some of these?

And for all you sarcastic subversives out there...

xoxoLVLV,

H

Flying's Da Bomb

2009-06-29T22:19:00.000-07:00

So I'm standing in line at airport security wishing I were somewhere more pleasant, like maybe the Siberian tundra, when a whole mess of beeping wakes me out of my dog-sledding vodka-swigging trance.

Airport Guy: Excuse me ma'am, what's in this metal box?
Me: A camera.
Airport Guy: (eying me warily) A camera?
Me: A camera.
Airport Guy: What kind of camera?
Me: A video camera.
Airport Guy: For videos?
Me:... yep.

Airport guy is clearly not satisfied with this description and so he asks me to open the camera case, which, granted, is bulky and reinforced with metal and locks and all sorts of things which someone might want to surround their delicate video equipment with. Airport Guy does not wait for me to open the camera case before he grabs it back from me and bangs it down on the counter five or six times.

Airport Guy: Why's it rattling?
Me: I think because you're banging it.
Airport Guy: Are you kidding me?
Me: ...no.
Airport Guy: You think I don't know what a camera sounds like?
Me: What?
Airport Guy: What's in the box, ma'am?
Me: My camera!
Airport Guy: (opening the box) And what about this, huh?
Me: Padding.
Airport Guy: Padding for what?
Me: Padding. It protects the camera incase it gets all banged around.
Airport Guy: Banged?
Me: Banged.
Airport Guy: Bang?
Me: What?
Airport Guy: Ma'am, I'm going to have to ask you to step over here.

So I step over there, a little gray room with no windows, where I am introduced to Airport Gal.

Airport Gal: A camera?
Me: A camera!
Airport Gal: Please turn the camera on ma'am.
Me: I can't, it's out of batteries.
Aiport Gal: That's pretty convenient, don't you think?
Me: Not really.
Airport Gal: Where are you traveling to?
Me: I'm going to Florida to visit my publishing company
Airport Gal: Like, books?
Me: Books.
Airport Gal: You said this was a camera.
Me: It is a camera.
Airport Gal: How do you know?
Me: I... what?
Airport Gal: Ma'am, I'm going to have to ask you to step over here.

So I step over there, and I am acquainted with Airport Man, who is distinguishable from Airport Guy by a massive belly and an even more massive mustache. I wait for nearly a half hour for Airport Man to get off of a phone call, and now he wants to know what's in the box.

Me: A camera! Look! Listen, my plane is leaving in like 15 minutes and I really can't miss-
Airport Man: This will take as long as it needs to take ma'am. What's this?
Me: Lens cleaner.
Airport Man: Lens cleaner?
Me: For the camera.
Airport Man: We're going to have to confiscate this.
Me: But it's under the liquid limit!
Airport Man: Would you be willing to taste it?
Me: What??
Airport Man: Ma'am, I'm going to have to ask you to step over -
Me: Don't you think if I wanted to transport a bomb I'd pick something more discreet to transport it in? This box is plated in shiny metal with huge rivets and locks and it's massive! Who would think this was a good place to hide a bomb!? Duffel bag, sure. Baby stroller, very inconspicuous. But this? I mean, you might as well rollerblade through customs dressed as a giant stick of TNT.

And that's how you get you get your lens cleaner confiscated and your red sweatshirt triple x-rayed in the special back office in a little grey windowless room next to airport security.

God Bless America.

Party Off.

2009-06-22T16:01:00.000-07:00

I went to a party recently, and it sucked donkey balls.

I cannot attribute this to not knowing anyone there, because there were at least two dozen familiar faces. And I cannot attribute this knowing but not liking any of those familiar faces, because among them were loved ones and dear friends. The food was pretty good, the dessert was great, mohitos and cosmos flowed like (insert your favorite flow metaphor here. Water/wine/tears/lava... it's that time of the month and I don't want to forcefully subject you to the metaphor that comes most readily to my mind. (Oops, too late.))

So anyway, lots of booze, lots of food, lots of flashbacks to me in middleschool hiding in the bathroom stall of some fancy catering hall.

I went to a "reform" temple on the wealthy side of town, which meant that people whose families had lots of money but not so much piety or tact invited me to a lot of Bar and Bat Mitzvahs where latkas with caviar on top were crucial religious celebratory ingredients. According to the 50 or so lavishly catered affairs I attended between ages 12-15, an ancient coming of age ceremony is simply not complete without novelty Groucho Marx sunglasses, miniature roulette wheels, caricaturists, fountains of chocolate, and sometimes three brand new ponies (no kidding.)

But hey, who am I to complain? I got 50 sweet goodie bags filled with personalized shirts, chocolates, light-up-pens, Tiffany bean necklaces, and sometimes even Bar Mints-vahs (because who wants to visit the holy land with a dirty mouth?)

I also got hours upon hours of awkward 7th grade dance antics, where the girls and boys treated eachother like a hostile enemy species until some coked-up professional "dance motivator" in a sequined vest skipped over and insisted that everyone join in for a mortifying game of "Coke and Pepsi."

Did you guys play Coke and Pepsi? Does anybody else think that having middle school girls repeatedly perch on the laps of middle school boys in the hopes of winning a giant inflatable saxophone borders on inappropriate? Was this just the ingenius plot of some horny group of 12 year olds? Have we been fooled into lap-perching submission for generations at the hands of a pervy pubescent patriarchy?

I didn't really have time to ponder these issues when I was 12-15 because, as I mentioned before, I was usually in the bathroom. These fancy catering halls usually had really fancy bathrooms that weren't even called bathrooms but rather "powder rooms," and the powder rooms were full of perfumes and hairspray and complimentary bouquets of tampax. They were also very quiet, and I found them a welcome escape from the blaring ear-assault of 3 hours of Backstreet Boys and Ricky Martin ickiness, or whoever the terrible pop idol of the era happened to be.

I have tried to be awesome at party socializing. I have tried to steel myself against the blaring music and sweaty handshakes and vapid chitchat about the weather and that yummy guacamole over by the bar. I have tried to imbibe half the contents of said bar in an attempt to enjoy myself more, but then I usually end up right back where I started- in the bathroom- and this time it's not because I'm a wallflower.

It's not that I don't like people. I mean, I don't like a lot of people, but I don't discount them as a race entirely. I think it's just that people were not meant to socialize in massive sweaty hordes of anonymous shouting.

But maybe that's just me.

Am I alone here? Are there other fellow bathroom-dwellers out there who couldn't wait for their Mom to pick them up from the 7th grade dance so they could go home and eat pizza bagels and watch old movie musicals with their cat and-

Well I think I've said too much.

Just to let you know, this candid admission only serves to underscore my allaround social excellence, because only the coolest person you know would willingly tell thousands of people about how she'd rather stab herself in the eye with a salad fork than go clubbing. Right?

...right.

Hope all is well, folks. Party on. Or off.

xo
H

P.S. I'm in the process of editing the very last FINAL FINAL FINAL four pages of the book- a little "special features" section if you will, and I'd love a few more opinions. If you'd be willing to give me your two cents I'll send you the sneak preview. Email me at writinghannah@me.com

HannahWriting

2009-06-08T15:22:00.000-07:00

How do you write a book?

As I mentioned on Youtube, a lot of people have been emailing me questions about the writing process lately. I figure now is as good a time as any to answer writing questions, because for the next month I will be an Author- a real live, true blue, pen-to-paper author, and after that my family will almost certainly re-dub me "get-a-job-and-move-the-hell-out Friedman."

The first thing that I learned is that writing is a job. It's not just that fun thing you do on the subway when you have nothing better to think about, or that indulgent hobby you store in a diary under your bed for all those times you're feeling très très heartbroken and poetic, or that rusty skill you dust off every time you have some bullshit homework assignment due. Writing is a job, and if you want to make it your job, you have to treat it with respect.

This means a few things:
1. You cannot wait until whimsy beckons you to your keyboard, because whimsy is a fickle muse.
2. You have to get used to the 1/10 idea. Nine tenths of what you write is going to be, according to you, total crap.
3. You have to wallow in a lot of supposed crap before you figure out what it is your subconscious is really trying to express. Don't give up.
4. In terms of raw creativity, your subconscious is valedictorian and your logical, literal mind, rides the short bus. And drools. And eats its own earwax. Leave her out of this.

To expand upon these ideas:

1 : Make yourself a schedule. (I will be the first one to call shenanigans here.) I will tell you that I work best under pressure of a deadline, but really that's a lie. I work only under pressure of a deadline, and if there hadn't been the possibility that I would get sued if I didn't finish this book, I probably wouldn't have gotten past chapter two.

But I knew I had to finish, and I knew this was a big project, so I set lots of little goals. They add up. All you can ask of yourself is to dedicate a little time every day to your project. Every single one of my favorite passages in the book came after at least five minutes of doodling around writing nothing very interesting. I'd write my name. My address. I'd write "I have nothing to write I have nothing to write I have nothing to write." And by and by, my mind would quiet and my fingers would take over and these awesome pages came totally out of nowhere. If I had waited until I "knew" exactly what I was going to write, nothing exciting or surprising would have been written.

Set aside time each day. No page limit, no word count. Just set a timer, and keep your fingers typing (/strumming/stirring/dribbling etc.) for exactly that amount of time. And no matter what you've accomplished by the end of it, you've succeeded. I promise that by the end of a week, you'll be seeing results. It is the hardest thing in the world to start working, especially when your goal is to finish a whole book. But if your only expectation is that you sit down and write for half an hour a day, you'll accomplish it easily. You'll feel accomplished. You'll start to accomplish amazing things. Day by day. You have my word.

2: If I had waited for everything to be perfect in my head, I would have gotten frustrated and stopped months ago. It's happened a million times, with songs, with poems, with short stories- I have a hundred half-finished projects festering in the nooks and crannies of my motherboard. But guess what? Things don't finish themselves, and there's no such thing as a brilliant stroke of insight that fixes every plothole and character arc. Even if you do stumble across a really great idea, you're going to have to work and whittle and move things around before everything fits.

And here's the best part: everything will fit. The reason that you're having such a hard time finishing is the very same reason that you'll be able to finish. If you had absolutely no standards, if you could pull strings of incoherent words out of a barrel and be fine signing your name to them, you'd be finished with all of your projects by now. But you know what you're capable of. You know how great it feels when, on that rare occasion, you write something that's just perfect. That you're proud of. That you want to share with others. Your high standards are often what gets in the way of your finishing a project, because you don't allow yourself the freedom to muck through the ten crappy sentences it takes before you find the good one. But the good news is that these same high standards will allow you to know, to really know, when you finally hit upon something great. So you don't need to worry about whether or not your work will be good. You only need to worry about doing enough work to get down to the good stuff.

3. There is no wrong way to start writing, except to not start. As a die-hard procrastinator, I was not used to the idea of drafts when I began this project. At Yale I would usually not look at my assignments for months, then spend the entire night before a paper was due agonizing over every single word until it was perfect, then print it out never to be seen again. I did not leave room for growth- I just wanted to finish the damn thing. But if you have a project that you care about, you're going to have to nurture it. It won't be perfect the first time around, or the second, or the third. Not only is that okay, that's the only way to really achieve your creative goals.

For a perfectionist like me, this idea was hard to get used to. I wanted Chapter One to be perfect so that I could move on to Chapter Two. I wanted to check it off on my little anal-retentive checklist. But that's not how creative projects work. They evolve from all angles at different speeds. Sometimes your very first chord or lyric or sentence will be influenced by your very last, and you won't know how it all ties together until you get to the end of the process. Things reveal themselves bit by bit, and if you give yourself over to this process, its like solving a fantastic artistic mystery every single day.

This is liberating, people. I used to be Ms. Thesaurus, and I'd sit and stare at my computer for half an hour making sure I had the perfect word. This is NOT the way to write. It will kill your creative spirit and wear you down. It's a waste of your time. Through this process I've learned to trust myself enough to leave things loose. Sometimes I'll know that I need a very certain word, but I can't put my finger on what it is, so I'll leave myself an asterisk in the text and come back to it later. Or I'll make up a fake word as a placeholder. Sometimes I'll reach a spot where I want to touch upon a very broad idea, an entire philosophy which needs to be artfully distilled, but I know that it will take me a long time to find the perfect format, and I'm in a good story flow and I know that wrestling with it will just trip me up. I leave myself a little note, one or two words which will remind me of the big idea I was intending to grapple with, and then later I'll come back.

This approach seems very messy, but it's actually quite relaxing. On the first pass you can just let yourself go crazy- you can write down every single thing that comes into your head without having to insist that the inner critic/editor have approval over every line. The inner critic/editor will be very helpful around the fifth or sixth draft, but in the beginning she only serves to make you feel like crap. When you feel like crap you don't give your ideas a chance, and very soon after you give up completely. Then you don't write anything and you feel worthless. Then you feel worthless so you don't write. Sound familiar?

My best advice is to trust yourself enough to have fun during the writing process. When you stop fixating on what your project should be, you get to discover what it is. And it is NEVER the same thing. Never. Your creative ideal is just a flagpost for the direction in which you'll begin to search, and once you begin to think about it as the search for Tut's tomb instead of the construction of a pyramid, you'll start to feel more sane, have more fun, and get more done. I promise.

4. You know way more than you think you know. I have never come up with a great idea banging my head against a wall willing myself to produce one. It just doesn't work that way. Most of the messages and information we absorb are not processed by our conscious mind, and the reason dreams are so nifty is that they weave together all sorts of snippets which affect us, but which we aren't completely aware of. When I was really "in the zone" while writing the book, it felt very akin to a dream. Things were unfolding in real time, and I recorded my narrative experience as I went through it in my head. And every single time my conscious mind got pissy and started to tell me "that's not funny," "that's not relevant," or "that just sucks," I would totally jar myself out of the zone and into self-doubt and panic. It wasn't fun.

I've mentioned it on the blog before, but I think I should reiterate this because it's such a fantastic writing tool. Get a Suck Jar. Mine is a sugar bowl with a little slot for a spoon. But instead of a spoon, I slide pieces of paper into the slot with every writing insecurity I come across. If I think a passage, paragraph, or project sucks, I write down why, and I put it in my Suck Jar. If I think I'm not funny, I put it in the Suck Jar. And then it's out of my head and I don't have to think about it anymore. I can just move on.

The jar is full of dozens of notes, and when I look back at them now, they all seem ridiculous and hyper critical. If an editor or a friend were to tell me a fraction of those things, I would never let them read my stuff again. But we're all our own worst critics, and we can't get away from ourselves. Which is why it's so important to delineate between pure creative time, and hardcore editing time. Don't start poking holes in your quiche before it's even in the oven.

The best thing I've learned over the course of writing this book is that if you give yourself the space to play out all of your craziest ideas, a judgement-free-zone, you will surprise yourself.

Please let me know about all of your other questions, and do keep me posted on whatever you're working on. Was any of this helpful? Hope all is well!

xox
H

Forgive me!

2009-05-31T22:44:00.000-07:00

Forgive me for my inexcusable absence. I was frantically finishing up my book. And guess what? I freakin' finished! I still can't really believe it. I keep expecting to leave it in the back of a taxi and then have all power in New York get shut down for weeks by an earth-shattering earthquake so that the internet is down. Then I have to strap the manuscript to my back and embark on an epic quest down the crumbled remains of I-95, during which I will face ravenous hillbillies and giant spiders and evil wizards to get it to my publisher in time to throw it into the volcano. (I also haven't been sleeping very much over these past 2 months, incase you can't tell.)

So in terms of big news, I launched the book yesterday at Book Expo America in NYC, and the reception was absolutely amazing. Thanks to all who came out and got advanced reader's copies. Thanks especially to Mr. McMegatron & Unk Terry for schlepping all the way to the west side before noon.

But first, WHY THE HELL WAS THAT ALL UNDERLINED? I can't find an underline feature here in blogger, and I don't know what the deal is. Thoughts? I'm not typing that over again, so those of you who stuck with me through all of the extra unnecessary emphasis, here are a few pictures from BEA:

Also, HannahFriedman.com got a little bit of a polish in anticipation of BEA, so check out some of the new links.

I plan to start right back up where I left off- I'm terribly sorry I haven't been around and I promise I'll make it up to you. If you have any burning questions you've been dying to get answered, do let me know and I'll keep you posted in the next post. I can't wait to tell you all about the writing process, as I've been contacted by several people in the last few days asking for publication advice. The short answer is: writing is fucking hard. Keep at it, because if you listen to how badly you think it sucks, you'll never give yourself the chance to fix it. And fixing it, (surprise surprise) is fucking hard. The fantastic part of the equation is that as long as you hold yourself to a high standard, you'll know when you're done. You'll know when it's right. It's just a matter of getting there. So shut up and keep writing. There's my short answer. As I mentioned, more to come.

Send me questions, let me know what you've been thinking. Hope all is well and that you're enjoying these sunny summer days. If you're not in a sunny summer place... what the hell are you thinking? New York is just starting to feel like the land of the living instead of some frozen ice-age wasteland, and I think we're all pretty grateful.

Love & Laughter & Lots of productivity,
xox
H

(also, I'm getting sick of blogger... it's tricky to customize format and I hate the settings. And the rogue underlinings. Are you all loving wordpress? Do you have other recommendations? I think I'm ready for a change. Let me know.)

Airline Lie

2009-04-21T07:45:00.000-07:00

A treatise:

I contend that there should be a sound-proof, padded tunnel underneath airline seats in which babies are stored. Toss down some applejuice and Cheerios every few hours and then shut the hatch again and save us all some aggravation for God sakes. I paid good, hard earned money to be ceremoniously crammed between an obese racist and an incontinent octogenarian with muscle spasms for half a day in a seat which-

Hold up. I was going to finish that sentence but I'm too hopping mad. New sentence.

If you can give me a good reason why (WHY?) they even bother to build in that smarmy little half-inch seat incline capability when they know perfectly well that it only serves to make the seat a hair more bearable before the guy behind you decides that his knee and your spine need to become intimately acquainted for six hours, and why (WHY?) it is so essential they wake you up from the merciful slumber it has taken you six hours to settle into only to have you contort yourself back to the original "upright" position to give you the privilege of experiencing an odorous concerto of your fellow passengers' digestion processes as that marvelous airline dinner takes a triumphant last stand, set to the dizzying swerves of a pilot who is either too young to drink or too drunk to think missing the optimal landing angle for the first, second, third loop, losing the scheduled runway opening, running out of fuel, and then deciding we need to divert to fucking Scranton Pennsylvania... if you can tell me why all these things have come to be synonymous with air travel, then I will apologize for telling a little white lie a little while back.

Sure, I'm not pregnant. Sure, the faintly rounded rim of my midsection has more to do with Cheese Whiz than jizz. But I don't feel bad about lying my way into business class last week with the claim that I had a bun in the oven. Nobody ever asked me whether or not it was a hamburger bun.

And, well... that's just not my fault.

Sheepishly, (but with more leg room, blankies, and complimentary cookies than you could shake a stick at,)

Hannah

Fennel Destination: College Matriculation Questions

2009-04-19T21:21:00.000-07:00

Questions questions!

I'm always thrilled and tickled to receive questions on the blog, so please don't interpret my delay as a lack of appreciation for you, only an abundance of appreciation for pirated web television. Also, I'm in Miami at the moment. As much as I cherish you, dear reader, you're no mango margarita mingling with a balmy Atlantic Ocean breeze in the creamy center of a sunny April afternoon. Step up your game.

My Yale posts (here and here and here) have once again garnered a disproportionate amount of attention as compared to, say, the post where I talk about seaweed. It's like I was challenging an almost universally lauded farce upon which our entire educational system is based or something... And as usual, I am happy to answer these question, but first off, I would like to set down some ground rules so that the jerkoff who thinks it's important to comment about how "biased" I am will have to root through the dictionary for another 100 point word they don't know how to use in context.

Yes folks, the following opinions regarding higher education will be biased. Because they are opinions. This being the case, and because, sadly, I have not yet perfected the neuro-manipulation device brewing in my basement which will bend all humankind to my will, I expect that my opinion will not reflect that of everyone else in the world. Don't freak out if you don't like what you hear. Or do freak out, but save yourself time and don't rant about how my experience was NOT the same as yours. Because I won't be surprised. Because you are probably seeing the world through douchebag-colored glasses. Hey- is it like those red/blue, 3D lenses that cancel out the very color they are tinted? When you look in the mirror do you disappear?

Moving on. Nestor writes: "I really appreciate all of this insight on Yale... however I still find Yale to be good for me, and I say "think" because I live in Cali and I can't afford going there to visit it. You say Yale is ugly, but I want to know if it is architectural-wise or is it because there's a trash problem or traffic? Or is it just because of the sucky weather?"

Well Nestor, I have three things to tell you. Firstly, if you think Yale is good for you that's fantastic, and far be it from me to tell you otherwise. I can only speak to my own personal experience, and there are plenty of blue-bleeding Yalies who would disagree with everything I'm about to say.

1. Listen to me when I tell you that New Haven is a pit. Sure, it's safer than it used to be. Sure, there are some fantastic restaurants and art museums. But even the heroin-grade gentrification injections of sushi joints and quirky coffee shops pooling about the perimeter of campus quickly drizzle down into urban decay after literally two blocks. Three blocks north of my favorite bookstore there was a shooting last year, and three blocks south there was another shooting this year. Now, if you're not wandering the streets alone and intoxicated whilst attempting to juggle your iphone, wallet, and Rolex at 3 AM on a holiday weekend, you're probably going to be okay, but that doesn't detract from the fact that New Haven is not a city I was sad to bid farewell to. It is dark and depressing in the wintertime, but if you're a Californian you're going to be bummed out by all the Ivy climates, so that's not exactly news.

The Yale campus itself is bustling and there are all sorts of activities to attend every night of the week, as compared to things I've heard from friends at Columbia, for example. It seems when you live in a city which doesn't drain your will to live you're more inclined to branch out and explore, so to Yale's credit, the awfulness of New Haven does inspire a certain insular vibrancy within Yale walls.

2. All this said, if every professor and every class I encountered at Yale just absolutely blew my fucking mind, I wouldn't have cared if Yale were located in the Orc-forging pits of Mordor. But they didn't. So if you're coming to Yale for the architecture then perhaps you'll be contented three times over the course of your education.

-The moment you step on campus and behold the grandeur of Yale buildings before realizing you'll be expected to inhabit a room approximately the size of a microwave oven. And oh yes, you'll be sharing that room with a manic-depressive, hyperactive, obsessive-compulsive. And oh yes, she needs to practice her tap-dancing routine every night before bed. And oh yes, she has gas problems.

-When your grandparents come to visit.

-When you see your college 'neath the first blanket of virgin snow before you realize you'll have to trudge through the damn stuff for the next four months anytime you want to see sunlight.

3. Sure, it's nice to walk outside and see pretty gothic architecture. But do you really want to lay down a quarter mil. just to see bootleg versions of things you could see for free at a tour of Oxford? I'm sure this is not the only criterion upon which you're basing your Yale decision, but it concerns me that it's the only one you mentioned. Too often when I worked in the admissions office I saw people totally bowled over by impressive facts that had no bearing on education at all... the prettiness of some buildings, the number of kids rejected each year, the fact that we had a Gutenberg bible.

Think of college tours like Coca Cola commercials. They conveniently leave out the tooth-dissolving, rainforest-raping, cancer-causing details in the lyrics of their snap-happy theme songs. So feel free to sing along, but don't forget to do your own research before deciding to... oh I don't know... bathe in the stuff for four years straight.

Another question:

"Yale has been my #1 choice for a long time, and I was admitted EA, so you can understand that I am dismayed at, if enlightened by, this blog. Plus, it's way too late to change where I applied, though I haven't comitted to Yale yet. So, out of curiosity, where would you go if you had to pick from the following institutions: Yale, Michigan (probable full-ride), Iowa (probable full-ride), Amherst, Harvard, and Stanford..."

Well… I have no idea. Seriously. The only school I ever went to was Yale, so that's the only school I can tell you about with any real credibility. I can’t stand the ranking systems which claim to accurately rank some schools above others based on categories as despicably irrelevant as "peer review," (i.e. popularity contest stats.) If you take anything away from this post, please remember that the same school which was a perfect fit for one person will be a terrible fit for another. So start doing your research. Some people want a strong focus on classical core curriculum, some people want to have access to particle colliders, some people want to be able to major in digeridoo. The first thing you need to do is figure out what you really want.

We're not used to doing this. We know what teachers want. What our parents want. We know what the traffic cops want and what the IRS wants. But rarely are we ever encouraged to really truly look inward and give ourselves permission to name what we want. And this is the essential first step to answering your question. Tell me what you want your education to look like and we can start planning from there.

Let's be frank: I wanted prestige and I got it. I didn't reflect deeply enough to recognize that what I also wanted was artistic freedom and creative interdisciplinary curriculum, so I didn't really get it. Be honest with yourself.

You mentioned the possibility of a free ride to several of your other college options. This is kind of a biggie, especially if you, like me, are going to be up to your ears in student loans until you're 30 if you decide to go with Yale.

Was it worth it?

Well here’s the thing. There is no significant distinction between the salaries of people who went to Ivy League schools and people who got into Ivy League schools but didn’t end up going. The Ivy Leagues take credit for the successes of a lot of kids who would arguably have been just as successful anywhere else.

But there’s more. Fascinatingly, there is also no distinction between the career success of people who attended Ivy League schools versus people who simply applied, even if they were rejected. If you have the balls to think that you belong at Yale, then odds are you’ve got the gusto required to kick ass in the real world no matter where you get your B.A. from, and if you’ve already been accepted then that’s just even more confirmation of your capability. So listen to me when I tell you this:

You do not need Yale.

I guarantee that anything you will learn there you can learn on your own with equal parts curiosity and dedication. If you’re making an investment in brand name because you want to be affiliated with an institution that spits out more politicians than all the bustiest White House interns combined, that’s great, but don’t get caught up in the idea that turning down an Ivy will screw you out of the best life has to offer. Statistically, just the fact that you applied makes you a winner.

So here’s what you should do: remove the idea that attending an Ivy League school will make you a successful person from your decision making process entirely. There’s nothing you can learn there that you can’t learn with a library card and some intellectual curiosity.

If you plan to become a beat poet it’s probably not a good idea to go into debt just to get a silly Ivy degree, but if you’re eyeing law school I cannot deny the persuasive powers of those three little letters... I V Y

So now sit down with your folks and figure out what really makes sense for you. Do you want a stellar film studies department? Do you need to have a car? Are you planning on going to medical school? Do you want to be able to ice skate? I know you’re going to hate that answer but it’s really the best one there is. Anybody who purports to know which school is better for you than another is not thinking about you. They’re thinking about brand names, spouting out propaganda, and exhibiting exactly the type of nitwittery that big businesses hope they can induce in the general population by showing us big tits and shiny objects and cool guys smoking cigarettes.

Final Question:

Hello :) what do you know about other Ivy League schools?... Are they all as bad as Yale?

I don’t know that much about other Ivy League schools other than the disparaging facts we were required to spout off to tour groups at the admissions office whenever anybody asked for an Ivy comparison. There isn’t a “campus life” at Columbia like at Yale. Penn lacks our resources, Princeton our open-mindedness, and Harvard is socially stunted. If that sounds like a crock to you then you’re absolutely right because none of these schools, including Yale are “bad.” They’re different. And each one is going to tell you that their differences make them better than all the other ones. But the truth is that no matter how perfectly some fancy Five Star Restaurant prepares the most succulent Roast duck leg with fennel and rosemary that has ever been served in the entire history of the culinary world, I am going to hate it.

Because I fucking hate fennel.

Hate it. Even writing the word fennel makes me wince. Fennel. Ugh. Fucking eiw. It’s like someone taking a dump in your throat.

And I will leave you with that lovely parting image. Not to gross you out, but rather to make you truly consider the subjectivity of preference, and to encourage you to discover and honor your educational goals and the things that make you want to hurl. Because guess what? No matter how important your parents and teachers and friends are telling you this decision is, once you graduate with or without a Yale degree in four years you’ll still have only just begun your educational journey. So figure out what you want to be doing now and start doing it a little at a time. That’s the best advice I can give you and it doesn’t require an Ivy League school, just the audacity to listen to yourself and to follow through.

If you really want to be happy with your decisions, listen, learn, and stay the hell away from your very own personal fennels, no matter how well respected they may be.

Stay sane folks. Keep me posted and keep the questions coming.

xox

Welcome to LA?

2009-03-18T09:20:00.001-07:00

Two posts in three days? Shocking.

Another recent shock:

I returned from Los Angeles last week, and the next time I go it might just be for keeps.

You see, ever since I was in gradeschool LA was a faraway dreamy land of giant donuts, giant apes, giant princess-castles, giant breasts, and egos... I visited family there from time to time, sunbathed and sushi-dined for a weekend of two, but I always returned dutifully and shivering to the NorthEast. To the real America. The place where you suffer through winter to deserve the spring.

Well now that I am no longer bound to the shackles of academia, I realize that I deserve the spring all the goddamn time. Why not? Isn't there enough bullshit in life without the added hassle of wind giving you perpetual icy smacks whenever you walk down the street? Do you think I'll grow jaded without a seasonal reality check? Take for granted the tender crocus blooms, the ever-present, effervescent verdigris of fragile life emerging from the wintery clutches of February frost? Will I lose my soul in sunny California sacrilege?

Perhaps I will...Whilst my soul is contemplating how many layers it will need to survive the icy trek to the mailbox, the rest of me will be at the beach. Suck it. Manifest Destiny baby.

But then again, why should my migration stop in California? I definitely wouldn't have the funds to get back, but hypothetically I have enough pocket change combined with waitressing, crude juggling, haggling, busking, whining, and top-secret ninja capabilities to get me from here to Tuxson, Tunisia or Tasmania by next Thursday.

Still, the smart money is on my being exactly where I am right now by next Thursday. Namely, sitting on my ass, staring into this magical technology box and typing. It will be the day after my first big final-revision meeting with my editor. And it will mark an intense edit binge in which I will attempt to make all 200 some-odd pages of Everything Sucks not suck at all. There, I fixed that word. Only 87,947 to go.

Recently I've noticed that every now and then, my aunt looks at me like I'm some sort of delicious pastry. Thousands of impossibly thin layers of the finest filo filled with the yummiest, juiciest, sweetest-ness there ever was. "You can do anything you want," she muses wistfully whilst balancing a tray of mini pizza bagels as one of her small children shoves a dinosaur-shaped crayon up their nose while another lobs a crayon-shaped dinosaur at the other one's forehead.

She's kinda right. I have no kids, no mortgage, no husband... people like Obama have the entire free world to juggle. And compared to the entire free world, no matter what the fashion magazines may say, I'm a pretty light load.

Which makes the unrealized potential all the more weighty. I could move to Tahiti and be a scuba instructor. I could move to Timbuktu to get a Masters in Mansa Musa's Malian mosques... why am I sitting here talking to you?

Because I don't really know what I want to do. I know plenty things that I like to do, but I'm pretty sure you can't get paid for most of them... or at least not in the way you'd want your grandmother to find out about.

I read an article in the NYT magazine recently about the "facebook generation," and how having a perpetual anchor to our past-selves, past-relationships, past-fashion-disasters, might be some sort of albatross for future re-invention. And maybe she's right. Maybe for all of our touted photo-tele-interwebbing connectivity, we're actually more isolated than before, just by virtue of the fact that we can never truly escape our before.

Not that we every truly could. But at least before you could bundle up your before into subconscious insulation and gallop off into the sunset without everyone you ever knew getting a front row seat. I know that nostalgia is like those icky chalky Valentine's day candy hearts though- always looks better than it tastes. But still, don't you long for the good ol' days when you could completely sever ties with everyone just by hopping in your horse and buggy and heading due West? Rob banks without security cameras and invisible laser beams ruining your fun?

But alas, in these days of social security numbers and Google-earth satelites and reality TV shows, we are nothing if not kept-tabs-on. "Truth" aside, (because what does that mean anyway?) the world appears to be more of a stage now than it has ever been before. Marketing experts want to know all about your buying habits. Medical experts want to know all about your living habits. The government is keen to eye your political leanings. Join a facebook group. A panlist. Cringe in horror when someone from your distant past uploads a photo of you in the peak of your adolescent awkwardness for all the virtual world to see.

I don't really know where I'm going with all this. Waitwait I do, but it's a forked path so let's do one of those Choose Your Own Adventure dealies:

If you want to read something uplifting, scroll to conclusion 1.
If you want to read something cynical, scroll to conclusion 2.
If you want to read something ambiguous, scroll to conclusion 3.

1. Maybe it's not a bad thing that we're moving away from the once-traditional smalltown "community" towards a Big Brother-esque mixture of complete isolation and complete transparency. Sure, increasing the critical strike change of your WoW death coil to help your guild isn't the same as bringing a ham home for family dinner, but you could argue that some people who would never have found any outlet or community before the internet are now surrounded by like niche minds. See: ferret-lovers. beanie-babie-lovers. sneeze-porn lovers. etc. And with the confidence to know that you're not alone in your insanity, maybe you'll find some insane calling in an insane locale and be insane enough to move there and do it. Maybe you'll have the confidence to envision and then enact insane things like happiness , cooperation, and peace. An island made entirely out of marshmallows. A great job with health insurance which revolves around kittens and cartoons and sunshine.

2. Gen Y is fucked. The economy is fucked, the education system is fucked, and this very obvious fucktitude is underscored by the subtle but constant crescendo of a soon-to-be devastating spiritual bankruptcy rooted in our ever-increasing alienation from nature. Political upheaval, famine, war, some sort of dark overlord... all of this only slightly mitigated by the possibility of a Water World-esque post-apocalyptic landscape. Gunna get me some swimmies and goggles and have a splashhappy time. Everyone is watching you and nobody cares because we're all going to die, so move somewhere hilarious to do something that doesn't suck before you get too old to go to the bathroom by yourself.

3. The universe as you experience it is an illusion, is always in flux, and yet it is always connected, as it all originated at the same moment in time, keeping in mind that time is also an illusion, just like integrity, privacy, and this thing:

So it doesn't really matter where you go because you always were where you're going to be......

I'd like to amend my previous post. I think everybody's goal is to do stuff they like in a place they like with people they like. If you've got even one out of the three, that's a damn good start. And if you're tired of chilly darkness nipping at your heels for half the year, and have always dreamed of making stories come to life, you might have to be brave and take a plunge in the form of crammed-full U-haul barreling towards the Pacific. Or at least that's what my gut's been telling me when it's not delirious- drowning in delicious, anxiety-soothing dairy products... ah to be giddy and gassy and on the verge of forging a new trail.

That's all I got folks. Mostly I don't know what the f I'm doing with my life, but I think I'm in good company. Tell me what you think. And think about what you would do, where you would go if you knew that nobody you've ever met, nobody who's ever even a vague acquaintance of your distant facebook friends, would be able to know about it. Also, where's your crazy dream-relocation? I'm thinking tie between Thailand, Burma, and pre-Miraz Narnia. But not the bloody freezing part that's close to the stupid wardrobe please.

Keep me posted.

xox
H

Do.

2009-03-16T20:13:00.000-07:00

These are all real things I did today in an attempt to justify not writing this:

Voluntarily cleaned the kitchen (unheard of.)
Extracted a tick out of my cat's neck (also unheard of. Their gross little jaws make me nauseous.)
Ran up and down and up and down and up the hill, exhausting entire Thriller album.
Made a new running playlist.
Researched Siddhartha, Monsanto, Bullfrogs, and the history of toothpaste.

I don't know quite what it is about the blank page which is so anxiety-provoking. I've mentioned before and will repeat (if only to affirm a twinkle of writerly sanity) that when I finally get through all the hemming and hawing and Billy-Jean-Is-Not-My-Lover sprinting, I usually am pleased with at least a kernel of what I end up with. And yet, the sitting still seems a Herculean undertaking.

And I don't use that adjective lightly. Gazing into vast and utter incompleteness of a project is daunting, but infusing that barren landscape with all of the intention and story and artfulness and humor you know that it should have often seems positively preternatural.

That's because it is. You're making something where once there was nothing. It's a fucking headache. Even God got tuckered out after six days of the whole rigamarole.

I've been thinking a lot about my brother lately. Mostly because we are stuck on this godforsaken hill together with Russian-Roulette-on-wheels as the only escape vehicle. (what'll it be today? faulty brakes? blown tire? a gruesome death-squeal every time you flick the blinker?) He took the year off from college and has four years of collegiate requirements ahead of him. I cannot believe. CANNOT BELIEVE. That I am a teensy bit jealous.

See, back when I was in school I had this really great catch-all excuse for anything that ailed me creatively. If it weren't for the Man, I'd have the freedom to make my Opus. Damn the Man, with his busywork and finals and required readings (which I didn't do, but which the stress of not doing undoubtedly clogged my creative pores with guilty, Ivory, heteronormative, puritanical junk to the popping point... seriously. Being bossed around is super hard. Poor me poor me etc. etc.)

Hmmm..... Cut to post-Man.

Now that I am both Manless and Opusless I'm feeling more hopeless by the moment. Because if all that's standing between me and those amazing pet-projects I dreamily envisioned during loooooooong, poorly organized psych lectures is me, then what was stopping me in the first place?

No, shut up. The answer is not me. Shutupshutup. I mean, it is me, of course, but I'd like to take a moment to expound upon the possibility that "me" is less the answer than the problem.

When I am scribbling in my notebook, I write all sorts of bullshit that nobody, including me, will likely be able to understand. When I sit down to write a blog post, I have a certain expectation for myself. For you, the reader.

When I sit down to write a book, this expectation is launched into hyperspace with the help of all sorts of combustible anxieties ranging from "are people going to buy this?" and "can I really get away with doing this for a living?" to "what defines my existence if not my actions? and shouldn't I be maximizing my self-creation by soaking in all of the scholarly brilliance of minds past instead of watching Gossip Girl and writing for teens? or does the transitory nature of life point to ultimate understanding as a transcendence of minutia into a broader acceptance of the unity of everything? Should I cast off all worldly possessions and go move to Varanasi? Do they get Gossip Girl in Varanasi??? [Enter every hysterical doubt about Love, Art, Religion, my Purpose, my Body, my Brain, my Sanity, etc.]

[All afforementioned players strike up a blaring ticker-tape parade across my prefrontal cortex complete with bagpipes and tubas and confidence confetti. ]

Even when I'm being super nice to myself, when Ethel* is tied up in some cerebral cellar somewhere, I psych myself out with...myself.

Anytime I sit down just for the fun of it with absolutely no expectations, without narrating my own creative process as it's unfolding, without freaking out about how much I haven't done, and how much I have to do, and what this process implies about my worth as a human being and my ability to function in society and find meaning and avoid being run over by my own shitty car... stuff gets done. And really, can we ask anything more of ourselves than to get some stuff done? Even if it's not the best stuff, the perfect stuff, its stuffliness alone should suffice in the face of nothing. Procrastination. Endless potential without followthrough...

I think if Old Testament God had thought too much about the longterm repercussions of his creation-binge he wouldn't have bothered to get past light and dark. Who needs all that water and wind and all those beastly seagulls shrieking around all over the place? Not to mention man and sin and Cain and genocide and totalitarianism and zealots endlessly trying to put words in God's mouth... figuring out what he was thinking... though if God is omniscient then he knew that would happen... knew that I'd be thinking about his thinking from the very first thought... in which case what sort of divine wisdom am I supposed to be gleaning from this cyclical-

NO. Enough meandering. Back to business.

I'm sorry I haven't been more active on the blog recently. When I finish a post I can't wait to start a new one, but with each passing day it gets more and more difficult to live up to my own expectation of what would justify and ameliorate such an extended absence. So let this be a lesson to... me. Just do the stuff and worry about what it means later. Because even after all that brooding you're not really going to know what it means anyway, and interesting work is absorbed and torn and tasted and digested by a million different people who won't give a damn about what you thought it meant anyway, so you might as well just get going gone.

Gone from where? More like gone from whom. I think.

(therefore I waffle.)
[and want a waffle.]
(and have no discipline)
[or future.]
....or talent or time or tact or grasp on reality or
Rinse.. Repeat..

There's only one conclusion and it's agonizingly short: Do stuff. Do. Stuff. This blog post marks my emergence from a (truth be told) pretty depressing bout of unproductiveness, and it sucks to feel like a shmuck. Sucks even more than the possibility of failing miserably at doing the stuff that you're not doing. Logically this makes sense, but I don't think logic has ever been man's most closely heeded advisor, so don't beat yourself up for knowing and not listening to this. Every day is a new day with new stuff to be done. So do some easy stuff or some hard stuff without worrying which type it is and what it will mean, it's just stuff all the same. Do let me know how you're doing. Do reward yourself for little victories.

And do know that the do-itude of yesterdays has no bearing on domorrow...

Much Love & Productivity,
Hannah.

*http://writinghannah.blogspot.com/2009/01/your-imaginary-friend-is-bitch.html

Monday Musings: Amazing Animation

2009-02-02T22:08:00.001-08:00

That's right people, I'm not giving up on Monday Musings, even if I've missed pretty much every Monday since its inception. Take this as steadfast dedication or mulish stubbornness... either way it seems to be a solid virtue on the ancient path of getting shit done.

Yesterday I rented Monster's Road, a documentary about a prolific yet obscure clay animator named Bruce Bickford. I highly recommend the film- this guy is fascinating. Not only because of his talent or unbelievably voluminous attention to the tiniest of details, sculpting dozens and dozens of almost identical forms descending in size millimeter by millimeter, not only because he's essentially a one-man movie-studio and his father is positively Shakespearean with his half-genius, half-curmudgeon, all alzheimer-inspired haze of eerie pondrances, but because Bruce is clearly working through some issues.

This guy is the perfect example of why 99.9% of art and literary criticism is laughable. Before I saw the documentary I sat through Bruce Bickford's animated short Prometheus's Garden, and I was throwing around all sorts of ancient Greek symbolism, Dadaism, stuff from Freud and Proust, isms here, isms there, isms isms everywhere. Turns out Bruce was beat up a lot as a little kid, and he vented his frustration by imagining a word in which "little guys" could have power- the power to punish jerks, to become giants, and the power to create.

Bruce shakes his head with bewilderment describing his reaction when someone asked him to describe the symbolism in his film... for Bruce, a story is just a story, and there doesn't have to be an explicit reason for the warrior to morph into a giant werewolf/milkshake... (you just have to check it out, believe me.)

It's not entirely uplifting. Bruce's work has been largely unrecognized and underappreciated, his relationship with his father seems icy at best, and although he has produced a massive amount of material and is proud of his work, sometimes I thought he seemed a little lonely surrounded by all of his thousands of sculpted clay figures... a little lost.

But he's also extremely self-reflective and admits that all the dark fantasies which resulted from his sucky childhood were channeled into his art. I find this idea extremely appealing. Especially during a time when I'm looking back over the past 17 years in academia and hating myself for not being more...

More of everything. More social, more serious about practicing music, more accepting, more relaxed, more adventurous, more studious, more fun... Sometimes it seems like there's no hope of starting today fresh because there have been so many shitty days prior. Days when you didn't do your best, days when other people screwed you over and stole away your sunshine, days of disappointment and failed diets and dumped dates. Sometimes it feels like you're working against the massive pull of that vast darkness, and that it's not even logical to hope you can overcome.

Well Bruce didn't overcome so much as repurpose. He took all the blackness and rolled it around in his palms until it was soft and pliable and he used it- prodded and sculpted and beat it into hundreds of thousands of frames of concentrated energy... truly an art of catharsis. This guy has modeled one rocky childhood into an ever-evolving, unbelievably complex source of inspiration. None of this art would have ever existed if he'd grown up with The Cleavers.

Which is to say, don't despair of an un-ideal past, of missed opportunities and regrettable happenings which you think may be holding you back. They might just as well be the very palate which you'll use to paint the newest, most innovative, and passionate chapter of your own story.

We're all goddamn crazy. And people who seem the least crazy are usually simmering the fiercest just below the surface. So take all that crazy and use it to sculpt something awesome. You are in charge of your story, and you might as well make it so that all the bullshit was worth your while in the end. Then you'll have gotten the better of every darkness. You'll be using it, instead of the other way around.

I'm not saying artists are the happiest people in the world. But I am saying there's a reason perfect people don't make art. Either they don't exist, or they don't have enough clay.

Thoughts?

Keep smiling, keep believing, keep me posted.

To Pee, Or Not To Pee

2009-01-28T22:24:00.000-08:00

I was going into the city to audition for a talkshow which I found on Craigslist. Every so often I suffer a grand career crisis (usually precipitated by hearing one of my successful ibanking friends discuss how iphones are actually more trouble than they're iworth,) in which I see my ipenniless life flash before my own ieyes.

I am scrounging around in some imaginary dumpster funneling old tuna can drippings into an empty coffee cup when I come to, and when I come to I'm in one of two places: scouring facebook for pictures of people who I didn't like in highschool whom I secretly hope will fail miserably right along with me, or scouring Craigslist for the perfect dream job which has simply eluded me until now. It's going to have flexible hours and great health insurance, and I'll get to play with kittens and babies and make music and blow bubbles and rate gourmet chocolate on a scale of delicious to super delicious and drink morning mimosas. All I have to do is find it.

I found a link asking for college students to talk about problems. I've got plenty of problems and used to go to college, so I felt I was qualified and wrote as much in an email. Cut to a few days later when I'm sitting in front of a green screen being interviewed by Andrew WK for an Adult Swim talkshow. For those of you who aren't unemployed men aged 18-25 who enjoy ironic heavy metal or absurdist stoner humor, Andrew WK is a rocker and Adult Swim is a block of adult-themed late-night shows on Cartoon Network. He's a fascinating guy and it's a great channel, but don't worry too much about that because this story has not very much to do with either.

This story has everything to do with pee. Don't get too excited though- this is an ordinary sort of pee which was used in an ordinary sort of way, and the only thing to note about this catalystic pee is that it was the cause of my being locked in a 4x6x8 metal box for the better part of 10 minutes which felt like the worst part of 10 years.

I was on my way to NYC on the trusty Metro North train line, which was (predictably) running a little bit late, and I knew I'd have to hop off and use the patented pissed-off-NewYorker-elbow to jab my way through crowds of commuters and down to the subway in time to make my interview, so I decided I'd save some time and pee on the train.

I don't like to pee on the train. It feels a lot like those weird Japanese gameshows which are equal parts humiliation and extremely random useless talent, like that guy who can traverse half-inch-thick greased zigzagging platforms while walking on his hands... I'm not quite that talented, but I was pretty proud of how well I managed to balance precariously above a toxic train toilet seat whilst making sure neither my coat, scarf, sweater, or bag touched any part of the inside of the train bathroom, whilst also managing the annoying details of tights, skirts, zippers, and tasteful lip-gloss reapplication. I was pleased as punch with the whole endeavor until I left. Or rather, tried to leave.

I was locked in. Fuck. I was locked in a metal urine coffin speeding down the tracks and nobody would hear my screams. I tried to stay calm. I fiddled and banged and pulled, but the damn door didn't budge. Eventually a nice woman must have heard me descending into panic because I heard another voice on the other side of the door encouraging me to pull, and although a voice inside me screamed (don't you think I've been trying that alreadyyyyyyyyy?!) I was very grateful to know that at least I wouldn't be abandoned for all eternity. At least one person knew I was here. Maybe she'd leave a stone outside the door with a carving of my name so that when the moon men of the future did an archaeological dig of the innards of Old New York they would find an ode to me encased in my locomotive lavatory restingplace.

I tried to breath deep and eventually a surly conductor got me out. I thanked the woman who had kept me company through the ordeal and it turned out she was a smart young brunette commuter who worked in entertainment. She was lovely and funny. We exchanged business cards.

After my second interview on the following day I grabbed Chinese food with a friend. Soup dumplings to die for. Fantastic. But as I left Grand Central to go home I realized I had left a bag at the restaurant. Shit.

So back to the city I go for the taping of the show this afternoon, and for the hopeful retrieval of said bag. I want to avoid any pee mishaps so right before I leave I make sure to pee at home, but the snowstorm from last night had slowed traffic to a halt and so my impromptu pee forces me to catch a later train. I'm going to be late again. Shit.

I get a textmessage as I step onto the platform. "Did you just get onto the 12:30 to Grand Central?"

Supercreepy. I am searching for mace, and have a firm grip on the stupid lipgloss when I get tapped on the shoulder by one of my dearest childhood friends who I haven't spoken to in too many years. We've been exchanging phonecalls and facebook niceties for a while, and I've always intended to reconnect with her but just hadn't gotten around to it. Well my bladder had other plans. We spent the entire train ride catching up, sharing our philosophies on life and education, and commiserating about the uniquely sweet horror of regressing back into a 15 year old when you don't have enough money to move out of your parent's house after college.

Every now and then I am overcome by something very powerful. It's kind of a surge of sentiment, a bolt of illumination, but it's not simply feeling or knowing. It's a feeling that I know something... I have no idea what it is, but I know it powerfully. And it's a knowledge that I am feeling something powerful- I'm not pondering poetry or arithmetic, I'm not hoping that my party chitchat is engaging, I'm not trying to figure out whether I'm in a pissy mood because of my brother's incessant banjo-ing or my own laziness, I'm just riding out the wave of a very powerful feeling.

(Act I finale, 8 part harmony, all parts awesomeness.)

I felt this way when I first read the first chapter of my first Tom Robbins, the first time I saw the finale of the first act of Les Mis on Broadway, the first time I kissed my first boyfriend in my highschool's photography darkroom, the first time I shopped the Yale playwrighting class which would shape my destiny as a writer. It's not always in profound circumstances- sometimes I'm just sitting around a campfire with friends or typing a particularly ******** word, (******** meaning exactly whatever you think it means.)

After 8 years of having our respective circumstances get in the way of what was once a very close friendship, we picked up right where we had left off, and after spending the entire train ride into NY chatting and laughing and finding commonalities in our lives despite the fact they had strayed so far apart, I got this feeling, this powerful feeling, and I burst into tears.

This feeling usually elicits a buoyant tingly awe, it makes me want to shout or smile and sing or listen and hold up and close my eyes... it's rather amorphous and very difficult to verbalize because it's different for every circumstance and yet always fundamentally the same. Familiar and powerful. There's nothing sad about it, but I think the best way my body knows how to express it is with an explosion of sorts, and I'm glad my body chose a little bit of misty-eyed-ness because it wouldn't be very convenient to burst into a sneezing orgasm every time I was moved.

I have learned to listen to this feeling. It is a completely unpredictable, perfectly attuned personal compass which has never led me astray. I don't know if or how it was conspiring with my bladder that morning, but I do know that I am grateful for the serendipitous circumstances which led me back to this old friend. Turns out I missed her much more than I ever realized.

So down to Chinatown I run for the taping, I make it out just in time to return to the yummy soup dumpling restaurant which had my bag. I was trying not to freak out about it, but even once I retrieved it I was a little peeved to have had to go out of my way in the disgusting slush to pick up something I had left behind.

After four hours of taping I had downed a full bottle of water and made it to Grand Central just in time for another pee dilemma- pee leisurely, or miss the express train? I go for the first option but I grumble about it. I'm cold and tired and poor. I'm cranky and I let a very good friend slip away for 8 years. I'm hungry. I pee.

I pee in the bathroom of the Oyster Bar. I'm really hesitant to reveal this hot tip because it's one of my all-time favorite commuter secrets, but since we're all friends here I expect you will only use it for the powers of good. Across from the bookstore in front of the entrance to the Shuttle train is the back entrance of the Oyster Bar, and if you're not in the mood for some mean clam chowder, but you are in the mood for some peaceful pee time, you can sneak into the back entrance, march down the stairs like you own the place, turn right, and enjoy the luxuriously appointed toilets of the non-commuter. There's double ply toilet paper, no icky puddles of stickiness, and even complimentary Q-tips.

I relax a bit. I relax a bit too much because I'm about to miss another stupid train, and I scurry into the last seat on the train just in time. After debating the merits of a rubric grading system with a grumpy teacher in a Cosby sweater, I am introduced to the head of a program called PubliColor, which is a nonprofit. They go into public schools work with kids to paint dreary walls into works of art, they have mentorship and tutoring programs, college prep, workshops, etc. etc. It's basically just an allaround good organization which helps at-risk kids feel empowered. We exchanged cards and ideas about educational philosophy. I felt the feeling. I plan to do a writing workshop there soon.

(PubliColor Project)

And this made me think about our education efforts recently. If you haven't already seen, every single one of the projects we focused on in my last post have been fully funded. Four classrooms across the country have been changed forever thanks to a little bit of good will. Kudos and thanks.

But our work is not done- I'll keep you posted on PubliColor and I do hope you will let me know about other unique service opportunities in your areas. A lot of people don't have money to spare, but everybody has a few minutes, and if inadvertent urination can lead to so many small revelations and happy serendipities, just think what some focused attention will reap!

Which is to say, pay attention to the feeling and always keep your eyes open for the best of a locked door or a lost bag, because with every missed train arrives something found. You just haven't found it yet.

Pay extra close attention to the feeling this week folks. I have a good feeling about it. It's as obvious as the call of nature when you're paying close attention, and whether it is the crackle of a crease in the very universe unfolding before you, or simply too much beer, is entirely up to you.

Keep me posted.

Much Love,

Tuesday Musings... (don't give me that look.)

2009-01-19T09:17:00.000-08:00

I realize that my past few posts have been rather... affirmation-rific. That's probably because I'm revving up for editing the rest of the book and (if you read the little lies post,) attempting to lie my way into being in a place where the thought of fixing all the gaping hopes in the 288 pages manuscript doesn't make sticking my face into a wood chipper seem like a preferable option. But it's not all fun and games here in casa de Hannah, because I also make youtube videos. Which is usually lots of fun until you've wrestled with the linked pasting properties of a final cut audio clip for long enough to have completed a whole other novel... I think I need an intern.

This is what I did when I was an intern: went on facebook, hoarded complimentary redbull, mailed some things.

This is what I'd have my intern do: make faces at the monkey, make me milkshakes, and organize the unorganizable glob of clutter which is the entire western side of my room.

Back to the "affirmation"-ness of the previous posts, I want to point out that a key ingredient in getting stuff done, in addition to thinking positively and trusting yourself, is being really pissed off.

All the best social revolutions are the direct result of some serious pissed-off-ness, and channeled into the appropriate forum you can use every ounce of it to fuel projects focused on change. MLK kind of change.

I was watching mtv teen Cribs yesterday... (umm... nope. no excuse.) If you haven't seen Cribs, it's a show where people show off their ostentatious wealth (think solid-gold monogrammed pool-balls, solid gold toilets, solid gold katana...) And usually they feature eccentric celebrity rock stars or skateboarders or bosomy actresses who own way too many cars and shoes for any single person to be able to use in 3 lifetimes. And they flaunt their gold albums and trophies and pretend to give a tour of the kitchen, a room which they have almost certainly never entered before this very moment except to scream at their personal chef.

But this episode wasn't about eccentric celebrities- it was just about rich kids. Kids who are freakin' loaded. Kids with private movie theaters and 19 guitars and a spiral mahogany slide right built inside their house to take them from their bedroom to their custom built treehouse.

When I was driving to highschool I used to look at the houses which grew larger and more beautiful the closer we got to the wealthy part of town and I'd pick out what I wanted. I'd take that inground swimmingpool with the waterfall, that rose garden, those fancy columns at the front... and I did this with women in magazines as well. I'd take a nose here, a tiny little waist there, slim calf muscles and perky breasts from page to page and reassemble them into a body wish-list cache.

This made shopping for bathing suits less than enjoyable. This made a lot of things less than enjoyable. If I had an intern (and while we're talking wish-list here, why don't we make it super-intern,) I would have him hack into MTV airtime during commercials inbetween Teen Cribs and air some sort of public service announcement about how this is a model for neither a realistic, fulfilling, or interesting life.

Not that I wouldn't want an indoor mahogany slide, a swimmingpool, or a golden katana. I might even have super-intern carve dig, and forge me one of each. But I certainly wouldn't wave them around on television in what essentially amounts to holding up a big sign that says "I'm a socially insensitive, emotionally stunted, entitled brat."

Have you watched My Super Sweet 16? Where Daddy shells out upwards of a hundred thousand dollars for his little girl to gyrate around dressed as a prostitute princess after being carried in via white horses/shirtless men dressed as greeks/a personal helicopter (all of these were actual entrances...)

That show is endlessly amusing to me, mostly because there's lots of sparkles and drama, but don't these people realize what aliens might think about them?

I'm not a big believer in worrying about what other people think, but ever since I read recently that the EISCAT space station was paid to broadcast a Doritos advertisement into space for 6 straight hours on loop, and that that signal is one of the strongest coming off of our planet, I've been pondering an extraterrestrial perspective.

No doubt we're a pretty predictable bunch- a few dead here, a few having sex over there, we fight, we make up, we fight some more... but the idea of an entire civilization deriving its knowledge of our culture from that Doritos advertisement is highly troubling to me.

I mean at least it wasn't a Super Sweet 16 signal, but still... what does it say about us? That we're always out for the buck? Or maybe that we're creative when we want to be? Or maybe that Doritos are our all-knowing flavorful leaders...

I've decided to use my TeenCribs pissedoffness to make a little change, and so I posted a youtube video soliciting donations for four, count 'em, four educational projects. They're really good adorable causes like buying interactive science research kits for underprivileged kindergardeners, and inspirational biography textbooks for ESL students.

I calculated that if everyone who reads the blog gives as little as $2 to any of the causes, we'll have completed all four charity projects by the end of the week.

I know you don't usually do this sort of thing. Neither do I. I'll admit it- I change the channel on Sally Struthers. There's so much poverty, so much to be done, that sometimes it feels like there's no good place to start so you might as well turn a blind eye. Go fondle your golden katana or something...

But I want to prove that the internet isn't just a universe of awkward social networking and porn. Especially in honor of this new presidential era, I'd like to encourage you to make tiny differences. Together, as we've all seen, tiny differences make monumental changes. And here's the cool part- there's a community forming here on the blog so we already have strong numbers- it won't be just your $2, you'll be part of the beginning of a movement. If you've been reading and enjoying the posts I invite you to pick any of the links, toss in a few bucks, leave a comment for your fellow readers to see, and invest in the future of all of our futures.

Mrs. C’s highschool biology class in MO will get a chemical and nutritional model kit

Mrs. T’s fourth graders in Texas will get a set of inspirational biography textbooks

Mrs. R’s Wisconsin kindergarten class will get a science discovery center &recycling activity kit

And all 30 kids in Mrs. F’s middle school writing club in Philladelphia will get a brand new writing journal

Maybe one day super-intern will be able to send out the comment and donation page to Ursa Major just like the Doritos folks did. I for one would feel pretty good about the aliens seeing that. And really, if given the opportunity to make kids laugh, make yourself feel good, and make an excellent impression on aliens who there's a small chance might one day become our overlords, shouldn't you take it?

That's all I got. Let's give these kids something to be excited about other than the impossible dream of owning one of those money swimming pools like Uncle Scrooge in DuckTales.

Also- it seems that my sorry attempt at regularity has already technically strayed because although I'm still on Monday and haven't gone to sleep, it's actually 3:51 AM Tuesday, hence the title change. I think I like it better though... nice assonance. And hey- nice ass. Yeah you... you're awesome. Do something nice for yourself today.

Your Imaginary Friend is a Bitch

2009-01-16T21:28:00.000-08:00

Dear Readers, (if there are any at all)

What do Captain Morgan, Eliza Doolittle, and WritingHannah have in common?

Well, after my previous post and youtube vlog I heard from several people who felt the "judgement-free creating time" and "stop worrying, sit down and start" advice was helpful, and I'm always glad to be of help. (that sounds totally self important.)

In this post I will endeavor to describe what I now realize is the secret second half of those ideas. (I'm bored, this post sucks balls, and I want some fucking cake!!)

If you haven't already noticed, I'm joined this evening by a nagging alterego who many of you are familiar with, whether you know it or not. She is the cousin of the sweaty gyrating sleazy thoughts I mentioned in the last post, a multifaceted personality at once resembling your mother, the Trunchbull, and a coked up hummingbird. Let's call her Ethel. Mostly because I don't know anyone named Ethel so there's no risk of gravely insulting anybody. Unless of course your name is Ethel... In which case you are more than welcome to create a psychologically abusive alterego and name her Hannah. (not funny)

Anyways, for all you non-Ethels out there, let's say you've been meaning to write a rap song about monkeys, mosaic your bathroom counter, or invent a new type of ice cream (fatty,) and you're off to a really good start because instead of wringing your hands and deferring the starting of the project until... infinity, you've actually given yourself a break from cripplingly high expectations and sat down. My latest youtube video (enough with the flagrant self promotion) www.youtube.com/writinghannah contained a favorite quote of mine which expressly states that "the art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair."

But that's not entirely true. Because once you're sitting down Ethel is just raring to sink her teeth into all of your ideas... they are either half-baked or derivative. Do you know what people will think when they see what you're doing? Your idea is a dead-end which you're never going to finish, and even if you did it would be offensively uninteresting. People are going to yawn or laugh at you. The Daily Show is on! You need a drink. You need a snack. You are a socially awkward pathetic excuse for a (fill-in-the-blank) and nobody likes you. Nobody. (No really, nobody.)

Needless to say, no matter how determinately you have positioned your ass in your work-chair, this sort of nonsense makes it difficult to keep your momentum. If you're not a fraud and a failure you're being lazy... if you're working really hard you're not working smart, if your ideas are interesting your execution is sloppy. You can't win.

But guess what? You're in good company. I think it's safe to say that most of the best ideas sounded totally insane in their conception, and only a fool doesn't think to question himself.

I keep an old sugarbowl next to my computer. There's a little crescent notch in the top which is meant for a spoon, but that's not what I keep inside. Inside the sugarbowl are dozens of little shreds of paper. I have not opened said container for many weeks, but I feel it's important to share some of the contents with you in order to silence the nagging power of our collective Ethels, so here is a selection of the real scraps within...

"prose nauseatingly bad."

"OMG so bad."

"you are dry... creative pools all are behind you."

"NOT RIGHT!"

"People are going to be pissed off about this."

"hypocrite."

"MESSYmessymessymessy"

"cliche"

"self indulgent"

"never going to finish"

...and my personal favorite which simply says "FUCK YOU!" accompanied by a big jumble of angry squiggles.

I'm not purporting to know anything more about the creative process than anybody else, but I do know that when I was a kid I always imagined Joyce and DaVinci and Mozart rocking back and forth in an artistic trance producing scores upon scores of brilliant earth-shakingly original ideas which flowed together with silky certainty.

In school you read about great generals and great journalists and all the great things they did, but rarely does anybody mention the universal Ethel.

Everybody questions themselves, and capable people are often the harshest self-critics. DaVinci was actually so frustrated by what he perceived to be his own lack of self-discipline that he was often quoted as appealing to God with the question "tell me if anything was ever done!" Alan Lerner, triple Tony & triple Academy Award winning musical writer (he did one of my favorites, My Fair Lady,) was such a notorious procrastinator that his partner literally had to lock him in his hotel room any time they were nearing a deadline. Dickinson, Proust, Tolkien, all of them struggled immensely with self-critique to the point where much of their work was kept away from the public/ destroyed.

Which is to say, you're in good company. There's a crazy Amadeus myth out there about people who are so brilliant at what they do that they just churn out brilliance by the barrel-full all the time, but that's bullshit. Successful entrepreneurs in the media spotlight today (everybody from Trump to JK Rowling to Gates & Bono) don't want to have you hearing about how difficult it is to overcome their insecurities and creative roadblocks, they aren't going to admit how often they lie in bed questioning the value of their contributions. They're quick to share success stories, but rarely share any of their Ethel. She's a nasty little secret that everyone's embarrassed to have around because maybe all those nagging doubts are true, and if anybody ever knew about them then...

*shudder* (shut up Hannah, only lame-o 6th graders express actions with asterisks... asterices? You can't even spell right, how do you expect to write right?)

The point is that at least for me, growing up with stories of great leaders and thinkers like George Washington and Shakespeare, it never occurred to me that everybody has a creative process, which means doing something totally brand new is ALWAYS scary and ALWAYS fraught and ALWAYS peppered with a billion little Ethels no matter who you are.

Everybody's seen this picture of Washington crossing the Delaware on December 25th- noble, resolute, rocking the "I'm such a bad-ass" Captain-Morgan stance...

But rarely do we talk about December 24th... the day Washington probably had a bit of a tummy ache, and smoked a bit too much tobaccee, and couldn't fall asleep anxiously anticipating his next move after being completely WALLOPED by the British at both the battle of White Plains and the battle of Long Island (which was the largest battle of the entire war!) We remember him as a strong commander, but nobody as savvy and humble as Washington would have been blind enough to rock the Captain-Morgan stance on December 24th. He wasn't the first president on December 24th, the rock of democracy, he was barely even a competent general. Plus he had just gotten a ton of people killed and fucked up the biggest battle he would ever fight in. Way to go Georgie.

But people don't paint pictures of the presidents' tummy aches, or write epic poetry about whiners. They write about winners. Heros. We come to worship these heros- the "greats." The dead white men whom we quote in thesis papers. The dead white men whose last names have become adjectives...

Well behind ever great man is a great woman. And behind ever great person is an Ethel.

So don't despair if she's jabbering rather loudly of late. Only fools have the good fortune of not having her around. The bad news is that she never goes away. The good news is that the more frequently you manage to hear her and then shove her latest quotation into the proverbial sugarbowl, the more creative potential you unleash.

Don't let your Ethel convince you that you're the only shmuck shmucky enough for her to hang around with. She's more than a bit of a tramp. She's been dogging everybody from Aristotle to P.Diddy since the birth of man. Such is the curse of sentience.

So know that you are never alone in feeling unproductive, untalented, unoriginal, or unloved. We're a queer bunch, us humans, and for all of our innovation and diversity we often forget what unites us... and that what unites us often undoes us. Self Awareness can lead to a desire to understand, to create, to communicate, and from thence comes civilization, science, art. But with the help of an insidious Ethel and others to compare yourself with, Self Awareness can also breed jealousy, self-criticism, competition, and all of the other ingredients of the war and senseless carnage we're so famous for.

Trust yourself. Trust yourself for long enough to get all the way to the end of that project you've been putting off. Because I guarantee you will surprise yourself, and even if you look back and you (as all your creative forefathers and mothers before you have done) think it kinda sucks, it'll be more satisfying than looking back at nothing at all. And you'll be more prepared for the next thing you try. And (if you're the type of person to believe in this sort of thing,) you'll be discovering your destiny along the way instead of lamenting a lack of one.

Get out those sugarbowls, rock your best pirate stance, and ford into the wild unknown knowing that you know what you don't yet know that you know. (well if the rest of this treacly crap didn't scare them away, that certainly did.)

Much Love,

Hannah

"Trust thyself, every heart vibrates to that iron string." Emerson

Monday Musings: Part one of X...

2009-01-12T15:16:00.000-08:00

(X being the result of an equation which extrapolates productivity based on various factors including (but not limited to) how long it takes me to edit the book, how much whining said process will cause, and how many pirated episodes of The Office I can watch before my brain becomes permanently impaired, unable to produce anything more substantive than a "that's what she said" comment.)

Which is to say, I think it's time I finally commit to a blog schedule, or else no matter how hard I moan and groan nothing will ever get done. (That's what she said.)

Some of you know I've been experimenting with various forms of meditation for a while now, (see me channeling serenity in front of San Fran Japanese tea garden.)

If you're anything like me, living inside your head is kind of like living inside one of those really loud obnoxious European dance clubs.

There was this one I visited during my summer semester in Prague called Karlovy Lazne which was particularly sketchy and well suited to this analogy because it boasted 5 whole floors of loud obnoxious sketchiness. Pop music blared from the bottom floor, R&B boomed on the second, there was country and rock and psychedelic and no matter where you went you were always surrounded by sweaty, handsy, drunken people shouting at you in different languages.

Welcome back into my head- no matter the sound-system or cerebral floor, whether I'm in academic mode or social mode or relaxation mode, I can usually hear the pounding bass of other floors echoing all around me. If I'm working I wish I were relaxing, if I'm relaxing I know I should be working, and all the while there are these slimy thoughts who, like oily club-men with ponytails and wifebeaters, I always wish would just go away. And even when they do, their pungent BO/cologne mixture lingers, reminding me that what I'm working on is boring, that I'm being lazy, that terrible things are going to start happening to people I love, and that I'm looking rather fat this afternoon.

The point being that I cannot express the relief of 10 minutes of meditation. You don't have to be "good" at meditation to do it- nobody can just shut off their thoughts. It's more like popping out of the back door of the club for a breather. Sure, you might still hear the shrill crooning of some Eastern European pop star in the background from time to time, but you choose to tune it out each time it appears. And sure, those pony-tail wifebeater guys might come out and try to offer you a cigarette. That doesn't mean you're not meditating the right way. All you have to do is tell them to screw off for a moment. They don't speak English so the best way to shake 'em is to just nod and hold up the "one minute" finger. They're not so smart, they'll lose count after a few seconds and you'll be alone again.

Meditating makes me excited to explore small day-to-day things instead of overwhelmed by the immensity of the world's fucked-up-ness, my lack of health insurance coverage, job prospects, and the meaning of life in general.

Here are a couple pictures I took whilst attempting to be more mindful of my surroundings. The first is a huge freakin' chair. Seriously, look how huge that chair is. I had to do a running jump just to get up there. It reminded me of being a little kid and being just tall enough to peer across the kitchen table. I used to watch 90210 and marvel at all of those "adults" with their adultly fashion and adultly problems. Most of the world was full of very tall people who got to use the stove without supervision and eat sugar cereal for breakfast and who put magic cards into machines and got free money out of them.

I very much enjoyed sitting in this huge chair. It made me feel like a kid again, and I realized that I'm still sort of waiting for those tall people with all the answers to come in and whisper all the answers to me. Except that now I am one of the tall people- I can tell by the way my 5 year old cousin looks up at me with half reverence for my command of the TV remote, half distain for what she deems undo storytime stinginess.

And now I look at the adult world and it looks a little like this guy:

disorienting... whimsical and amazing and also really disturbing and creepy. Multitudinous. Note my ambiguous glance... I think I'm trying to make sense of it all. Don't hold your breath folks. (P.S. does anybody know who did this statue?)

In trying to make sense of it all I've realized that it's never a good idea to write things off, no matter how silly they sound. Enter the card game Dominion, which I've been told is sort of a Magic: The Gathering light. In middleschool I would have run screaming out of any room containing a camera and the hint of a whisper of D&D tournaments... that's the sort of damning evidence that could confirm the demise of your 12 year old popularity for good. Luckily for me, I now know that the people who don't think I'm cool are seriously misinformed, no matter how many tequila bodyshots they consume off of rippling tan abs during their Cancun spring break.

Dominion is a turn-based card game with witches and gold and festivals and an almost infinite combination of set-up possibilities which makes it enjoyable for the lay-gamer (me) while keeping it interesting for the brilliant dungeon masters (my opponent.)

I'm thrilled that I stuck it out through the "I'm a total idiot, no wonder I sucked so bad at calculus" phase into the "I'm the ruler of the universe" phase, because it turned out to be lots of fun. Here's me haughtily wielding my many province cards before beating my two skilled opponents. Sorry boys, there's a new dungeonmaster in town.

Which is to say, keep your eyes open and try new things no matter what you think you know about them, because you don't know until you try. Plus, if you keep your eyes open you might spot someone like this walking down 7th avenue:

That's right, it's a real live cat hat. His name is apparently Nicholas. He stays up there for six blocks at a time, said the man with the cat for a hat. I didn't get a chance to ask what he does after the sixth block. Maybe they switch.

Anyways, have a productive week folks. If you're a writer who has been reading the blog- you are NOT ALLOWED to judge what you've been working on until you've written another five whole pages. That's right- five whole pages without a single "that doesn't make sense" "that's not funny" "that's what they did in Fight Club" sweaty smelly club thought getting all up in your creative grill. It'll work, trust me. And keep me posted!

I'm trying to keep my eyes and mind especially open this week. Make the rest of us tall-people proud- go do something fun.

Love,

Gift of the Golden Rule

2009-01-04T22:06:00.001-08:00

Dear Readers,

For those who have participated in some of the spectacularly positive feedback I've been getting recently:

Firstly, your encouragement has made me smile and urged me forward on so many self-doubting occasions. I want to extend my most sincere and humble gratitude.

Secondly, fuck you. Not in a meanspirited way or anything, (not in a literal way either...)

When I was pouring my thoughts into the void of cyberspace for nobody to read it was easy to look at a rotting pile of seaweed and decide it was worthy of a photograph and some pontification. (seriously...see first post ever...) But Now that I have actual human beings reading this stuff I feel periodic pangs of legitimacy-lust... that hot pulse that nags "is this really worthwhile enough to expect that a person whom you respect will spend time reading it?"

This process swiftly fell a handfull of possible holiday blog-topics ranging from the fake history of Hannukah to the zesty yumm of Brad Pitt's abs as evidenced by their ability to almost ameliorate 2 hours of the shlockiest jumble of cinematic blah I've seen in years. I wanted to give you guys something great. And as each day passed the imperativeness of a mind-blowing new post mounted. Something for the new year? Something hopeful, poignant, witty? It would be the post to end all posts. And of course with each day it went uncompleted, the Platonic post became grander and grander until finally I realized if I didn't sit down and start writing something I'd never write anything.

I feel that way very often, surprisingly often, in fact the writer in me knows that I feel that way almost as often as I feel like eating cream-filled cookies and watching House MD instead of writing, which is all the freakin' time. And yet the scholar in me is loath to admit that she hasn't learned the lesson yet- just sit down and do it instead of worrying about how you're not doing it and something will come out. Well ya, easy for you to say.

So here in no particular order are some things I've been thinking about while waiting for edits from my editor, which, incidentally, feels a bit like taking a nap under a guillotine.

1. Hannukah. First of all- what a load of crap. Yesyesyes of course spending time with family is wonderful and exchanging presents is dandy and lights are pretty, but I don't think I'll ever outgrow my 5 year old fury at the fact that every other kid in kindergarten got a big sparkly holiday orgasm every December 25th while I was spinning a top for year-old chocolate coins and opening up 8 days worth of socks. My Dad tried to make Hannukah seem cool- he even wrote a song about a jolly character named Hannukah Harry who rides around in a taxi cab driven by a moose named Morris and delivers dreidels to little kids. And I appreciated that. And I love my family.

But how do you expect to compete with the 1000-watt pinnacle of the American capitalist tree? With a holiday so decadent that not only does it mark the birth of a man who some people believe is God incarnate, but it also encourages, nay requires you to take all of the goodwill you've saved up all year and spend it on diamonds and Xboxes for your loved ones? Eat ham! Rejoice with family! Get boozed up and sing! Guess what? God's here!!

Sorry Dad, but there's no way "and then the oil lasted a few days longer than they expected it to last" was ever going to top that.

And this year I discovered why. I always knew the American Hannukah holiday was the product of well-meaning American parents attempting to match the holiday-rificness of its proximate Christian cousin, and I appreciated the effort. But what I didn't know was that Hannukah was never about oil, it was about ass-kicking.

When the Maccabees were rebelling against the oppressive Seleucid monarchy in 165 BCE they were held up in caves during the harvest festival Sukkot, and when they finally got out they had a delayed celebration (Sukkot is 8 days long...) in Decemberish. They missed a bunch of holidays in those caves, and Sukkot was an interesting one to choose to do a re-mix of. They could have chosen Passover or Yom Kippur, (slavery day and death day respectively, according to what 5 year old Hannah gleaned,) but they didn't. Sukkot is about joy and thankfulness... because perhaps the Maccabees were trying to have as peaceful an outlook as possible post-ass-kicking.

But they couldn't go around telling subsequent monarchs that their Decemberish festival was a peaceful outlook on monarch-ass-kicking, so they trumped up some bogus story about extra-strength-miracle-oil. Lights are a great metaphor for all sorts of things of course, for inspiration and hope and for the connectedness of all living things blahblahblah, but it was never the real reason for Hannukah celebrations, and I'm fascinated by how many years it took me to figure this out.

I always knew it seemed a little lackluster. We only spend one day celebrating that time God not only split the ocean in two, but made it rain frogs, but we spend eight days on some oil?

I suppose the origin of most holidays isn't as important as what they've evolved to signify though. I mean according to most biblical scholars and scientists Jesus was actually born in June.

But I digress... I was going to say something about the true spirit of the holidays and all the crap but you've heard it all before- love your family, don't be a Scrooge... I always find those messages hard to reconcile with the presents presents presents thing though. Shouldn't we be feeding the poor or something? Did I really need another novelty coffee-table book which will wind up on my bathroom floor?

Which got me thinking about the website I've been twiddling with for a few weeks. I've discussed this idea with some of you already and I'm excited about it although it's still a little doughy. I want to create a resource for collaborative community outreach. Creative service opportunities, creative projects, a creative/volunteering Craigslist, if you will. I'd like for people to be able to search by location, interest, and time dedication, and be able to find opportunities for them to help others, whether it be bartering skills, volunteering time, writing letters, or painting hippopotami. There are plenty of traditional volunteer-finding services but nothing that's uniquely creative, and I think it would be really cool.

I also think it will be a lot of work, so I'm still turning over logistics in my mind. If you have any ideas regarding this project please do drop me a line at writinghannah@me.com and let me know your thoughts. I'd love to have lots of input (after all that's kind of the philosophy of the site,) and even if your only expertise is in ladybugs, you owe it to every ladybug-loving-layperson to put in your two cents, because if you don't, who else will?

I don't usually talk about religion here on the blog but that little Hannukah history rant reminded me of a quote I heard kicked around a lot as a kid, something like "if not me, then who? If not now, then when?" It was usually quoted in reference to speaking out against the Holocaust, but was actually coined thousands of years earlier and went like this:

"If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?"

Oh Hillel the Elder you sly fox you. I take it to mean three things:

1. Be yourself.

2. Don't just think about yourself jerkface, you're part of something bigger.

and 3. Go do something. Anything. Seriously.

There are many interpretations of course as the questions are rhetorical (and if you were that asshole in my junior year lit theory section I'm sure you could wax poetic for six weeks about the symbolic symphonic & syntactic meaning of the word 'if,') but Hillel had a knack for the pithy so I aimed sharp.

A guy once challenged Hillel to summarize the entire torah while standing on one foot. He said, basically, "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary." Golden rule, bing bang boom.

I like this guy because he cuts right to the chase, through the floods and the frogs, the stories about three wise men and two tablets and burning bushes, the rules about shellfish and virgins and wine, straight to the heart of the matter.

Unsurprisingly, he isn't the first or the last. Buddha says it, Jesus says it, Muhammed says it, every hippy band worth their weight in ganga said it... I guess this is why I avoid discussing religion in particular, because I always feel compelled to illuminate similarities in general, because maybe when we realize that everyone's invisible man is saying pretty much the same thing, we'll stop blowing eachother to pieces over semantics. Then I have to reel myself back from the brink of an avalanche of "why why why"s when I reflect upon history and conclude that humankind is inherently illogical and that there's nothing to be done, and then, every now and then, I think about Hillel the Elder.

Because if we can't fix things who can? And if we don't try who will? And if we don't start now then how are we going to explain to our children why their breakfasts consist of radioactive genetically modified anthrax-laced Ritalin-flakes?

SO... where were we? Hmmm. Well all I know is that if you're not being yourself, being audaciously yourself, then there's a huge ingredient missing in the world because nobody else is going to be able to fill your you-shoes. Write what only you can write, create what only you can create, and don't give yourself a hard time if it's not as "prolific" as Beethoven and Einstein. What you make is right because it's yours, and it's something that neither of them, despite their talent, could ever conceive of. And don't give yourself the credit of foresight because it's a joke- you never know how things will turn out tomorrow letalone two thousand years from now. Imagine telling Hillel he's being quoted on a blog. Whaaaaa?

Most of all, (as inspired by a lovely email I received from a talented writer/temporary security guard,) I'd like to encourage everyone to be good to themselves this year. Be encouraging and patient, because before you can treat others the way you want to be treated, you need to treat yourself with respect and kindness. It's the best way to get shit done folks. And it feels like you're crazy at first, like you should be reminding yourself of shortcomings and obstacles instead of skipping ahead like a sunshiney idiot into uncharted territory without any realistic expectations.... but reality is what you make it.

So anyways, let me know your thoughts on the site thing, on life in general, etc. Thanks for checking out my fun little youtube songs, (youtube.com/writinghannah) I'm having a great time experimenting with them and I appreciate your humoring my musical side. (Secretly) I'm a little nervous about performing in public and I've aaaaaalways berated myself ever since I quit piano at age 11 for not being a better musician by now, for not practicing more, but the songs are my small attempt at forging ahead despite the naysaying voices, at giving myself permission to do something I like even if I'm not the best at it, at turning something I want into something I have.

It's all about the babysteps.

Much love & light,

Hannah

LisaNova

2008-12-21T18:38:00.000-08:00

Hi! Celebrating the festival of lights here in San Fran. Hope all is well folks- look for a new blog post soon, but until then Please Please Please vote for my video (Neuroses in D) at the Lisanova holiday video contest....

www.lisanovalive.com

winning would be great exposure as well as a fab opportunity to keep doing more net content and chatting with all you fantastic folks. Plus perhaps it will allow me to make enough money to move out of my parent's basement which, if you're a longtime reader, you know is kind of a priority. Keep me posted on holiday happenings people.

Much Love,

Hannah

Tiny Pop Post

2008-12-16T17:57:00.000-08:00

My interview from the New York Television Festival is on Pop17 today!!

Starts about 50 seconds in.

Watch me take 9 seconds to search for and find the word "publisher." Guess I'm going to work on boning up on my interview skills... mostly I think I was just mesmerized by the adorableness of Sarah Austin.

Teentastic

2008-12-13T23:45:00.000-08:00

So now that I've written 288 pages of a book I feel I'm finally in a position to answer these questions which many folks have been asking: What the hell is your book about? And why does everything suck? And why the hell should I care?

First for a little background.

Two years ago I was in my Yale dorm room studying for some bullshit literature test. It was late. I realized I would never be able to cram in enough knowledge of obscure Hegelian ideals to get an 'A' when I decided to procrastinate.

"What's with this whole GPA nonsense?" I thought to myself. "Who even came up with this crap?'

I did some digging. I discovered that the 4.0 grade system was invented at Yale, and I fell off my couch and lay on the floor like a comatose beached starfish reliving the cosmic cycle which had drafted me as a perfectionist pawn and spit me out here... I spent my entire highschool career mastering a system to impress an institution that invented that very system. ***See myriad of EDUCATION and YALE posts.

Needless to say, I was pissed off. I channeled this into a few Bailey's-fueled nights of too much eye makeup and underaged dancing to horrible club music, then progressed into my "fuck it" phase, during which I ate cookies by the boxfull and stayed in bed for days skipping class, not showering, and watching LOST episodes back to back to back. I moaned and groaned and had a big existential crisis in the Sterling Memorial Library courtyard while smoking a cigarette during the "life is a meaningless abyss, might as well be a trendy hipster and blow ironic cigarette smoke rings into said abyss" phase. And I realized that I could continue to bitch or I could do something. So I started writing.

I wrote a few op-eds about No Child Left Behind, and I wrote a big fat book proposal.

Fast forward to a few months ago. I was put in touch with HCI, a fantastic company based out of Florida known for the Chicken Soup For The Soul series. Young Adult (YA) market is growing. Fangirls are proving their strength. They wanted a teenage memoir. Could I do that?

I wasn't sure. I wrote down a collection of teenage angsty highschool stories, tried to be as honest as possible about the reality of being a teenager, and hoped for the best. It's seven months and 288 pages later, and now I'm pretty sure I can.

SO ONTO THE QUESTIONS!

1. What the hell is your book about?
My book is a teenage memoir. Sure I haven't created the most expansive monarchy in the world, or become a billionaire mogul with my adorably anorexic twin sister, or written, directed, produced, and starred in one of the greatest films of all time. (a big thanks to Alexander, Olsens, and Orson Welles for making my every achievement seem little more than the not-even-sticky-anymore brown star at the end of the sticker supply.) Still, having spent the last few months poring over old yearbooks and reassembling the most awkward and formative moments of my life into some semblance of a story, I cannot escape what a surprisingly... interesting journey it's turned out to be.

And by "interesting" I mean a combination between fascination, frustration, titillation, and utter repulsion. At first compared to what I had initially set out to write about, teenagehood seemed a little frivolous, but the more time I spend with my teenage self and her teenage problems and teenage friends and enemies and frenemies, the more I realize that we're all still teenagers at heart.

Little kids are stupid. Ignorant to the social boundaries we have drawn all around ourselves with different colored cultural crayons. They'll soon learn through a steady dose of indoctrination and humiliation, but until then they'll run out of the bathroom absolutely beaming, shouting "HannahHannahHannah I pooped a circle!!" as my five year old cousin informed me yesterday. When you're a kid you don't know enough to worry about the chickenskin on your arms or your uneven eyebrows or the fact that when you're around pretty girls you get gassy.

Then, hooray! Middleschool. Awkward dancing. Bitchy popular people. Braces. Unfortunate hormonal side effects all 'round. You learn that your parents are not the smartest strongest bestest in the whole wide world, that pretty much nobody other than them wants to listen to your fully choreographed one-woman rendition of Office Krupke from West Side Story, and that your fossil collection is not objectively neato. You learn that pretty much everything you do in a regular day could do with some "cool"ifying, and you watch TV shows with real live teenagers (played by 35 year old underwear models) and figure out the new rules.

All of which you are ready to implement come highschool. New freedoms- cars, parties, that creepy delegate dance at the end of the model UN conference where every greasy nerd in the continental united states cashes in the horny points they've been saving with a whole year of sexual frustration in some super un-PC PDA...

I think the teenage state of mind has been trivialized and overlooked as a result of suburban affluence- all kids have to do is go to school so all of their problems are just angst and hormones. Sure, when your lifespan is 80 years long the second 1/8 might not seem that important, but not too long ago teenaged was middle aged, and it was teenagers on the battlefront in every major revolution. The teenage mind is revolutionary by definition- surging with fundamental synapse zaps which will change your body, your processing, challenge every world view.

Guess what?
There's no Santa, Dad's an alcoholic, the government is lying to you, your mother is having an affair with "auntie cathy," and babies come from sex, which you will think about all the time, but in all probability have about as much chance of having it as you have of being cool and popular, and let's face it... were you?

2. Why does "Everything Suck?"
When I was unpopular everything sucked because I felt like there was something wrong with me. Seriously, I was sure I was defective. Maybe if I just tried harder, got smarter, skinnier, funnier, then I would be able to be "normal." This seemed very important and also very faroff coming from a house where a monkey roams around the kitchen and instead of spending money to fix the gutters my Dad once designed and constructed a vehicular shoe. Here is some advice: if you want people to think you're normal, do not show up to school in a shoe.

After a lot of research and focus and hair gel, eventually I did feel popular. But things weren't perfect at the top- there was competition coupled with all of the self-doubt from before, and a whole new set of expectations that came from being more in the spotlight. Sex, drugs, college applications... You'll have to read the book to find out about drinking Cristall with famous rappers, almost getting kicked out of Yale before I get to attend, being published in Newsweek at 17, and other things too embarrassing to mention in this forum. But the point is that in a time of great flux, if you don't like yourself, then you start searching. Far and wide. And the farther you search the more lost you feel in your own skin, and then by extension, everything kind of does suck.

3. Why the hell should I care?
Well, you certainly don't have to care. But if you're at all interested in understanding yourself, or your peers, and the future of this planet, teenagers are at the crux of it all. The stage for ideological revelation is set in the time between childhood and adulthood- you're reevaluating your place in the world, questioning the things you've always been taught, gaining independence. Maybe you're a bully or a recluse or a cheerleader but whether you loved or hated highschool, it would be hard to identify another chunk of 4 years which is so universally... awkward. You have no expertise, no moves, little freedom, and pretty much no respect. Who even are you? Who are your friends? What are you good for?

In the olden days teenagers were apprentices or serfs. They weren't lazing around all day on Second Life eating Doritos, downloading pirated porn, and shopping for shoes. There wasn't time for having an existential crisis. No dating. No clubbing. NO FACEBOOK. Leisure time leads to high-class problems. ADD. Controlled substances. Depression. Being one of those goth kids who cultivates paleness. People sell these teens prozac. Ipods. Cigarettes and shoes. Ivy League degrees.

And then you get out and you realize that everything and nothing is like highschool. There are still politics, inequality, and suckiness. But there are also still reliable awesome people who you love. Fun things to learn and explore. There's power struggles and ass-kissing and also flexibility and self-determination. So. Many. Possibilities.

The teenager inside you has a lot to say- she's shy and cynical, awkward and gawky and bursting with dreams... she has the power to lead revolutions, the stubbornness to start wars, and the uncertainty to undo all of the good within her by comparing herself as pale comparisons to others. Embrace her passion, respect her questioning, and assure her that it's really, truly, finally okay to be herself.

(And buy her a copy of my teenage memoir Everything Sucks out in August.)

Flannery O'Connor said "anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days." And I'd posit that anybody who has lived through their teenagehood has enough information, happy, crappy, and transformational moments, to write about.

To all those who laughed when I told them I was writing a memoir at the age of 22-yes it's true it sounds a little funny, and probably even a little pretentious. But who says you need to be at the end of your life to reflect? In fact isn't it going to be more generative/relevant the sooner you start? And don't teenagers deserve something of their own to read? Some honest humor, vulnerability, and commiseration in a world of too much GPA ADD and MTV?

After four pages I thought this was a terrible idea for a project. After one hundred I was intrigued. And now after 288 pages, I feel like my book has become something I never expected- sprouted its own personality and agenda and purpose. Just like a real teenager. I'm so excited to see what kind of antics it gets up to before publication.

Keep me posted, hope all is well, let me know what you're thinking.
xox
H

All Work And No Play Makes Hannah a Confidence Ponderer. or: Why A Theater Major is at most only 70% BS.

2008-11-22T22:08:00.000-08:00

As some of you may know, it is T minus seven days before I hand in my first draft of of my first book.
Now I know first drafts don't have to be perfect, but that doesn't change the fact that the only reason I'm talking to you right now at all is that I am procrastinating having to continue squeezing a baby out of my brain. Get out the bone saws. This one's a struggler.

I hope that you will forgive me for my absence, and take heart in knowing that while I deprived you of any posts more substantial than me mugging with a monkey, (desperate times...) I was depriving myself of sunlight, regular human interaction, and even the most basic human hygiene. I know, I know, I'm quite a catch. Inside my love den strewn with post-its, crusty thai takeout, monkey poop, and glitter nailpolish, things have never looked brighter. This is probably due to the fact that because I have been left to my own devices, (but having absolutely no connection to the recent Twilight epidemic,) I have essentially become a pajama-wearing, chocoholic, nocturnal hermit whose only source of light is florescent.

Not that I would mind some kind of connection to the recent Twilight epidemic. If being mormon and writing about vampire foreplay is the recipe for 25 million books sold and 30 million opening day, then break out the magic golden plates and virgin blood, cuz I'm moving to Utah.

Here's what I think makes vampires so sexy: They can't die, they don't take shit, and for some reason even though they never have occupations, they are always immaculately appointed and live in giant mansions. This all adds up to one thing: CONFIDENCE. I have been thinking about confidence a lot lately. (If you're not up for a neurotic psychoanalytical Magic Shoolbus-esque journey to the center of the mind of a person who's been spending six hours a day reliving all of their most awkward and formative memories in agonizing detail, bail now. I don't blame you- it's a fucking circus in there. Get out while you can.)

For the rest of you- the biggest challenge of writing for me, hands down, is just believing in the idea that I'm actually going to finish something. Starting out with a blank page has got to be one of the most awful experiences in my life- i imagine hell will be and endless repetition of blaring alarm clocks, blank first pages, and the leaky brown water at the bottom of garbage cans. At least in school I could go on an all night bender and churn out something loaded up with enough metaphors and "paradoxes" to confuse my TA into thinking that it deserves an A because as far as literary theory goes, there's a pretty fine line between pretentious genius and pretentious tripe.

I'm trying hard to make sure this book (which is 30 times longer than any mfing paper) isn't pretentious anything, because for all their giggling and gossip, teenage girls are actually ninja masters at social radar. They can detect bullshit and insincerity a mile off. I should know, I was one.

And a confused one at that. I didn't have a dashing vampire lover, or an alternate life as a pop-star, or the body of Lindsay Lohan, so according to popular opinion I was pretty much as important as every other angsty teenage girl with hair line acne, which was not very important at all. I wasn't very confident. I should have been.

Here's what I think about Sarah Palin- 5% fashion, 5% "aw, shucks," 110% confidence. I know, I know Mathy Mcgee, that adds up to more than a hundred. That's how important I think the confidence was- it pushed her over the edge, it made the things that came out of her mouth, no matter how raucously imbecilic, sound totally legitimate, because she committed.

They talk a lot in the theater about commitment. "Commit to your role," "commit to the scene." But what does that really mean? I had an excellent acting teacher last year who, in a refreshing departure from high fallutin theater theory, emphasized the importance of just being real, right now, here in your body. She advised asking yourself the questions that will yield specifics about your character's situation which you can use find intersections into your own experience, getting prepared, and then chilling the fuck out. Don't show how upset you are about having to shoot your mentally retarded lady/mouse-murdering farm buddy. Just exist up there on the stage, and trust yourself. If you believe it, we'll believe it.

Palin certainly had down the "trusting yourself" part even if the preparation wasn't all there, which just goes to show the power of confident improvisation. And politicians have good reason to be confident. They're controlling the lives of thousands, sometimes even billions of people. Nothing'll put a spring in your step quite like the knowledge that with a flip of your little finger, you could make Russia extinct.

Confidence can make dumb people alluring, and turn untalented people into celebrities. I don't think I need to name names..
And you know what? Good for them. Even better for those people who were talented to begin with and then just ran with it. Props to Bowie for prancing around dressed like a time traveling transvestite and not only getting away with it, but marrying a god damn super model. Props to OJ Simpson forgetting off the hook and then having the balls to write a book called "If I Did It." Well probably not so much props as gasps of audacity, but you get the picture...

This is what I've been learning:

1.) A key to writing, and probably a lot of other things, is having confidence. The confidence to face the blank page and get through three more pages of shit believing that maybe on page 4 something worthwhile will come out. And a lot of the time it feels like you're lying to yourself, because you're the one making all the shit, and you're getting that distinct gassy feeling like there's a lot more to come.

2.) The key to having confidence is lying to yourself. Hold on there, don't get your britches in a twist. This isn't Enron or OJ lying, I'm talkin' about some good old fashioned blind faith. Because nobody is born with a 300 page book in their hands, and how are you ever going to get away with becoming a Vice Presidential, glam-rock murderer if you don't have a little faith in a seemingly distant dream?

3. Having confidence and committing can create reality. There were many days when I was sure I wouldn't be able to finish this project the way I wanted to. I wasn't a professional writer who worked 8 hours a day and met deadlines and did outlines. It's true. I wasn't. So I lied to myself a little bit every day, and pretended I was that person. After a while I stopped checking the clock and facebook every 20 minutes, and after 6 months of being confident in a little positive lying, I think I actually became half-competent.

A paper cape and a crown can turn a fine actor into a king. He commits. He doesn't criticize himself, worry about preparation for the next scene, or keep one eye the reviewer in the front row, because he's just in the moment. He's confident.

And the bard wasn't dumb. Life really is a stage. No one is born ready to do what they want to do, and lots of clumsy footwork always precedes the grand tango of every great goal. The only way to be the person who runs 2 miles a day or reads two books a week or turns into Paris Hilton is one audacious cha-cha at a time. Pretend. Do your prep-work, don't freak out about the nay-sayers, stay in the moment a little every day until you've done enough prep to become. Have faith in the progress of a continual process. It's a bitch for web-savvy kids like us to wrap our heads around, but unfortunately, Life Itself is not googleable. So lie yourself into having the confidence to believe that with some well-intentioned patience in pretending, you can get your shit done. And if that sounds a little Dr. Phil for you then surprise because you've unintentionally stumbled upon the long awaited (by nobody but me,) third installment of Hannah's Guide To Eternal Happiness

Anyways, this would all be well and good if I were not, as I mentioned before, totally talking out of my ass right now in a cowardly retreat from the vile whiff of blank-white-book-page. You guys are the best. Thanks for all of your encouragement. I know you wouldn't want to be aiding or abetting my continued procrastination, because if I don't finish this book I can't move out of my parent's house and will probably start traveling around the country in a pink minivan full of cats showing up at your house to crash on your couches and eat your frozen dinners. (I know where you live.)

Please keep me posted on your goings on, I'd love to hear updates on life, work, politics, etc , and if you have something interesting to share feel free to shoot me an email at writinghannah@me.com because in light of my deadline I've been considering the community-fostering, diversity-generating, (ie lazy,) idea of having guest contributors on the blog. No but seriously, I want your probative ponderings like a fat kid wants cake.

Wish me luck people. Back to the trenches.

Much Love,
Hannah

Amelia pics

2008-11-08T15:53:00.000-08:00

Draft due in 23 days and it's slow going... just received a few of the possible shots for the jacket-cover though. We did a bunch of shots and then decided to try some with Amelia. She was cooperative for the most part but not exactly an angel...

The Stool Hits the Fan

2008-11-06T21:27:00.001-08:00

A couple of things I've been thinking about:

Firstly, hooray for Obama. I really never intended for this blog to have political content when it first began, what with my entire political adult consciousness being dominated by 8 years of a man whom I could outcount and outspell by the time I was a third trimester fetus. In those eight years we've become embroiled in a mismanaged, neverending war, and we've gone from having a surplus to basically becoming a subsidiary of China. Forgive me for preferring to do the crossword than trying to puzzle out what new, horrifically cavalier, authoritarian atrocity the front page might have in store.

Secondly, let's take a look at that word 'cavalier...' Bear with me for a sec. Now that we're on the other side of election night, I can begin to reflect on the message of the Obama campaign without having to overload my brain with images of singing puppies pooping rainbows in order to counteract the bleak scenario that a woman who doesn't know that Africa is a continent might end up in the most influential position in the world. Fhew. Onto cavalier.

It originated as the Latin caballarius (horseman,) and was later adopted as a negative title for royalists during the Engish Civil War. The royal in question is Charles I, who decided that despite economic turmoil, his real focus should be cutting off the ears of people who spoke out against required attendance policies for his super awesome High Anglican church. The protestants weren't pleased. Parliament wasn't pleased. The Scots were especially displeased. Apparently King Charles never saw Braveheart, because otherwise he might have kept his nose out of the badass, kilt-wearing, mofo north.

The Scottish rebellion set the stage for the English Civil War, which paved the way for a constitutional monarchy, whose parliament did not include representation for a handfull of pissed-off passionate patriots, and now a few centuries later here we stand in the USA instead of "West Britain" with absolutely no monarchy and a pretty nifty constitution. And I tell you this for two reasons. Firstly, legend has it that the first riot began in St Giles Cathedral when a minster who was reading from Charles's fancy new required-prayer-book for the first time was lobbed in the head by a stool. This stool was thrown by a merchant woman named Jenny Henry. She is reported to have thrown it while shouting "Deil colic the wame o’ ye, fause thief" which, for those of us who don't speak angry Scot, means "Devil cause you severe pain and flatulent distention of your abdomen, false thief..." Severe pain and flatulent distention? Geesh...see? I knew you you shouldn't mess with the Scottish.

This brings me to an interesting comment my good friend Michael made recently about a nasty case of gout. This gout incapacitated British parliamentarian William Pitt so much he was not able to protest the fateful Stamp Act which helped catalyze the Revolutionary War.

Now, of course we can trace back from all world-changing events to a million other small catalysts which each played integral roles because everything is connected. And you can't choose to get assassinated by the Black Hand or to get gout. But you can choose to throw a stool at someone cavalierly trying to take away your rights. Which is to say...

"Yes we can" is an exciting message of hope after what feels like endless unchecked tyranny. But when you think about it, the only reason this country exists in the first place is that "yes, we did." We did in 1775 and we've been doing ever since: emancipation proclamation, suffrage, civil rights... a whole bunch of Americans doing a whole bunch of good. And I don't point this out to diminish Obama's win, but rather to point out that despite the fact my generation has not lived through a major ideological revolution, despite the completely jaded cynicism adopted by many woebegone anti-Bushies, revolution is in our blood, and although we can't control a lot about the universe, we always have the power of taking a stand. (Or throwing a stool.)

Or, for that matter, performing a devastatingly satirical blow to a political candidate on national television. My father posits that comedienne extraordinaire Tina Fey played a key yet under-acknowledged role in bringing down Palin, and I think he's probably right. Just goes to show how far a little free speech can go.

For me, after experiencing many "holy shit...like, really?" moments over the past two days, all of these ideas have helped to make the whole Obama thing seem less surreal, to put it into context, to restore some of my theoretical confidence in the idea of freedom, freedom to write and believe and to make a difference, all without getting your ear cut off.

Oh Obama

2008-11-05T01:24:00.000-08:00

Am exhausted. Am exhilarated. Am still curiously very nervous, like maybe this is all a dream and soon a hurricane of pregnant chads will come plummeting out of the sky. So here is my letter to our new President Elect:

Dear Obama,

For all the jaded cynicism our generation is famous for, I don't think any one of us can deny the amazing leaps in equality that that 106 year old woman has seen over her lifetime. And perhaps for the first time in my adult life I see the opportunity to make sure the next century brings even more hope and prosperity. I don't care if it's dumb to be optimistic. Obama isn't a singular savior and of course he's going to need help, but I think we need to start believing that together we can move towards positive, lasting change. If we have even a lingering shred of reverence for the ideals of real democracy, of the American dream, then I don't think we have any other choice.

Oh god I can't believe it's 5 am. Guess this isn't a dream after all.

xox,

Captain Fantastic

2008-11-04T11:23:00.000-08:00

Just to get your minds briefly off of electionly nerves, take comfort in knowing that other people around the world aren't letting the prospect of prez Palin ruin their day or corrupt their inner child. Take this kid for example, who has just legally changed his name to "Captain Fantastic Faster than Superman Spiderman Batman Wolverine The Hulk and the Flash Combined."

Well done, my friend. Way to buck the unimaginative title shackles enforced by The Man. Though god help you if you ever need to go to the DMV, because you're not going to be faster than any superheroes letalone the 95 year old no-legged man behind you when it turns out your name is too long to put on a form. Step to the back of the line. Meet me at window number 6. Sir, are you a terrorist?

Also, I hope this kid makes an awful lot of money in the next few years because otherwise it's going to be hard to convince anyone to become Mrs. Faster than Superman Spiderman Batman Wolverine The Hulk and the Flash Combined.

But truly, brava for bravery and creativity. Weird little wonders make the world go 'round.

Pondering The Dark Side

2008-11-03T18:53:00.001-08:00

On this the eve of the election, I'd like to capture my thoughts before America either elects a president who its first 26 presidents could have legally owned, or brazenly subverts the very ideals it was founded upon by manipulating numbers in a final embarrassingly overt goosestep towards corporate totalitarianism.

I am nervous. And not night-before-the-swim-test nervous or even night-you-lose-your-virginity nervous, it's a low rumbling primal panic which I can only liken to Star Wars panic. Disney panic. The edge-of-your-seat-terror that makes you wonder if Skywalker's doomed after he refuses to join Darth Vader and drops down into the abyss, if the wicked octopus or grand vizier or steroid-pumping-village-misogynist is going to wed/kill/skin the dashing prince and then evil people in dark funny costumes are going to take over the world... if it wasn't a movie of course.

And tonight it's not. It's not a movie and yet I feel like Obama might as well be wearing an American flag cape while a decaying McCain, in a high-tech robotic spider wheelchair wearing an eyepatch and stroking an evil cat, gives orders to a sexy scheming Palin who marches back and forth through their sub-terranian campaign lair in four inch thigh-highs and full-body black leather catsuit bossing around the evangelical ants with a loooooong whip... umm... is this just me?

Anyway, the point is that things feel weird folks. I have friends who have peed in waterbottles to keep from interrupting a Halo-playing marathon who got off their asses/couches to volunteer for the Obama campaign not once, but many times. Friends so cheap their body content is at least 1/3 Ramen Noodle who donated a good deal of their hard-earned cash to the campaign. People have registered to vote in record numbers, and yet, something just doesn't feel right. I think we should stop congratulating ourselves for just voting. To vote is a privilege which people have died for, and I think there's a whole lot more to be done for the country than to simply help win an election every 4 years.

Hundreds of millions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of man-hours spent on both sides by good-intentioned people who want to make a difference in an historic election, so many resources and voices and energies devoted to a single day. After tomorrow, half of that is going to have been a waste. And I can't help but wonder what could have happened if all that muscle had been put towards something else, and what will happen to its momentum after the election has come and gone. Shouldn't we be donating our money to good causes whenever we can? Helping people who don't have? Dedicating some of our time to contribute to making the country which provides for us a better place? Of course a power shift is a hugely significant step on the path to great reform, but worrying about this election has been a wakeup call for me:

Even if Obama wins, we have not "won." This isn't a movie and we can't toss every greedy lobbyist oil fatcat bigot down a reactor shaft. I think if we dedicate ourselves to the ongoing welfare of the country as much as we have to the outcome of this election, we'll have a much better shot at coming closer to the overwhelming good the liberals hope Obama will usher in, but which no mere mortal could fully realize alone.

Which brings me to the other side. I've heard a lot of people claim that if McCain wins, they're leaving. I heard the same thing about Bush's reelection, and his unelection before that, and nobody seems to be leaving. And that's fine. Because as much as I complain about certain political happenings, atrocities, etc., I really do like it here and I suspect most other people do too. We have New York and Hollywood, purple mountain's majesty and sea to shining sea, we created jazz and country music and baseball and cars and lightbulbs and computers and that movie with hundreds of animated singing Chihuahuas! I mean who among the shivering Plymouth pilgrims ever imagined ordering hundreds of animated singing chihuahuas onto a magical box from an invisible information superweb?

The point being, if things don't turn out the way I want tomorrow, I feel compelled, as a college-graduated adultish-type-person, to take a stand. And if I'm going to leave I'm going to leave. But if I'm going to stay I'm not going to sit around whining like I have for the past 8 years. It's like when I don't clean my room because it's dirty and then I blame the dirt. So in my very indecisive way, before you and your screen, I'm declaring my intention to make some kind of stand in the event of -(Ican'tevensayit)-, and encouraging you to consider making one too...

Jump the ship or grab a bucket?

-Sigh-

Wasn't everything so much easier back when the worst possible affront to your values was a PB&J sandwich cut diagonally with crust?

Anyways, I guess what I'm saying is that if we're going to stay on board, we should probably be generous with our time and resources when times are tough even more than when the hero saves the day. Because what if he doesn't? And what if he can't?

Hope all is well out there. Everything in NY is going swimmingly, leaves changing, Sam is much better, book is coming along... now if only we could wrangle Ohio everything might just fall right into place.

Yours Nervously,

Whimsical Bigotry Halloween Factory

2008-11-01T10:30:00.000-07:00

Sooo... right in time for the day after Halloween comes a very strange musical braindripping which is way too bizarre for me to even recall how it came into being, letalone how I convinced my very talented brother to stoop to playing a tiny piano in trackpants and his bar mitzvah jacket. I do know it coincided with my desire to learn how to experiment cramming as many videofilters as possible into one Final Cut project... or perhaps it was just the moon.

xxx,

Pre-TV ... in D

2008-10-24T10:25:00.000-07:00

This is entitled

"Pre-TV reflections as to why I've been so Wildly unproductive as of late set to vaguely generic acoustic stacatto: Neuroses in the key of D"

Autumnly Embraces,

Slap in the facebook

2008-10-13T17:45:00.000-07:00

Dear Facebook,

Have I not been faithful? Do five years of procrastinatory devotion, tagging, friending, poking, and lastminute birthday reminders mean nothing to you? Our voyeurism orgies? The good times? I don't even have a myspace you miserable humanizer! I gave you my all.

Alas, despite my dedication and allaround awesomeness you have forsaken me and deactivated my account. This, simply put, was a dick move. Why must you spurn me so you vile web temptress?

Yet I shall not weep. Perhaps this is a harbinger from above, a signal of exciting new adultly times approaching, times when it will no longer behoove me to spend half an hour looking at wall comments of that girl from highschool with the superfine ass... I suppose it never behooved me at all. All those happy hours we spent trolling for hotties on company time, checking updates... have they come to nothing?

Indeed, I must admit it is with trepidation that I take my first steps into a life without you, my maddeningly captivating comrade. However, in the past few dark hours, as I take stock of all I have lost- friends, groups, witty wall comments, that awesome picture of me dressed as Tomb Raider- I begin to wonder if perhaps the time spent away from your candy-coated-clutches will become more valuable than virtual time. Perhaps I'll actually call my friend on her birthday. Nay, perhaps I'll actually see my friend. Start a group! A real live group that does real things. Maybe i'll do something truly spectacular without worrying about what a missed Facebook album opportunity it was...

Dost thou thinkest that a bluff? Damn you Facebook, mistress of a million eyes, you see through my resolve to the shivering core. You know how much I long to login just one last time, if only to answer that message, to check that album, to bid a final farewell...

A new account? A fresh start?

Not today, Facebook. Not today and not tomorrow. If we should meet again someday, know that I will not forget this injustice. Know that without you, although my midnight web stumblings will never be the same, I can see a bright new future on the rise. Damn you Facebook- damn your splendor and your might and your deactivation, but most of all, damn your ways. I'm going to go out in the sunshine with some real live friends and do some real live living and I thank you for the wakeup call, however jarring, you ungrateful harlot.

Gratefully Yours,

Hannah Friedman

P.S. (my Facebook farewells)

Michael: Oh no I lost my inbox! Please send me the last message you sent to writinghannah@me.com so that I can respond! Also, you have a fascinating mind. Also, blog plug on lifetime would be peachy. Thank you so much.

Laz: Send me your blog link again! Hope school is going well my love.

Brian, Jeremy, Lauren, Rachel, Rob, Willy, Benji: A final poke.

Lauren: I never got to join your tv show group... are there episodes online?!!

Mr. McMegatron: Imagine I just wrote something hysterically offensive on your wall.

Others: you can reach me at WRITINGHANNAH@ME.COM or here on the blog.

Much love & silliness,

Hannah

"Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air..." Emerson

All Roads Lead To Rome. (Writing about Writing)

2008-10-11T18:06:00.001-07:00

A few of you have asked me to blog about writing. I assume you want something more substantive than this embarassingly accurate reenactment of my day:

Morning... Bleh. email, digg, facebook, email, cookies! Bleh. writing, bitching, itching, knitting, cookies! Bleh. TV. (repeat)

Here goes- Writing is the most rewarding and maddening endeavor I have ever undertaken. Sometimes you sit down at the keyboard and the keys just clickclickclick away like raindrop patter and every image is poignant and you ride atop a soaring wave of creative flow until suddenly you realize it's been 2 hours and 5 pages since you sat down and you exhale a sigh of supreme satisfaction. The world is a beautiful place and you have a beautiful real purpose.

These times are few and far between.

They are flanked by many large angry phalanxes of crappy times. Writer's block is, for me, a misnomer, because it suggests that if the writer were to use some figurative plunging or Draino-powered purging, everything would flow freely. When things are not flowing it never seems the fault of a "block," but rather the crappy crumbling system of my own cerebral plumbing. It's simply no good. It'd be cheaper to trash the whole damn thing than to try and fix a little leak or blockage. I feel like the paragraph I'm staring at is shit, the chapter I'm pondering is shit, the project, and by extension my entire pathetic creative career and very existence is shit...

OPTIMISTIC H: But I've done good stuff before, right?

U.R.SHIT H: Irrelevant. The well has run dry... the best you can hope for now is that people won't realize when you slap tacky ornaments onto your old, withering, once-mildly-amusing ideas.

HANNUKAH H: Man I love ornaments... and Christmas trees. And ham! Driedels blow.

GOD-FEARING H: You're totally going to hell. Say you love Hannukah.

HANNUKAH H: Fuck no!

GOD-FEARING H: Say it or God will smite you and you won't be written down in his fancy yearbook of people who aren't going to die this year.

NEUROSIS H: Ohmigod Ohmigod Ohmigod I read this thing about black African ants that travel in enormous migrating mountains 10 million strong, and they destroy everything in their path, and if they reach you you die, but not by ant bite, you die by suffocation.

H: Eiw!

GOD-FEARING H: See? God has some scary shit up his sleeve.

EGALITARIAN H: Her sleeve.

ATHEIST H: Nobody's sleeve.

AGNOSTIC H: Is there even a sleeve at all?

BUDDHIST H: It is the empty space within the sleeve that defines the sleeve.

REALITY CHECK H: You are all so full of shit. Shut up. What were we talking about again?

U.R.SHIT H: How she's full of shit.

BUDDHIST H: Now now, even shit is part of the oneness of the universe.

SKINNYBITCH H: You're only saying that cuz you're ugly. And FAT. I thought you reached Nirvana by starving yourself under a tree for 40 days... did Nirvana come with a milkshake and a side fries?

BUDDHIST H: You know what? Peace out.

SKINNYBITCH H: That's right fatty- you run! Then maybe in a few millenia you won't be the Chris Farley of deities.

WIKI H: Let's google the gods of greek mythology!

SKINNYBITCH H: Or the Olsen twins!

EGO H: Let's google me!

My curmudgeonly friend Ned says that blogs are literary masturbation, and that nobody wants to read about "all those fruity feelings," and that I should only keep him posted in the event that something truly momentous occurs because why the hell else would he read me instead of Orwell? And with Ego H leading the way I find just the thing...

Bill Donahue, president of the Catholic League, the guy who has protested everything from Dogma and The Golden Compass to Bill Maher and a statue of Jesus made out of chocolate, the

guy who was featured in the Easter episode of South Park using a "doublecross" to seize papal power and condemn Jesus himself for "going against the church," quoted yours truly in a book. Whaaaaat?

CHECK IT OUT

My favorite part is that after my quote about icky teenage backstabbing he writes "...but not so with Jesus." I have found myself tempted to use this phrase a lot over the past few days, like "Working hard makes me want to get wicked high and play Halo... not so with Jesus" or "I think my brother tangled up the network with all of that online hardcore babysitter porn... not so with Jesus."

Anyway this just goes to show you how far I am usually led astray by bands of roving writerly doubt. One minute I'll be staring at a sentence unsure of what adjective to use and the next I'm having a full out existential crisis followed by an unstoppable craving for South Park, Redtube, controlled substances, and the meaning of life itself. It's exhausting.

The strange thing is that when you really are in the zone, when your fingers are flowing in perfect harmony with your thoughts, if you start thinking "oh wow I'm totally in the zone, hot damn that was a great metaphor," you plummet straight back into the pit. Don't overthink it. You can look back later.

Which is to say: I don't really like writing. I like having written.

The satisfaction of looking back over a whole literary landscape you've crafted stone by stone totally... rocks. But the creative unconscious is a finicky creature who hates nothing more than the over-intellectual analysis that peppered so many of my best college papers. I've been reading a lot of 'writers on writing' and everybody seems to agree on one seemingly simple thing: stop trying so hard, don't be afraid to make mistakes, just do it.

The trick is that, just like with meditation, clearing your mind is much easier said than done. I find that carrying a notebook to get ideas out of my head is helpful, as is scribbling down a list of any "why you're an untalented loser" thoughts which get in the way of uninhibited writing.

My favorite recent discovery is the fact that all good ideas and potent themes and meaningful truths that want to get written exist in a room with a million doors.

Stay with me... so you can agonize over symbolism and stare at the computer for 12 hours trying to find the perfect topic or theme or chapter title, but in reality that thing has been waiting around the whole time for you to start knocking. Maybe you start knocking at a door with a picture of your dog on it, which reminds you of your Dad, which reminds you of that time you and your Dad went hiking and played harmonica in the abandoned barn and you realize what you really want to talk about is bonding through music. The door opens and suddenly you're inside- rehearsals, pianos, performance anxiety, it is a rich radiant room and now you're on a roll.

Or maybe you start knocking on a door that has nailpolish on it. And you start writing about painting your nails and that saxophone player who had sparkle nailpolish, or you knock on the sushi door and you write about the first time you ate California rolls in New York City and how your mother said if you didn't stand behind the yellow line someone might throw you into the subway tracks and how the buskers played the Star Spangled Banner as the 4 train pulled away. It doesn't matter what you start writing about because now you're inside the music room again even though you came in from the other side through a different door.

Stop worrying what's right. Write. **

**HYPOCRITE ALERT H: If Hannah could take this advice half as often as she dispenses it she'd have been onto book #4 last year instead of trapped on page 57 of book #1 for the third day straight. Damn.

Keep the faith. Keep smiling. Keep me posted.

H (&H&H&

Me (MeMeMeMeMe)

2008-09-30T09:01:00.001-07:00

Birthdays have always seemed a little anti-climactic since my My Little Pony days. Somewhere along the way, getting the cake slice with the very most frosting became a matter of calorific concern instead of glee, and the wondrous wonder of helium balloons began to deflate.

Plus, the fact that I've never had one of those incestuous Dawson's Creek/Saved by the Bell 'crews' who throws you surprise parties and gives you big group-hugs as sappy string music plays and you all learn a lesson about friendship and love and not abusing caffeine pills has always made a birthday party consisting of a geriatric primate and my brother and the cat who humps my pillowcase seem like a big YOU'RE LAME-themed commercial for why I should just give up the social struggle and stop shaving my armpits and move into a cave.

Six year old me would not be pleased with this because she knows your birthday is not about you moving into a cave, but about you being the princess of the whole wide world.

But time and middleschool brutality have taught me much humility.

A level of humility which is surprisingly difficult to maintain whilst publicizing the completely coincidental public birthday launch of my me themed show all about me:

FLYING SOLO

http://www.mylifetime.com/lifestyle/entertainment/flying-solo/video/1815816476

Hooray!!!

I have nothing else to say because I'm watching it now making ick faces at all the times I sound/look like an idiot. Feel free to echo these embarrassing instances as a means of keeping me grounded, or if you're feeling generous, let me know what doesn't totally suck. Thanks guys.

Best,

Hannah (Princess of the whole wide day)

Also, if you liked it, it would be a huge boon if you posted a little love on lifetime:

Comment

http://www.mylifetime.com/lifestyle/entertainment/flying-solo

Ubermenschian Stemcell Baby Army. Also Jetpacks. Plus Democracy.

2008-09-27T07:50:00.001-07:00

I refuse to dignify debates with anything longer than two sentences worth of attention, one for each candidate, because anything more would suggest that I think they are actually a reflection of intention or integrity rather than a big red white and blue puppet show for big kids. So... did you notice Obama wore a flag pin while McCain wore a Palpatine, Dark Lord of the Sith mask?

Talk is cheap. Especially in wake of the past 8 years, in which the value of talk has been so badly bludgeoned that it makes pieces of dog shit look like British Pound Sterling while talk is devalued into pieces of... I was going to say worm shit but that's actually a key natural fertilizer so perhaps pieces of garbage. Unrecyclable biohazardous smelly ugly garbage.

This is of great concern to me, someone who is attempting to make a living by putting words together. So you can understand how it's hard to watch people with zero accountability saying whatever the heck they want for two hours on primetime. Let's lower taxes! Torture is bad! Look at my friendship bracelet from some dead army kid. No look at MY friendship bracelet from some dead army kid! Freedom!!!

I don't understand how a country so awesome at sensationalistic reality television can put up with this. Where are the tears? The alcoholic rages? I want to see how McCain discusses foreign policy after he finds out his wife has been giving head to Flava Flav in the whitehouse grotto.

Seriously, there should be a reality show where we lock both candidates in a house, deprive them of sleep, and then have fake national disasters of all different shapes and sizes to see how they really deal under pressure- then they're acting instead of just waxing poetic about freedom. They do it in Model UN and I don't see why we can't do it here. It would be like campaign bootcamp. Wake up McCain! Iran has obtained weapons of mass destruction and is threatening to obliterate Israel and you have 12 minutes to come up with a negotiation strategy....

...underwater! Maybe not the underwater part, but how else are we going to keep the ratings up?

I'm sick and tired of all this bullshit political sweettalk lies. And it's contagious- I told you I was only going to spend two sentences discussing this nonsense and I lied straight to your face because here I am still ranting about this whole absurd charade. So what do we do when we're up to our neck in lies? Do we leave?

This possibility sounds more and more compelling, especially after seeing things like this, which is actually what I originally intended to write my entire post about:

This Swiss guy flew across the English Channel via Jetpack.

JETPACK.

Holy Shit.

This is my childhood Jetson fantasy come true- they have self opening doors and self cleaning litterboxes and even a magical network of boxes which can magically teleport your thoughts to anywhere in the world, and yet jerky Seagulls are still laughing their winged asses off at us.

Us and penguins. We're both flightless rejects.

Until now. Swiss guy gives flight to the dreams of kids who suck hardcore at every sport and yet still hold out absurd hope that in some alternate reality, they are totally Quiddich masters... the dreams of everyone who's sure they could be Iron Man if only they were a little more genius suave and a billionaire... and the dreams of people like me who are too lazy to walk six blocks to the grocery store and carry their own groceries back.

Jetpack Flight. The stuff dreams are made of. So if the debate bummed you out like me, take solace in the knowledge that weird and whimsical wonders are all around and above us.

Or, if you, like me, can't drive past a McDonalds without having a nightmarish fantasy about McCain stealing the election a la 2000, for a giggle that's still politically themed, check out some of the things which are younger than John McCain:

Chocolate Chip Cookies, the lubricated condom, Scrabble, the PB&J sandwich, Zip Codes, and the Minimum Wage. tadaa!

Love,

Hannah

PS... if you are a regular reader of this blog and you haven't entered my Writinghannah Writing Challenge, you kind of Writinghannah Writing Suck. We can only become a world-altering establishment-shattering creative community if we create stuff. As a community. So here's the deal: if you're enjoying the blog, it would make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside if you sent it to a few pals who might also enjoy it, and if you've put in your two cents in comments already, I thank you kindly. As for R. Matt- he is not only gentleman and scholar, but also sire-er of my future Postmodern ubermenschian stem cell baby army. (If that's okay with you R. Matt.)

Bull

2008-09-22T15:06:00.000-07:00

I know embarrassingly little about the economy. It's never been a discussion topic in our house because we've never had enough money to warrant interest in the market, and if we ever do it will almost certainly be spent on a 10 acre monkey preserve and some kind of virtual solar powered piano/guitar/kazoo hybrid which also dispenses strawberry shortcake before you can say Bull.

Plus those guys on Wallstreet don't do a great job of promoting the interesting side of the industry- all that swearing and bidding and sweating... A friend's dad once told me that on the day his wife gave birth to kid number 3, he lost $9 million of a client's money and was so deliriously distraught that he puked and passed out in the bathroom and didn't wake up till the janitor found him that night and the kid was already born. Cherished memories.

Anyway I'm admitting this deficiency in my knowledge base for two reasons:

1. As our nation plummets even deeper into what would be a comedically meteoric clusterfuck if it weren't going to screw over everyone in my generation while all the idiots who at fault are contentedly dead, it seems prudent to be informed and

2. I'm guessing most of you out there don't understand every in and out of the market either. It's big and numbery and, until recently, didn't seem to have a huge impact on day to day life if you weren't a high-rolling coke-snorting Rolex-wearing Wallstreet guy. And frankly, it seems to me that a lot of those guys are in those jobs at least partly due to the fact that it's easier to talk to numbers than to other humans. Maybe if you make enough monkey you can buy some friends...

But as I'd like to be the ultimate crunchy hippie whose ideal form of currency is macrame bracelets and hugs, I realize that finance is not all numbery drivel, and that even if it is, it's important to start getting real and getting informed. I went to the bookstore today with my brother to pick out something to inform me investment-wise, became achingly bored in 2 minutes, then wandered into the children's section in search of a colorful remedy where I came across this...

Reeeally? I mean Barack seems like a good guy, but does his story really merit shelf-space next to my beloved childhood One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish? It freaks me out to think that our political system has become so reductive and polarized that candidates are either evil scum or the Harry Potter of politics. Then, not to be outdone, I find the republican counter...

Can you believe this shit? A children's book which features a whole four page watercolor spread of a guy in a cage being tortured for five years?! Who the hell would buy this?

And, more importantly, where is the middleground? Neither men are complete saints, and canonizing them in children's books is a perfect example of how we're cultivating a nation of followers who don't look beyond the myth to demand the fact. If you want to read to your kids about Jesus or Moses or Santa then fine, but don't start shoveling pagefulls of kiddie-propaganda down their throats about real people who deserve critical, sophisticated analyses.

In such a black and white media circus it's easy to get caught up in absolutes. I've had to remind myself often that I can't constantly defend Obama just because he's not McCain- there are thousands of Obama quotes and interviews and policies which I know nothing about, and if I support him just because of who he is instead of what I know to be truth, I'm no better than the mindless Bush devotees who I've criticized so fervently in the past.

I think that especially in the face of such unprecedented economic turmoil it's important not to get swept up in Obama-Mythology. He's just a guy like the rest of us with good and bad qualities, and if we mentally bestow him with every positive attribute from MLK to JFK's, we'll be as disappointed and disillusioned as ever.

Plus, our generation cannot afford to be uninformed... we can't accept the children's book watercolor version of politics, economics, or anything we care about for that matter. Thoughts? Suggestions? What do you feel uninformed about? Maybe we can do some virtual fact networking. And maybe if you're not as mathtarded as me you can explain how all of a sudden the entire economy can go tits up in one night like a tipsy sorority girl in stilettos? Keep me posted.

TV & Me

2008-09-18T19:42:00.001-07:00

I must apologize for being MIA as of late. I got a bitchin case of tendinitis from typing all curled up in bed in what yoga enthusiasts might dub the 'constipated fetus' pose. I know that fetuses can't be constipated and now I also know that pirating crappy mac dictation software and trying to use it in public leads to your yelling obscenities repeatedly at someone who isn't there, thus blurring any differentiation between you and a crazy homeless person-

"It was a rather aggressive... "Not 'a grass lives.' Delete. AGGRESSIVE. Not 'agar is' goddamn it. Aggressive. Delete. Delete! No don't type delete, just delete. DELETE!"

And then it deletes your entire document. And then you shout "control Z! control Z! whilst tensing your fists up like... a constipated fetus. And then a policeman asks you if there is a problem. Needless to say that little experiment didn't last very long and I decided to let my tendons rest for a bit.

I spent the week at the New York Television Festival at which a reality pilot about me was premiering. I suppose what I should have guessed about reality television is that, instead of being a compilation of your most fantastically intelligent viewpoints and clever quips and humorous moments, it's more like letting someone take hundreds of naked pictures of you and then publish a hideous compilation of all the most hairy scaly blotchy dimply pimply patches for all the world to see. Over and over again when and wherever they would like. In fact I think most people would come off better in their secret sex tape than in their own reality tv show because you can't really be a whiny jerk or a jerky ditz or a ditzy fucktard when all you're doing is having an orgasm.

That being said, my pilot Flying Solo was a pleasant surprise, and although they cut all my thoughts on positive female role models, and reforming education, and music as a means of cultural communication, and the creative unconscious, and the writing process, and the mark of our generation, at least I didn't look like a megabitch.... It premieres on mylifetime.com in the next few days and I'd love to hear your thoughts. It's a hybrid reality show by P&G combining my footage with the crew's footage to detail my summer.

The festival was smashing and I met tons of creative filmmakers as well as comedy development folks and even the heads of Swedish television. Turns out Swedish television is totally cutting edge- they won an interactive Emmy for a recent project called The Truth about Marika which combined a TV drama with an online conspiracy in which fans were encouraged to uncover the truth about the 20,000 people who have gone missing in Sweden in the past few decades, and the part that blew me away was that in addition to the online hacking there were clues and meetings and surprises planted all over Sweden, blending game with reality, and completely immersing the viewer as a true participant in the mystery. They even had a game where viewers could drive to an actual set in the form of a war trench, suit up in battlegear, and wage computer warfare from within the game. And we think we're pushing the limit with text message American Idol voting...

I always loved those old maps in history class from before all the continents had been mapped- the ones with big dragons and seamonsters dotting uncharted waters, daring explorers to journey into the unknown, and I was pretty bummed to discover at the age of 7 that the only things truly left to explore are the thick jungle, the deep sea, and outerspace seeing as I am an allergic claustrophobe with a fear of flying.

But the NYTVF really inspired me to view the internet as a new frontier not only for entertainment and social networking, but for education, creative inspiration, and as a tool for empowering the oppressed. Never before have we had access to so much information from so many different cultures, and I can only hope that this, in the face of religious oppression and intellectual/social intolerance and economic fucking Armageddon, will pave the way for cooperation and innovation as it's done in previous incarnations of cultural renaissance.

I was heartened to find a community of artists at the festival who were really just plain nice. They were hardworking passionate people who were excited to share their ideas and it made me hopeful about the future despite increasingly dire newspaper headlines.

I also learned that everyone is desperate for good content, and that even for comedy geniuses only about 10% of ideas are great, and the collaboration leads to greatness, so in the spirit of the festival I'm posing the very first...

Collaborative Writinghannah Challenge!!!

Combine at least three of the following elements into a kick-ass TV series pitch:

Speculum Kleptomania Beer Byron Bear-Baiting Toddlers Adultery

Jellybeans Dr. Seuss Podiatry Treasure-Hunting Celebrities Foot-Fetish

Drugs Collectors Vampires/Ninjas (must use both) Dating Amish

Sing-Along Canada Time-Travel The-80s Tits Fashion DaDaism

Thoreau Terrorism Feminism Dragons Psoriasis Lesbians Marsupials

Defenestration Mendel Flesh-eating-bacteria Glitter Lincoln Dwight

Makeovers Prison Monarchy Amnesia Intervention Japan Gynocology

Octopi Johnny-Cash Baking The-1800s The-Mob Nietzsche World-Domination

Sun Tsu Jesus Fungus Nuts Ballroom-dancing Fetuses Aquaphobia

Monkey Nymphomania French Maids Basketball Puppets Hipsters

Prizes will be awarded by category and for originality.

Best,

Quickie plug

2008-09-10T21:58:00.000-07:00

my fabulously talented friend Jeremy's new Palin spoof video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGwfrt3gWdo&watch_response

PH.D. in Yo.U

2008-09-06T12:28:00.000-07:00

If you are looking for Yale posts, I suggest you read the intro to this post which is here and here.

Thank you for your insightful thoughts and questions regarding my most recent education post. My favorite nervous prefrosh E wrote: “Before you scared the bejeezus out of me concerning Yale. Now you scared the bejeezus out of me in general. Where can I get a REAL education?"

This question and others like it from fellow knowledge-lovers who are frustrated with what one reader described as “recycled thought, recycled theses, and recycled teaching,” deserve a very thoughtful answer, and I spent much of this week turning over possibilities in my mind.

But an answer came to me, as most exciting answers so often do, as a complete surprise and while I was focused on something else entirely- namely finishing a 50 page chapter summary for my editor.

Let me just say that writing is a bitch. You stare at a blank page completely convinced you have absolutely nothing to say, or even if you do kinda have a vague idea of what you’d like to say, crafting those blobs of thought into a cohesive narrative seems about as likely as your being able to sculpt a life sized replica of the David out of peanut butter before lunchtime.

So in the face of no ideas, no outlines, and no hope, you just have to forge ahead anyway by convincing yourself that something good will happen eventually. Believing in yourself is a clichéd mantra, but a popular one because it is such an essential prerequisite for having the balls and audacity to turn passion into product.

And therein lies one of my main problems with the ‘idea’ of higher education. We seem to think that we need to do well on the SATs, we need to get good grades, we need to graduate from college in order to be PREPARED. But the truth is, you’re already prepared. You were born with a unique set of abilities and interests and with a completely revolutionary perspective. You, as you are right now, are capable of unrecycled revolutionary thoughts simply because you are the only you there ever has been or will be.

But traditional education thrives on enforcing the belief that you are not enough. How can you expect to accomplish anything if you don’t know algebra? If you don’t read Dostoyevsky? If you can’t speak 2 languages? If you don’t have a college degree? Until you do all of those things, you are still only in the prerequisite part of your life, acquiring the skill points necessary to qualify you as a person who is worthy of doing something real.

Frankly, that's bull...

I’m not saying that learning isn’t the brightest pigment in your creative palate- learning is profoundly powerful. But even if you spend 50 years amassing millions of shades of information colors, compared to Wikipedia you will still only be a Crayola 10 pack. And you’ll be so self conscious about what you still don’t have, you’ll never take the plunge and just start scribbling with what you’ve got.

Ask any four year old fingerpainter about their “creative process” and they will look at you cockeyed. They’re just painting. They have not yet been told how ignorant they are in the face of college-education requirements, so they’re free to follow their own truths.

“But oh how woefully uneducated they are! Heathens! What they really need is to sit still, listen and repeat!”

We listen and repeat and listen and repeat in different subjects and formats for the better part of 17 years. We fill in bubbles with number two pencils and try to prove we aren’t idiots. But no matter how many bubbles we get ‘right’ we feel like failures in the face of the impossible expectation of being human Wikipedias. We’ll never be ready. But guess what?

You have always been ready.

And any educational system or institution which focuses on how much you don’t know, instead of nurturing what you intuitively know, is a sham. Haven’t your best teachers been the ones who encourage and engage you with knowledge which, for whatever reason, enriches you? Feels relevant for you? It's not about the subject, it's about how you feel about the subject. And you won't always be able to rationalize why you are drawn to what you are drawn to- your creative unconscious is a vast and thrillingly complicated place and you need to trust in hunches and passions- you'll end up doing something exciting everyday instead of trying to force yourself to be interested in something that seems 'important' but doesn't have meaning for you.

You are the only expert in yourself. Start listening.

And this isn’t self indulgent self-help baby stuff. You are an extremely difficult subject- infinitely harder than college classes. Going to Yale was technically tough, but strategically it couldn't have been simpler: just take the tests, do the reading, follow the rules.

What makes writing or painting or inventing so hard is that there is no syllabus for the intricate caverns of your own brain. There’s no expert, no textbook, no study-guide for the midterm. All there is is you, and when you’ve spent 17 years focusing on how much you don’t know, it’s hard to have faith in what you do. It’s hard to have faith in a process which you can’t read about in a book because nobody has ever done it before. It’s completely uncharted territory, and the only way you’re going to figure out how to do it is to do it.

So now you know why I started out talking about self confidence. I was an A student all my life who went to a top college, but having the confidence to follow rules is completely the opposite of believing in your own unique vision.

The ingenious idiocy of persisting in exploring your ideas instead of memorizing others' is not taught in schools because it undermines their authority- the notion that a child could produce something marvelous by following through on their inspiration might make SAT prep courses completely obscolete.

And I'm not saying it's all a waste of time, but remember that tasks which are safe and predictable will never be anything but safe and predictable, while the completely terrifyingly unknowable challenges have the potential to change the world.

So although I don't think I'm going to change the world with my little teen memoir, I do feel like I've learned an enormous amount about myself and my creative process by forcing myself to write even when I don't have a good idea, even when I feel untalented, even when it seems like it'll never sound right, and even when I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, because showing up and having faith in the face of self-doubt is the only prerequisite for creating something new and worthwhile.

There are a billion things you don't know, but you'll only discover something truly unique if you trust in yourself. And the best way, the only way to start, is to just decide you're going to do it without questioning yourself about how unprepared you seem. Everyone feels unprepared. If they don't, then they aren't taking any risks. And risks are the only way that crazy amazing ideas become crazy amazing realities.

So to answer the original question, "REAL education" is not something you can purchase or download or memorize, it is an active personal journey. It can be supplemented and illuminated by school, but the only way you're going to have the balls to think you can write a sonata or cure a disease or find a unifying theory of the universe is to challenge yourself as often as you can.

Give yourself every opportunity to surprise yourself.

Because everything else you can just find on Wikipedia.

thoughts questions comments?

much love,

(formerly-Hurricane-now-tropical-storm) Hannah

Secrets Secrets Hurt Someone

2008-09-01T13:34:00.000-07:00

I was absolutely tickled pink when I heard the fabulous rumor that Sarah Palin's new retarded baby was actually the illegitimate child of her 17 year old daughter Bristol.

Bristol had been suspiciously kept out of school for 5 months prior to the birth with "mono," and Sarah Palin was allegedly leaking amniotic fluid before boarding the 8 hour flight back to Alaska, where upon landing instead of rushing to the closest major hospital she ambled along to some tiny town an hour away to give birth in total seclusion. Nobody on her staff knew she was pregnant and the flight attendants claimed they hadn't the faintest idea there was a pregnant woman on the flight.

This is fantastic people- top notch Republican shenanigans right out of the gate- they'd have to find an Obama-run cigarette sweatshop which enslaves privileged white babies to top it.

But now I find out that 17 year old Bristol Palin actually is pregnant!

Either she's gotten knocked up once before and both babies are hers, or her mother is a reckless nut who gladly boards crosscountry flights while in labor with a down-syndrome fetus. Either way, McCain's new VP who is pro abstinence-only sex ed and pro-life even in rape and incest scenarios has an unwed pregnant 17 year old daughter.

Are the Republicans kidding? Part of me is giddy that McCain has dug his own grave with this nomination, but another part is gravely suspicious. I mean maybe they're just fucking with us- like the time they nominated an illiterate draft-dodging cokehead to office because they knew they could rig the election and win. Or the time they did that again.

Bear with me while I explain that I just came back from my cousin's wedding in Florida, complete with cheek-pinching relatives and floofy dresses and that guy who is incapable of comprehending the meaning of personal space.

And here is what I realized- everyone love gossip. I heard about overbearing mothers and selfish brothers and alcoholic sisters and manic-depressive gun-toting uncles. I heard about the best friend who's in love with the roommate's girlfriend, and I even heard about the cousin who was a big mouthed troublemaking yank and realized after a while that my gossip buddy was unknowingly referring to... me.

My grandmother says that 'lashon hara' (evil tongue) is, in the torah, one of the worst things a person can do aside from breaking one of the big 10. That is, of course, unless speaking the truth will prevent future harm.

So technically if I want to get into heaven, saying that Sarah Palin is a hypocritical bitch will not win me points with the big guy unless being a hypocrite will endanger the country. And maybe it will. But we do have a long illustrious line of hypocrites- Jefferson, author of the declaration of independence, not only owned slaves, but had illegitimate slave children! Fucking A! Why didn't they tell us that in school?

Well, probably because being a hypocritical bastard did not diminish enough from his positive accomplishments to warrant a juicy footnote. So as much as I hate to say it, and as great of a story as preggers-Bristol is, we can't write off Palin just for saying one thing and (her daughter) doing another. Without a condom. Again.

There are plenty of thing about all of us that are beyond humiliating and which, if plastered all over the tabloids, could be used to make us look like total psychopaths. In most every case, people are not divisible in a Good/Bad binary, and as much as I'd like this scandal to take down Palin and the Republicans in a fireball of elitist racist homophobic ignorance, I think that buying into the gossip instead of the real issues is eventually going to hurt everyone involved.

The media has become so obsessed with gossip that honest discussion about experience and ideas is completely irrelevant if one of the candidates happens to not be donning an American Flag pin. And God help him if his middle name is Hussein. Even though the rumormills are favoring the Dems at the moment, mudslinging always goes two ways, and if we ever want to have an adult democracy it is incumbent upon our generation to demand relevance instead of spectacle.

So, this is a long way of explaining Hannah's Guide to Eternal Happiness (Part 2):

2. Gossip is bullshit.

It hurts when it's about you, and it hurts you even when it's not.

More to come. Keep me posted.

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. - Eleanor Roosevelt

Education Revelation

2008-08-27T14:27:00.001-07:00

Gosh... I never meant to "scare the bejeezus" out of a prefrosh days before camp Yale with my anti Ivy-Mythology rant. Sorry kid- you're gunna be fine.

I want to clarify something- Yale got the brunt of my ire because of what I feel is an undeserved overly-lofty status in the collective cultural conscious, and because it's the only college I went to so therefore the only one I know enough about to write long whining diatribes, and because I fancy myself an Ivyconoclast. But Yale isn't hell, or else I would have left.

Yale is simply a symptom of a larger educational epidemic...

The roots of compulsory and linearly ranked (graded) education are sordid and surprising, and I wanted to share some of my research:

In the early 1800s the King of Prussia decided he wanted a KICK ASS army. The kind of army that would do and believe whatever the hell they were told no matter how absurd. So he sent guys with guns to steal kids from their parents and forced them to go to the first official nationalized public school, where they were completely indoctrinated, lectured with unflinchingly rigid royally-approved curriculum, and were not allowed to even ask a question unless they first asked if they had permission to ask a question. This is the origin of raising your hand folks. (...I always knew that prissy bitch Ms. Cook was a fascist...)

Then the INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION in America comes along, and Horace Mann, the father of compulsory American public schooling, takes a trip over to Germany to study this tip top child-molding system. He brings it back to make sure there are sufficient cogs for the new American Industrial machine. Check out this creeptastic quote about his goals for indoctrinating, I mean educating, the masses:

"Having found the present generation composed of materials almost unmalleable, I am about transferring my efforts to the next. Men are cast-iron; but children are wax. Strength expended upon the latter may be effectual, which would make no impression upon the former."

Public education was made compulsory on a national level, but its private investors and most influential molders like Ford Rockefeller and Carnegie were never intending to help kids achieve the American Dream. These guys needed bodies to work in factories. John D. Rockefeller, THE FOUNDER OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION, said "I don't want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers."

Traditional education was always intended to suppress individual creativity in favor of the collective good. And I'm pretty sure that's called socialism.

But even after the Robber Barons kicked the bucket, this anti-child agenda held fast. Benjamin Bloom of the famed 'Bloom's Taxonomy,' which has arguably played a bigger role in shaping education than any other document, claimed outright that “The purpose of education is to change the thoughts feelings and actions of students.”

And there, in a nutshell, is the history of why you should be suspicious of traditional education.

But that isn't even close to the most interesting part. THIS is the BEST part:

In order to inspire obedience and competition amongst students, and to save time and money, holistic written evaluations were scrapped in favor of linearly ranked evaluation. And those impersonal, maddeningly un-calibrated and mind-numbing grades, 4.0, ABCD, grades...WERE INVENTED AT YALE.

Grades. Came. From Yale.

http://books.google.com/books?id=R1QH0db2xGsC&pg=PA4&dq=%22It+was+not+until+1785+that+an+american+college%22&ei=8PK1SOb7ApW0yQSN6fTLAQ&sig=ACfU3U2ltFA7HC8x_r2-OjiaN9gO5IFLXg

(Not to be outdone, Harvard decides to use 100 points instead of four...)

Of course in order to impress these institutions, all the feeder schools began shaping their evaluation system to comply with these rankings. Grades trickled down from Yale to thousands of highschools and middleschools and beyond, tantalizing and torturing the brains of millions of kids for the past hundred years with their uncreative unproductive and unhelpful brand of labeling.

Holy Shit. When I first read this I fell off my couch and lay there basking in the horrifying possibility that I was a pawn in some sick cosmic cycle of elitism... I had spent 16 years perfecting a system to impress the very institution which invented the system?! WHAAAT?

I was horrified. I was furious. I was shocked that I hadn't looked into this sooner... everyone just follows the system without stopping to question its merits or relevance. Nobody tells you that the whole damn thing was concocted as a way to bludgeon your individuality to death with a cleaver and then pump your deflated corpse full of creamy sweet conformist filling.

But then after my blood boiled over I started to feel vindicated for having suspected something was fishy since the very beginning... school was a drag. I was good at it but it never made my soul sing, and I was sure there was more to life than being a good parrot. I was proud of myself for never giving in. And I decided to spread the word.

Consider it spread.

Several very insightful commenters noted that if you try hard you can find inspiring teachers and great people at Yale, and they are absolutely totally right. In fact that's true of most places you'll find yourself educational or no.

But it just seems to me that for all the hype, for all the bullshit of applying, for all the time and for 40 grand a year for four years, your brain should be orgasmically stimulated. Call me a demanding customer, but that's the way I see it.

College is a product without a better business bureau to police it, and the most infuriating thing is that even if you don't want to buy it, it has made itself a necessity in many job circles. And with inflation, the jobs that used to go to college grads now require masters degrees, and the MA positions are only PH.D worthy, etc.

So work the system and get the most you can, but know that it's just that, a system, not an answer.

Be an Autodidact. Follow your passions. Thoughts?

Best,

HnnH

(Cuz you can take the 'A's and shove them up your SS.)

Hannah's Guide to Eternal Happiness (Part One)

2008-08-23T22:31:00.000-07:00

I worked for Yale admissions all four years and have advised thousands of nervous prefrosh about everything from med school requirements to fire safety regulations (apparently his biggest fear was being burned alive...gotta love those fresh-faced, well-adjusted Yalies....)

But after a while I realized that these kids were not asking me how many sweaters to bring New Haven, how many APs to take, and what acapella rush is like because of their love of sweaters, standardized testing, and public humiliation. It was because they were, like any kid about to enter college, freaked out.

But even if they come to Yale armed with those answers (a shitload, a shitload, and a load of shit) and more, I realized they wouldn't really be any better off. Logistics are what overachievers excel at, and those kids don't need me telling them that New Haven is cold unless they're retarded *oops* I mean recruited athletes. So I started to cut through the bull and tell them the things that I didn't think they'd be able to find in their bluebooks. And the more I talked the more I realized how many of us who are awesome at SATs and internships and auditions and elections are surprisingly lacking in something most butt-sniffing dogs are constantly capable of- Actually Being Truly Happy.

So I've sorted my thoughts into a few chunks, this being the first.

HANNAH'S (slightly hypocritical)*

GUIDE TO ETERNAL HAPPINESS Part One

1. The Voice

If you are like me, or if you are even slightly more interesting than unbuttered toast, you have some form of The Voice. The Voice sounds a whole lot like you except that The Voice is a dick. The Voice takes great pleasure in saying helpful things like this:

"You are never going to finish ____ you incompetent lazy baboon. Go eat Mars Bars and forget your woefully pathetic _____ abilities in the mindless abyss of reality television. You will never amount to anything."

"Wow. This idea sucks more balls than 1. Paris Hilton and Liberace at a ball sucking competition and 2. A sweatshop full of cute asian girls who are only fed that tapioca-ball bubble tea and 3.a powerball lotto machine combined. To review: this idea, and by extension you, suck."

"Holy shit this is a disaster! Everything is horrible and it's only getting worse! Bail out now."

the one that I'm sure all you Yalies in the audience will be familiar with:

"That's not good enough. Why do you even bother? You could do so much better."

and the wonderfully uplifting:

"Nobody loves you and you have no friends. That annoying habit you secretly fear someone could hate you for is only one of the thousands of reasons that everyone hates you."

The Voice insists that it's The Voice and not you're awesomeness that makes you a successful person. "Without me you'd be a crack addicted loser" The Voice declares. But just for kicks, let's think of The Voice as if it were a voice outside your head instead of inside for a moment.

Imagine if you had someone hanging around you pretty much all the time who shouted about what a failure you were, and told you you were ugly and unworthy, and insisted that all your dreams are laughable delusions because you're such a talentless slob.

If I were you, I'd punch that person in the face. And I hope you would too.

And let's remind ourselves that on some days we inflict that kind of battering on ourselves hour after painful hour with the expectation that we're being realists. It's game time. Nose to the grindstone. Tough love.

That's bullshit.

People tell us it's good to be motivated and to give yourself deadlines. We assume this means being hard on yourself. But you and I both know that you're going to reach the finishline much faster if someone is cheering you on even when you fall down instead of taking the opportunity to pour bees on your head and smack you around with 2x4.

Let's be logical- if you're like me, and you err on the side of perfectionism, you do not need The Voice telling you that you're doing a terrible lazy uncreative mediocre job. You'll get it done faster and it'll be more pleasant if you just stay positive and wait to critique yourself until the end.

In fact, doing something creative like writing, and something more critical like editing, uses entirely different parts of the brain. Doing and criticizing is like simultaneously trying to tweek and analyze the exact decibel frequency of the aria you are trying to perform with passionate emotion- it's gunna trip you up.

So... what to do?

First thing's first. Identify it. The Voice is super sneaky and, as I said before, sounds exactly like you. It also knows everything there is to know about you, every icky awful cringe-worthy detail, so it has a pretty big arsenal of insults to draw from. Don't let it get to you. You're too important to waste time getting stamped on by some figment of your own imagination.

Secondly- Reason with it. Eventually you'll be able to hear the voice and tell it to shut the fuck up, but at first The Voice is not going to back down easily, so you'll have to be pugnacious and deal with feeling like a skitzo for a little while. It goes a little something like this:

"You suck."

"Glad to hear that you think that. But I'm busy right now."

"Ya, busy sucking"

"A helpful suggestion, but one which I know will only serve to make me feel crappy, which is ultimately going to hurt my productivity and quality of life, so I bid you good day sir."

"Who do you think you are you pretentious freak? This is why you have no friends."

"No, this is why you have no friends. You're negative and obsessive and if you talked to any of my friends the way you talked to me they would punch you in the face."

Thirdly- After working hard at the last one, you'll eventually have sussed out The Voice's tricks enough to smell The Voice like a distant but swiftly approaching hint of dog poo in the breeze, and just put it aside. It's not helpful. It's not enjoyable. You're not even going to dignify it with a conversation.

Woohoo!

So here is my footnote about why my guide is *(slightly hypocritical) ...

This is hard.

This is really hard. It is 100% worthwhile but you will have to work at it constantly, especially if you, like me, have The Voice turned on so loud that sometimes it has edged out your own voice entirely. *I do not claim to have mastered this system.

But I do know that every day I use it, my life is happier, healthier, and more meaningful. I have more productivity, more joy, more fun, more energy to make friends, more confidence in myself, and more certainty in what I want to do with my life than ever before.

Sussing out The Voice is the most powerful gift I've ever given myself, and I hope you find it helpful.

Check back for another Happiness Guide and How To Get Published installment.

Let me know if you have questions :)

Much Love and Light,

Pilot Audition Tape

2008-08-22T13:46:00.000-07:00

The audition tape which won me the New York Television Film Festival Flying Solo contest. (turn up the volume on the bottom it defaults very low)

CLICK HERE

My pilot premieres September 17th. Hooray!

video url: http://www.youshare.com/hannahannahanna/3c5d0c2d73eb588c.flv.html
contest details here: http://www.nytvf.com/2008_pgp_info.htm

Spamming Quips and Publishing Tips

2008-08-22T08:15:00.001-07:00

Last night I did something brazen. I sent out a mass blog advertisement to every possible Yale panlist I had ever been a part of in four years. I broke the yalemail rules. The possibility of my dignified and dapper Master Haller browsing a slapdash post about curry & cunnilingus wasn't even enough to dissuade my triggerhappy click finger.

And I did this for two reasons. Firstly, I think it's important to start steeling myself against critics, and I don't know anywhere with a higher density of socially frustrated elitists who get their self-aggrandizing kicks by pointing out pedantic imperfections in other people's work (myself included) than at Yale. Secondly, my Yalemail expires in about 3 days and I was more than happy to bid the buggy system goodbye in a spam-tastic flurry of self promotion.

Encouragingly, despite this caveat I included at the end of the email:

If you are FUMING because you received this email three times in a row then either get a better spam filter, or take this as serendipity and see if one of my posts doesn't tickle you. That, or write derogatory sarcastic comments on my blog to vent your anger at me while soothing the pains of a pathetic life in which email decorum takes up 1/3 of your mental energy while STILL supporting the career of a struggling artist.

I have still ruffled the feathers of people who don't seem to understand sarcasm, like the Grammar Gestapo, who is quick to tell me that “I think if you're going to write a book, you should learn how to use punctuation with quotations…” and, helpfully, "...you know it's spelled Tandoori, right?"

I apologize guys. Although I too used to extract meager droplets of self worth from making sure English papers footnotes were formatted exactly perfectly, I am now a Yale graduate and this is a blog, so I am no longer beholden to the ALL HOLY MLA FORMAT. Witness a daring rebellion as I cavalierly leave this sentence totally un-punctuated

Also- that's what I have an editor for. Do you have an editor? No? Then I guess it's a good thing you can use punctuation marks correctly. Well done. Gold star!

The ones that I won't admit stung a little more included: "Jesus h christ you're not funny" and the thrilling "you are not funny and I hope no one buys your book." Well I don't think you're particularly funny either.

But I do think it's funny that you may be stuck at Yale writing 10-12 page papers which will be scanned for 4 seconds by a manic depressive TA playing guitar hero with his free hand while I get to sort through comments about writing that people are actually reading. People including you, funnyman.

My alltime favorite comment was "The least you could've done is facebook friended me first, you trollop." Consider it done Chris. Anyone who can combine 21st century telecommunication and 17th century prostitution in one swiftly condemning quip is ok by me.

I was really tickled to read that one person had already heard of my blog when a friend told him something along the lines of "believe it or not, someone we went to Yale with is doing something better than turning other people's money into more money or doing coke off of toilet seats."

I am humbled by this compliment and hope I will live up to it. In fact I am resolving here and now before all and BlogGod only to turn other people's money into my money and do coke off of strippers' elbows nowhere near toilet seats.

He promised "I will read your book cover to cover when it comes out, tell my friends about it even when I lack an appropriate conversational segue, AND read your blog...if you tell me about the process you went through to get to this point" which I think is a pretty legitimate deal seeing as I claimed to be writing about professional writing. You're on AC. So here's a little intro which will be fleshed out over the coming weeks:

How to get a book deal.

First, have a unique idea. Do research into your target demographic and be familiar with the hooks of bestsellers in your market. See if you can find a niche for yourself amongst them, and once you do, start writing a killer chapter sample.

A lot of people I know slaved away writing entire books before shopping them around, but the truth is that most book deals are sold based on a proposal which includes, generally, a compelling summary, 2 sample chapters, a chapter outline, marketing info, and a bio. That's it.
Then you get an editor to help you figure everything out, and an advance to bolster living expenses while you write for a few months, so sometimes it's better to concentrate on a killer proposal that gets you in the door than driving yourself nuts writing the perfect completed novel which people are going to want to change anyway.

There are two ways to go after you assemble this stuff, and please ask questions if you want more details on any of those specific proposal elements.

First, send emails to a gagillion agents. Agents will help you craft a proposal and shop it around to the big buyers. There are tons of listings on the net, one of which is here: http://www.ebookcrossroads.com/agents.html.

Do your research and figure out which agents specialize in what. Don't send your slasher murder mystery to a children's book agent. If you have a favorite series or an author you want to pattern yourself after it wouldn't hurt to find out what agency they work with.

Calls are generally considered creepy, so write a short but intriguing email about your book, attach your summary or chapter, and hope for the best. Be enthusiastic and appeal to their mentorly side (Having a yale.edu email address really helped me out here). I sent about 50 emails and got 6 or 7 responses, two of which resulted in meetings, and one ended up with a contract. Still, even the contractless agents offered me tips on how to make the proposal more industry-ready and I think I ended up with a much better product after hearing so many 'no's.

However, this is where things get tricky. Agents are basically professional leeches no matter how nice and competent they are, and it's a big commitment to give 20% of your career to someone before you even have one. You don't need one right away.

I actually got this book deal without my agent through contact with the publishing company, which can be established through more emails, tenacity, and personal contacts. If you know a friend of a friend who is interning at Random House, get them your proposal. Often interns our age are the ones sorting through submissions and can make the difference between a proposal winding up on an editor's desk or in the garbage.

Also, blogs are the new frontier in publishing, and if you get a lot of traffic and fill a niche you'll be able to attract attention from publishers while honing your writing chops.

And you may even get a bunch of your former classmates anonymously accusing you of hackery.

My advice is to write a lot, even when you don't feel like it, because if you wait 'til you feel like it you'll be that 80 year old guy still working on his first and only novel. I don't like writing. But I do like having written.

What do you guys think? How have you managed to motivate yourselves beyond the realm of GPAs? How have I endured my first official Ivy-avalanche of troll posts? Keep me posted, keep smiling, keep the faith.

Best,
H

Tandori

2008-08-21T21:21:00.000-07:00

My friend goes on a date, he and the lady get tipsy, she takes him home, she goes down on him, and as any gentlemanly gentleman would do, he attempts to return the favor. He has never done this before and is less than pleased with the results.

"My god it's like trench warfare down there" he shrieks retelling the harrowing tale.

Nausea swells but then subsides. It subsides because he has vomited chunky curry tandori dinner all over her... trench. He says that she says it stings even after she's run into the shower and rinsed and redressed and called a cab to take him home.

"I'm gay" he announces.

I try to sound surprised, like his tapdancing and love of lavender scented candles and obsession with American Idol were just flukes. "Reeeeeeally?"

"I guess sometimes God works in mysterious ways" he says mysteriously.

"And so does Tandori" I conclude.

He pauses. "I don't know if I'll ever be able to eat it again."

"...well that makes two of us."

Dog

2008-08-21T06:31:00.001-07:00

I've been caring for a narcoleptic poodle and she's making me suspicious.

At first I was convinced she was about as intelligent as a doorknob who you also had the privilege of feeding, walking, and petting. She had been biting her tail and had her head in one of those oversized clear plastic cones to make sure she couldn't reach it. "Stop biting your stupid tail stupid dog. It's not good for you. Stopit how hard is that?" I say while watching TV eating brownies surfing the internet and drinking a glass of wine.

Dog follows me around the house, even into the bathroom, and cocks her head to the side perplexedly like I just sprouted alien antennae when I say "Go. Get out. Just because you can shit in the middle of the Stop and Shop parkinglot at rushhour doesn't mean that this is a spectator sport." She cocks her head to the other side. I do whatever shooing I can from the toilet, then resort to hurling a roll of toilet paper at her, then lock the door. I feel guilty about it the rest of the day because she hangs her head like she's done something wrong.

Dog likes to sniff things and tugs at the leash powerfully when she decides that prime sniffing loations are behind us. "This way! Eiw that's a dead bird! Come ON stupid dog." She gives up after a while but still seems perfectly satisfied with herself by the end of the walk having smelled, pooped, and smelled lots of poop, and lies down for some tail gnawing or some squeezy toy chewing or some shut eye.

Dog watches me get dressed and follows me back and forth from laundry to mirror to closet to mirror to bathroom to mirror to closet. I feel like a tour guide and suddenly feel an aggravating pressure to be doing something more exciting than color coordinating. Dog has no clothes and a floofy poodle haircut but that wasn't my decision and presumably not her's either.

Dog catches me masturbating and thinks this too is a spectator sport. It's beyond awkward and the mood is beyond ruined and Dog seems to think we are playing a game. Dog offers me her squeezy toy. I do not return the gesture.

Dog does not procrastinate.

My Dad says his philosophy on life is based on his dead dog Barker. Barker insisted on healthy cardio and spending time in nature, and not letting the man get you down. One day in the park Barker made friends with the dog of a beautiful lady who turned out to be my mother. Barker sure could pick 'em, Dad says.

My mother is suspicious of anyone who the monkey (see note) does not trust. My mother says the monkey can smell dishonesty. My mother also says the monkey might be psychic. Sometimes the monkey drinks her own urine.

Sometimes I hate my writing so much it makes me sick to even approach the computer letalone face the screen and come to terms with how much more I have to finish. I squeeze my theighs, enraged at my inefficiency, til white thumbprints appear. I watch the blood fill them in as a temporary distraction from the lame lame lameness of how lame everything is.

Dog offers me her squeezy toy.

We take a walk. She cocks her head.

I wonder what Dog is thinking as Dog wonders what I am thinking and I realize that we are thinking the same thing. And I wonder which of us is slumming it. And I don't think it's me.

Note:
Monkey (Amelia) has lived with my mom for 23 years. 2 years longer than she's had me. Monkey gets the good towels.

Fuckity Fuck Fuck (or, the beauty of the blossoms)

2008-08-16T18:03:00.001-07:00

Sam seems to be doing better thank god. No permanent damage, no ruptured tendons as he insisted was the case while lamenting "well... I guess I need to choose another career. I can never be a musician." I held back from reminding him that Django only had 2 fingers and still tore it up, but then a surge of big-sisterly-snootiness overtook me and I said "See? This is what it's like to feel depressed. Sucks, huh?"

This was in response to a lifetime of my blissfully contended brother observing my bouts of anxiety depression obsession and self doubt the same way a beach towel might consider a volleyball... why all that bouncing soaring pounding nauseating spiraling hysteria? Why get smacked around all day by angry women when you can just lie on the sand and have them lounge atop you? This is the kid whose first girlfriend was a beautiful blonde heiress who flew him to her private peninsula complete with houses cabins docks and boats. Private fucking peninsula. I spend highschool cramming for AP classes, being class president, and meticulously concocting the ingredients of a fairytale relationship only to end up with an eating disorder and an alcoholic nutjob while Sam basically sleeps and smokes his way into a fucking romance novel.

But while we're on the subject of fucking... one of my loyal readers who also happens to be my loyal aunt mentioned a friend of hers read this blog and thinks I say fuck too much. My first instinct was, of course, to tell that friend to go fuck herself. Who the fuck does she think she fucking is? Go read Dr. Laura's blog if you want things kept clean.

But after some fucking consideration I realized that my love of etymology has never ventured into the furtive forest of fuck and so I decided to do some further fucking research.

There are many theories as to the origin of fuck. Some say it comes from one or a combination of a cornucopia of language roots:
The Swedish focka -strike push
The Swedish fock -penis
The French se foutre- to care nothing
The German ficken- to itch, scratch, make quick movements to and fro
The Latin facare- to do, to make
The Dutch fugtig- damp, musty

I learned the word has its fair share of fucklore, if you will. Some falsely surmise it originated as a medieval battlefield taunt (holding up your middle arching finger and shouting 'pluck you' was a way to rub in the fact that the soldiers had been victorious and would be able to fight again), others claim it's actually an acronym (False Use of Carnal Knowledge, Fornication Under the Christian King...). The fact of the matter is that although it was coyly referenced in euphemism by Shakespeare, C.S. Lewis, and James Joyce, its most popular advertisement came from a Louis Armstrong song entitled Ol' Man Mose, chorus below:

(We believe) He kicked the bucket,
(We believe) Yeah man, buck-buck-bucket,
(We believe) He kicked the bucket and ol' man mose is dead,
(We believe) Ahh, fuck it!
(We believe) Buck-buck-bucket

Which basically means that the reason people use the word Fuck is because some guy couldn't think of a rhyme for bucket. Seriously, can you? Nantucket... that's all I got.

Despite its humble beginnings, fuck blossomed into veritable verbal fucking manna- for no other word can convey so many things for so many people in so many different situations:

Fuck can be used in an endless number of ways, its grammar malleability showcased by the
transitive verb form- she fucked him
intransitive verb- he likes to fuck
adjective- where did all the fucking doritos go?
adverb- you talk too fucking much
noun- who gives a flying fuck?
verb- don't fuck with me buster.
exclamation- Holy fuck!

But what really struck me was despite the fact that fuck came from far and wide, its countries of origin are fucked when it comes to the handy applicability we enjoy here in the USA

In French, "He's a great fuck" is "C'est un bon coup" but "He's a fuckup" is "C'est un pauvre con" while "Fuck off" is "Va chier!" (I don't speak fantastic French so don't slaughter me for translation). The list goes on. They are missing out on the simplistic beauty of our Fuck... a fuck which can be used to describe joy, disappointment, surprise, anger, and an endless host of other emotions. A true chameleon, Fuck should be celebrated for its versatility and efficiency- it's the ipod of profanity, the Bard of bawdiness, the Hercules of lewd, the frosting on the birthday cake of foulmouthed filth.

So what have I learned? Perhaps I could use more restraint, but we're all adults here... and if the best way I can think of to describe a music tour in which 1/3 of my band goes from jazz-god to limbless-lad in a month is "a fucking disaster," I'm not going to hold back. It would be patronizing. I think too much of you to dress my posts up in bonnets and powder their noses before publishing.

However, I will admit that perhaps due to its vunderful versatility I might use a fucking fuck-crutch a little more than fucking necessary to inject edginess into anotherwise bland sentence. And after what I have learned, fuck has come too far, has blossomed too magnificently in its unparallelled functionality, to be taken for granted. Like fine china, perhaps fuck should only be taken out for the most special of circumstances... if the pope comes to visit or something.

Or maybe, rather than being a crazy celibate monk about my fucks, I should simply learn to appreciate and truly savor them instead of hurling them around like fucks grow on trees. The world is a splendid place full of many complex beautiful things awaiting our attention, and we can choose to hurry past, or to bask in their fucking glow.

So have a lovely evening folks. Hug your families. Breath some fresh air. Be patient with yourselves. I, for one, am not going to frivolously fritter my beautiful things away just for the heck of it.

But sometimes, and in some contexts, something feels so right it can't be wrong.

Goodnight folks.

Fuck!!
H

Blah Blah Blog

2008-08-14T09:38:00.000-07:00

I have to be honest, folks. Frequent blogging freaks me the fuck out because every time I finish a post I’m happy with it means dick the next day, and maybe even worse than dick, raises the bar for the next post. Today, in a pathetic attempt to find a blogging niche and a mad dash to one-up myself, I pumped successful blogs for ideas, took my favorite post titles, gutted them of heinously awful/ridiculous content and filled in my own.

TOP LISTS
Everyone on the blogosphere seems too brain addled to be capable of reading content longer than one sentence, so we have reverted to a simplified bullet point system as demonstrated by the two real post titles found below and filled with my own content:

Top five hairstyles of Lauren LC Conrad and how to do them yourself:
Seeing as the complexities of my hairstyling repertoire amount to two modes: hair up and hair down, this is perplexing. For a brief period in middleschool (known as the dark ages) I subscribed to the very popular Puerty Rican hair-plastered-to-your-skull look, and the combination of my rather large head and the even larger plume of cauliflower curls bursting forth around my neck once I had run out of skull to plaster my hair to with gobs of hairgel is something I get chills reliving even now.

I can however, point out that the only thing which flagged this chick as a candidate for being on TV in the first place was the fact that she is fucking loaded. If you have enough money to employ a professional hair stylist, you too will have fab hair ladies. So here is my how-to for La Lauren’s cute wavy look:

1. Get rich. (I’m talkin’ four iphones and a swarovski-coated Chihuahua rich.)

2. Get pretty. (skinny, tan, toned, mani and pedi botox lunching at the Ivy pretty)

3. Get someone else to grow you some really fantastic hair (preferably a vegan nubile Swiss virgin) then lob it off and get it woven into your own hair.

4. Get another someone to perform daily blows, curls, spritzes, scrunches, twists, and up-dos on your lovely new locks. It is preferable to abuse this someone verbally, financially, or otherwise if you get really creative.)

5. Work it, biatch!

Top three ways to get into a bar underage:
Boobs, more specifically, cleavage, sideboob, or, for the truly desperate or perhaps already halfway gone due to vigilant pre-gaming- the nip slip. It’s not classy ladies, but neither is the drunken dance floor dry-humping you’re about to be doing. Pay a bum to buy you a bottle of wine and drink the classy way- with friends in a candlelit room where the floor doesn’t stick to your shoes and smell like piss, or for the truly Hemmingway at heart- alone in your locked room with only the glow of a flickering candle for company.

HOW TO GET SHIT DONE POST
There are many posts which claim they are doing you a favor by telling you how to be more efficient, effective, and productive.

However, scanning the internet for ways to be productive is like fucking a porcupine to get rid of that stabbing pain in your inner theigh. I mean that’s a little graphic but seriously, the whole reason you’re unproductive is the fact you are spending time stumbling upon these articles. However, if you fall into the category of people who are genuinely trying to find answers instead of dicking around and then giving themselves an excuse for dicking around by finding a ‘productive’ way of dicking around, then you need to know a few things which are brutally honest and which , even in my most manic raging waves of productivity, I can never manage to stick to:

How To Be Productive
1. Sit down and fucking do it.
2. Shut up, stop whining, and really do it.
3. Seriously, what the fuck are you still doing here- go do it. It will usually get done.

These posts love to harp on the power of positive thinking, taking small bites, and good planning, but all the planning and smiling in the world isn’t going to get shit done unless you do it. Go and do it.

REVIEWS OF STUFF BY PEOPLE WITH NO AUTHORITY
People like to review new technology and applications, and I’ve noticed that the NEW FACEBOOK has garnered a huge amount of posts. But what worries me more is the huge amount of views on said posts… a whole community of people who are too retarded and devoid of personality to even make their own decision about the ultimate tecno-tool for retards with no personalities

Review of the New Facebook
Don’t get me wrong, I use the facebook. I use it more than I’ll care to admit, but I am under no illusion that I am indulging in anything short of binging on a sociopathic-masturbation sunday with a .com cherry on top. Facebook and THE NEW FACEBOOK are still good for exactly the same things:

1. reinforcing my fear of social interaction
2. stalking the fuck out of everyone under the guise of “social networking”
3. Looking at pictures of old boyfriends’ new girlfriends to see if they are prettier than I am
4. Looking at pictures of the bitchy girls from highschool to see if they are prettier than I am
5. Looking at pictures of seemingly happy people going to parties, lounging on the beach together, and making silly faces on backpacking Euro-trips to reinforce what I already suspected, which is that my life is boring and empty.
6. Posing for pictures with people who are not really my friends at parties on the beach and in Europe to reinforce the illusion that compared to me, everyone else’s life is boring and empty.

Movie Review
Who really cares about your movie review unless you are A. a well respected film maker B. famous, or C. a total asshole who is entertaining only in their brazen assholedome. Since I have no claim to a or b yet, I’ll dive right into C and say something inflammatory just for the sake of getting attention:

Heath Ledger absolutely SUCKED ASS in Dark Knight because he was not Heath Ledger, but rather a shapeshifting reincarnation of Sid Vicious who died only a few months before the birth of baby Heath, as clearly evidenced here:

Well done Sid.

CELEBRITY GOSSIP BLOG
Someone got fat, someone got knocked up, someone is in rehab. I don’t know how the same recycled stories still manages to maintain our interest year after year. I mean come on people, we have CG now, can’t we have a cooler scandal? Mary Kate Olsen is dating a kraken!

I don’t care if Lindsay Lohan is a lesbian. Call me when you find out her lesbian lover is the spirit of Catherine the great (the Paris Hilton of the 18th century, whose well pounded Polish pussy got gossip mills a churnin’ claiming she died by having sex with a horse. That’s right. A horse. Now THAT’S a quality tabloid. Step it up tabloids of 2008, you’ve got big shoes (and vaginas) to fill.)

I’m out.
Xo
H

Awesomeness: the Scottish Tourism Epic

2008-08-12T07:40:00.000-07:00

Now with a 7 hour plane ride between me and Scotland, I have had some time to reflect, because although I don’t have a thing for shitty weather, alcoholism and kilt-clad lads, I do have a special fondness for Scotland.

And after some consideration I think it’s really an appreciation for the perpetual cultural zeitgeist which, to be sociologically blunt, pretty much amounts to “… Fuck it!” Nowhere is this better exemplified than in their tourism industry.

Scot the Scottish Tourism Apprentice and his master are drinking ale by a fireside...

But Sir… our weather is dreary and depressing and the only thing we’ve ever done arguably better than other countries is make whiskey!

I know my boy, but...Fuck it! We’re gunna make it work.

How?

We’ll start with the weather. You know the moors?

You mean our many “ open areas of land- usually above sea level- with poor drainage?”

That’s right... We’re gunna sex that shit up.

Excuse me?

You heard me lad. We’ll get some product placement in those newfangled ‘chick’ novels… the crappiness of the weather will represent… tempestuous relationships… women love that shit. Get those batty Bronte bitches on the phone.

But sir, who would want to read that?

Nobody but… fuck it. We’ll make pretentious English departments in other countries feel like they’re being sexist and unsophisticated if they don’t force every single goddamn student they ever get their hands on read it!

Oh I see! What about that Shakespeare Fellow? I heard he’s writing something that takes place in Scotland right now… it’s called Macb-

Stop right there.…. Fuck it. From now on it’s called the Scottish Play. Send some of our goons to every single place it’s being performed and have ‘em smack the shit out of someone with a blunt object anytime they say the name. It’ll catch on. Fuck I’m brilliant.

But sir… even if we get people here… how do we make them stay?

We get them piss drunk of course. We’re good at that. Here’s how I want the main street arranged: pub, fruit-stand, pub, pharmacy, pub, pub, pub with prostitutes in the back of the pub, charity shop, pub.

What if they don’t drink?

Then they’re idiots! And idiot tourists love two things: old stuff and magic stuff. We’ll give ‘em tours of the castles.

You mean the crumbling piles of rock all over the place? But they’re just… old walls.

…Fuck it. We can make up anything we want to say because the only physical evidence is a bunch of fuckin’ rocks. Battles! Bravery! We'll sell swords in the giftshop. And then for magic…

Yes?

Hmm… you know what? Fuck it. Giant fish dragon. In a lake. Is it magical? Is it a dinosaur?

Is it?
Exactly. They’ll eat it up. Go round up some drunken fishermen, a half broken camera, and a noodle with an eyehole cut out. And while you’re out- you know those ridiculous tablecloth skirts people wear because we like to go commando? … fuck it. We’ll sell ‘em to tourists at $200 a pop. Oh! And you know that obnoxious squeezebox thing that sounds like you’re squeezing a dying cat?

Sir… you can’t mean… the bagpipes?

Get a whole bunch of guys, I’m talkin’ like 500 guys, playing the dead cats and wearing tablecloths. We’ll get people to pay $60 a seat, get the audience wasted and then… set stuff on fire.

(Here we have the Edinburgh Military tattoo... thousands of $60 seats booked more than a year in advance.)

Sir… you’re truly a genius. How can I ever repay you for all you've taught me?

Go make our national animal the most hilariously fruity thing you can possibly think of. Oh- and get me a drink. or five.

Anything for you sir.

And the official animal of Scotland is (…fuck it)
a unicorn! That’s right, who needs biological taxonomy when you have whimsy?

Even better, true to the nature of a loveable drunken bum who you might poke with a stick, but a looong stick just incase he ever musters enough motivation to lunge, Scotland’s motto is
“Nemo me impune lacessit” which means “no one provokes me with impunity.”

So you can provoke Scotland. You can poke and provoke and overtake its monarchy all goddamn millenia. But sooner or later… (probably later) you’re gunna get… well... (they haven’t gotten around to that part of the slogan.)

But you do not have provoking impunity, sir. There are consequences. Oh Yes. Something of undetermined nature and magnitude at an unknown future date is going to… do something. You will be somethinged. Badly. And that’s what you get for fucking with Scotland biatches.

xox
H (no one facebookpokes me with impunity) annah

E(R)epiphany

2008-08-07T16:51:00.000-07:00

There's nothing like sitting next to a once ten, now three-toed man gushing blood to make you reevaluate your own 'problems.'

My brother Sam has been experiencing tons of strange and intense wrist pains, and today's fun kicked off with his hands going numb, turning blue, and deforming into a creepy crippled claw-like position which made him look like the Crypt Keeper.

"Umm... what the hell should we do?" I ask the reception staff at the physical therapy place.
"Does he want a biscuit?" says a chubby receptionist
"A what?"
"A biscuit. Chocolate or oatmeal?" she asks cheerily reaching into her purse.
"Are you serious? He's shaking and turning blue."
"So... he doesn't want a biscuit?"
"No. No he doesn't want a biscuit. He wants some pain killers. Do you have anything for the pain?"
She looks at me suspiciously and puts down the biscuits.
"Just popping out for a cigarette I'll be back soon." she declares.

Well fuck.

Eventually biscuit lady and I decide to call an ambulance, which, aside from how scary the afternoon was, is actually kind of exciting. I feel suddenly like I'm on Grey's Anatomy and although I have no medical training and the phone connection is fine I find myself shouting seemingly authoritative things at the 911 (or 999 over here) person. "He is 18! He has blue hands! He is breathing! With his mouth! And nose! Stat! Shit!"

In the ambulance Sam calms down a bit and I try to get the paramedic to assure him he hasn't damaged his hands for life. Sam is the best jazz piano improviser I've ever fucking met and is understandably upset at the prospect of losing his playing capabilities. The guy goes on and on about tendons and oxygen and calcium and seems really nonplussed. I try to coax him into straightforwardly assuring Sam that he'll be fine.

"He'll be fine, right?" I nudge
"Looks like you're the one who's not doing so fine lass.. calm down there."
"I am calm."
"You've got a wee vein popping out in your forehead says otherwise."
"I'm fine."
"Do you always turn red when yer fine?"
"Listen, why are we stopping at every red light? Isn't this an ambulance?"
"I hope so, otherwise this is the worst-stocked iced cream truck in the whole damn county" he laughs, pointing to a cabinet full of splints.

Har d har har.

Then we proceed to the emergency room where we wait for 2 hours only to be moved into a small room where we wait for another 2 hours, then a nurse comes in and takes blood while she tells us about how she lives near the world's largest puffin sanctuary.

"Are you concerned the hands are blue?" I ask
"Beautiful birds."
"But-"
"Very regal."
"What?"
"The puffins. The royalty of marine birds. Did you know they can live 30 years?"
"And the hands?"
"They're blue."
"Umm... thanks."

Eventually they rule out the crazy-bad diseases my mother and I have been driving ourselves insane with worry researching on WebMD, splint him, drug him, and send him home.

The weirdest thing is that the whole day is free- they don't take a health insurance card or ask for a billing address. Thank fucking God for free national healthcare (wtf America, I'd put up with snarky paramedics and ornithological enthusiasts for this kind of treatment anyday). When we finally walk out of there 12 hours later with a bagfull of codeine and wrist splints and haven't paid a penny, I feel like I've pulled off a major jewel heist.

Sam is sleeping and no longer in constant pain, though he can't use his hands even to feed himself Thai food or go to the bathroom, and I cannot help but feel guilty for all of the complaining I've done thus-far on this trip, even right here on this blog.

It's easy to feel very far away from everything we'd like be and to have. Lists of our unfulfilled desires multiply with overwhelming perceived flaws in an ever-mounting mountain of reasons to be unsatisfied, frustrated, just plain depressed.

But for tonight at least, dazed from 12 hours of ER tracklighting and shitty BBC waitingroom television and gushing toe blood and unhelpful cookie-wielding receptionists and the yicky smell of antiseptic and vomit, I'm taking a moment to acknowledge and celebrate the too-often under-appreciated fact that I can go to the bathroom all by myself and feed myself chicken satay without having to use my feet, ending up with Thai peanut sauce lodged in my nose, as Sam pathetically demonstrated before bed.

And although being a superhero billionaire, or an Oscar winning astronaut, or a magical shape-shifting genie that can talk to dogs might be super awesome...compared to toe-less Joe, most of us with all 10 little piggies are having a pretty good night.

I mean, I can pee and eat chicken all by myself. Seriously. Woohoo! And if you can too, then you should smile wide, and you should give yourself a pat on the back for Sam, because he can't even pat himself on the front.

(See Ned- I don't just complain on this blog. I can be positive. I can be uplifting. I could uplift Oscar the Grouch, Squidward, and Eeyore and still have enough lifting power to lift your grumpy bum into sillyville and back- I'm like the Jewish Oprah. Suck it. Mwah.)

much love and limb limberness,
H

Dirty Little Secrets for Cheap Laughs

2008-08-06T13:46:00.000-07:00

Hooray for the Fringe!

Today I met up with fellow college grad G, who is spreading his carefree youth wings for the last time before September when he will be caged into official corporate servitude (don’t feel too bad, he’ll have enough cash to buy you and your family and force you to dress up in hilarious animal costumes for his afternoon entertainment before he’s 30). We have seen a host of shows ranging from complete shit to nonstop laughs.

One show opened with two gorillas emerging from orange puffs of smoke, then peeling off their fur to reveal leather, bikini-clad babes who proceeded to have an elaborate boob-jiggling sword fight before falling prostrate on the floor where they lay for the entirety of the show. Then the comedian of the evening came out dressed like Conan the Barbarian and shouted “Because I fucking can!” before starting his standup.

And he fucking could because he was fucking funny. Last year, G and I were brave/stupid enough to enter Yale’s Last Comic Standing, and we were... not. Seeing as that when I am not craving attention I am a neurotic recluse whose fear of rejection is only eclipsed by her fear of public failure, that may well have been both my debut and my Waterloo on the standup stage.

But in the written word I’m a lot more comfortable and can be flanked by my badass literary posse Captain Edit, Colonel Thesaurus, and General Wikipedia, so I thought I’d try out a popular theme I’ve noticed in the good acts here at the Fringe which I like to call the “I’m fucking crazy and here’s why” admission monologue. So here, in no particular order, is my list:

I have alternated between genuinely thinking I’m the laziest most worthless person that has ever lived and genuinely thinking I am the fucking messiah, or maybe more like a badass revolutionary who’s a cross between Che Guevara, that Terminator kid and Cheetara from Thunder Cats.

I often change clothes 3 times before walking out the door because, depending upon on where I’m going, I feel compelled to delicately navigate between being casual but not looking like a fucking hobo, trendy without looking like I'm trying to be trendy, hippie without the crunchiness, sexy without the sluttiness, and quirky without being one those obnoxious “LOOK AT ME!” girls who prances around in fairy wings.

Sometimes while you are talking, I hum a song in my head about all the things I would rather be doing than listening to you talk. (watching Schindler’s list on repeat, giving birth to quintuplets without anesthesia on an airplane that’s about to crash, swimming in snot, etc.)

Even though, as compared to 99% of the world, I come from a super comfortable financial background, if you have a trust fund, no matter how nice you are, not only am I jealous of you and completely dismissive of your ‘problems’, but I am probably doodling an imaginary Uncle Moneybags from Monopoly mustache onto your face as you talk.

I rage against all the bullshit masochistic anti-feminist swill in the media, but secretly love those old movies where the guy calls the high-collared straight-laced ingenue “doll-face” and passionately kisses her against her will and then she smacks him in the face but secretly absolutely loves it and goes in for another.

I love to be in charge, but will readily cede power and delegate responsibility in order to have a scapegoat in case things go wrong.

If I date you, I will test you with a formula which is as elaborate as it is illogical, and no matter how spontaneous you think we are being, I will have already determined whether or not you will ever get to touch my boobs by test number 3.

I am suspicious of, and only feel at ease with beautiful confident women once I am able to identify what about them is sufficiently fucked up (anything will do really, crippling fear of spiders, dead parents, lazy eye, lisp, lupus, hot but pants-on-head retarded…)

I think my farts smell like a delicious magical bread factory in a swampy but lovable bog.

I make fun of religions people, but have earnestly prayed at one point or another for all of the following things: blonde hair, a tomagatchi, chocolate cake, rock hard abs, a pony, a bag of pot as big as a pony, sparkly shoes, my own island, and an island of ponies wearing sparkly shoes and smoking pot... thank you Jesus.

I consider having children because I think there should be more of my DNA out there than other people’s. Darwin would have wanted it that way.

Feel free to share your own anonymous dirty little secrets. It might even inspire me to share the real ones... More on the festival to come.

xo
H

reYALEity check: comment extravaganza

2008-08-04T09:51:00.000-07:00

Since my Yale posting garnered an unprecedented amount of comments, I've decided to distill a little 'best of,' because I thought my responses were clever, and I want you guys to see them, and I know the only people who read entire comment chains are… well me and my father.

If you don't care about this topic enough for a second helping then 1) who the hell are you? 2) piss off and 3) I love you I need you I swear I didnt mean it, check back tomorrow for a fun Edinburgh Fringe Festival post.

Here's my point from the previous post distilled:
Yale is nothing special. Gucci sunglasses shade your eyes whilst shouting “Hey you! Guess what? I’m fucking loaded!” but they don’t work better than the crappy plastic ones at the gas station.

Inquisitive Oliver, reasoning that there must be something about Yale that justifies its mythical status in his and the collective mind, like maybe a magical Hogwartsesque stone that sneezes gold and grants career wishes, is my first commenter:

OLIVER LI: Besides name, do you believe there is anything outstanding about Yale that sets it apart from other schools?

ME: Well Oliver, in short, NO.

In long, Yale has a hugeass library and gym and attracts a lot of famous people. Everyone from the president of China to the director of the biggest budget porn movie of all time visited during my time at Yale and I shook hands with fucking Paul McCartney at my graduation. But that doesn't mean, and I cannot emphasize this enough, that those famous people give a good goddamn about you or your education.

Then I was pleasantly surprised to receive... a rebuttal! I have always dreamed of being part of a community of insightful writers who hurl witty insults at one another over fancy cocktails and even wrote as much in my blogger profile but never imagined anybody would care enough to respond to my bitter blatherings. Anonymous defends Yale:

ANONYMOUS: Wow, really? Yale was the best thing that happened to me…I felt safe, surrounded by beauty every day, and in love with every person and conversation I had…

ME: In love with every person and conversation you had?... what kind of happy pills are you on, and where can I get some?

Maybe the roving drunken bums, the plethora of horrendously boring intro classes, and the soul-sucking icefest that was October through March in New Haven were figments of my imagination. It wouldn't be the first time I thunk myself into a funk, and of course everyone is entitled to their opinion no matter how suspiciously saccharine I think it might be... (you giddy grinning freak)

ANONYMOUS: And the teachers -- really, you didn't find anyone who sat down and took the time to figure out how best you learned?

ME: I would certainly never claim that every single teacher at Yale is a twat, but for me at least, out of the 37ish classes I took I had:

2 amazing teachers
4 good teachers
9 teachers who were amusing simply in their utter fucking craziness (including the guy who got fired for faking his PhD, the guy who called the Mexicans in my class 'shifty bean lovers,' the raging uber feminist who permanently replaced the term 'man' in her personal lexicon with 'penis wielder' and the digital video professor who showed us the epic film he made featuring him, naked on a hospital bed, shaving his entire body while he wept and then jacked off into the pile of collected hair clippings. Seriously. WTF.)
6 totally vanilla blah teachers
10 teachers who were the temporary bane of my existence due to their incompetence and
6 teachers who, if I were stuck on a desert island with, I would delay every rescue plan just for the opportunity and excuse to tie them to a tree while warthogs and fireants ravaged their flesh as I forced them to listen to their own horrendously awful lectures for hour after cerebral mutilating hour before I gave them the choice between completing every reading essay quiz and test on their own syllabus or having a wild monkey feast on their eyeballs to which they would undoubtedly choose the latter.

So while this doesn't amount to a torturous education, what I'm saying is that Yale isn't utopia. I expected, in my prefrosh naivety, for most classes to be fucking stellar illuminating experience. That's what Yale told me.

ANONYMOUS: I had more than one lecturer or young professor reach out and engage me, and e-mail me to get coffee and talk about my paper, or just life. I am certain this would not have happened anywhere else -- definitely not in a state school with enormous classes and possibly not at other Ivies…

ME: Now this really gets my proverbial goat. I have to assume you are being hyperbolic. Right? I'm glad you had close teacher relationships, as did I, but it's that kind of blatant elitism that puts a mindfuck on kids going into application hell. "Well shit" they think "no teacher will ever want to talk to me if I don't go to Yale!" I have to believe, based on simply knowing more than a few people who are not Yalies, that meaningful and profound educational relationships have developed in the not-so-hallowed halls of universities all over the country, even *gasp!* in a state school or two.

But perhaps out of stubbornness or a desperate need to justify their sometimes unfounded and usually unbridled Yale Bulldog pride, Anonymous returns:

ANONYMOUS: another thing - I never could have afforded another non-ivy liberal arts school, like wesleyan, because those schools mostly have limited financial aid.

ME: Awesome. I'm jealous. My financial aid was fine, but I am now solidly in the hole. Plus, if I had chosen to go to Vassar, Sarah Lawrence, Ithaca, Con College, or Wes, I would have been paid a few grand a semester just to attend. That's right- THEY WOULD HAVE PAID ME.

So while the Yale package isn't shit it certainly isn't the top, especially for a university which is SO FUCKING WELL ENDOWED they could give the Hubble telescope a golden shower of Ivy League excellence.

And then, much to my titillation, I get my first troll!

CRIMSON: Yale = Harvard rejects

Hilarious. You truly have a saber wit.

A few hours later, in a faux-nonchalant attempt to prove his Harvard diploma actually does make him special and important, Crimson returns with some more stunning feats of brilliance…

CRIMSON: If I could make a neutral observation, you should put more time in your writings, so they are more coherent, and be a bit more balanced….

ME: First of all, I think you need a dictionary. Your observation is not “neutral” if you introduce yourself by condemning 15,000 people you’ve never met as rejects in the face of your Crimson godliness.

CRIMSON: And I think your blog suffers from organisation and it stinks of a student who was slightly wronged by Yale.

ME: Well you’re right there bucko, I was “slightly wronged” by Yale. I think every negative review stems from this sense of wronging, from feeling that something didn’t live up to its own hype, wasted your time and money, or pissed you off enough that you want to make sure other people don’t go in with the same high expectations. That’s what a real review is. If I were going to pad my review with all pros instead of cons I would be the fucking Princeton Review who (if you couldn’t tell by the title) has been lavishing Ivy League balls with big wet tongue kisses since its inception.

As to the claim that I’m incoherent, your point is actually well taken and I agree I may need to edit and streamline a bit more. However, the blog is called a “mess of motley musings” and not “an alphabetized spreadsheet of doctoral theses” so what the hell did you really expect?

ANONYMOUS #2: I find all this very intriguing and it has opened my eyes. I am currently about to be a senior in high school choosing universities, and having a really hard time!...Any advice?

I am thrilled to discover another Anonymous has put in their 2 cents before I get a chance to answer and it's a pretty good post albeit pithy.

ANONYMOUS #3: "education" is overrated. If you're going to a university for "intellectual stimulation", chances are you won't find it, regardless of where you go. Choose whichever school gives you the most money. If you have a full ride to a state school, go for it. I wish I had.

There are some exceptions: if you plan on going into a field where reputation/connections will make/break your careeer (investment banking at UPenn), or where you're learning a physical skill (singing, dance at Juilliard), it might be worth it to spend the extra bucks.

ME: I think ANONYMOUS 3 has made an excellent point, and one which is probably difficult to hear for those who are drowning in application propaganda. As Americans in the age of the internet we’re all looking for instant gratification, the quick fix, and a snazzy college name seems like the fast track to inspiration-nation, but the truth is that if you want to do something truly original with your life you’re probably not going to find a lot of support at ‘top’ colleges.

What you will find in college are lots of course requirements and homework which seems maddeningly similar to the bullshit timewasting you had to put up with in highschool in the name of getting into college. And if that doesn't piss you off, then your spirit has been completely broken just like traditional education always intended for it to be. Don't get me wrong, college is not all a time waste; you will find some great teachers, but you will find great teachers anywhere. My favorite teacher of all time never got her masters in education and would not have even been allowed as an associate assistant professor at Yale letalone a tenured one.

College is not the best or the only way to learn. Do you like music? Well the Beatles couldn’t read music notation so fuck music theory, kids. Like money? Richard Branson rebel billionaire didn’t even graduate highschool. I’m not saying school isn’t important, but I’m saying that it’s not as important as it seems right now, and in this spectacular age of plenty you’ll be able to learn everything you need to by being pugnacious and passionate and having access to freakin' Wikipedia- no Ivies required.

“But people who go to top schools make more money, right?!!” Actually, all the studies that claim this are laughably biased because they don’t take into consideration the fact that even if Harvard lets in 1000 brilliant kids and then does nothing but play pattycake with them for four years, Harvard will still get credit when the kids go on to major corporate ass-kicking whether or not they had anything to do with it.

One of my favorite studies which addresses this flaw is by Al Krueger and proves that people who go to ‘top’ schools make JUST AS MUCH money as people who got into those schools and turned them down, implying that it’s NOT the school that makes the success story. ‘Top’ schools identify people who are go-getters and those people will be success stories whether or not they choose attend.

In the grand scheme of things, if you’re a smart hardworking creative person, IT WILL MAKE NO DIFFERENCE what school you went to. Have faith in yourself.

So what to do? Figure out what you might be interested in and sit in on lots of classes to see what actually excites you instead of what sounds really prestigious. Use your detective skills and look around campus- are there people who you would want to spend time with? Are there opportunities which will satisfy and nurture you intellectually and creatively? Are students encouraged to explore and devise unique curriculum?

If yes, then that’s the right school no matter what it’s called. You are fucking awesome, and you need an Ivy diploma to prove it as much as you need your SAT score to get you laid.

So that’s my rant for the afternoon- I am so looking forward to more comments if you’re feeling curious or furious or just plain silly. And if I ribbed you a bit in this post... it's all in good fun.

Xox
H

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain

"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein