http://gingermiss.wordpress.com/

So, I haven’t died, nor have I abandoned my desire to write in this blog. I hope to start again soon.

Take that, world.

Random bits of interest.

1. Schizophrenia Gene May Have On/Off Switch Interesting, specifically for people suffering from schizophrenia and their families. The study was done on mice and there is no guarantee that the results will transfer over into humans, but the mice supposedly displayed behaviors similar to those that are seen in people with the disorder. Hopefully we’ll hear about this again someday, as opposed to many of the seemingly revolutionary medical tests I read about in the news that mysteriously disappear.

2. Amish donate cash to school gunman’s widow Although I am wary of people who urge universal forgiveness, I was struck and impressed by the sympathy in this act. For the Amish people to be able to make such a kind gesture toward a woman who has probably suffered a great deal since the incident in question - when her husband took several Amish schoolgirls hostage, eventually killing four and injuring others - is thought-provoking and inspiring.

3. Commuting Sucks One of the most beneficial perks of living in New York City is the top-notch public transportation system. NYC is the only place I have ever lived where the public transportation system was so comprehensive and reliable that it greatly diminished your need for a car. In most American places, people have to rely on cars because they have no alternatives - places where public transit is limited to poor to non-existent. This study isn’t telling people anything they don’t know. Comprehensive public transportation improvements need to be a higher priority of the American public and of our politicians.

4. White Stripes cancel all 2007 tour dates :*[ Anyone who has read of my love of the White Stripes knows this is distressing news. Here’s hoping Meg gets better sometime soon. If she needs a break, she needs a break. I’m just glad I was able to see them when I did.

Glow Sticks on Will It Blend?

Knowing precisely what their consumers and the rest of the world would want to see, this company records crazy things being thrown into a blender. An incredibly durable blender. So elementary and wonderfully pleasing. There’s even a space on their website where you can suggest things to blend.

Other events of consequence have been on my radar recently, but I can’t really remember what any of them are. Random bits of fascinating news information that caught my eye. Such a strange place, this world.

Then I’m sorry for that. Beyond being a talented actor, my admiration for Owen Wilson stems primarily from his abilities as a writer and my general affection for the beautiful films he has co-written with Wes Anderson.

It must be so difficult for his family to see the information being disseminated about the situation. When you’re suicidally depressed, one of the things I sincerely doubt you want to hear is how everyone thought you were so happy, how you have so many reasons to be happy. I don’t want to say too much about it, just that I hope he is able to recuperate in a relatively quiet atmosphere.

People seem to have difficulty accepting the idea that depression can be caused by a chemical imbalance and that you may want to kill yourself no matter how ‘good’ your life seems. That’s part of why depression sucks so much, obviously.

The disdainful response that many people are having to this specific situation has made me think of the poem Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson. There’s some works of art that repeatedly come up during the course of your life, things that you’re extremely glad you were exposed to, and for me this poem is one of them.

“So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.”

I should post some of the spam comments I’ve received in the past 24 hours here so that people can see how hateful and repulsive they are, but it doesn’t really seem necessary. You could probably guess. “cunt” this and “rape” that, child porn fantasy fulfillment stories, disturbing images, random empty spam material, etc. etc. All this because of what I said below. Wow.

The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.

- Virginia Woolf

Always Apologize, Always Explain

That is the link to an excellent article on CNN.com today about the art of apologizing. The author, Martha Beck, has said everything I’ve been trying to express to my boyfriend for the last 5 years.

In my own, personal experience, it seems men have more difficulty apologizing than women. I’m not saying that women are great at apologizing, or that men who do genuinely apologize for their mistakes on a regular basis are fictional, just that it seems more difficult for them on a personal level. I’m not exactly sure why this is, but I would guess it has something to do with pride, with feeling like admitting to their mistakes makes them seem like a weaker, more fallible person, or just that it’s about maintaining their status and power in a relationship.

Regardless of the reason, this is one of the best articles I’ve read that outlines the situation (in a gender-neutral way) and gives a practical, straight-forward explanation as to why a genuine apology, however seemingly insignificant, is very important.

The introduction to the piece evaluates that stupid fucking line from Love Story - “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” - although Beck’s point was already made by Lisa Simpson several years ago.

I don’t care how much you love someone else. Somewhere down the line, you’re going to make a mistake, and you’re going to need to apologize for that mistake to maintain a healthy, functioning relationship. Beck makes an important point by saying that you shouldn’t be constantly apologizing; apologies should always reflect the idea that you (and you alone) are truly sorry for what you did or said.

Empty, useless apologies can often be more hurtful than not apologizing at all because it’s just showing the other person that you have no intention of listening to what they have to say and just want them to be quiet. I certainly find them much more frustrating, especially since it’s pretty easy to identify when someone is just jerking you around and isn’t actually repenting.

I have my own set of problems, but apologizing when I feel that I have done something wrong is not one of them. If you feel this is something you have difficulty with, or know someone who does, I encourage you to take a look.

You… won’t… be… come on, you know what’s coming….

SORRY!

Ha. I’m sure me and 9 million other people have made that original, hilarious joke.

P.S. - The wording in the article is not gender-neutral; the author writes the article with the goal of speaking to women who are apologizing to men. What I mean when I say this is that I feel the advice works well for both men and women.

Just wanted to write a quick note to say that I am currently ‘on vacation’. I’ll have internet access, but little time, so I probably won’t be doing any serious updating until I get back to my little computer environment on Wednesday, July 4th.

I also wanted to mention that I have now become a contributing writer over at AROO, although I have not yet contributed anything. Thanks very much to E.K. Glendower for the invitation!

P.S. - Fuck President Bush and Scooter Libby. 2008 can’t come fast enough. Let’s hope there’s something left of the country by the time he gets out of office.

Another news rundown, you say? Well, it was never really my intention with this blog to do a running commentary on every article I read, but it works at the moment.

There was a lot that grabbed my attention today. I also realized that I check CNN compulsively when given the opportunity to see if anything earthshattering has happened and whether or not I’m missing it. Kind of twisted, n’est pas? One is prompted to wonder, how did all those non-internet-blessed people survive before the world wide web came along? More peacefully, I imagine.

- One-eyed gator pulls golfer into pond : I’m starting off on a positive note, so to speak. Prior to moving to Florida for a period of my life, I was equally fascinated and horrified by the fact that gators run rampant there; that they shuffled their way into the bottom of swimming pools, waiting for unsuspecting skinny dippers; that they wandered into communities and devoured pets. It only gets weirder when you’re actually there. No, most Floridians don’t encounter alligators in their every day lives as if they were some unbearable blight on human existence, but everyone has their stories and some of them are harrowing indeed - or just plain strange.

One of my mother’s co-workers hit an alligator that was crossing the road while driving home one evening. Apparently the gator, somewhat unfazed, slunk back into the golf course pond it had emerged from or continued on towards it’s original destination. We guess this because when my mother’s co-worker turned around to see if the gator was alright, it had already disappeared.

One of my own co-workers lived in one of the really swampy areas of Central Florida. He was about 80-90 years old, eccentric, and enjoyed playing upon the unsettling presence of the alligators to those who admitted an interest. He mentioned how at night, if you looked out from his house onto the swamp, you could see thousands of red beady little eyes staring back at you from the darkness. He was the one who was sent to deal with the rogue alligators at my place of employment. When they would approach people, which they did on a more regular basis than one would like to have guessed, he would smack them in the nose with a stick. Their noses are very sensitive. This would send them scurrying back into the wilderness.

What I liked best about the article mentioned above were these two facts. 1) There was actually a “Beware of Alligator” sign posted outside the sixth hole where the alligator resides and the man was attacked. As a non-Floridian, I was often baffled by how nonchalant native Floridians were when it came to swimming in gator infested waters. It didn’t bother them at all. Around the time I moved away, I remember, a little boy was killed by an alligator while swimming in one of these bodies of water. Everyone in his community was surprised. I myself was not so surprised. If anything I was surprised I didn’t hear about it happening more often.

The second thing I liked about the article was the quote at the end from the general manager of the golf course: “Unfortunately, that’s part of Florida,” course general manager Rod Parry said. “There’s wildlife in these ponds.” There sure are, Rod. The purity of that statement and the unabashed straight-forwardness of it made me laugh. When it comes to publicized gator attacks, you often hear a lot of hmming and hawing on the parts of officials and wildlife experts. This guy basically just said, ‘Yep. We got gators. And they periodically attack you. Gotta watch out for that.’

- Runaway confronts man who kept her as ‘puppet’ : The following quote is the actual opening paragraph of this article: A former school security guard accused of keeping a teenage runaway in his home for a decade and having sex with her pleaded guilty Tuesday, the opening day of his trial.

That strikes me as a pretty soft and cuddly way to refer to imprisonment, sexual abuse, and statutory rape. Seriously, who the hell is writing this opening? The way that initial paragraph is worded actually seems to try and downplay the criminality of what the man in question did. Later in the article, they mention how the victim described herself as being treated “like a puppet”, with her abuser exerting control over pretty much everything she did.

How different do these two statements sound? The real version: A former school security guard accused of keeping a teenage runaway in his home for a decade and having sex with her pleaded guilty Tuesday, the opening day of his trial. Now another: The former school security guard who sexually abused a teenage runaway and held her captive in his home for a decade pleaded guilty to several assault charges Tuesday. Strangely different, in my opinion. I have to wonder what made them go with the first statement.

- Boy, 7, kills 8-year-old cousin while playing with gun : Other than being really tragic, there was nothing unexpected I came across while reading this article until I found this quote from ‘a family friend’ of the boy who was killed: “I don’t have a clue where he got this gun, but just I hope that this is a wake-up call to all the young mothers in Boston: Guns and babies do not mix,” Watts said.

I’m not sure what the mother’s fault is, if any. What I am sure of is that the article states she was at home at the time of the shooting and that there were people “related to gangs” living in the family’s apartment.

Rather than issue a wake up call to all the young mothers out there who probably already know guns and babies aren’t a good combination, let’s issue a wake up call to all the boys and men who think they’re so fucking tough that they can’t travel anywhere without a loaded gun. It never seems to be enough to just kill each other. They have to take as many people out with them as they can. Which reminds me of my last news bit for the day.

- Wrestler Chris Benoit Kills His Wife Nancy and Son Daniel : Well, the WWE is notorious for wallowing in any gutter that might increase the company’s cash flow. I wouldn’t say they’re reaching new lows with this whole story, but I guess I would describe it as solidly fortifying the lows they’ve already established for themselves.

They ran a three-hour tribute to Benoit. They are disputing media speculation that steroids played a role in Benoit’s fatally aggressive behavior, despite the fact that steroids were already found in his home. Clearly his wife and child were taking them.

Chris Benoit is a murderer. He choked his family to death. The company he worked for is celebrating his life and making it pretty damn clear that the only tragedy they see in the situation is the embarrassment they’ll suffer from it. I expect this kind of thing from them, but what really makes me sick is that all the ‘fans’ of the WWE more than likely won’t give a damn either. Apparently it doesn’t matter how high profile, how wealthy, how anything you are; if you’re an abused wife or an abused child, the ones who have the ability to help you don’t care. Not even after you’re dead.

I haven’t been around online lately. No real reason for this other than general exhaustion. I certainly have been sleeping a lot. Anyway, I wanted to at the very least mention some of the recent news pieces I’ve seen that caught my attention.

- Girl’s feet severed on ride at Six Flags : Hating roller coasters, I’ve never been on one of these Tower of Terror/Freefall rides where the enjoyment of the thing comes from the sick feeling you get in your stomach. When is Six Flags going to learn that naming their rides after Superman seems to increase the probability that something bad is going to happen?

- We, the two-headed snake, dies : Several things struck me about this snake other than the fact that it was generally an anomaly. 1) It lived for 8 years when most two-headed snakes die within weeks of birth. 2) The heartbreaking description of how We’s two heads would struggle to slither in two divergent directions. Sounds like such a sad existence. I find snakes as unsettling as the next person commonly does, but this was interesting.

- Mythic Creatures exhibit at the Museum of Natural History : I haven’t seen it yet, but I really want to. I hear tell of Giant Squid/Kraken inclusion, information that is verified by the website. Suffice it to say, I’ll be very excited to go.

- Bone Cracking Ancient Wolves : The more we learn about history, the more I believe that the creatures we once thought to be ‘mythic’ may truly have existed.

So much more has happened in the world and I haven’t been able to comment on it. Hopefully I’ll have caught up on my super-exhaustion soon.

Laurelin in the Rain has posted the 39th Carnival of Feminists, and there’s definitely some interesting reads in there. Just wanted to mention it. Tra la la.