A Baffling Conundrum of Human Existence: Part I

Over the past couple of days, I've been thinking extensively about two extraordinarily offensive things. The first, which will be the topic of today's post, is torture porn.

Torture porn is the genre of film that deals pretty much exclusively with scenes of horrific torture violence, typically propagated against one human being by another human being for no real discernible reason. There tends to be very little else in the way of plot.

I have several questions regarding the torture porn genre. The first, that I think I've given the most thought to, is this: what possible need could watching horrific violence fulfill for normal, well-adjusted people? 

The name "torture porn" comes from the idea that, like regular porn is mostly sex scenes linked together by a typically fairly tenuous plot, these films are mostly scenes of torture linked together by some half-baked construct of a so-called plot. Like sex is the driving force behind porn, human pain and humiliation is the driving force behind torture porn.

I understand the appeal of regular porn. To me, it makes a lot of sense that pornography is a multi-billion dollar industry. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs qualifies sexual gratification as among a person's most basic needs, putting it on the same level as food and sleep. However, sexual intimacy is qualified as a much less basic need. With that particular distinction in mind, I fully understand why so many people use pornography. 

Further, I understand the appeal of the horror movie genre, in which scary things happen and violence gets committed. The thing about horror movies, though, is that the violence is rarely graphic or excessively prolonged. There's a certain thrill that comes with being startled and experiencing an adrenaline rush. My experience says that the reaction that tends to accompany prolonged graphic violence tends to be horror and nausea. I'm not a big fan of either. 

The need to commit random acts violence against another human being, or to watch others commit random acts of violence does not appear anywhere on any hierarchy of needs, as far as I am aware. Granted, I'm not a trained psychologist, so I could be wrong. Indeed, the fact that this genre of movies is so prevalent now makes me think that either a huge portion of the population is horrifically disturbed, or there really is something about human nature that makes us want to see other members of our species get hurt. 

It might make more sense to me if these movies made more of an effort to dehumanize the victims. Slaves fighting large, starving animals was an entertainment staple in ancient Rome. No one thought of the slaves as human beings, so it's a little bit easier for me to understand how no one thought it was a bad idea. The idea that animals can feel is relatively recent; for most of history, it didn't occur to anyone that the animals they were making fight to the death were in pain. Slaves were placed on par with animals, and humanity as a whole has never had a problem victimizing sub-humans. 

The thing about torture porn that I find so baffling is that there is no effort made to dehumanize the victims. Quite the opposite, in fact. The audience watches as extraordinarily frail and humanized victims are senselessly and brutally tortured and murdered. The audience sees every second of pain and terror. 

An argument that is commonly made in defense of the genre is that it isn't real, and because no one is actually getting injured, it shouldn't be a big deal. 

I'm not disturbed by torture porn because I think that what happening onscreen is real. I went to film school. I'm aware that unless it's a documentary, what we are seeing is staged. I'm not here out of concern for the actors, consenting adults who knew what they were getting into, who knew that they would not actually get hurt, and who got paid enormous sums of money. 

I'm disturbed by the fact that people are willing to pay to watch it. Even though it isn't real, and everyone watching knows it isn't real, I fail to see the entertainment value. I don't get the appeal. It LOOKS real. As far as anyone watching knows, it could be real. It might as well be real. I don't know about anyone else, but when I watch a movie that contains any kind of graphic violence or gore, I don't have a terrifically positive reaction.

Maybe I'm a "wimp." That's the word that usually gets thrown around in those sorts of scenarios, isn't it? Wimp? Someone doesn't like graphic torture violence, and that makes them a wimp, implying that enjoying scenes of torture is synonymous with strength and masculinity. 

Enjoying scenes of torture is not strength. Enjoying scenes of torture is sick. 

I read an article once, several years ago, postulating that by 2050, people would be fighting to the death on Pay-Per-View. For the sake of our society, I sincerely hope not. 

Work Crisis:Installment Three or So

It's been a long and hectic week for me. I thought that my part in diffusing the crisis at work was over on Saturday. I had put in something like forty hours doing tasks that are not usually in any way a part of my job description. All was well, I didn't mind. I was getting paid by the hour, so having a large amount of time-consuming work was not in any way a terribly big deal.

On Saturday evening, I received an e-mail from my boss, asking me if I could do one more project. At the time, the deadline for those particular projects was Sunday night. I had plans for Sunday, so I told her that I couldn't do it if they wanted it on time, and if there was anyone else who could or wanted to do it, then she should probably ask them.

She said she'd ask around, but asked me to check on the project if I had any spare time. I didn't, but on Sunday night, she sent me another e-mail asking me to continue the project on Monday and Tuesday. Because I'd be spending Monday and Tuesday doing work regardless, I didn't see a problem with that.

Here's where the problem comes in. My boss went out of town this morning. Apparently, there was another project, in addition to the previously mentioned one, that she either told people I'd be taking care of, or she told them I'd be taking care of one of them and they assumed that I would be doing the other one as well. The thing is, though, no one actually told me that the second project was my responsibility. Furthermore, my boss told me that I would have today and Tuesday to do the first project.

But then, I got an e-mail this afternoon asking me if BOTH the projects were done. I wrote back, saying I was done with project number one, but I hadn't started project number two, and that I could probably have it done by tonight or tomorrow. Apparently, that's not acceptable. Given my involvement thus far, there would be no reason to assume that both of them would be done. I told my boss I couldn't work Sunday. My boss told me that I would have Monday and Tuesday to work. I told all this to the guy standing in for my boss, and he didn't sound impressed.

These projects have been taking, on average, about six hours to do. If they wanted it done before tomorrow, they should have given me a titch more notice. Also, they should have told me that they wanted me to do the second project BEFORE asking me if I had finished it. I mean, had they asked, and I really did have until tomorrow to do it, then it would be fine. But it sounds like they were expecting me to work Sunday, even though I told them that I couldn't.

Also, I'm a freelancer. I'm an independent contractor. Per my contract with this company, I'm supposed to be a writer. That's it. That is as far as my responsibilities extend. When this work crisis came up, they asked me if I could help. I said I would be happy to help, but I thought it was clear that I would only help insofar as my schedule would allow. I mean, I'm doing them a favor, rather than fulfilling a responsibility. Some additional projects became my responsibility when I agreed to do them, but only the ones explicitly discussed and agreed to. Not the extra ones they assumed I was going to do.

I imagine that there was probably just a miscommunication or two somewhere along the line. Maybe my boss forgot to ask me to take on the second project. Maybe the guy who's standing in for my boss just assumed that I took on the second one when I took on the first one, and that I had been working Sunday to get them done. Maybe the two of them weren't clear with each other about what the deadlines are/were/should be. I really don't know.

I'm not angry or anything, but I am a little bit frustrated. I've spent the past week (minus Sunday) working my butt off for these people, taking on all kinds of extra responsibilities and spending all kinds of time that would normally be allocated to other things, like eating and sleeping and occasionally being in the same room with my husband. I feel a tad taken for granted, and I don't feel like that's fair.

On the plus side, my paycheck is going to be HUGE.

Catalog Fever

So, I guess I should probably never complain that my boss isn't giving me enough work ever again.

She e-mailed me yesterday at around 12:30 and asked if I could start a special project. I then spent the next seven straight hours cataloging over three hundred scripts. Then I spent another four hours this morning, and I'll probably be starting up again in the semi-near future.

On the plus side, if it gets done by Monday, I get a bonus. And Heaven knows that I like bonuses. I don't think I've ever gotten a bonus before. You don't get bonuses for hostessing, and you definitely don't get bonuses in retail. Or, at least, I never did, and I always worked really hard. I frequently got asked to work extra hours and pick up extra shifts and stay late if someone from the evening shift called out, but the closest I ever got to a bonus was a box of whoppers.

Not that I didn't appreciate the whoppers, but I'm really excited about maybe getting a bonus. So that'll be fun.

Not so fun is the hours and hours and hours of work I'm going to be logging until Monday. Fortunately, for this particular project I'm getting paid by the hour, so even that has it's upside. Usually I get paid by the script, but I'm not writing scripts, I'm cataloging.

On the plus side, Nate and I are watching Lord of the Rings this afternoon. Nate decided that I needed a break, so here we are. Also, I'm waiting for my boss to get back to me about the next thing I'm supposed to be cataloging.

Crisis At Work

There's some kind of crisis going on at work this week. Apparently, a big-name client wants five major projects finished by the tenth of December, a full twenty days before the original deadline. My boss e-mailed me late last night and asked if I could help. Being the model employee that I am, of course I agreed. Also, as of right now, I am completely finished with all the work that's been assigned to me up to this point, with two exceptions. In their respective cases, I don't have access to the areas of the site that I need in order to write those scripts, so getting something new to work on might be nice.

I e-mailed my boss about the site access thing. She hasn't gotten back to me yet. She also hasn't gotten back to me about helping with the crisis, so I'm just assuming that she's probably busy and she'll answer my e-mails when she gets the chance. In the meantime, I'm sitting at the computer, refreshing my e-mail browser every five minutes or so, just in case this is one of those times that it says I don't have any new e-mails but I actually do. So far, that hasn't been the case. Actually, it was once, but it was an e-mail from Charlotte Russe advertising their boot sale.

I'm not worried about getting paid next period. I have something like fourteen scripts that are in the process of being produced, and twenty-three or so that are still waiting for editing. Giving the editors a chance to work through my backlog might not be a terrible idea. Unfortunately, all of the editors are working on this crisis.

I'm flattered that my boss e-mailed me and asked for my help. I mean, I do write quickly and I have the ability to churn out scripts like nobody's business. If I were my boss and I needed a project finished quickly, I'd probably ask me also. My current project has something like eleven other writers and myself. As a group, about two hundred and forty scripts have been written. Of those, about sixty have been written by me. That means that everyone else has written on average around sixteen scripts.

Part of it is probably that I don't exactly have another job. I have this one singular job as my whole livelihood. I know a couple of the other writers personally, and at least one has another job. It would be an easy way to make some money on the side, especially if you're not in school and you have enough time to write a script or two a day. Were I to get another job, I'd probably still do this because it's decent money and it's a nice gig.

I'm always worrying that I'm going to get fired, which I know is irrational, because I work really hard and I've never gotten in trouble. It just sort of seems like it's too good to be true. I work from home writing in my pajamas and I make enough money to cover most of our major expenses.

For me, it's working really well as a full-time job. Between my husband and I, we make enough that we can pay our bills and save a little and usually have a little money left over for fun things. I mean, we don't have huge expenses, typically, so we don't usually need a whole lot of money. If we had a mortgage or a heftier car payment, then we might be in trouble. But we don't, so it's okay. Our largest expenses are generally education-related, and we've managed okay with that so far.

I suspect that it might be because I pay tithing. Despite all of my personal issues with the Church, it seems like the Lord is obligated to bless me as long as I'm a full tithe payer, so I continue to pay it and Nate and I continue to have enough money to pay our rent and go grocery shopping.

Christmas was kind of a strain, but at least we were smart enough not to use our credit card to pay for everything. Generally, we only use our credit card if we're buying something a) we were going to buy anyway and b) we get rewards for. So usually when we go to restaurants or clothing shopping we use our credit card, but not a whole lot otherwise.

We did have to start limiting the number of times per week we could order in or go out to eat. It got kind of out of control for a while there. Now, we typically order in on Tuesday or Wednesday nights because we're tired and we don't feel like cooking, and then we go out to lunch on Fridays or Saturdays as a fun and exciting date. We've had to limit it to twice per week, and we try to make at least one of those fairly inexpensive (pizza or burgers, as opposed to a sit-down place).

There are a couple really good Italian restaurants that we like to frequent, and they are within a block of each other and, more importantly, like three blocks from our apartment. The first is Gloria's Little Italy, which has excellent food and dessert and a more formal atmosphere. It's more expensive, though, so we don't go there as often. Then there's La Dolce Vita. It's smaller, less expensive, and less formal. As far as I can tell, everyone working there is related to each other and they're all authentically Italian. The server we get every time we go is named Giuseppe, and his mom owns the place.

There is also an excellent authentic Chinese restaurant that we order from all the time. It's called the Lotus Garden, and it's owned and operated by a Chinese family. We have like eighteen of their menus in our kitchen right now. They deliver (in the phone book, their ad says "We Delivery!," which is either an amusing error or an excellent marketing move. No one is sure which), and every time they bring us our food, they bring us another menu. Their menus do have coupons in them, but they never take the coupons when we use them, so our stack of menus just keeps getting larger and larger.

We have yet to be able to find a really good pizza place. There's the Brick Oven, which is okay (and less than a block away), but it isn't AMAZING.

In Phoenix, I knew all the good pizza places. I knew exactly where to order from in any scenario. Say there are four of us, we have twenty dollars to spend, we want to go out, and our starting position is at my parents house. In that case, we go to Streets of New York Pizza. You get free garlic rolls and you can order by the slice. Also, they frequently have deals so you can get pizza and wings or pizza and salad for a really good deal.

If we have like no money at all, we order Barro's. It's not mind-blowing, but it's better than Domino's or Pizza Hut, and it's significantly less expensive.

If we've got a little bit more to spend but we still want to keep it close to home, we go to Rosatti's. Delicious deep-dish pizza that's like five inches thick.

If we've got a fair amount of money burning holes in our wallets and we're really hungry but don't mind waiting, the standard, of course, is Oregano's. Oregano's might be the best restaurant in the history of the world. You pretty much have to get an appetizer, a pizza, and a dessert. Not because they make you, but because it's delicious. Getting in on a Friday or Saturday night can take a while, because the place is always packed, but it has never not been worth the wait. Other establishments sell pizookies, but Oregano's has perfected it. Not getting a pizookie at Oregano's is not just a terrible mistake, it might be a crime against humanity. They are that good.

Unfortunately, Provo has none of these places. Usually, when we order pizza, we end up ordering from Papa John's. Eh. It's fine, but it's overpriced and the quality just isn't quite there. We've tried other pizza places. Usually they're either too far away to deliver to us or they're terrible. Really, really terrible. Like, really really bad. Really, very bad pizza. Some of the worst pizza I've ever had is right around the corner from me right at this very moment.

You'd think, being a college town and all, that Provo would have some really excellent pizza joints. It doesn't. I mean, the restaurant selection isn't awful, but if you don't feel like cooking and you don't want to leave the house and you don't want Chinese, you're in trouble.

I've spent about forty minutes writing this blog post. My boss still hasn't gotten back to me. I'm hoping she does soon, because Lord knows I could use something to do.

Christmas Jitters

I'm going to be honest here. I'm a little bit nervous about spending Christmas with Nate's family. We got everyone gifts, and they're perfectly respectable. Nate and I will probably get more stuff for each other than we did for anyone else, which I feel vaguely guilty about. I mean, it's probably normal and natural for a married couple to get more stuff for each other than for their siblings, but I have an overdeveloped sense of shame. I don't know who I have to credit for that, but there you go.

Part of it is probably that I haven't spend a ton of time with any of the family-in-law. And it's somewhat unlikely that we will ever get the chance to spend any kind of extended period of time together. I mean, it'll probably be a week or two a year for the rest of our lives. Which is fine, I guess. I mean, it's not something I have any strong feelings about either way. I mean, I don't really know most of his family all that well. Plus, I don't have terrifically strong feelings about spending tons of time with my own personal family that I spent eighteen years living with. So, there's that.

I like Christmas, and this won't be the first one that I've spent away from my immediate family. I don't think I was nervous about spending Christmas in Italy. It was probably at least partly because I had already been in Italy for three months and knew each other and knew for a fact that there was going to some extremely delicious several-course lunch with the entire extended family on both sides, all of whom I knew well (with the possible exception of Mario, Andrea's dad, who I believe has Alzheimer's).

I need to remember to find a recipe for the green sauce that was supposed to be eaten with boiled meats. I ate it with bread, and it was awesome. As I recall, the entire meal was somewhere within the four to five courses range. Soup, pasta, a first meat course, a second meat course, various breads through the duration of the meal, and something like five desserts.

I'm pretty sure it was the largest meal of my life to this point, and definitely one of the best ones. Fantastic. Nella, Serena's mom, is supposed to be like a restaraunt-grade chef. We went to her house for Sunday lunch at least twice a month while I was in Italy, and I have to say, she did not disappoint.

Also, Italy was where I learned the value of having a breadmaker. Nate and I got a breadmaker for a wedding gift, and we use it all the time. We haven't bought a loaf of sandwich bread since our honeymoon.

I guess what I'm really trying to say is that I'm nervous about Christmas, and it's a new feeling for me. I'm sure it'll be fine and enjoyable (although we do apparently have to take a family photo, and I tend to have very negative feelings about family photos in general. Oh, and take some kind of a hike). But mostly enjoyable.

School Stresses

So, once again, I'm on the fence about what I want to study for the next however-long.

I'm trying to lock down a major, and I keep changing my mind. Currently, I'm leaning toward Anthropology with a Sociocultural emphasis (the options are sociocultural or archeological, and I think sociocultural sounds more interesting) with a minor in either French or Italian. I really don't know. I'd minor in Comparative lit, but it doesn't look like BYU offers Comparative lit as a minor.

I considered majoring in Comparative lit for a while, but while it would be interesting, I don't think it would be as interesting as Anthropology.

A few years ago, I met a date at Borders. We didn't know each other; I was working in a restaurant at the time, and he came in, decided I was cute or something, and asked me out. We decided to meet each other at Borders. The date itself was kind of a bust (I cannot now even remember his name), but while I was there, I found an extremely interesting book. It offers potential answers to societal and cultural questions, ie why some cultures revere pigs and some cultures view pigs as horrifically unclean.

Now, I don't by any means think that the theories posited are 100% correct. There is a segment dealing exclusively with the Christ myth, and the author bases many of his conclusions on "probablies." One of the basic tenants of his arguments is that the historical Christ was "probably" not as peace-loving as he is portrayed in the Gospels or as popular opinion would suggest, but that he was "probably" an anti-Roman radical zealot.

Complete conjecture. The author doesn't try to back up those particular claims with anything other than "it doesn't really make sense for Christ to have been as peace-loving and tolerant as he was portrayed." And then he drew all of his conclusions from that piece of erroneous conjecture, which I found annoying. It seemed like he wouldn't or couldn't believe that any person could have based a ministry on genuine altruism. That sort of skepticism is pretty representative of that found within the scientific community, but I think it was more detrimental than beneficial in this case. Rather than base his conclusions on any actual evidence, he based them on his personal feelings.

But his personal biases against Christ aside, I found his work fascinating. I still do. His anti-relgious biases are pretty prevalent, but I felt they were only problematic when he attempted to come up with an alternate explanation for the accounts of Christ's ministry. I believe that the Lord has good reasons for any commandment he gives his children, so I am willing to believe that the Lord's commandment to the Jews not to eat pork could have been because pigs and humans compete directly for food sources, so keeping pigs may have been a luxury the early Jews could not afford. The ancient Hebrews are pretty well-known for being a hard-headed people, so maybe branding pigs as unclean was the only way the Lord could keep them from giving food that should have gone to their children to their pigs.

Those of us who practice Christian religions and believe that the Jews were our predecessors do not currently believe that there is any inherent harm in eating pork or bacon once in a while, which would imply that something changed so that commandment would no longer be necessary. I don't necessarily believe that Christ's atonement cleansed the pigs of their impurities and made them okay to eat or keep as adorable pets.

I'm not saying that the solution put forward in this book is the only possible solution. I'm just saying that I think it's a valid hypothesis, and that the author's anti-religious bias wasn't an issue when trying to answer that particular question.

 Much of his research comes from studying indigenous tribes of South America and the Pacific Islands and deals with power hierarchies within these primitive cultures. Societal power structures fascinate me, and frequently make me incredibly angry. For example, the book tackles the issue of the unequal balance of power between males and females that exists almost ubiquitously. Theoretically, women's collective ability to have children and their generally increased involvement in their raising would give women the ability to root out any way of life that is threatening to them via positive reinforcement and selective neglect. Yet women continuously raise children who grow up to perpetuate the power imbalance between sexes.

In my husband's family, his mother is the primary breadwinner. His father does the majority of the child-rearing. As a result, my husband has a greater respect for women in general and a greater belief that women can be equally capable providers as men, and men can be equally capable child-raisers as women. By seeing the opposite of the stereotype perpetrated successfully in his home as a child, his entire perspective on male/female relations is substantially different than the norm. And then he married what some people might call an angry feminist*, so his opinions are reinforced in our marriage relationship, and it is likely that any children we have will share his opinions as well.

In this family dynamic, it is pretty clear that gender is irrelevant to personal strengths. Some men are naturally nurturing. My husband is that way, as is his father. Some women are not naturally nurturing. His mom seems to do fine with kids (I'm certainly not going to call her out that way in a public forum. Or any kind of forum, for that matter), but I don't mind admitting that they scare the hell out of me. My husband's mother does, however, seem to be extremely well-suited to being the family breadwinner. I currently make roughly twice as much money as my husband does, and I don't think either of us are at all bothered by it.

I once read a study in Psychology Today that said that women who make more money than their husbands tend to view them as less masculine and have less respect for them in the long run. I certainly don't feel that way. Then again, not even the tiniest bit of me believes that it is solely Nate's responsibility to be the primary breadwinner. Most women, I think, even if it's just subconsciously, think that their husbands should be responsible for the financial security of the family. Women are groomed to want to feel taken care of. Another Psychology Today study said that men tend to feel loved when they feel respected by their partners, but women tend to feel loved when they feel secure in their relationships.

I've been freakishly independent since I came out of the womb. The only reason I got married at all was because I love Nate and moving in together and seizing tax benefits seemed like a good idea (still does, by the way). I didn't marry him so he could take care of me. I certainly didn't marry him so he could be my meal ticket. I didn't marry him because I thought it would bring stability to my life.

I feel really bad for the girls who feel or felt compelled to always be in a romantic relationship. I mean, there were males I went to school with who felt the same way, and that sucks for them, but, and by all means, correct me if I'm wrong, I never saw society put pressure on guys the way it does on girls. In LDS society, you're a freak and an outcast if you're under thirty, unmarried, and not going on a date or two a week, but even in non-LDS society, the pressure to find someone who you can pretend to like and who will pretend to like you too is incredibly high.

From what I've seen, many relationships in the high school and college age groups are based on not sharing any interests or values. The girl pretends that she doesn't know that he's a jackass, the boy pretends he doesn't know that she's a harpy shrew, and their farcical relationship continues until one or both of them realizes that they have nothing in common except vanity and self-involvement, and then it all dissolves in a mess of tears and delusion.

Not all relationships are like this, obviously. But enough of them are that I fear for any people, of any gender, who are in this age group and are trying to navigate the tempestuous seas of dating. Avoiding jackasses and harpy shrews is a good start, I feel.

But, and this brings me back to my point, girls and women frequently feel so much pressure to look like they're in the perfect relationship that they overlook the jackassishness that's seeping out of these guys pores. It's often less about actual happiness, and more about appearance. Being happy is irrelevant as long as you look happy to your peers.

Is there a major in teaching people not to be stupid?




*In my defense, it's not just male/female inequality that gets me fired up. I'm deeply opposed to social inequality of any kind, except the sort that favors smart, hard-working people (regardless of their age, race, gender, religion, or social status) over not-so-smart, lazy people (regardless of their age, race, gender, religion, or social status). 

I Could Be Your Loving Fender

Continuing with the theme of things that I think are awesome that other people think are terrible, let's talk about 70's and 80's era pop music as sung by sassy black women and nordic pop bands.

Everyone who has been my facebook friend for more than fifteen minutes knows how much I love this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPnGPIMUnus

When my older brother Zack showed this video to me for the first time, it started out as an ironic affection. It's not anymore. The more I watched it, the more I realized we were soulmates. It has everything I love: generic pop music with badly translated lyrics, terrible dancing, and awesome belts.

Also, since going through the temple, this video has altered how I picture heaven entirely, because I'm about 90% sure that's the same set. I now pretty much envision God as that guy, and I have to say, if God looks like the guy from that music video, congratulations to them both. In all seriousness, good for everyone involved, especially me. And them.

It should, then, come as no surprise that I'm a huge ABBA fan. Again, something that started out ironic. Actually, that's probably a lie. When I was maybe ten or eleven, a nordic pop group called the A*Teens catapulted out of Sweden and started releasing ABBA covers in the US. Then it turned out that my mother had an ABBA: Gold record, and I discovered that I liked the originals better. Then the A*Teens made the disastrous career move of recording original stuff. Not a good call on their part, I feel. I mean, I still bought their CDs, but I don't think anyone else did.

Moving on, I spent a significant portion of this morning listening to Donna Summers and Tina Turner and dancing around the apartment in my underwear. Nate had to go take a test, and that's pretty much what I do when he's not here and I'm done with work. I recently purchased a Carmen Electra Aerobic Striptease workout DVD, and I got the dances down pretty quickly (it was the first DVD in the series, so I think it's supposed to get harder from there). But there were a bunch of moves and suchlike that are both highly enjoyable and make my muscles burn when I repeat them several times. So now, instead of exercising like any kind of real person, I practice my pliés (I can almost plié in first position without falling over) and gyrate around the apartment for an hour or so. It turns out that Donna Summer and Tina Turner are both very good for that kind of thing.  Not that you care, but I think my waistline and hips are slightly smaller than they were.

This doesn't fall into either of the aforementioned categories, but I'm listening to Sonny and Cher's "I Got You Babe" for like the third time today, and I'm enjoying it immensely. I realize that it's just me and some weird middle aged people who like this song, but I don't care.