IQOTD

"A happy man is a disaster waiting to happen. I knew a happy man once. His happiness was his curse."

Alan Arkin in Thirteen Conversations About One Thing
More Online Dating Wisdom from Bunni

Ok I have two things to discuss here-the first is the insulting why don't you talk to me anymore email. What do I mean by that? I'm talking about the emails I get from some of the guys from mate.com who are irate that I have weeded them out as perspective dates. A couple of guys have sent me emails and I email them back. For whatever reason I decide not to email them anymore and then I get the irate email about why I am such a bitch that I stopped sending them email. Now what the hell are they thinking? Sending an email is hardly a serious commitment. Dating, for the most part, is like the Miss America Pageant. You start with a whole bunch of possibles and in theory you keep whittling it down until you have your Miss America. Then you and your lucky partner tour the country opening malls and so forth. At least that is how they ran the last "Who wants to marry my dad?" Ok arguably anyone taking dating shows as a kind of instructional manual is in trouble, but clearly part of dating is a selection process. ( The second part is negotiating.)

I have gotten in the last week two irate emails. One from a guy in Washington state of all places. He sent me all of two emails before I called it quits. Now I get an email from him asking me "When are we going to talk about what happened between us?" Uh, what? Nothing happened between us. I read your last email and decided that you were, well, given to form obsessive attachments and decided to move on. That you sent this email only confirms it. I declined to respond to that email which prompted another email asking me why I was being such a bitch. Now are these kind of inquires ever answered? Let me rephrase that are they ever answered in a fashion that doesn't involve an an AK-47, a weed wacker, and a lot of super glue?

The second one came from a guy who I have been emailing for a month. He was rushing me to meet him, which I resisted. In addition, my resistence started to cause him to become rude and rather irate. Finally I received an email today, which I deleted not wanting the bad karma to taint me, however I can reconstruct it from memory:

"Well it was nice to finally meet you. I guess this is what I get for trying to date a JEW, which I swore I would never do. When you told me about your measurements, 34 DD, I should have said good-bye right then.

Good luck finding whatever the hell you are looking for."

(Readers Note: the "it was nice to finally meet you" was a sad attempt at sarcasm)

Ah yes, nothing like waking up to find I have inspired yet another man to become anti-semitic. What exactly is this guy trying to accomplish? Is he trying to hurt my feelings? Well he failed there, because he didn't insult my weak points. Apparently he has issues with large breasted Jews. Well then it's a good thing we didn't date. Was he trying to shame me into a date? Does that ever work? Well, it might, but then again he clearly miscalculated my re-action. In addition, it just makes him look crazy that he is this enraged by a person he never met or spoke to.

So guys if you are chatting with someone online or on the phone or even if you go on maybe two or three dates and the lady vanishes-just say no to the hostile retaliation. It only reinforces her idea that it was indeed a GOOD idea to drop you.

And did I respond to either of these men with hostility? Not in the least. The first guy I sent him a brief email saying that I didn't know what he was talking about and thanking him to not email me again ( a point I made moot by blocking him from my email). The second I sent out a little more detailed email.

"In the future you should refrain from being insulting in your emails. It accomplishes nothing except convince me that I made the right decision putting off meeting you. I will not insult you in a similar manner, but rather simply inform you that some of us are extremely busy. I will not stoop to sarcastic well wishing, but I will suggest in the future that you understand that some people have health, work, and time constraints that trump our ability to drop everything and meet someone.

In the future, please don't send me anymore emails as I don't have the time to deal with unwarranted hostility."

Now I know Jin will fault me for actually sending a response to the guy, but really I couldn't let the anti semite go without saying something, like showing him how this little Jewess is mightily superior. Of course, it's easy when you're a Jew to be superior because everyone knows we run the media and have all the money. In the words of Mark Maron "I'm suprised I have the time to do this right now...You know we put out newsletters 'Congratulations Jews we have all the money!' Again? That's like over 2000 years in a row! Actually late night we go into the basement of temples and we just throw all the money in the air and go 'I can't believe it. We have all the money. Yes!'"

And then I blocked the twit from my email.

So there ( sticks out tongue)!

Photo No-No

Uh just a suggestion but photos of guys in camo-fatigues-unless you are in the military-scary.

Also the photos of you with your arm around some chick-bad taste-even if it is just your cousin ( yeah right). Crop the photo, it's just that simple.
Bad Film Friday

Yes, Retrocrush apparently made a list of their least favorite films titles. I have a couple of problems with their list. First it seems a little more focused on bad films than bad titles ( some of them, arguably, are bad). Also the titles are also very modern. But honestly Jin's suggestion in the comments box of my last film title post totally slams anything on their list. Jin came up with (drum role) "Dances with Cum" which I just love.

Metafilter comes up with some good suggestions including the entertainly entitled porn films "Hairy Partner and the Chamber of Secrets", "Jur-Ass in the Park", and "Super Hornio Brothers." I have offered up some of my own suggestions to their list (including one of yours, Jin, as I knew you wouldn't bother with it). The IMDB's bottom 100 movies AKA the worst movies ever made also has quite a few bad film titles.

Again the list isn't nearly inclusive enough as porn films seem to have the worst titles. Horror films make a close second.

Look at me, friday night and I am talking bad horror films. Crickey, there are housewives in Ox's Snot, Kansas getting more action than I am these days.

Lucky for me, Airplane! is going to be on later tonight.

"What do you make of this Johnny?"

"Well I could make a hat, or a brooch, or a pterodactyl."

Who am I now?

The above heading is actually the title of a Kurt Vonnegut story, which is in Welcome to the Monkey House. Actually this posting takes it's inspiration from one of today's metafilter posts-WHO were you on Sept 11?

Well I think we all know who I was. I was a girl who thought she was very lucky to be so happy. I thought that everything was just beginning to go right. I thought I had everything ahead of me. I was just starting on a new job, by the end of the year my boyfriend would be living with me, or so I thought, and it seemed like everything was going to be better and brighter and more fun. I was scared, but in a good giddy kind of way. Conversely I wasn't really worried about my health or depression. In fact I was thinking, for the first time in five years, of terminating therapy. I had lots of friends. I went out all the time. I had someone to read to in bed. I looked forward to going home as there was someone waiting there. I felt like I had grown up, like I had finally done what I set out to do I had arrived, I had succeeded or at least begun to. I felt great.

Now I'm miserable a vast majority of the time. Often I can't sleep at all ( I could sleep with Eric, it was the only time in my life I consistently slept well). I have no boyfriend, my job that I worked so hard for-that I was so proud to have-is a dead end. Often I look around my apartment digusted by myself. I worry about who will take care of me when my disability decides to strike again. I worry about what will happen when walking gets too difficult, when going to grocery store and getting my own prescriptions will be too much for me ( like when I was 12 and was in a wheelchair of 6 weeks). I worry about losing all my money and living out of a paper bag. I'm much heavier now and as a result I'm depressed about my weight. I worry and fear the future instead of looking forward to it. I'm more isolated than I was then. I spend a lot more time online and a lot less time working on my classes. Most of the time I feel that what I do has absolutely no impact on my students. I cry almost every day. I got that giddy feeling in my stomach maybe four or five times in the last two years, but only very briefly. I dread going home as I have nothing to go home to. I used to see such beauty in people, take such joy in stupid things. A little boy on the bus asking his nanny when the first school bus was invented, my favorite teacher telling me to come in to her office and have vanilla wafers with her, a little girl with pigtails on the top of her head like horns. Now every day I hate people a little bit more. I lose hope a little bit more. I'm tired and depressed and I'm tired of being tired and depressed. I'm still in therapy, although I switched therapists.

So that's how I've changed. Nothing about keeping rations in my desk or worrying about the subway. Nope, it's far far worse.

Welcome to the New World Order

HOWEVER having said that- I have decided to come up with a list of things and I am going to do them. Now many of them are not short term goals. They are things that will take a while, but if I pull it off, things will have to get better. At least I'll know I accomplished these things ( not listed in order of importance):

get a PhD ( in english-most likely)
go to Italy
go to France
go back to England
go back to Scotland
go to New Orleans
go to Mexico for Spring Break
go to the Cloisters ( in NYC)
go to the Bronx Zoo
make a bunny shaped piggy bank
go to the next silent party no matter what
take a ceramics class
take a photography class
get this site uploaded to its new home and redo the template
finish writing the story "Research"
edit my old work
spend more time out doing different stuff ( suggestions?)

that's about it for right now-not a bad list though


Why I teach

OK so there have been some questions about why I do this job, and it's a question I ask myself daily. I wil be going on this more on the future, but you can check my comments on the previous post to give you the beginning of the idea. Yesterday the 2:00 class was great. And when you have a great class you really feel good as a teacher. Today the 11:00 was falling asleep, which makes me want to go home and stick my head in the toilet. Like all people I tend to complain about the things that go wrong and not mention what goes right. Last night I got the following email:

Dear Ms Bunni:

I am writing tell you how happy I am to have taken your class in the summer. Before that time I had written only one research paper in high school and had never received any feedback on it at all. I think by me having took your class I have gained a stronger sense of how to argue my point. I'm really just writing to thank you because after going to my classes today I realized how many research papers I have to write. So thank you.

But such a nice email is then counter balanced by the fact that she wrote "I think by me having took", which shows me how much I have failed in my job. In addition, today one of my students asked her former teacher if she could switch into his section. He asked me about it, knowing full well I was already feeling very depressed about my whole teaching situation. I told him "Like I tell my students when they whine about homework 'That it annoys you, only makes me enjoy it more.' So no she can't switch." He should know better anyway. Even if I said yes, the department won't let her switch unless she can demonstrate a serious scheduling conflict. And even if she could, she shouldn't rely on a former teacher to help her out, she should come to me herself.

Ok I'm ranting again.

Basically why do I do this? Why did Cinderella clean up after her evil stepsisters? Because she was a virtuous girl, who believed in being "good" even when there were no rewards. Jin can tell you a lot of my hostility comes from the fact that I put a lot into my job so that when students want to switch or don't learn or fall asleep I take it personally while teachers like the Mistake don't mind because they don't have much invested in their classes. I am working on doing less or finding ways to cut corners, which hopefully lead to a reduction in hostility. I do this because I believe in learning and education. But that doesn't mean that I don't get frustrated.

What's amazing is that I listen to other people complain aabout their jobs, and then when I join in, people always ask "why do you do it?" Well, why do you? Annoyance is part of the equation. The question is how much and is there a pay off? The annoyance factor varies, but the pay off part in terms of emotional satisfaction, pay, and beenfits is almost none. However, the virtue pay off is off the charts. Last year my students dubbed me St. Bunni because of all the help I gave them. The same class also used to call me G-d because they claimed I knew everything, or knew someone who knew it, if I happened to forget. I keep seeing former students and they hug me and ask me when they can come by and visit. They tell about what's going on. One of them needs my help getting into medical school. ( She calls me a goddess since I helped her to get a government research grant.)

And the truth is I love being in a school. I am comfortable here. but that may be the biggest reason, in the long run, to leave.
Teaches with Idiots

And this is why I hate the first day-no matter how emphatic, how simple, how repetitive-there's always one person that makes me think "How did you get in here? And I don't mean how were you accepted, I mean how did you figure out how to get into the building?"

This morning they, administration, switched one of my sections. My syllabus was for two Monday, Tuesday, Thursday sections and they switched me to one MTR and one Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Really fine with me. The problem is I didn't have enough time to change my syllabus so I just copied the old one. I spent five minutes explaining the situation. "OK so everytime it says thursday for YOU it means wednesday". I'm not talking quatum physics here. It's not like I Scott Bacula to help teach them how to shift one day. Half an hour later, HALF AN HOUR LATER a student says in the middle of class " Um, excuse me, but are the dates on this syllabus correct?"

Of course she isn't the only one, I have to deal with a whole host of other stupid questions. Jin thinks I should walk in the first day of class and just shoot a random student. I have to say the idea is not without appeal. particularly the student who walked up to me after class and then said "Whoa." I looked at her. I didn't know what I had done to make her re act that way. I know some people are intimidated by me, but I hadn't really done anything except start to pack away my books. "What is it?" I asked. And then I realized what it was, why she wouldn't say. "You didn't expect me to be this short, did you?" She started laughing. "No," she admitted. Yeah, I'll be your teacher, professor Tumbellina.

You know the worst part is that in the Middle Ages I'd be average height. I'd also get a senior citizens discount.

But the real idiocy is reserved for the administration. I have to turn in a detailed syllabus this week, but you want to know when the department gets together to decide all of our core requirements for the fall-minimum amount of papers, length of the research paper and all that other really important info that not only do my students need to know but I do? Monday, yep next monday. Which is fine considering I still haven't been given a copy of my own damn textbook. I have students who have the textbook, but I don't nor did I get it advance when it would be REALLY USEFUL FOR PLANNING. I mean NYU just got an 800 million dollar donation-could I get one textbook in a timely fashion? Please?
Five Questions

Here are the five questions I was posed by Snowball:

1. How would you describe the last time you grew frustrated enough with traffic to make a rude gesture?

Well, I haven't really driven since I've moved to NYC. And the truth is I never have made an obscene gesture at anyone while driving. Well, I haven't made an obscene gesture at ANOTHER DRIVER while driving. I used to give the finger to the Pro Life hutch across the street from the Planned Parenthood. If that counts it would be about five years. But if that doesn't count, never.

2. If you could make one wish to benefit another person, what would it be?

Oh that's a hard one. I guess one wish to benefit one other person? It would have to be for my mother to find a male companion. She deserves it, more than anyone I can think of. If I could have one wish for a group of people, it would be for my students to come out of my class well justified in their confidence to write a well developed paper. That would be closer to a miracle than a wish and if it ever happened, I would stop being a skeptic, proclaim my faith in G-d, and join the nearest synagogue.

3. What is the most impulsively silly thing you've ever done?

Oh man there is some serious competition for that one on a daily basis but this year's award goes to pretending to be a monster while sitting on Jin's shoulder's during the BlackOut. (To make it scandalous, I was wearing a skirt.) I am often given to doing improptu interpretive dance numbers (particularly the "happi bunni" dance and the "antler" dance), and anyone who has seen me dance knows exactly how silly I can be.

I also once flashed ( just my bra) an NYU tour ( I was an undergrad at the time). And I once wore boxers on my head while sitting next to my dad in his vintage convertible MG model B.

4. Who has been the most influential person in your life?

Damn Snowball you ask some hard questions. I am taking influence as not necessarily a good or bad thing, just how much a person has effected me for good AND evil. I have to say my father. I have his depressive tendencies. I enjoy martinis and bloody mary's like he did. He fostered my love of bad horror movies and good horror fiction. He fostered my reading habits. I got my love of learning and school from him. Also he really encouraged me to come to NYC. We were actually a lot alike. When he died, I inherited his library. It was reading those books that really ecnouraged me to be a writer. Before that a lot of the stuff I read was very traditional. I would try and write that way and it just would be forced and difficult. It was reading my father's books that showed me that I could break the rules. So his death is really responsible for me going to grad school in creative writing and for me working on a newspaper for three years.

5. What's your very favorite song?

I have to say it is now, and has been for a while, "Feelin' Good" by Nina Simone. I just love that woman. A close second would be Bobby Short's "In the Dark" which I heard him perform in person on my 25 birthday. It was the best birthday I ever had, drinking champagne with the man I loved at the Carlyle hotel while listening to Bobby Short. You just don't get better than that.

Hey other bloggers, wanna play five questions along with the Bunni?

If you want to play, the rules work like this:

1. If you want to participate, leave a comment saying "interview me."

2. I will respond by asking you five questions-each person's will be different.

3. You will update your journal with the answers to the questions.

4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.

5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

I got rhythm

OK so I got a profile from mate.com and I AM SO TEMPTED to respond. He is a musician living in California. But here's the catch, I would have to pay to email him. Now I know you think oh you evil little hypocritical slut, but see here's why I don't pay for these services anymore, because I did once and it was a waste of money. And a waste of quite a bit of money and I really REALLY don't have it to waste.

Now if genius was smart enough, he could have put his email in a code in his profile ( as some others have done). If he put the name of the band he plays in I am sure I could sus him out over google, but brilliance here didn't put anything that useful in there.

But I was thinking about it and I realized I've gone out with 3 bassists-well, maybe not dated in a strickly dating sense-I dated ONE bassist, I fooled around one night with another bassist, and I went on all of one date with the last bassist. I've dated 3 jazz musicians. OK 2 of the bassists were jazz musicians, and then there was a professional jazz drummer. And this isn't even including the amateur musicians (Speedfreak was a drummer/guitar player/song writer in his free time-of which there were copious amounts).

So yeah I got rhythm, I got music, what I don't got is a man.

Oh and the next wedding I go to where the bride and groom dance to At Last by Etta James-I am taking hostages. There are other jazz songs ( like "In the Dark" by Bobby Short or "Stay with Me" by Jimmy Scott) FIND THEM. Hell I'll even help.
Depression can benefit links

Well thanks to Bliss I have found all sorts of fun new blogs. I have added them to the appropriate sections on the side bar. Yes, I am becoming one of those bloggers who does nothing but blogs and reads other blogs. Perhaps there is a doctoral thesis in here-blogging as it's own literary genre. I am worried about my ability to read however. I've been reading Possession for damn near a week and I'm only half way through. Normally I would have been done on wednesday.

I do worry about spending so much time online, that it fosters my depression instead of kicking me out of it. The good news is that I was a good girl today and so now I can see the top of my kitchen table for like the first time since June. Tomorrow I will hopefully vacuum and clean even more. I am hoping that I will be able to stay on track. Honestly I'm totally in awe of how other people manage to pull off everyday life. I have no idea how they do it cooking, cleaning, shopping, bills, work, fun. Maybe I have an inflated sense of the lives of others, maybe most other people are having as much trouble as I am keeping up with the mundane tasks.

I am considering switching to movable type, so for all of you movable type people, why not tell me how you feel about the service. My blog just feels boring compared to what I've seen at Scandalous! and The Black Saint as well as all the others I added today. But before I commit to that kind of switch, I'd like to hear from those of you who actually use the service. Basically, is it worth it?

Well tomorrow Jin and I are going to some parade and then school starts, and I am going to try and be good and start off on top of things. ( I'm already behind-two and half weeks to write comments on those research papers- I haven't even done one. NOT ONE. Oh I am slacker. But really they are such an affront to my intelligence. And if you think I'm suicidal now, just imagine how much worse I would be after reading the papers and realizing all that effort is going to NOTHING.) But I shall be not blogging as much. So the links will hopefully keep you entertained. But not so entertained you forget about your own dear fluffi bunnikins.


Fun with movie description

Tonight Lost Souls is on TNT. If you don't remember it, well, you probably shouldn't I don't think anyone saw it in the theaters. But being me I decided to look it up in the cable guide. Here's the description:

A young mother discovers a conspiracy involving the Devil.

And you know, I always thought the cigarette smoking man killed Kennedy.
Mistake

So I was cleaning up some old papers, you know sifting through articles I cut out for my class to see what I should throw out and what I should file and I came across an old notebook. It had notes from grad school and it had notes from the first class I taught. I made the mistake of flipping to the back, and there was a letter from Eric. I was sure I had put all the letters in one place to be avoided, but apparently I forgot about one. If memory serves it was probably the last letter I ever got ( dated July 3, 2001- making it shortly after my last visit to see his parents and meet his grandparents). And of course, I wasn't going to look at it. But then I did. I didn't read the whole thing. I only saw two sentences. That was enough.

Jin asked me why I am I still posting about Eric ( in one of the previous comment threads) and I would think the reason would be obvious. I can't pretend it didn't happen. I can't "just move on." Now maybe that's because of my culture. I was raised a Jew, and we are big on remembering. That whole never forget the Holocaust thing, as if anyone could. ( Isn't there a famous line in a movie "Never forget, never surrender"?) Well asking me to forget the Eric is to some degree like asking me to forget the Holocaust. It is like asking me to stand on the smoldering ashes of Pompeii and say there was never a town there. It's a denial, a denial on an epic level. After all Eric managed to do what cancer and my disability and my father could not-he managed to make me want to die, to lose hope, to regret my life. And that is an accomplishment not easily forgotten.

And of course WHEN he left has something to do with it ( 2 weeks after sept 11th). But I'm still a mess. Have I had men fall in love with me since then? Yes ( if speed freak is to be believed). Certainly I've had at least three men fall in love with me, and one of them would have wanted to marry me (at least one), but I couldn't do it. I just didn't feel anything for them ( or if I did it was revulsion). The men I have felt something for since then ( beast, vampire hunter, and ami) have all been at the very best emotionally unavailable.

I still write about him because I still feel the loss of him as I still feel the loss of the nerves in parts of the lower half of my body. 18 years later I still feel that loss. Some wounds don't heal. If you don't believed me, go to a burn unit.

And it's not just the loss of him. Him I could have gotten over long ago. But more difficult is the loss of the girl I used to be when I was with him. I miss the girl I was before this happened. I miss the life I had. I miss the life I was supposed to have.

And more than anything I want this to stop. I want to feel better again and g-d knows I've done any number of crazy things to TRY and feel better. All to no gain whatsoever. If anything my only accomplishment is that I can simply pretend to be sane better than I did a year ago. Oh and I can read. There's an accomplishment. When it first happened, I couldn't read which needless to say for a writing instructor is a pretty fucking horrible problem to deal with. Now I can read ( I only wish my students knew how to as well).

And part of is that everywhere I go people my age are getting married. My crazy friend B, my crazy slut former roommate, my 20 year old cousin, my photographer friend at F's. I mean, christ, I can't even find someone I like enough for a second date. I still write about him because all of these couples remind me of my loss. It's not as bad as it used to be. The reason I love Law and Order was because for a long time it was the only show I could watch - no romance. You want to know what the statisitcal likelihood of a disabled woman my age is? I'll tell you it's thirty percent on a good fucking day. And that's without the mentally instability and the emotional scarring. I mean really going into a flooded market ( 7 women for every man) a physically disabled, emotional disturbed girl isn't exactly a hot commodity. And beyond that living on my own as a disabled person is extremely difficult. There are a lot of problems that I won't go into here (which is my way) which were alleviated by having a boyfriend ( not that friends couldn't help in SOME ways, but certainly living with someone made things much easier).

You know what? I need to say fuck this and go to sleep. Please feel free to leave me encouraging notes in the night.

And the first person who says anything about the power of positive thinking OR self fulfilling prophecy is going to be attacked by a battalion of carefully trained sadistic ocelots. So comment at your own peril.
Legal Eagles

It just happens to be on We and I just happen to be up watching it. I think it should definately get an award for one of the worst film titles of all time. I mean what the hell does it mean? It doesn't have any relevance to the script at all. Another one of my least favorite titles? Hope floats. I just hate it. What is Hope then? Is it like oil or vinegar? Is it less dense than water? Yick. And of course we have already established my dislike of the Whole Ten Yards. People, put in some effort. It's a sad day when I have to admire Dumb and Dumberer as a creative sequel title.

Why I love my cat

Well, another staurday night with no date, and so I thought I would spend tonight talking about why my cat is so fabulous. No doubt you all are just dying to know. And since I am getting hooked on the list thingy, I shall list ten fabulous things about my cat.

10. She watches tv with me. She seems to feel the same attachment to Law and Order, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Six Feet Under that I do. You have to love a cat that enjoys quality programming.

9. For some reason, when I ever I imagine my cat talking, I imagine that she should be smoking a cig and holding a martini.

8. Nice long soft cat fur. It feels particularly nice when I have just shaved my legs. Or sometimes when she hooks her tail around my neck.

7. Every night she curls up at my feet to sleep, and every morning she curls up by my head and purrs.

6. She licks my face and often my hands. It's not a pleasant experience, but it does show the love.

5. She plays fetch. Of course it's cat fetch which means she does it only when she wants to, usually around 2 am, and will stop randomly, but it's still fetch.

4. She taps me on the shoulder when I have been on the computer too long.

3. She runs to the door when I come home. Sure it could just be because she wants to be fed, but damn the sentiment is nice.

2. My cat encourages me in all my bad habits. She's all for lying around doing nothing but enjoying the AC, and I love her for helping me to be lazy.

1. No matter how disgusted I am, my cat is more so. Sometimes I'll be grading a paper and I'm so filled with disappointment and hatred, and I'll look at my cat and she'll just give me this "Don't even start" look.

Basically my cat is like having a short furry roommate who never pays rent, but on the other hand never runs up my phone bill.