The Tribe Has Spoken

I've watched Survivor for each of its 16 seasons not because it's always good or entertaining but because I find it fascinating to see how people behave when put into a situation where they need to play a social game while starving. Social games are hard enough when played in the real world, fueled by pizza and cheese doodles. How well would I be able to influence people if I spent 39 days in a bikini, drenched by rain at least once a day, subsisting on clams and coconuts? I probably won't ever have the opportunity to answer that question based on experience, so I answer it vicariously by watching the show.

Last night's finale was unique in that each of the four remaining contestants had played a very good game. None of them was a goat, dragged along to the finals as dead weight who can't possibly win. I have no doubt that Parvarti, the winner, is a bitch in real life, but I have to give her props for her ability to lie, backstab, flirt, look good in a bikini, and persuade her victims to give her the win, all while consuming probably around 500 calories a day.

I often watch Survivor jealous that our lives can't function on this simple level. Don't like your boss? Convince an alliance of coworkers to vote him or her out of the office. Want to teach your rival a lesson? Send him or her over to Exile Island for a couple of days and plot against him or her the whole time. If life were like Survivor we could work our way through all our anger and resentments immediately and openly, simply by persuading others to share those resentments and act on them. We'd also all be thin, and look good in bikinis.

Of course, life isn't a game and doesn't feature a million-dollar prize at the end. Life isn't edited to fit into a 13-week season. Even so, I woke up this morning wishing I could go to tribal council tonight and vote someone off my island.

Word of the Weekend

The following was contained in a chain email that was forwarded to me. I think this word may be what I was looking for to describe the story of my life:

Christopher Foyle, British owner of Foyle's Bookshops, has
recently published Foyle's Philavery: A Treasury of Unusual
Words. In it he defines arcane English words currently dropped
or seldom used. Among them "Dentiloquy" (speaking through
clenched teeth) and "Latrability" (the ability to bark). One in particular needs to be returned to mainline usage:

"Kalopsia" is the condition in which things appear more
beautiful than they really are. It's like where girls (and
boys) in bars, for example, tend to look more attractive nearer
to closing time. For example: "At 1 AM the bar was high on
kalopsia."

Sound familiar?

Birds of Hillside Avenue

My yard's ecosystem causes a chain reaction at first light each day, which was around 5 this morning. Birds start chirping, which awakens my cat, who begins purring and batting at me, which awakens my dog, who begins leaping over me to play with the cat, which makes further sleep an impossibility, at least until I get out of bed, let the dog out, and feed them both. The birds chirp through all of this, oblivious.

This is my first spring living in a house in a semi-wooded area. I've got a lot of trees here, so also a lot of birds, deer, insects, chipmunks, squirrels (even an albino squirrel), weeds, you name it. Just a lot of nature. I'm much more used to pavement. Birds are, of course, everywhere, it just feels like my yard is their ground zero. I started noticing them a month ago, with the arrival of cardinals. Here's how much I know about birds: cardinals are the only species I can tell by sight. I borrowed a bird book from a neighbor, but by the time I begin flipping through it looking for a picture the bird I'm trying to identify is gone, so I'm not even sure how many species I've got hanging out here, awakening the household each morning.

This morning featured a deafening symphony or riot, depending on your point of view, which lasted for approximately an hour, at which point it began to rain and everything quieted down. This led me to wonder two things: why do birds chirp at dawn but not all day long, or at sunset? And what do birds to when it rains?

The answer to the first question follows common sense, something I wouldn't have attributed to birds. Obviously they don't sing at night because it's dark and they don't want predators to know where they are and attack when they can't see. They chirp at dawn to let their enemies know that they've survived the night and still retain their territory, and to let their friends know that they're available for some afternoon delight. By mid-day they're busy with other things, like nesting and feeding, which are solitary pursuits. Then they go to sleep, obviously much earlier than I and obviously needing much less rest than I, otherwise they wouldn't be awake at 5 AM.

When it rains, birds hide under branches and leaves, but even if there's no cover they're ok, because their feathers are water-resistant. All they have to do is shake and the water is gone. They can fly in the rain because they have a special membrane that repels water, a sort of natural pair of goggles.

So there you have it - all the question you didn't have about birds in the first place conveniently answered for you. I'm still left with the problem of being awakened in the middle of the night, though. A crazy cat person's posse would seem to be the only solution.

Crazy Cat People

During my senior year in college I lived across the street from a small faculty apartment duplex. One of those apartments was occupied by a Spanish professor who was in Spain, on sabbatical, that year. My room was in an old inn and so was large, with two closets, a private bathroom, and a private parking lot. I was in heaven. About a month into the fall semester I began to be awakened regularly to the sounds of cats fighting and mating. I don't mean a cat or two, I mean lots of cats, going at it all night. It took about a week, but I figured out the problem: the Spanish professor had left her bathroom window open, filled her bathtub with cat food, and left her place in the care of a campus-full of feral cats.

I had moved across the street from a crazy cat lady.

Crazy cat ladies appear to be a staple of every community. Crazy cat men must exist somewhere out there, but I've never seen or heard of one. The hoarding of cats appears to be an activity that skews female, as does the hoarding of animals in general. From what I can tell the affliction begins with the feeding of feral cats, progresses to a plethora of cats in the house, and goes on from there. Cats are but a gateway drug; the hoarding of cats often leads to the hoarding of dogs as well, and on from there to farm animals.

Someone I knew back in high school has become a crazy cat lady. She discovered a stray cat in her suburban back yard and began feeding it. Of course, in short order her yard was filled every night with around 30 cats, looking for food. She thought it was cute. Her neighbors disagreed. She finally trapped and released all the cats, but remains the neighborhood pariah.

The first municipal election that I followed, back in 1995, culminated in the Board of Health's condemnation of the Democratic mayoral candidate's house. The house was filled with over 50 cats, cat food, cat urine, cat feces. Yes, she lost the election, although I thought she should have embraced her weirdness and campaigned on the "Crazy Cat Lady for Mayor" platform. You never know, it might have helped.

I take my dog to run in a park every day, but for several months this spring I was unable to use the one park where he can run leash-free because a crazy cat couple had decided to leave bedding and food for a feral cat. Naturally that cat soon turned into several cats, which led to the appearance of more food and bedding. The end result wasn't just going to be an entire feral colony, but was also the fact that my dog wouldn't run but would instead eat the cat food, search for cat feces, and roll around in the cat bedding. Park officials threw away the cat stuff three times before the crazy cat couple finally gave up.

In short, crazy cat people are everywhere. It could be that it's something that lies dormant in each of us, waiting to be released. Plenty of us do hoard, if not cats then books, papers, figurines, photographs, whatever it is we stock away and call a "collection." What made me think of all this, on a fine spring day? I went through my basement yesterday looking for my pruning shears, and realized that I have boxes down there that I haven't opened in years. I don't even know what's in them, I'm just saving them. So, if you see me buying an inordinate amount of cat food, please slap me. Thank you.

My Brain on Wellbutrin

For the past month, I've found it increasingly difficult to get out of bed. I've also had difficulty focusing on tasks; something as minor as sending out an email sometimes paralyzes me. I was bitten by a deer tick around a month ago and thought maybe I was coming down with lyme disease, then as time went on I began thinking maybe I'd just become depressed, although I've never had this sort of depression before.

My mood started changing for no apparent reason. I'd suddenly be anxious, suddenly become hostile, then suddenly feel incredibly happy. I couldn't control these mood swings any more than I could feel like getting out of bed in the morning. Last week I finally realized what was causing this. About six weeks ago I began taking Wellbutrin to help me stop smoking, and what I was experiencing was my brain on Wellbutrin.

I tried Wellbutrin a little over a year ago, and in the month I took it my only side effect was insomnia. In fact, the insomnia was the reason I stopped. When I decided to take it again, I figured I'd have some trouble sleeping for a month or two, but that was a small price to pay for the health benefits of becoming smoke-free. When, after a couple of weeks, I didn't experience sleeplessness, I just thought I was lucky and side-effect free. When I started feeling exhausted I attributed it to the tick bite, figuring it was early lyme that just didn't show up in the blood test, and that when I go back to the doctor next week I'd test positive.

I've never before felt helpless in the face of my own emotions. When I read Darkness Visible years ago I thought, "How awful. I can't imagine something coming upon you like that." Unfortunately, I now can imagine what Styron went through. Each day I became a little more tired, each day became a little bit harder on me. Then last week I found myself at the grocery store suddenly incredibly anxious: I'd been out of the house for two hours. I needed more than anything to get home, to get into bed, to get myself away from my own life. That's when I read up on all Wellbutrin's possible side effects, and decided it was time to stop taking my daily dose.

Some good has come out of this. I've greatly reduced my nicotine intake. Despite my lethargy I've lost a bit of weight. If I weren't depressed I'd probably feel great. Hopefully I'll be back to my old self in about a week, when the medication has worked its way out of my blood. In the meantime I've learned two lessons. First, rely on willpower if at all possible and avoid medications you don't need. Second, be glad it wasn't Chantix.

Reality Bytes

Awake and bored in the middle of the night, I flipped through channels to find something to put me to sleep. Rather than doing the smart thing, which would be to watch whatever was playing on one of the Discovery channels, I allowed myself to be sucked into the season premier of whatever iteration of The Real World we've reached. Seriously, what is this, Season 358? I haven't watched this show since the first Clinton administration and was sucked in because I couldn't believe how much it's changed since its 1992 debut.

This version takes place in Hollywood, and here's a brief recap of the first episode: seven telegenic strangers, most of whom are still in or just out of college, arrive at a literal television set on a backlot (the "house" is an old CBS studio), put their bags down, and begin drinking. They put on bathing suits, check out the hot tub, keep drinking. They decide to go out clubbing, drink some more, and try to negotiate who in the house will hook up with whom. We end with promos: this season of The Real World will feature drunken fights, drunken arguments, drunken sex, drunken outbursts, drunken negotiations.

When the first season aired I was 28, and I watched the show with interest. The inaugural cast was comprised mainly of people in their mid-20s, so even though I was a couple of years older I felt as if I was watching a story about my peers. My recollection of that first season didn't include one drunken antic after another, and I became interested in watching the pilot episode to see how things have changed. As it turns out you can find all of Season One on YouTube, and it's eye-opening.

The pilot focuses on Julie, who leaves a sheltered existence in Alabama to come to NYC to pursue dance. Her six roommates not only already live in New York, but all have established the beginnings of their careers. They have agreed to live in the loft together and be filmed in part as an experiment. The show unfolds not as crude entertainment but as a documentary: what are the hopes and dreams and expectations of these newly-minted adults? Will Julie survive not only in the big city but in a loft filled with roommates who are older, opinionated, incredibly different from all that she has known?

The roommates arrive at the loft and sit in a circle to get to know each other. This process involves a lengthy discussion of race and class, of the cultures in which they were raised versus the cultures in which they are living their adult lives. No one is drinking anything stronger than water. When someone's beeper goes off, Julie inadvertently offends the black roommates by making a joke about drug dealers and beepers. This doesn't lead to a drunken blow-up, not on this episode anyway, but instead to a consideration of her naivety.

Because everyone but Julie already lives in New York, they all have lives outside the loft, which means that during the season we will see them living their lives apart from each other. Cast members now come from all over the country, with no connection to the city in which filming takes place, meaning that no one knows anyone outside the house. No one has a job, no one has a career. In this episode Becky has a gig singing at some nightclub, and we see her rehearsing, and then the roommates go to the gig to support her. No alcohol, no fights, no hook-ups. The whole thing is much closer to An American Family than Girls Gone Wild. What happened to make the entire premise so different?

Perhaps the changes are due to the fact that sometime in the mid-90s The Real World became a franchise, a show in constant production and in constant rotation on MTV. A portrait of how 20-somethings live "now" loses its meaning when the "now" is constant. Plus, all those serious discussions about race and class and aspiration would get boring. Ratings were undoubtedly served by offering up a rotating cast of pretty 22 year-olds with nothing else to do but get drunk with each other. To accomplish drunken antics it's best to cast types rather than interesting individuals: throw together one ex-jock, one black dude, one innocent, one girl with emotional issues, one gay guy, one total bitch, and one random other person selected for no good reason, give them nothing to do but be together, and you're guaranteed the antics you need.

In 1992, living ones life in public meant something different than it means today. The absence of the internet meant the absence of YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, all those cheap and easy "social networking" opportunities. At heart, social networking really means creating and presenting an identity to the world, making your life in a sense public. The web allows the continuous representation of creative, social, and cultural identities, both factual and fictitious. We are now our own documentarians.

We can play a role on a networking site, we can create an identity on a blog, we can go to chat rooms and find others who are just like us, or just like who we wish we were. Those who learn to play with and construct identities at an early age find it easy to take the next step, to not only be "the girl with emotional issues," but to also play one on tv.

We really are a long way from 1992.

Today's Weather

"They" were convinced it would be raining right now, so convinced that the homepage of my local paper's website not two minutes ago stated that it's currently "Rain/47 degrees F." A simple look out the window indicates nearly full sun. A simple walk onto my back porch indicates a temperature in the mid-50s.

I haven't even finished my coffee and have already learned today's lesson. When you wake up in the morning knowing that sun will shine and birds will chirp you think nothing of it. When you wake up in the morning ready for gloom and instead find sun shining, birds chirping, trees pollenating, and flowers budding, the day feels as if it's been given to you for free.