msmeta’s musings on the meaning of life at middle age — and beyond.
A new diversion for a new year: What could be better?
No. 1 (and 2?) with a bullet: Man’s pistol blasts toilet to pieces
Don’t miss the photo. What if it had hit his, um, leg?
Update: Applications for concealed weapon permits are also at an all time high around here. Commodes, beware!
Further update: The commode will be honored during a special service.
The Associated Press is reporting today that some 3.4 million Americans identified themselves as victims of stalking last year:
About half of the victims experienced at least one unwanted contact per week from a stalker, and 11 percent had been stalked for five or more years, according to the report by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics… The most commonly reported types of stalking were unwanted phone calls (66 percent), unsolicited letters or e-mail (31 percent), or having rumors spread about the victim (36 percent).
The article also details the cost of stalking, from lost time at work (to hide out or submit restraining orders), lost jobs, fear, relocation and a host of other problems.
I’ve had only a few minor brushes with this scary phenomenon, which has gotten a lot of press in recent years. There was a guy in one of my college classes who reacted surprisingly aggressively when I wouldn’t go out with him, calling me to talk about his sexual relationships with other women (rather graphicly, but I was too inexperienced and polite to know to hang up on the creep) and following me around for a few days until he dropped the class and disappeared, much to my relief. That FELT like stalking.
But someone, for the past year or so, has been leaving little innocuous holiday gifts on my doorstep, with a note that says “Love, Joy.” I have wracked my brain and I can’t come up with who it might be. The gifts are small and harmless, and I haven’t paid much attention to them or worried when they showed up. But the giver is clearly unwilling to identify him/herself. Is that stalking? Do fear and intimidation have to be involved?
According to the researchers in the AP story, stalking is “a course of conduct, directed at a specific person on at least two separate occasions, that would cause a reasonable person to feel fear.” But a recently single midlife friend of mine has, since her divorce, attracted several sad-sack, underachieving older men who call her regularly but for whom she has expressed no interest. She calls them, in a kindly way, her “stalkers.” She doesn’t fear them, although she admits that they can get annoying. (No surprise, her underachieving ex-husband also calls her regularly to lament his life, so maybe she needs to set up some firmer boundaries…)
The crime channels are full of programs about women who were terrified and in many cases killed by men who were stalking them, and law enforcement appeared in many cases ham-strung by weak or non-existent laws against that kind of threatening behavior. But does unwanted attention have to be that extreme or go that far to be considered stalking?
The article also made me wonder if I’ve been guilty of stalking as well. I clearly remember, also back in college, when the-only-boyfriend-I-was-EVER-going-have-in-my-entire-life broke up with me. I admittedly went a little mad, daily driving by his apartment, hiding outside his classes to see him when he came in and out, pestering mutual friends about what he was doing and who he was seeing. I never did the call-and-hang-up thing, praise Allah, but I remember being pretty obsessed over him for several months until the passion burned out and I got my pride back. (What was I thinking? He was a DOPE.) Was I on some level a stalker?
One lesson I’ve learned over my 50+ years is that we humanoids, male or female, are intensely social and emotional creatures, a fact which often leads to some pretty irrational behavior. (That image of my college-age self, waiting in my unheated car in freezing rain outside Former Boyfriend’s apartment, still makes me CRINGE.) Add those too-human traits to a mind that is already unhinged in some way, and you have a disaster ready to happen.
Does this all stir any memories? Is stalking part of the human experience, some sort of Darwinian throwback? Can we not help ourselves?
Now you too can become your very own Obamicon, thanks to the folks at paste magazine. (Via Gawker. YES, I REALLY DO LOOK AT THAT AWFUL SITE! SO SUE ME!)
Merlot Mom, a fine site I have followed since I started hanging out here, is back after a noticeable hiatus, and admits that she wasn’t just too busy to blog:
…I also left to pull myself out of the debilitating internal competition I was having with Sitemeter, Feedburner and Statcounter, not to mention you other bloggers out there (you know who you are) who get dozens or hundreds of comments for every post no matter how large or how small). To be honest, that is just hard to take.
Indeed, it is, girl. Once I was introduced to stats checkers (thanks to some of YOU), I found myself blogging more and enjoying it less, and actually came to the point where I was more concerned with my stats that with what I was blogging about. And, if that’s what becomes important to you, it’s discouraging.
As I said to ByJane in an earlier conversation, it sometimes seems like the only way to get a following out here is to engage in a lot of breast-baring exhibitionism, sprinkled liberally with snarky comments and a dollop of dirty-laundry airing. I hate to disappoint anyone, but my life isn’t that dramatic and I HATE SNARK. (Which, of course, means I have no future in cable news.)
But then, the better angels of my nature crawl back onto my shoulder (I keep knocking them off) and gently remind me that I didn’t really embark on all of this a year ago to be read. I started this to become part of an interesting, compelling and dynamic phenomenon, and to try to find out exactly what I thought about it. And I don’t need Sitemeter to tell me that, on those points, I’ve succeeded. The big bonus has been meeting so many interesting and articulate bloggers, some of whom have kindly stopped by long enough to comment and encourage me. Thanks.
So I guess I’ll keep nattering away. For now. You too, Merlot Mom.
Thanks to Paper Cuts at the NYTimes, I now have a name for my post-holiday angst, what Kingsley Amis called a “metaphysical hangover”:
…that ineffable compound of depression, sadness (these two are not the same), anxiety, self-hatred, sense of failure and fear for the future [says Amis]… You have not suffered a minor brain lesion, you are not all that bad at your job, your family and friends are not leagued in a conspiracy of barely maintained silence about what a skunk you are, you have not come at last to see life as it really is.
That “fear for the future” has been compounded in recent weeks for all of us, and after the frivolity of the past two weeks (I admit to five parties in one six-day stretch around New Year’s Day), it is time for that confounded piper to be paid.
So the Christmas lights are all down and packed away, the cupboard has been cleared of all Christmas goodies and the pantry stocked with NutriSystem and SlimFast, the poinsettias have withered away — and I am back at my desk, glad to have a job, but wishing that the paper narcissus bulbs would bloom already and give me a little burst of spring.
Cheerier posts will resume shortly. Promise.
Meghan Daum, one of my favorite writers, has a little fun with Facebook — and the President-Elect — in her latest Op-Ed piece for the LATimes.
Unmitigated, who is always good for something interesting, has introduced me to Wordle, which generates “word clouds” from any text that you provide. And so here is my latest:
I had no idea I used the word “just” so much. I need to quit qualifying my ideas. Verrrrrrry interesting.
If you’re on red and green overload this time of year (neither one is my favorite color), I offer these two gems from American abstract artist Helen Frankenthaler. Unlike the canvases of some of her contemporaries (Jackson Pollock comes to mind), her works whisper instead of scream.
A little Zen moment for your Friday. I hope your weekend is joyful.
All I have to say about Oprah and her 40 refound pounds is that, if America’s sweetheart, with her millions and millions of dollars and her literal army of assistants — trainers, personal chefs, doctors, nutritionists, counselors, etc. — can’t keep the weight off, then the rest of us chubby plebeians out here should step back, take a deep breath, and just be a little kinder to ourselves. I don’t just think, I KNOW this kind of yo-yo weight loss has contributed to her — and my — weight issues over the years.
She maintains that her fall off the wagon is due to a out-of-balance thyroid, and, in deference to my thyroid-deficient friends — and I have many — I’ll refrain from speculating on that excuse. And don’t go ragging on me — I think Oprah’s okay, just maybe a little self-absorbed sometimes.
This doesn’t mean that I’ll be accepting seconds on pecan pie this season (even if its ByJane’s recipe) or that I’ll quit nagging myself to get off my lazy backside and go for a walk. I’m just not looking for any more reasons to despise myself. And neither should you.
A blessed, peaceful and gracious holiday to you all! (And apologies for my absence from the Blogosphere. Life happens…)
At the risk of flogging that dead horse, I renew the concerns expressed in my last blogpost by referring you to today’s The Daily Beast, which has an article that quantifies my uneasiness over the state of women following the recent election. According to its own poll:
• By an overwhelming 61% to 19% margin, women believe there is a gender bias in the media.
• 4 in 10 men freely admit sexist attitudes towards a female president. 39% of men say that a male is “naturally more suited” to carrying out the duties of the office
• 48% of women thought Hillary Clinton received fair media treatment and only 29% believed Sarah Palin was treated fairly. In contrast, nearly 8 in 10 voters thought the press gave fair treatment to Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
• More than two-thirds of women said they were being treated unfairly in the workplace (68%)
And, it determined, “Women over 50, the first generation to have a majority in the workforce, see far more discrimination in every area of life than younger women.” (HA! I wasn’t just imagining it!)
So clearly I’m not the only one grinding my teeth over this issue. We seem to be running harder than ever, but are we just running in place? Our biggest enemy may not be a biased media, but our own ambivalence, since The Daily Beast’s survey also found that, “Only 20% of women are willing to use the word ‘feminist’ about themselves [and] only 17% of all voters said they would welcome their daughters using that label.” And while more than 90% of African-American voters supported Barack Obama, American women did not back either Clinton or Palin in such significant numbers.
Do we really want to succeed? If we keep thinking that “feminist” is a dirty word, do we need to rescript or relabel the whole endeavor?
“What will women do now?” wonders The Daily Beast.
The poll suggests that there is tremendous potential for an expanded, revitalized, and updated women’s equality movement. Certainly there would be considerable support for boycotts of news stations that carry sexist commentators or generally cover women unfairly.
I think it’s time to us women to start speaking up — in ways small and large, gentle and forthright, local and national — instead of hoping that our sheer numbers are going to speak for us.
Update: Social critic Daphne Merkin shares my pessimism.
I, msmeta, am a middle-aged, middle-class, middle-brow writer, reader, wife and mother languishing in a dusty corner of the Great American West. I have spent several years lurking online, but I'm ready to join the conversation. I just hope I have something to say. I'm particularly interested in issues facing women at midlife. Look for posts on books, American culture, middle age, thrift shops, shoes, family, politics, religion and maybe even the occasional rant if I'm irritated enough.
Thanks for stopping by!
