Right now I’m reading Consider the Lobster, a collection of essays by David Foster Wallace. (I’ve gotten back onto a Wallace kick recently.) The first essay in the book is “Big Red Son,” an informal disquisition on the (heterosexual) U.S. porn industry that takes as its launching point a description of Wallce’s experience attending the Annual Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas. The piece first appeared in Premiere. It’s cynical and hilarious and saddening all at the same time. Though Wallace is a master postmodernish ironist, his meta-ironic point is usually that all this irony is killing our ability to deal with real human emotion. That comes through in this essay.

Two passages stood out for me. One:

Volunteer as a judge for the AVN Awards and spend 1.4 years gazing without rest at the latest in adult video. We guarantee that you will never thereafter want to see, hear, engage in, or even think about human sexuality ever again. Trust us on this. All five marginal (and male) print journalists assigned to cover the 1998 AVN Awards concur: Even just watching the dozen or so “big” or “high-profile” adult releases of the past year… fried everyone’s glandular circuitboard. By the end of the Awards weekend, none of us were even having normal biological first-thing-in-the-morning or jouncy-bus-ride-between-hotels erections; and when approached even innocently by members of the opposite sex, we all now recoiled as from a hot flame (which made our party a kind of strange and challenging breakfast gig, according to our Sunday-AM waitress).

The second passage is too long to quote, but it makes the point that the only moments of real humanity in porn films appear when porn actors’ faces accidentally drop their masks to reveal the person underneath, and that this happens rarely.

The essay didn’t touch on gay porn at all — it seemed largely to be about female porn actresses and their exploitation — and for that reason, I felt disconnected from it. Still, the essay was so long (nearly 50 pages) and so relentless in its focus on the tawdriness and extreme tackiness of everyone involved in porn that a third of the way through the essay I felt a strong desire to wash my brain out. I was happy when it was over.

Hmm… y’know, I’m thinking, maybe Bush could kill two birds with one stone.

Why not just go ahead and nominate Larry Craig for Attorney General?

(Sorry if you were drinking any liquids while reading that.)

Oh, this is rich.

As Talking Points Memo says in response, “What are the odds of a piece on airport restroom trysts appearing below a picture of Larry Craig in a conservative group’s newsletter, not to mention the reference to Craigslist?”

Incidentally, the Idaho Values Alliance is calling for Craig to resign.

Not only did Alberto Gonzales suck as Attorney General – the man doesn’t even know how to write.

Why is it always the Republican senators who get arrested for trying to find sex in men’s rooms?

I’ve dug up the old volumes of my diary. I’ve got tons of them.

I began keeping a diary a few days after my thirteenth birthday. I’d recently read The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4, and it inspired me to start one of my own. I told my parents that I wanted a diary for my birthday, and they got me one from a custom crafts store – the cover painted glossy white and stippled with small painted blue stars and a yellow moon, with the words “Jeff’s Midnight Confessions” written on it.

Here’s the first entry I ever wrote. I must point out that (1) one of my recent Hanukkah presents had been a word-a-day calendar and (2) I was a huge fan of “Days of our Lives.”

* * * * * * *

Friday, Jan. 2, 1987

Hello, Diary. This is my first entry. It’s about 4:30 pm and it’s during vacation. I’m in the middle of writing my stupid essay for Mrs. Podesta. I wish I didn’t have any homework over vacation!

Last night for Chanukah (7th night) I didn’t open anything, but on New Year’s Eve I got the Talisman Adventure Set. Now I have the complete Talisman collection!

On DOOL today, they found out that Emma’s death was homicidal. Also, Kayla discovered that Steve used to spy on her for Victor and they broke up. Sometimes I hate Victor! Also, Roman helped a skier with a broken leg. An ambulance took her to a hospital. It doesn’t seem important, but knowing DAYS, I know it’ll lead to something.

I have to get back to my dumb essay. And, just for the record, I like Lara C_________. Hopefully, nobody will look inside of here. Maybe I’ll write later. Bye! Oh, by the way, we didn’t maffick very loudly on New Year’s Eve.

Now it’s 5:00 pm. I’m sleeping at Larry’s house tonight, and we’re going to the museum tomorrow, so I can’t write in you tonight. Bye for today!

P.S. I didn’t set my tocsin this morning since there was no school today.

* * * * * * *

Oh, to be thirteen again. Except not really.

The other day I blogged about Best American Essays 2007, which is edited by David Foster Wallace. (Wallace chose them from a larger list that was provided to him.) I’ve done a little web research, and I’ve compiled a list of the pieces in the book that you can already read for free online. Enjoy.

Mark Danner, Iraq: The War of the Imagination

Malcolm Gladwell, What the Dog Saw

Louis Menand, Name That Tone

Cynthia Ozick, Out from Xanadu (under a different name)

Richard Rodriguez, Disappointment

Elaine Scarry, Rules of Engagement

Roger Scruton. A Carnivore’s Credo (I think this is the same piece)

Peter Singer, What Should a Billionaire Give — and What Should You?

Edward O. Wilson, Apocalypse Now

I recently got notalgic for an old videogame and decided to play it for the first time in years: Day of the Tentacle. It’s one of the most brilliant adventure games ever.

And then I found this speed-run of the game on YouTube.

If you’ve never played the game before or it’s been a long time, you might be confused. And, at the very least, spoiled.

I’ve been wondering lately whether I should end therapy. I probably won’t do it, but I do think about it.

I’ve been with my therapist for almost seven years now. I had my first appointment with her in November 2000. She’s not even my first therapist – I’ve been in therapy on and off since I was in college. But she’s by far been the most beneficial. I have the best rapport with her and I’ve learned a lot with her help.

I’ve thought about ending therapy from time to time. This most recent musing came about because I was thinking of ways to save money if Matt and I have to move, and getting rid of that weekly expense would be a big way to save.

But also – sometimes I feel like I get diminishing returns from therapy. By this point, I know what my issues are. I know why I am the way I am, why I do what I do, why I think the way I think.

My biggest issue is one that therapy so far hasn’t been able to help me with: an existential malaise. The big picture. I’m not living my purpose. This has dogged me for years. I didn’t know what I wanted to do in college, didn’t know what I wanted to do after college, in law school, after law school, now. Throughout my years of therapy it’s the one thing I’ve never been able to solve. I’ve taken a couple of writing courses (screenwriting and fiction writing), I’ve written a couple of newspaper letters, I’ve written a piece for the Blade, I’ve joined a chorus – but none of this lets me avoid going to a job every day.

The thing I ask myself is: what would I do if I didn’t have to go to a job every day? What would I do if I were set for life? And that’s a question therapy can’t seem to help me with. It’s a question that requires *action.* And therapy has never been good at helping me translate understanding into action.

Therapy has been very good for certain things. My therapist is someone who I always know is going to be on my side, unconditionally. I can talk to her about the most embarrassing, stupidest things and know I won’t be judged. I can vent to her to my heart’s content. I can be totally selfish around her, because it’s the one place where it’s all about me me me and I don’t have to feel guilty about being the center of attention.

Also, I’d be afraid of not having her to talk to anymore. She’s a safety valve that helps me keep my sanity in case I need it. I don’t know if I can trust anyone else to listen to my problems without rolling their eyes at me, visibly or otherwise.

So for now I’ll keep going to therapy. But I do wonder sometimes.

David Foster Wallace is the guest editor of the 2007 edition of the Best American Essays. The book won’t be published until October, but here’s Wallace’s introduction to the volume. It’s vintage Wallace. (Here’s the table of contents.)

I was going to quote an excerpt from his intro, but I couldn’t find one that would make any sense out of context. You’ll just have to read the whole thing.

Oh, hell. Here’s an excerpt. But it still doesn’t capture the full tone of his piece, because the essay isn’t really about politics. Although it does encompass it.

Here is an overt premise. There is just no way that 2004’s reelection could have taken place — not to mention extraordinary renditions, legalized torture, FISA-flouting, or the passage of the Military Commissions Act — if we had been paying attention and handling information in a competent grown-up way. ‘We’ meaning as a polity and culture. The premise does not entail specific blame — or rather the problems here are too entangled and systemic for good old-fashioned finger-pointing. It is, for one example, simplistic and wrong to blame the for-profit media for somehow failing to make clear to us the moral and practical hazards of trashing the Geneva Conventions. The for-profit media is highly attuned to what we want and the amount of detail we’ll sit still for. And a ninety-second news piece on the question of whether and how the Geneva Conventions ought to apply in an era of asymmetrical warfare is not going to explain anything; the relevant questions are too numerous and complicated, too fraught with contexts in everything from civil law and military history to ethics and game theory. One could spend a hard month just learning the history of the Conventions’ translation into actual codes of conduct for the U.S. military . . . and that’s not counting the dramatic changes in those codes since 2002, or the question of just what new practices violate (or don’t) just which Geneva provisions, and according to whom. Or let’s not even mention the amount of research, background, cross-checking, corroboration, and rhetorical parsing required to understand the cataclysm of Iraq, the collapse of congressional oversight, the ideology of neoconservatism, the legal status of presidential signing statements, the political marriage of evangelical Protestantism and corporatist laissez-faire . . . There’s no way. You’d simply drown. We all would. It’s amazing to me that no one much talks about this — about the fact that whatever our founders and framers thought of as a literate, informed citizenry can no longer exist, at least not without a whole new modern degree of subcontracting and dependence packed into what we mean by ‘informed.’

Followed, in pure Wallaceian fashion, by a footnote.

This is going to be disorganized and not very well written.

I hate it when I use this place as my personal therapy session. I’ve already got a therapist. And this place isn’t private. This is a place where I put myself forward to the public.

(Shades of Josh Lyman. “This is a place where solemn work is done. This is a place… this is a place… let me say this… this is not a place where one’s personal things… where things among people… this is not a place… let’s… This is a place where work is done and nothing else.”)

I remember something Mike wrote when I first quit blogging a few years ago. “I’m sad that you never really considered devoting most of your blogging energy to the less emotional aspects of your life, choosing instead to live a very big chunk of your life out in the open. It made for some very compelling reading… and it wore you down in little more than a year.”

I’ve tried hard to avoid doing that since I resumed blogging. But sometimes it slips through. Sometimes I tend to feel things… intensely. I can be oversensitive. Not all the time, but it still happens.

I realized something about myself a while back. I used to think I hated competition. I told myself I wasn’t competitive. But what I realized is, I am competitive. I’m very competitive. I just don’t like having to compete. It’s much easier to feel jealousy or envy instead of actually doing what it takes to compete. In theory I’m against competition, because I think you should focus on yourself instead of on other people, and competition brings up conflict, and I hate conflict. And yet, I focus a lot on other people’s accomplishments in comparison to my own and wind up seething with resentment inside – sometimes subconsciously, so I don’t even realize I’m doing it. So basically, I hate being competitive, yet I can’t help but be competitive.

There are certain blogs I don’t read anymore because they stir up lots of negative feelings in me when I read them, mostly envy. Part of this comes from the fact that I’ve been blogging for such a long time that I resent people who’ve been blogging for much shorter periods of time and are much more popular. Which I know is totally stupid. But they don’t have to be newish upstarts – they can be older bloggers, too. Regardless — I think to myself, what have they got that I haven’t got? And the answer is, drive, or more writing talent, or more focus, or something inherently appealing or attractive about their personality.

I am such a competitive person. I get envious *so* easily.

Sometimes I wish I could get back to that place where I wrote about things in a compelling manner. But too many people know about this site now, which inhibits me.

I’ve been bummed lately in general. Part of it is this dark and gloomy weather that’s hung over New York City and Newark the last few days. Part of it is that Matt’s been really busy and frazzled with getting things set for the new students to move into our building and hasn’t been around that much. Part of it is that I’m worried about us maybe having to move, and about the dent that’s going to put in my finances.

Sunday was one of the worst weekend days I’d had in a long time – complete and utter boredom and loneliness and gloomy weather, resentment over lost or deteriorated friendships, self-flagellation for not being as social as I should be, self-doubt.

I don’t know why I am the way I am. Years of therapy have not gotten rid of it.

This looks awesome. You can now explore the heavens with Google Earth – stars, galaxies, constellations. I can’t wait to try it out.

I’ve always liked this poem by Phillip Lopate. I find it darkly amusing.

We who are
your closest friends
feel the time
has come to tell you
that every Thursday
we have been meeting,
as a group,
to devise ways
to keep you
in perpetual uncertainty
frustration
discontent and
torture
by neither loving you
as much as you want
nor cutting you adrift.
Your analyst is
in on it,
plus your boyfriend
and your ex-husband;
and we have pledged
to disappoint you
as long as you need us.
In announcing our
association
we realize we have
placed in your hands
a possible antidote
against uncertainty
indeed against ourselves.
But since our Thursday nights
have brought us
to a community
of purpose
rare in itself
with you as
the natural center,
we feel hopeful you
will continue to make unreasonable
demands for affection
if not as a consequence
of your disastrous personality
then for the good of the collective.

It appears in Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott.

Can anyone recommend a good gay or gay-friendly doctor in Manhattan? I’ve realized I don’t have a regular doctor anymore since I switched jobs, and it would be good to have one.

Yesterday was the 25th birthday of the compact disc.

I got my first CD player for my bar mitzvah in March 1987. It was part of an enormous stereo system that included two tape decks and a turntable, and it all fit into a wooden case on wheels with a glass door.

I’m not sure which CD is the first I ever owned. It was either Genesis, Invisible Touch, Bon Jovi, Bon Jovi, or The Bangles, Different Light.

Wow, that last disc was a good one. Lately I’ve been moving my CD collection from jewel cases into slim CD sleeves, and I can’t find it anywhere. Boo.

I have my second letter to the New York Times in Saturday’s paper.

Did any of you see last night’s Daily Show? Jon Stewart did an amazing inteview (the link is a video clip) with Stephen Hayes, author of a new hagiography of Dick Cheney. Minutes earlier, Stewart had shown a clip of Dick Cheney saying in 1994 that overthrowing Saddam Hussein would be a mistake, because it would result in chaos. In the subsequent interview, Stewart nailed Hayes to the wall. In a terrific moment, Hayes denied that the Bush administration had ever characterized war dissenters as traitors; the audience responded with a huge groan of disbelief, as if it were collectively yelling, “Come on!”

There were other moments where Stewart voiced the anger so many of us have felt toward neocons in the past six years.

It was great, and it shows once again why I love Jon Stewart.

We have a mouse in the apartment and it’s freaking me out.

It’s not the first mouse we’ve had – I caught two or three a few months ago with glue traps on the floor. But this one is different, because it’s gotten into our food cabinet. The middle shelf of our food cabinet, actually. We have no idea how it gets up there. Can mice fly?

I first realized we had an uninvited guest several nights ago, when I went to the cabinet to take out a bag of M&Ms. As I picked up the bag, several M&Ms landed on the floor. Puzzled, I looked at the bag and noticed a small hole in the bottom. I felt my stomach begin to turn. I threw the whole M&M bag in the trash.

The last few mornings, I’ve woken up and approached the cabinet with trepidation. We have numerous small bags of candy that I think came from the gift basket for my brother’s wedding last summer, and every morning or night I keep finding little chewed-out holes in them and little pieces of plastic bag strewn about the cabinet. The mystery visitor also got into a bag of bagel chips, a box of cream of wheat, and, sometime last night, a packet of hot chocolate. A few nights ago I set up glue traps right next to the food, but they’re not helping. In the morning I find the traps untouched and more evidence of mousery.

As morning arrived today, I kept dreaming about mice in the cabinet. I dreamed that I went to the cabinet and saw them, little and gray. I woke up anxious, went to the cabinet, and saw the torn hot chocolate packet and some loose chocolate powder on the shelf. I felt ill.

I want to find and trap the damn thing. As I said, it’s really starting to freak me out. I think in part it’s because I don’t actually see the mouse. It’s invisible, which just makes it more mysterious and freaky. AND IT’S GETTING INTO OUR FOOD.

This morning I finally looked at the base of the cabinet (it’s a floor-length cabinet built into the wall) and saw a small hole. That could be where it’s coming from. So I put a glue trap right in front of the hole. It better work. If it doesn’t, I really don’t know what I’m going to do.