Monday evening roundup and rambles

Oh, Ukraine.
The Onion on knowing how Jesus felt.

The DC Council has come up with the second best idea ever, after the bag tax. Now if the lobbyist could drop the faux populism (my goodness! people's grocery bills!), we might get somewhere. And I'm looking forward to seeing how another set of lobbyists spin a new study that correlates pesticides with ADHD. Just keep telling people organics are no healthier.

I usually don't care much for stories on social networking, but this Chat Roulette piece from the New Yorker is remarkably insightful about Russian culture and society. Some excerpts:

"Like his grandfather, Andrey Ternovskiy knows when to toe the pro-Russian line; for example, when reporters from state television call. In private, however, he gripes, albeit cautiously, about his country and his countrymen. He doesn’t like his peers’ increasingly anti-Western attitudes, which he says make him “uncomfortable” because most of his virtual friends happen to be in the U.S. He is puzzled by Russia’s hypersensitive self-absorption. He has also been worried about getting drafted into the Russian Army, which has become infamous for hazing so brutal that it kills dozens of draftees every year. As a self-described happy nerd—a word he loves to drop in English—he cringes at the anger and frustration that he sees in his compatriots. When I asked him where he got his optimism, he said, simply, “Dad is happy, Mom is Russian.”

"Ternovskiy also has reason to be skeptical of the Kremlin’s recent interest in grooming intellectual talent, given the exodus of scientists from the country—by 2002, more than half a million had left—and the pitiful state of Russia’s intelligentsia since the fall of Communism. Andrey’s parents are exactly the kind of people Russia might be cultivating in its modernization drive, yet Vladimir makes only five hundred dollars a month and Elena three hundred. Official talk of modernization and innovation rankles Vladimir, who supplements his income with work for Russian Souvenirs. “It’s demagoguery,” he says...

"And Andrey knows that if he stays here no one will support him. The country doesn’t need people like him.”

Andrey, in turn, feels that he doesn’t need the country, and declares that he does not want to run a Russian company, which might be forced to pay “dirty,” under-the-table salaries to avoid a crushing tax burden, or to deal with extortion from corrupt tax and fire-code inspectors."

The story about getting to the airport also really resonated--that is so my family (although even we are more organized than that)--but the bickering was spot on. Bickering, arguing has a varying role in different cultures, and it's a pretty standard thing in Russian families. I was just having this conversation with some friends last week. I was talking about that situation I blogged about last night--how I feel bad about snapping at my parents--when two friends said it was cultural, i.e., in "ethnic" families, snapping at parents is not acceptable. Um, my family is pretty ethnic. They--African Americans--went on to argue that in African American, Latino and Asian families, it's an entirely different situation. A Latina friend disagreed, said that it varies so completely within that "ethnic" category and within families. I spend enough time with Latino friends and other Latino families to know that there is certainly no blanket cultural predilection against snapping at one's elders. Nonetheless, I'll grant you the amount of bickering in my family is largely cultural.

***
I have something else to add to last night's post about how mom and RM both have a knack for timing: Gracie's awesome that way, too. Guess who pooped and made mommy just miss a train, making her extra late for work this morning? At least Gracie has an "excuse": she poops when she feels neglected, and she's "neglected" when I'm especially busy. Which makes me wonder whether it wasn't a subconscious passive-aggressive power thing on RM's part as well.

***
Speaking of RM--yes, the experience was so traumatic that it continues to haunt me--I was thinking today about how the first rule of interpersonal conflict management is to make sure you're having the same conversation. For example, when I'm having a "I'm sorry I don't like the china" conversation with my mother, we're really having a conversation about how I have a right to determine what takes up precious real estate inside my house, and I have a right to my own tastes. Which means that I may end up paying more for things like flatware then if I just accept from her the set she found at a yard sale, but I'm okay with that, and it's time for her to respect that. If we argue about a specific china set, or a specific lamp, we'll continue to talk past each other (and we have).

With RM, I really did try to have the right level conversation (i.e., the issue is boundaries, not earrings), and he just wasn't hearing it. His power to ignore reality and selectively understand things was just that strong. It took me a while to fully grasp what that level of conversation was, but even when I did, it went nowhere. Well, we're all glad that's over.

***
Thinking about RM, and other people with whom I've recently interacted--a couple of coworkers, and Susan (who is too nice and normal, actually, to be put in the same category as RM)--it's amazing to me how very different these people from me and from most people I know. This got me thinking about "types" of people. At the barbecue I went to yesterday, various types of people were on display, in full contrast. There was one grad school colleague that I'd not seen in ages who is so annoying that people actually chose classes around her (I was not that bothered, although in the couple of classes we had together, I often regretted that). There were the hosts--very good friends of mine, but, at this point, committed suburbanites. Another urbanite guest made a catty comment about the cake (it was a child's birthday party) and its "happy birthday" stenciled lettering. She said, more than once, "I guess this is what people in the suburbs do." Which isn't really fair: there are plenty of people in the city who have chocolate molds. But there were things about the area that struck me. A certain type of person can live there, and it's not me.

The barbecue offered other food for thought about type, more than I can get into here. When the hostess introduced various people to another guest as grad school friends, the other friend pointed out that we were well represented, at which point she (hostess) talked about what a great time it was, and how from a social/interpersonal perspective, it was a great opportunity to make friends. Within certain parameters--and with great variation, actually, we were all a certain 'type' of people. She said it was the first time in her life where, in some ways, she didn't feel like a freak. Not that she wasn't a freak, she added.

To which I said, it seems to me that anyone who could stay sane in Japan for a prolonged period of time is kind of a freak. She agreed, said that she and her other friends who left after a year or so because they couldn't take it often talked about the people that can stay longer--especially men, who are more likely to manage for longer. She's wary about the type of person who can thrive in Japan for more than a year. [Ernessa, I'm not sure how long you were there, but from your previous comments on the matter, I gather you're an exception, in any case.]

Speaking of Japan, I found myself talking about deer poop at the barbecue (at least it's not panda porn). Someone else had talked about how she got for her mother some of that civet poop coffee for mother's day, and watched her open it on Skype. Her mother's reaction was not what she was expecting. (I wish I'd been there to see Jay open his deer poop, but imagining his reaction was good enough).

Back to what's going to have to suffice as a point, I couldn't agree more about how my grad school friends, different as we all are, are my type of people. It's not a value judgment, I'm not suggesting we're better people; just saying we understand each other.