Cogito, Ergo Sumana for 2006 March 12

# 12 Mar 2006, 04:08PM: MC Masala on Alcohol: Still chasing down a link to last week's column; InsideBayArea has redesigned its site. My column this week is basically a giant response to my parents, my ex, Leonard, DARE, and especially Brendan. It's insufficient as a response to Brendan's essays, but it's a start.

But I only started drinking after I'd gotten some maturity, as a person paranoid about self-control and the epistemology of experience, just as I only got a credit card after I'd started supporting myself and living within my means. Your mileage will vary.

Brendan wrote, of being a teetotaler among drinkers: "Their choices don't define who they are; I don't think I'll ever understand why mine apparently does." The pat answer is that all our choices define us. Also, especially when the abstainer is abstaining from something that people in his society commonly consume or do, the conscious choice of the abstainer forces the person who doesn't abstain to examine her unthinking choice, possibly finding it wanting. Look at how US meat-eaters often treat vegetarians or vegans, imagining self-righteousness where there's often none.

My first semester at UC Berkeley, I went to some seminar/workshop at a gender resource center on campus. There, I learned some interesting and useful factoids about reproductive health, safety, and the like. But one thing I was told there I've never quite gotten over: people's identities are independent of their behavior. Example: a man who has sex with men may identify as straight, not gay or bisexual.

I reflexively believe that choices generate identity. (Yeah, there are some identities you get born with, too.) You choose to teach, you're a teacher. You choose to lie, you're a liar. You choose to abstain from alcohol, you're a teetotaler, and that's an unusual and shaping choice if your milieu partakes. A man who has sex with other men but identifies as heterosexual is entertaining delusions. This is a huge topic and I'm probably being too harsh and narrowminded, somehow, somehow.

# 12 Mar 2006, 05:23PM: Online Voice: Flea of One Good Thing writes a letter to her sons. She's pseudonymous. Even if I were too, I don't think I could be as vulnerable in a blog as she is in that entry.

# 12 Mar 2006, 05:53PM: More Profound Jon Stewart Advice: Via Slacktivist: Very odd interview between Larry King and Jon Stewart.

I really feel like I have gotten to this weird place where rejection, like, or bombing or things like that is kind of like it's a good kind of pain. Like you get a shot to the ribs sometimes and you go, eh, I'm alive, you know what I mean? Like it doesn't -- it doesn't -- you get to a certain baseline where you feel confident in your ability to do that tiny little thing that you do. And the other stuff that you've been allowed to do is sort of gravy, and if it doesn't work out, that's really all right.

# 12 Mar 2006, 06:38PM: "Spaced": Turn-of-the-century British sitcom "Spaced" is pretty funny. Leonard and I watched the entire run of it last night. Of course, it's British, so the entire run is 14 episodes. And you thought Arrested Development was a brief candle!

# 12 Mar 2006, 10:39PM: Links While Procrastinating Writing Important Deadline Things: Haikus about Muni, often on the themes of tourists, lateness, and feast-and-famine arrivals.

"Religion isn't the opiate of the masses anymore, Karl. IDEs are." My ad hoc campaign to learn the world of programming continues apace! A booklist from the same guy may help; I've added a few books from there onto my wantlist/to-read list. Probably most of them are already in the Fog Creek library.