What Fosco learned from Mother Teresa

Fosco doesn't like to discuss religion in polite company; and if my conversation with you here at Fosco Lives! isn't polite, I don't know what it is. Aside from a few good-natured jokes about the Morms, Fosco prefers to live his unrepentantly atheistic life and ignore all the silliness about this Jebus Jesus that people keep talking about. This is the understanding here at Fosco Lives!: let's not talk god.

Fosco is going to break this agreement to make a brief comment about the soon-to-be-released letters of Saintish Mother Teresa. This collection reveals that Mother Teresa may have had (gasp!) doubts about her faith and the existence of god, revealing what is described by the NYTimes as a "profound darkness." From the NYT:

"I have no Faith--I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart--& make me suffer untold agony," she wrote in an undated letter.

In 1956, she wrote: "Such deep longing for God and...repulsed empty no faith no love no zeal. ... Heaven means nothing pray for me please that I keep smiling at Him in spite of everything."

Mother Teresa acknowledged the apparent contradiction with per public persona, describing her ever-present smile as "a mask" or "a cloak that covers everything."

Some writings seem to suggest she doubted God's existence. She wrote in 1959: "What do I labour for? If there be no God--there can be no soul--if there is no Soul then Jesus You also are not true."

Now Fosco has no interest in snarking at Mother Teresa. Even taking into account what Christopher Hitchens has (persuasively) argued, I still find Mother Teresa to be a lot more saint-like than say... me. Or Robert Olen Butler (R.I.P.). No, the target of Fosco's ire here is not MT herself, but rather anyone who thinks that christianity produces peace of mind.

Now Fosco's mind has a long and proud tradition of inquietude. And on several occasions has Fosco been assured by some glassy-eyed christo-zombie that a life of faith is pure blisssssssss. Fosco was once told (at a school board meeting, no less!) that only god could bring quiet to his troubled mind. And at least when Fosco is on an airplane or insomniac in the middle of the night, that kind of promise can seem pretty appealing.

But look at Saint Albanian Nun! This is what Mother Teresa's doubts suggest to me: the key to peace of mind is not faith in god, but rather near-vegetable idiocy. Apparently, even Mother Teresa was too smart for that.

(Of course, part of the Vatican's point here is that MT performed her saintly deeds despite her doubts--she lived a faith she didn't feel. Fine. I can deal with that. We can productively disagree over whether or not that's inspirational or pathetic--or some of both.)

So the next time Fosco finds himself in existential crisis in the middle of the night, he's going to think about Mother Teresa. And then he's going to roll over and make out with his boyfriend Oz, secure in the knowledge that christians all over the country are having similar midnight anxieties (and that most of them do not have a boyfriend with such a cute ass).

Two Truths and a Lie (Part II)

Let's talk about a new series of posts. Every so often, I will collect three tidbits of info that don't really deserve their own entry and then squish them together... Oh, and one of them will have something to do with lying. I did this once and I like how it works. So let's go, let's go, L-E-T-S-G-O!

• Stephen Colbert has issued the call to arms:
  

  We’re at war here, singles. Pick a side. You can be married or you can be gay.

  I know I've chosen my side, although I might prefer to have the singles team up with the gays to fight the marrieds... But oh well.
  
  At any rate, Stephen is going to be pissed about this: according to results released by the Census Bureau, married people in the US are now outnumbered by singles!
  
  The most interesting things about these data?
  

  Among counties, the highest proportion of unmarried opposite-sex partners was in Mendocino, Calif., where they made up nearly 11 percent of all households.
  
  The highest share of male couples was in San Francisco, where, according to the census, they accounted for nearly 2 percent of all households. Hampshire County, Mass., home to Northampton, had the highest proportion of female couples, at 1.7 percent.

  While it is no surprise to find that San Francisco is the place to live when you're gaymale and coupled, and while it is no surprise (to anyone who, like Fosco, has visited) that Northampton, MA is Lesbian Central, what is the deal with Mendocino County?
  
  Maybe I should think about moving to that swinger's paradise... I hear that Ukiah (the largest community in Mendocino County) has got a hella crazy club scene...
  
  
• Have you heard of this tool named Aleksey Vayner? It seems he's been a viral internet celeb lately, but not in a good way.
  
  
  
  He's a Yale student (it figures...) and it seems that he prepared this totally narcissistic and bizarre video resume (entitled "Impossible Is Nothing") for some ibanking job. According to the NYTimes,
  

  Mr. Vayner’s seven-minute clip, entitled “Impossible is nothing,” presents images of him bench-pressing what a caption suggests is 495 pounds and firing off what is purported to be a 140-mile-an-hour tennis serve.
  
  The tone of the video seems too serious to be parody, yet too over-the-top to be credible.

  As for the footage of him doing the ski tricks? Well, that's only "probably" him. Oh yeah, he also wrote a book. It's self-published and entitled "Women’s Silent Tears: A Unique Gendered Perspective on the Holocaust." And did I mention that it's largely plagiarized? Yesss... I love this story. Read the rest of it here.
  
  
• Fosco's self-promoting college roommate (God bless him), David Lat, is profiled in this article in the Legal Times.
  
  It's a good profile--quite fawning--and it doesn't dwell too much on David's bizarre and unpleasant conservatism. Did you know that David actually requires that his clothes be tailored by seven-year-old Cambodian orphans? It's true. If you want the real dirt on David Lat, now you know where to go...
  
  Oh, and does Fosco get mentioned in the profile? Not exactly, unless you know that Fosco is actually the nom-de-guerre plume of Jeffrey Toobin. But shhhh...
  

Maybe next year, Joyce...

The first few weeks of October are both exciting and frustrating for Fosco. As the Nobel Prizes begin to trickle out of Stockholm, he has to put with the almost daily announcements of useless awards (like Physics or Medicine) until they finally get around to the Literature award.

Fosco loves the Nobel Prize in Literature (as he loves most other literary awards). Actually, the thing that Fosco loves most about the Nobel Prize in Literature is handicapping it. Who will win? Who should win but won't? Who might win but shouldn't?

To tell you the truth, Fosco's favorite thing about the Nobel Lit Prize is the perrenial presence of Skeletor, er, Joyce Carol Oates on the media's "shortlist." Yes, our JCO is Literature's Susan Lucci, tapped by both the newsmedia and the betting books (yes, you can bet on this!) as one of the heavyweights for the last several years. JCO's annual candidacy has even led the editor of the JCO infosite to provide this tart reply. Personally, I doubt that JCO will ever win the Nobel Prize for Literature, for the following reasons:

• She teaches at Princeton with previous Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison (Winner in 1993). How many Literature Nobels are they going to throw at Princeton?
  
• She's written somewhere in the neighborhood of, oh say, 6500 books and yet, NO ONE I know has read one of her novels. (Fosco has read more of her novels than he would care to admit, but all against his will. Ask him what that means, sometime.)
  
• She's written (by a conservative estimate) about 9,740 books. Every time you look away, another book by her appears on the "New Books" table. Can the Nobel Committee really come to terms with that kind of oeuvre? Do they care to?
  
• Although she's written roughly 4200 books, a close reading reveals that she's actually written the same 5 books, 840 times each. That's something I expect the Swedish Academy to notice. Eventually.
  
• There's that whole mess with her accusing James McGreevey of killing all those teen vagrants. Stockholm doesn't really like teen sex killings.

So who did win? Some Turkish guy. Actually, to be more accurate, it's some Turkish guy who has faced political repression (a lil' bit) in his home country. Huh. Well, at least the Nobel Committee isn't predictable or anything.

So who should have won? Actually, I'm fine with Pamuk winning. I've never read his stuff, but it seems to review well. I mean, if Margaret Atwood thinks it's okay who am I to argue? (Atwood herself is something of a gunner for the Prize, eh?)

Next year, I'd love to see it go to Salman Rushdie (especially if the Academy really wants to make a statement about creative freedom) or Haruki Murakami (cuz I like him).

Actually the writer I think most deserves it (as he is certainly the best living writing working in English) is Philip Roth. However, he will never win it. Never. Why not? Because I don't see another American Jewish man (who writes about aging American men) winning. It turns out that Saul Bellow won the Nobel Prize that should have, thirty years later, gone to Roth. Time plays such cruel jokes.

Don't worry, Joyce--you still have that cushy gig at Princeton, even if Toni makes fun of you behind your back. And, as this post proves, you don't need to have a Nobel to do that...

Two Truths and a Lie

Even though I'm hella busy with school and all, I don't want this blog to turn into one of those "funny/weird picture/story of the day/week" blogs (can you handle that many slashes?). So don't worry, some original, extensive posts are in the works for this week (including the weekly restaurant review and a totally invented "conversation" with Jennifer Egan). However, I'm only human (of flesh and blood I'm made) and cannot, CANNOT!, resist pointing out three interesting titbits of fun from the news/blogosphere.

• I know that today's gay youth think they're so clever because they've invented/redefined a whole bunch of words that then function both as a secret language and as a semi-discreet identity signal. Although, sadly, the American Academy of Arts and Letters has yet to recognize and honor the originators of terms like "boi," "fierce," and "power bottom." Now it may come as a surprise (especially to anyone who regularly uses the term "power bottom") that there were gay men in England in the 1950s and 60s (to paraphrase Mary-Kate or Ashley: "Bummer, I didn't know people were gay in the past"). Even more interesting is that they had a slang all their own. It was called "Polari" and it is described here.
  
  Now just think... if I were to learn Polari, I could totally say things to my gay pals and you straight people wouldn't understand a word of it! That's awesome! Wouldn't you straight people feel totally left out!
  I'm going to try it:
  

  Fosco [to his personal assistant Geoffrey]: Did you see that bitch in drag? I would need a really strong bevvy before I would blow that trade.

  Wow, you straight people must be so confused right now. Don't worry, I won't use it too much around you.
  
  
• Two of my most beloved camp icons--oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to slip into Polari there, let me start over.
  
  Two of my most beloved effeminate and outrageous icons are Lady Miss Kier of Deee-Lite and the video game journalist/hottie/fabulon Ulala from Space Channel 5 (why don't they make more computer games for homosexuals?). But it never occurred to me that they were exactly the same person!
  
  At least that's what Lady Kier's lawsuit alleged. Unfortunately, Lady Miss Kier lost. Which makes me sad.
  
  But I can't stay sad when I watch Ulala dancing her way through space:

That girl is so bona... I mean fierce! I love you, Ulala! Write me!

• This last story is hilarious, but laughing at it makes me seem a bit cruel. Let's just file it under "Why It's Good that Fosco Will Never Have Kids." In my defense, it wouldn't be so funny if anyone had been seriously hurt. And, it's not like the getting hurt is the funny part anyway... Oh well, that's enough of an apologia. Okay.
  
  So there's this four-year-old kid in Mountain View, CA (the South Bay) who went to a park on a picnic with his mother. When his mother unwrapped her muffin, an extremely aggressive squirrel attacked the boy, scratching and biting him (this isn't the funny part).
  
  You can read the whole story here [San Jose Mercury News].
  
  Here's a funny part:
  

  As for Andrew, he's still trying to make sense of the assault. He declared he's never going into a park with trees ever again, his mother said, and he keeps telling everyone the squirrel was trying to eat him.

  
  In a dark and twisted way, this would have been great material for Bill Cosby and that goddamn "funny things kids say" show.
  
  Ah, but I've saved the best for last:
  

  "My mommy said the squirrel sneaked down behind me and he was hugging me, but when he kissed me it was really a scratch,'' he recalled Monday. "I fell down, and he fell on me, and . . . and he's still on, and yeah, he was crazy. I don't know what he was trying to do.''

  This is the reason that I feel justified in laughing at parts of this story. The woman told her son that the squirrel was trying to HUG HIM? And then she told him that the squirrel's bite was A KISS? WTF? Why on earth would the woman say that? Even if you felt like you had to lie to your child, is this the best lie you could come up with? And why would you lie in the first place? Can't you just explain that some squirrels are bad--in the same way that some dogs/birds/etc. are bad and you should be careful around them?
  
  Why would you try to map the domain of physical affection (hugs, kisses) onto an extremely traumatic and painful experience? Doesn't this seem like a bad idea? Shouldn't physical affection have positive associations? That lie is absurd.
  
  Yes, I know, I "don't understand what it's like to have a four-year-old." Thank goodness.
  

It's Sunday...

...shouldn't you be at Church?

It's Not Raining Men

When Fosco was a youth and he lived in Rust Belt, MI, what kind of summer weather was worth complaining about? Usually, like 93 degrees with 85% relative humidity.

And when Fosco lived on the East Coast? He remembers some summer days in the Mid-Atlantic in the high-90's that were complete murder.

But, as everyone knows, complaint weather is relative. Now, living in Coastal California, it seems that it is entirely appropriate to complain about a... cloudy day.

In fact, such a cloudy day is worthy of an article in the regional newspaper of record.

Of course, this is not to say that the weather in the Cruz isn't odd... There is this whole marine layer that sits on the coast most mornings before the sun burns it off around noon. And even then, it lurks over the MoBay, waiting to return that evening. Fosco has been told that this marine layer is what keeps the coastal temps low, for which he is thankful.

It turns out, however, that the Santa Cruz area is something of a climatological curiosity. Fosco doesn't quite understand the science of it all, but it somehow involves a pressure inversion that produces a "Santa Cruz Eddy." You can read all about it in this journal article, written by Stanford researchers.

Oh, and incidentally, the forecast was correct: today was a beautifully sunny day and Fosco spent the afternoon on the beach.

And in the interests of full disclosure:

Fosco's friend is meteorologist Norm Sprouse with whom he is very close and whose advice he cherishes.

From the Annals of Why Wikipedia Is Lame

I know Wikipedia is useful and all (I use it more than I'd like to admit). But don't you ever get suspicious about the anonymous webcyclopediasts who are writing the entries? I know that the assumption is that multiple iterations of editing by multiple users will result in a more accurate entry (and here is an assumption begging for a debunking--but not by me, not today). But what about those obscure entries with very limited traffic? What's to prevent some lone nut from writing something very odd and untrustworthy?

Here's an example I just came across--a pretty funny one, actually. This is how the Wikipedia entry for Timothy C. Draper ends (and please don't ask why I was reading this entry...):

As an advocate for entrepreneurs and free markets, Mr. Draper is regularly featured as a keynote speaker in entrepreneurial conferences throughout the world, has been recognized as a leader in his field through numerous awards and honors, and has frequent TV radio, and headline appearances.

Mr. Draper is the course creator and Chairman of BizWorld, a 501c3 organization built around simulated teaching of entrepreneurship and business to children.

Mr. Draper served on the California State Board of Education in 1998-9. He launched a statewide cyber-initiative on school choice for the California General Election in November of 2000.

He has a BS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

His sister is Becky Draper with whom he is very close and whose advice he cherishes.

Hmmm. The last sentence just kills me. I'm still giggling about it. I wonder which member of Timothy C. Draper's immediate family wrote this entry? Was it... Becky?