I'm wondering idly if 'treatment center' means 'I told her Arizona so we could have some time in Vegas!! Thank God I've got a moment free, where's the Bellagio?'
I wish there had been more exposition as to what 'love addiction' denotes, because it doesn't seem like he quit his job, or all of his friends, or his family.
The thing about Tiffany is that, honestly, lots of their stuff is pretty uninteresting.
I used to have the business card of a jewelry store in Nauplio, or however you romanize its name (home to many jewelry stores), and also I think of one in Naxos, both of which had interesting jewelry designed by the owners of the stores. One of them (the one I definitely used to have the card of) gave a free ring to the beautiful Beatles fan after whom I lusted on that trip. (The construction of the previous sentence can imply that there are many different beautiful Beatles fans after whom I lust in different situations, but that's not what I meant.)
There was also a cool store in Xania in Crete at which I bought a nice ceramic bowl that broke in transit, the fucker, and which also had good jewelry.
For instance, these rings? They suck.
This is ok, though.
How is this post not titled "You're Gonna Have To Face It"?
What exactly does this author, or anyone for that matter, mean when they say "love"? I imagine her as a little girl, saying "Love is when someone maxes out all his credit cards! Love is when you throw up whenever you think of Him! Love is hating everyone else I know!"
I think someone needs to track down Daddy on this one.
Love is ...
a Roxy Music / Robert Palmer mashup. Brain Salad Surgery.
Hey, w-lfs-n: I could set you up with some verrry interesting gold nugget jewelry. Cheap! (Especially the pendant with nuggets worked into the shape of the Yukon Territory.) Authentic as all-git-out, I swear; we could work out a deal.
As for the Modern Love column, I am flat-out not going to click through. But I'm guessing that she is under 26, he under 30, and that there are other addictions besides "love" floating around in the subtext.
8: Why must they be so young? Doesn't craziness know no age limits?
P.S. Citing her dropping out of college is cheating, and you know it.
The most ridiculous thing about it is how familiar and generic her experience was, and how totally facile her treatment of it is in the column. I mean, it's not some horribly shameful thing to have had a destructive, obsessive relationship in your past, but all she has to say about it, her "hook", is just that love was an addiction. As if no one ever thought of that metaphor before. Obviously the relationship was not her underlying problem, and if she'd written about what the hell was with any degree of honesty or self-examination, that might have been an interesting column. Either that or she could have written something funny about going to a rehab center for a relationship; I'm sure there's a goldmine of material there for someone who knew how to write.
Tia's exactly right: it's not that the experience being related is itself inherently scorn-worthy, it's just that if you're going ot talk about that kind of obsessive feeling, it would help if you could actually convey what it feels like.
I'm sure there's a goldmine of material there for someone who knew how to write.
Well you know, she is in a creative writing program. And as for your "as if no one ever thought of that metaphor before": but how many people thought it wasn't a metaphor? Granted she's not the first, but the number is smaller, I'm sure.
The first sentence is a further mockery of the writer for being in a creative writing program and still not knowing how to write (though maybe it's a sign that she's aware of it?). The second is a further mockery of the writer for taking a metaphor for literal truth. (Of course one doesn't want to be flippant but I guess odds are low that it was actually a physical dependency–type addiction.)
Well, it's true that the mockery part didn't come through for me, but really, the "huh" was directed at Granted she's not the first, but the number is smaller, I'm sure. Which number?
'And as for your "as if no one ever thought of that metaphor before": how many people thought it wasn't a metaphor? Granted she's not the first [to think it's not a metaphor], but the number [of people who didn't think it's a metaphor] is smaller [than the number of people who've thought of the metaphor], I'm sure.'
Maybe a wee bit lacking in clarity. Maybe.
At lunch today, the radio played greil marcus' favorite song of 1985: "I want to know what love is" by foreigner. That song still sucks.
The most ridiculous thing about it is how familiar and generic her experience was, and how totally facile her treatment of it is in the column.
YES. A whole article telling us how she's a dysfunctional screwball, and not an interesting one either. And they BOTH needed to go out of state to check into rehab? Over a relationship? Who are these fucking people? Part of me suspencts "memoir story", Million Little Pieces style. But if it's true, we're not doing enough to encourage suicide in this country.
Well, I understood what you meant.
Doesn't craziness know no age limits?
Trust me, it does not. However, the older you get, the more recognizably pathetic (and hence less interesting, except in the "watching a train wreck" sense) events such as those described in the linked article are. No one wants to read about a 47 year old matron crying her eyes out over a 47 year old bald guy.
it's just that if you're going ot talk about that kind of obsessive feeling, it would help if you could actually convey what it feels like.
Or, any details at all. "First we were in love, then it got obsessive, yadayadayada, we broke up at a rehab center." Or, maybe, upon reaching the rehab center and finding people with actual serious problems, exhibiting any amount of self-reflection?
How do people get to write in the NYT? Is it just a matter of being roommates with some rich brat in college who ends up panicking over a deadline and being asked to write something in half an hour?
Yeah, the big unanswered question here is why? What was it about this guy, or this girl, or this relationship, that made it be like . . . whatever it was like?
Do you suppose maybe it's not the writers, but the editors?
Maybe there was some detail that got cut? It just seems so . . . hollow.
Maybe the story seems stupid and shallow because the experience was stupid and shallow. And maybe the Times is subversively mocking the modern notions of love and romance.
29: That is plausible. Also plausible is that the article contains a stenographically encrypted missive urging readers to buy more Times subscriptions.
See, what bugs me is that I don't think the subject *is* stupid or shallow; that question of, what is it that experiense of obsession like, why do ppl have it, where does it come from, etc., is an interesting one, potentially at least. But all this article does is outline the potential for such an explanation, without giving it. Weird.
Maybe there's nothing to say about where the obsession came from because it wasn't really all that obsessed. A bad four-week long relationship where because he bought you thing from Tiffany's you quit school and then had a trip to the other side of the country for rehab and failed to mention your drug addiction when you wrote up the piece in the Times.
But if you read the article in a valleygirl voice, it's a lot more entertaining. 'Omg, so like, he bought me things, and I thought he was the one, and so I totally quit school, which yeah, I know, was totally dumb, but like, I was in love, and then...."
I thought that w-lfs-n's comment was funny despite its lack of clarity.
I don't think the subject *is* stupid or shallow
Maybe not, but, based on the description given, the relationship seems to have been. It may not be possible to treat the subject in an interesting fashion in the NYT. This subject gets treated endlessly in film, song, and book; it would be hard to distinguish your own story from one of the countless others that, now so familiar as to be cliches, in only 1700 words. After all, there's a cable network devoted to this story; two, if the Oxygen network is still alive. What's the poor woman to do?
This is reminding me of some review or other of Russian Dolls. In it, the hero is attempting to write a romance. The people paying him want it to be clichéd, so it will sell, and he keeps resisting and trying to think of how people actually get together, and be true to that. The reviewer (Anthony Lane?) points out that the character has a realization that one has to give in to cliché in the end. One has to kiss the girl on the boat at twilight surrounded by the lights of the city, &c.
I used to have the business card of a jewelry store in Nauplio, or however you romanize its name
Nafplio is how I usually see it. Also Nafplion sometimes. Old 19th Century English maps called it "Naples", but I don't know if the city in Italy was named after the Greek city or not.
I have the business card of a guy who owns a small shop there where he sells some great great cheeses that he makes out of milk he buys from lots of little sheep, goat, and cow herders in the surrounding hills. He also makes hand-cut noodles and other lovingly crafted foods, but without the artisinal mark-up (yet).
He was quick to give me an expansive tour of his whole little set-up, and I mostly understood what he was talking about, despite the fact that my Greek is at sub-Sesame Street level.
Too bad. I'd prefer to be ineffectually paraphrasing Anthony Lane. But it does seem as though a lot of stories work by narrowly averting cliché rather than avoiding it altogether. Which means even people who are aware of the pitfalls will miss.
So the appropriate criticism of the column may be not "We've heard this hundreds of times before" but "We've heard this hundreds of times before, so you should at least know how to deliver the clichés effectively by now."
Kitten! Does this mean you guys can get at the real .htaccess file now, and will possibly be able to implement some of the awesome spam-fighting strategies?
Does this mean you guys can get at the real .htaccess file now, and will possibly be able to implement some of the awesome spam-fighting strategies?
Theoretically, one of them has already been implemented ... I don't know how effective it's been, though.
The .htaccess fix appears to have been effective with fighting the spam. I'm seeing much lower loads on the server. Could just be that I'm not looking at it during the times we're being hit, but I think it really did help.
The ISEs are caused by a cron job we asked the host to turn on to renice and kill processes that were using too many resources. Since there were so many processes running, we had to be pretty strict with how much of the CPU and memory they could use. Now that the .htaccess fix appears to be stopping the spam processes, we can probably ask them to turn off the renicing/killing job.
My only fear is that when we turn it off, one of the scripts spins out of control and hangs the server but, if one of our scripts is able to do that, I guess that's something we need to uncover sooner or later anyway.
I've watched older colleagues who are married with children develop these sorts of relationships. That is totally scary to see. Both boy and girl bunny boilers. Laying waste to professional reputation, relationship with children, nest eggs etc. You might say, a la Michael Corleone, that when the thunder bolt strikes, you go with it. But in these cases, the love seems to lack sweetness. Instead its an act of rebellion. Much like a lot of young love. But not so pleasant to behold.
Do you suppose maybe it's not the writers, but the editors?
Yes, I suspect it's exactly that. It's true that when a column is filled by new contributors every week, a would-be new contributor tries to guess at the tone in order to pitch his/her submission correctly. But the Modern Love pieces are so consistently...consistent in their phrasing, vocabulary, etc. that I strongly suspect these pieces get massaged to death.
In fact -- remember that the guy who wrote the "I broke up with my girlfriend because she used cute 'foofie' couple-talk and a baby voice even when we needed to talk about Serious Things"? I'm pretty sure that after his ML column came out, the female half of the couple wrote her side for the web -- something like, "Yeah, there were some truths about our relationship in there, but all in all it was snipped and mis-contexted out of recognition."
(Mis-contexted = new word)
Witt, you're thinking of the rejoinder on the Black Table? This?
You're thinking of the rejoinder on the Black Table?
Yup.
But all this article does is outline the potential for such an explanation, without giving it. Weird.
Ah, but see, while she mentions therapists, what she talks about is 'love addiction'. The concept of love addiction comes from 12-step land, where everything is an addiction. (And in the short term sense, they're right.) That is, if we can help people addicted to heroin, we can take the same model and apply it to love.
Biochemically the various sorts of addiction have lots in common, but the behavior/personality problems of drunks are not necessarily the same as someone like Yoder. And she basically says that: SIX years and three relationships later, I am still coming to terms with this experience. It would be interesting to know what she did in those three relationships. But she's not going to tell you, which she basically says clearly at the beginning of the story: IN 12-step confessional style, this is what love addiction did to my life:
She's just writing down the same story she's told hundreds (or thousands) of time to a meeting. The story isn't actually about Matthew, the relationship, her problems with relationships or anything like that it. It's the "How I Got Into the Program and Started Working the 12 Steps and Why Love Addicts Anonymous Is So Wonderful" story. (Or whatever the 12-step group for love addiction is called.) Those stories have to have a certain plot to them or the storyteller won't fit into the program: Why Everything Was So Fucked Up, Getting In The Program, I'm Not Cured But I'm Better, Someday You Newbies Can Be Just Like Me.
ash
['More like Modern Fucked Up than Modern Love.']
Or whatever the 12-step group for love addiction is called.
Inamorati Anonymous, from Crying of Lot 49? It's bad enough that our politics are imitating Pynchon novels, must this happen in private life as well?
Inamorati Anonymous
Inamorati are beloveds, not lovers.
Inamorati Anonymous
IHNTSH, but that sparks the notion of 'Technocrati Anonymous'.
Pseudonymous Anonymous.
ash
['Hi, my name is Atrios...ha ha ha, no not really.']
I guess I'd make a lousy obsessive, but at my most besotted the only quasi-destructive thing I ever did was skip (one) class to have sex.
Moderation in all things, even obsession.
