Heartbreaking Washington Post Magazine story about a South Asian-American poet who killed her 2-year-old son and herself.

AND: OK, I won’t just leave it at that. Why is it heartbreaking?

It’s steeped in her poetry. Paula Span, the author, pulls in these opaque fragments of poems, and they’re excellent. Early on, Span cites this devastating piece by the woman, called “Lullaby”:

I would not sing you to sleep.

I would press my lips to your ear

and hope the terror in my heart stirs you.

And you can’t help but see her writing that poem to her murdered son.

You can’t read a good poem by a dead author without missing what’s been lost, wondering what they were thinking, and lamenting that you can’t know. It’s just the same reading this. As with any article about a suicide, this one spends the whole time probing the question of why she did it, while always being upfront about the fact that we can never know. Reetika Varzani was foreign-born, and wrote between these two worlds — India and America. America, where her own father disappeared one day, and she later found he’d taken his own life.

But that’s just one seemingly significant piece in this huge puzzle portrait of a mind that you can almost feel beneath the text, as her words weave in and out. It’s not at all like reading “The Bell Jar,” I promise.

Yesterday, as San Francisco gay couples received marriage licenses from the city, Judge James Warren of the county Superior Court said something. That’s about all the newspaper headlines about the story can agree on.

What actually happened, as far as I can tell: Judge Warren was responding to a request from an anti-gay-marriage group asking him to make San Francisco “cease and desist issuing marriage licenses to and/or solemnizing marriages of same-sex couples; to show cause before this court.” He interpreted the semicolon in that sentence as an “or.” So he told the city either to cease and desist, or to defend its actions on March 29. He also said that the anti-marriage group will probably win its stay when that hearing is held. In other words, the city’s actions might eventually be determined to be illegal.

Depending on which headline you believe, the judge said the marriages were illegal, he said they were ok, he urged a halt on the marriages, he won’t halt the marriages, etc.

I think The Washington Post hits closest to the truth with their headline, “Judges Postpone Action on Same-Sex Marriage.” And I think SFGate.com carried the best story about the matter; theirs actually quoted the judge.

OK, this should be filed under something that’s more like Election 3028, but whatever. Inspired by this asstastic idea, Robin and I were discussing our own pie-in-the-sky visions of electoral utopia tonight.

We agree that our current political system, in practice, does not reflect America at all. Our politicians are, for the most part, rich and homogenous. We’ve been debating strategies on how best to turn the country into a truly excellent representative democracy.

Here’s one idea we had:

First off, Election Day should be a holiday. I could stop right there. Why isn’t it a holiday? Really, we take days off for some of the most arbitrary things. The single calendar day arguably most rationally suited to being a holiday is not. What gives with that? I’m making it part of my Personal Life Crusade to get at least this plank of our plan enacted.

[/digression]

On Election Day, everyone eligible to vote gathers in geographically divided groups of 20. They spend all day trading words, talking ideas, deliberative polling, all the good civic stuff. Then, they elect a representative for the group, ostensibly the smartest and savviest member.

Then those representatives gather in groups of 20, and do the same.

Now it’s Wednesday, and we’ve got 500,000 representatives, who gather in groups of 20, and pick 25,000 representatives, who gather on Thursday in groups of 20 and pick 1,250 representatives. Who gather on Friday and choose a legislature.

That’s the gist of it. Thoughts?

This is serious gleeful miscellany. CraigsList rocks the party that rocks the body.

A few researchers at the U. Washington have announced that they can predict if a marriage is going to fail or succeed.

I wonder if they’ve re-jiggered their algorithm to take into account the recent gay marriages in San Francisco. According to information from Focus on the Family and the Campaign for California Families, these developments will destroy an estimated 5.3 percent of all marriages.

We can all relate to this month’s Esquire Complaint — people who sit through the credits. I’m not sure why I’m linking to it, because I’m an Esquire subscriber, and unless you are, you probably can’t read it. And in any case, it’s good enough and short enough that I’m going to reproduce it here in toto. Sorry, Esquire:

You are fooling no one.

You know who you are. You are impressing no one, and it is time you learned the truth: Nobody thinks you’re smart because you sit through the closing credits at the end of movies.

You do this all the time (and particularly at the end of Miramax films). The movie concludes, the houselights come up, and you silently pretend to be fascinated by the cast listing. Somehow, this is supposed to indicate that you are a serious person. What this actually proves is that you are an inefficient person, because all the information you are pretending to ascertain is already on the Internet (and most of that information doesn’t matter to anyone who doesn’t actively work in the film industry). You do not have a favorite gaffer. You do not care what record label released the soundtrack. You do not know the difference between the motion caption coordinator and the environmental technical director, so why would you care who these people are (or who their first assistants are)?

Now, I realize you do this because you think your date will think you’re intellectual. She does not. She either thinks you’re a pretentious fraud (which you are), or she suddenly feels insecure (because she can’t figure out why she’s supposed to care who the secondary location scout was). The movie is over. Leave the theater. Go to the bathroom.

Being one who sits through the credits, I take umbrage, even as I appreciate Chuck Klosterman’s sneering. But I’d like to answer on behalf of the Credits-Watchers. (Others who watch the credits, feel free to chime in.)

Read more…

This thread about the pronunciation of the word “forte” turns out to be excellent. As does this one, about popular songs of misunderstood intent.

These two posts, in conjunction, raise an interesting issue (if you’re me) that I’d like to call out here.

People always snark out Alanis Morissette for misusing the term “Ironic.” But it seems to me she clearly didn’t do so. Her usages of the term are all “poignantly contrary to what was expected or intended.” And it seems like all the protestations amount to, “That definition doesn’t count.”

Hey, if anyone wants to nominate anything I’ve written for a Pulitzer Prize, I’ll totally return the favor. We’ve got three days left.

Sigh. I sort of miss the days when we could just daydream possibilities, entirely unperturbed by things like “primaries” or “votes” or any other little reverie-ruining nasties like that. Reality has this uncanny way of biting you on the ass.

William Safire is playing fairy godpundit to conservatives, complete with random Hillary Clinton reference.

Honestly, I don’t understand all the excitement among Dems about the prospect of a brokered convention. Yes, it’s nice for the candidates to have an exciting three-way (possibly four-way, but I can’t see Clark going too much further) political race going on, but after March, it would get real old, real fast. The more these three candidates are mired in the need to beat each other, the more they polarize their supporters among each other. Already, bitter-but-defeated Dean supporters have decided they just can’t support John Kerry, so they’ll probably be sitting this one out. I imagine a good number of Kerry’s supporters feel the same way, or will, by the end of an even rougher nomination battle. Whoever emerges from such a bloody fight can’t be in good shape to take on the incumbent President. Can they?

I mean, I know our national attention span is short, but are the months between July and November long enough for Dean/Kerry/Edwards/Clark supporters to forgive and forget their grievances, and rally behind the nominee?

At any rate, Robin was right that the expectations game cuts like a knife. A week ago, Dean was absolutely finished. Then on Thursday, things began turning around, and he had to take second in order to hang on. Anything less than second, and he was done. By Monday, his poll numbers were trending up, and he had to take a solid second to remain competitive, not just edge out a Mo-powered Edwards or Clark. Now, the story is apparently that although his second placing was solid, it wasn’t close enough to Kerry to count as a victory of any sort. Remarkable.

If you ask the History Channel, it won’t mention anything particularly notable that happened on November 18, 1980.

Google begs to differ.

On November 18, 1980, President and Mrs. Carter watch the movie “It’s My Turn” before retiring to bed.

A huge, triangular UFO floats around a 100-mile span in Northern Missouri and Kansas, according to reports.

The sixth season of “Laverne and Shirley” begins with the dizzy duo moving to Los Angeles, ushering in a whole new era of hijinx and hilarity for the popular show.

A 19-year-old gangbanger named Gil Porras is beaten to death by rival gang members in East L.A. Police arrest one man for the murder, Jos