The greatcoat

I saw The Namesake the other night. For those in the know, the movie follows the life of Gogol, son of two Indian immigrants to the United States. Not only was Gogol born in the U.S., his parents gave him a helluva awkward name that he just can't shake.

Over the years, Gogol experiments with fluent English, weed, guitar, and various blonde girlfriends. After his father dies, Gogol meets and marries the daughter of a longtime family friend. She cheats on him and breaks his heart. She says, "It wasn't enough that we were both Bengali." And he replies, "That's not why I love you." They divorce. At the end, covered in life's bruises, he returns home and tells his mother that his wife left him for a man named "Pierre." His mom says, "I'm so sorry, I should never have pushed you to call her." He replies, "Mom, it's okay. For the first time in my life, I actually feel free."

Divorce is terrible, but not all marriages are meant to last forever. I expected to relate to the characters in The Namesake, to feel their struggles and cultural mismatches as my own. And I didn't. My parents were never those parents. My Dad is too loud and angry, my Mom too educated. One of my friends once told me, "Your family doesn't strike me as very Indian - culturally." I was pissed off at her, because how is she supposed to know what that means? How can she so casually pass judgment on something that has defined our entire lives? I kept these feelings to myself, of course.

No culture is a monolithic institution, we all relate to it in our own ways. At one point, Gogol asks his father, "Why this name, Dad? Why did you call me Gogol?" (Gogol, by the way, is the famous Russian author of The Overcoat. He's also a lunatic.) And his Dad replies, "We all came out of Gogol's overcoat."

What I carried away from this film is the idea that we're all coming out of various overcoats, awkward as it sounds. We all come from somewhere, we all have a set of values, behaviors and prejudices we associate with home. The most difficult thing about college is realizing that each of us has come so far, but we're still trying so hard to hold onto things that remind us of home. It's why students start attending church when they hated it for years. It's why I spent hours playing piano in those stuffy classrooms in the music buildings. It's why...well, I wonder how much of "finding yourself" is just "finding your way back."

What I liked about The Namesake is that it recounts that journey, but the main character doesn't end up in the same place he started. If Gogol can return to a better home than he left, can't we all? Or, as one of the other characters puts it, "Go ahead. Grab a backpack and get on a train and see the world. You will never regret it."

The Hawk and the Hooker

I usually wouldn't write twice in one day, but my ode to open sources pales to the color of milk beside the story I just dug up on DC gossip-blog Wonkette. I did some online sleuthing of my own, and corroborated Wonkette's story (by corroborated I mean, dug up loosely supporting facts). For those who don't regularly type "prostitute" into the Google News box, a quick summary of the story. About a month ago, DC police charged a California woman with racketeering and money-laundering. She would have been just another middle-aged woman implicated in massive fraud, but when the police raided her home, they found that she was also an entrepreneur. Deborah Jeane Palfrey ran the most profitable prostitution ring in the DC Metro area. Over the course of a few decades, her 130 girls serviced over 15,000 power brokers in the DC, Maryland and Virginia area (for the mathematically-minded, 15,000 divided by 130 is 115. Enough said.) Palfrey made nearly $3 million.

But the plot thickens. She recently decided to give her entire client list to ABC News, and today they outed senior policy associate Harlan Ullman as a regular customer. Ullman, for those who don't regularly type "Neocon" into the Google News box, came up with the "Shock and Awe" strategy towards military combat. Apparently, shock and awe "calls for a massive attack of precision air power that psychologically destroys an enemy's will to fight as much as it destroys the physical ability to fight." I'm sure I'm not the only one surprised that this guy had trouble meeting women. It's unclear which warhawk sex scandal came first: Ullman or Wolfowitz (a married man who allegedly paid his Arab mistress $193,590 to "work for the World Bank." As many sources have said, this is more money than Condi makes, but for now the Secretary of State plans to continue in her current line of work - servicing George Bush for free).

Although Republicans have never been in favor of free love, I didn't realize they were so enthusiastic about paying for it. More importantly, even I'm surprised by Palfrey's discretion - in an age where a girl can drunkenly flash the bartender on her 21st birthday and find the video on Youtube ten years later - Palfrey managed to recruit sex workers through the Internet without anyone knowing.

The fact that she chose to recruit only college-educated women puts a charming Woody Allen spin on the entire tale.

Is that an iPod in your pocket, or are you just trying to rob me?

I hate to say it, but the age of copyright is over. As a journalist, I'm supposed to exhibit frothing-at-the-mouth enthusiasm for copyright protection, printed media, and other things that will soon only exist within the Library of Congress. But as Dave Barry once pointed out, there's no point in pursuing the demographic of "people who are dead or older."

I'm biased, maybe because I have a rap sheet. I recently faced a serious complaint under the DMCA, which, for those of you who aren't in the criminal know, stands for Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA is what happens when Congress monkeys with the Internet. It's also the infamous law being used to prosecute college students across the country for distributing illegal copies of copyrighted material. When my case came up, I uninstalled all the offending software (some of which had been running without my consent) and swore, ala Frances Willard, that I would "never touch the stuff again." Which I'm willing to do, to stay out of the clink.

However, let me just get one point across. When I first entered the world of downloading, there was no iTunes. The only way to get music was to convince my parents to drive me round to Best Buy and drop $15 on a CD. And $15 was the cheap end of the scale - new CD's cost as much as $24. Record companies, confident in their monopoly power, had been fixing prices with the enthusiasm of the Wal-Mart Price-Slashing Smiley. In economic terms, this is a market failure, and perhaps illegal downloading began when one brave student took on the mantle of Adam Smith and decided it was time to do something with his invisible hand. The truth is, I was drawn to it because it was cheap and easy - the values our generation lives by. But when I was 14, I never bought CD's. By downloading music, I got to sample artists, periods and styles I had never previously known. My world expanded because I wasn't tied to the all-expensive CD. Online downloading decreased the risks associated with musical diversification, and increased the odds of it ocurring. I bought more music, rather than less, because of downloading. And this is what the IRAA still fails to understand.

I did an interview today with the director of a Rwandan nonprofit. This consortium of moviemakers puts all their product online, for free, with no copyright protection. And after a moment of shock, I realized that their strategy was genius. In the world of viral marketing, media is information, and its power (and selling ability) lies in how easily it can be distributed. This strategy brings more, rather than less, attention and money to the cause. The same is true for music downloading. It has created a fan base for artists who might never have attracted a second glance in the era of big-budget CD's. It has brought music to the masses, who couldn't afford it before.

But then again, maybe that's just what the record companies fear. The diversification of the music-making and distributing process. They know their profits depend on a narrowly-defined intellectual monopoly. The truth is, I never stole anyone's intellectual property. I deprived them of their rightful profits. But I never claimed to have written or performed "Genie in a Bottle," or any other ballad that went through my machine. In fact, the value of the product came from the fact that Christina wrote it. Illegal downloading might make the real theft of ideas more recognizable, rather than less, since it ensures a wider spread of information.

The Internet has turned the little guy (the downtrodden consumer, etc) into the commercial decision-maker. It's a shift in power that most large corporations can't handle, and I don't blame them. But in my opinion, they will have to learn to leverage profits differently. I have seen the future, and it is open source.

Things that go "bang" in the night

In a class where every lecture ends in an unsolved mystery, I was not surprised to hear this story in Southeast Asian Politics. Apparently some years back, in the dead silence of Indonesian night, rebel forces kidnapped six powerful military officers. They shot three, and took the other three to an Air Force Base on the outskirts of Jakarta. Three days later, the bodies of the three remaining generals were discovered at the bottom of a well. The bodies were grossly disfigured, and no one knew the cause of death. Soon after, Indonesian newspapers got wind of a horrific story: apparently, the popular "Women's Movement" (wing of the Communist Party) tortured the brave generals with razor blades. They gouged out their eyes and castrated them. Then, these bloodthirsty harpies took off all their clothes and started to dance naked around the whimpering generals. More torture followed. Then they dumped the bodies down the well.

The military nationalists warned that this was what happened when Communists ran free. The orthodox Muslims warned that this was what happened when women didn't wear headscarves (Salem witch trials, anyone?) Public sentiment turned against the Communists. People took up arms in the streets, and before the year was out, nearly 1 million Indonesian communists had been massacred, most by their neighbors and countrymen.

Years later, an American scholar going through some discarded papers came across copies of the military autopsies for the three generals who were found at the bottom of the well. The reports contained descriptions of three relatively intact bodies, all with eyes and genitals untouched. Each man had died of a single gunshot wound.

So the question is: what really happened at the Air Force Base? And who planted the story that led to mass murder? The CIA has released most of its files on Indonesia. But there are four files that it has not yet declassified, and scholars suspect they contain the answers, because rumor has it the CIA supplied the insurgents who kidnapped the generals in the first place.

Looking at Indonesia, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Argentina and Vietnam, I feel the US foreign policy of the past has been to ship boxes of guns to ill-informed and poorly-trained guerrillas and watch the resulting battles with mounting consternation and horror. In the case of Saddam, it was not guns but weapons-grade VX gas (which answers the question of where the WMD's came from, if not where they went). It seems that despite our best intentions, the only democratic principle we've consistently exported is the 2nd Amendment.

Help, my makeup is taking over my face

I used to scrub my face before working out. Now, in a more laissez-faire (or more fittingly, lazy-fair) approach to life, I just let it molder before taking it off at the end of the day.

I've come to accept mascaras, blushes and tints - essentially, paint-like gloop for the face - as part of my skin. But imagine my surprise today. I got dressed and put on eye makeup. I had lunch with a friend, went to two classes, trekked several miles through the Siberian sleet that apparently constitutes an Evanston spring, took a Pilates class, went for a swim, and showered. Yet when I reached up to brush my hair out of my face afterwards, I was shocked to realize that my eyelashes were still crunchy.

Anything that clings to skin with such ardor - resisting water, oil, chlorine, snow, and sweat - must have more devastating long-range effects than Agent Orange. Isn't water supposed to be the universal solvent? What otherworldly crap am I spackling on each day?

Germany's Kinder Cousin, and Battle of the Bulges

So when I was 7 years old, my parents told me that India, much like the United States, had once been a British colony. I was too young for cursive, but old enough to know how the world worked. I asked, "Why did the British get so many colonies?" My mom answered, "well a couple of hundred years ago all the countries had a competition. Each country built a boat, and the country that built the fastest boat got to colonize the others. The British built the fastest boat."

For many years I was satisfied with the BBC Kids version of the story. It's a kinder, gentler colonization tale than children in ex-colonies learn. That story goes like, "they stripped our country of its natural resources and denigrated our culture and history for hundreds of years." As you can see, no mention of boats.

The Dutch proved the exception. Around the early 1900s, as a result of widespread Dutch protest, the government instituted "the ethical policy." The softer side of colonialism integrated native and white populations in schools, and gave native elites access to certain resources. Interestingly, the Dutch were also the only people who made a countrywide effort to hide and protect their Jewish citizens from Hitler's police during World War II. Coincidence, or are the Dutch just better people than the rest of us?

On another note, this week is our college's first Sex Week. The College Fems have been touting the event for months. They put cutesy posters all over campus with slogans like, "Sex Week is coming. Are you?" Gosh, girls, it takes more than a poster to get me to that point. Unlike at Yale, where Sex Week features a "panel of porn stars and stripping lessons from a Playboy Channel hostess" (A hostess? What? Are we businessmen at a gentlemen's club in Tokyo?), our Sex Week promises "discussions on the 'sin of sodom' and the effect of sexual arousal on decision making."

The 'sin of sodom'? It's Sex Week, and we can't even call it by its real name? Furthermore, what is with this discussion BS? How does a discussion put anyone in the mood? Fore-conversation? After-discussion glow? I have another suggestion. I say, take a page from the Dance Marathon book. They're our most successful campus organization. Rent out the student center for 30 hours. Get a DJ, themes, costumes, videos, the works. Even a light show, or a not-so-silent auction! Just like dance marathon, except no dancing, and people don't have to stand up the entire time! We could call it Sex Weekend, because who needs a whole week? Certainly nobody who's been on the quarter system! You choose your own partner, but it's probably best not to ask your parents for a donation.

Sex toy and condom giveaways can take place as planned. At the door.

For once, NU can become a forum for people to actually have sex, rather than just talk their way around it.

Between a keg and a hard place

Yet again, I've come across an article about Laura Stepp's Unhooked. For the unaware, Stepp's book is a condemnation of today's hookup culture. According to Stepp, young women who have casual sexual encounters (what counts as a sexual encounter in Stepp's view? Holding hands?) soon find themselves on the fast road to misery and disappointment. Stepp, who clearly scribbled the book on napkins in between handing out brownies at a chastity ball bake sale, recognizes young women for the lost lambs they are. She's not alone. Newsweek ran a story a few months back about the "Girls Gone Wild Effect." Although the writers did nod at parental responsibility, the mag cited a long tradition of "women behaving badly," starting with Queen Elizabeth I. Newsweek dubbed her, "The virgin queen who slept around." In Queen Liz's footsteps came Britney, then Paris, then Lindsay. The result: 10-year-olds flirting with boys and singing songs with the word 'sexy' in the lyrics.

Excuse me if I don't rush off to buy the entire Left Behind series. As a college student, I feel someone has to get a word in edgewise about the common theme these articles share: that somehow, girls are being manipulated into bringing sexyback. Yes, we live in a sex-drenched culture, but is it really possible that we're getting so much more action than our parents did in the free-loving 60s? For that matter, than our tight-laced grandmothers did in the 40's and 50's, or our swag-sporting great-grandmothers in the Golden Age of the Flapper?

Give me a break. Women have been sleeping wherever they want since Cleopatra first rolled herself in Caesar's carpet. The difference is, nowadays, Paris Hilton can talk about Carl's Junior without feeling the least bit ashamed. I admit that maybe young women have more sexual partners than in the past, but don't blame that on Lindsay: blame it on Friendster. These days, even the janitor has MySpace, and it's no longer so hard to go where everybody knows your name.

For a lot of people, casual hook-ups are fun. More importantly, college is supposed to be a time of experimentation. Women have more power, greater voice, and more numerous options than at any time in the past. Those options come in all shapes, sizes and levels of stylishness. And for girls who don't appreciate the love that dare not call in the morning, there are still plenty of options. Most of my friends don't sleep around. Those who do know what they're doing.

That said, there are pitfalls and drawbacks to any casual encounter. If a girl falls for a guy who thinks of her as "that eight-hour period between the Keg and Sunday brunch," she's in for a world of pain. But getting your heart broken is as much a part of college as co-ed dorms and late-night talks about breast size (a popular subject for both guys and girls). My advice to all these people: let it go. Socrates once said, "know thyself." In the process, you may get to know a lot of other people as well. But didn't another wise mystic once advise us to "love our neighbor"?

The caveat: alcohol makes people do regrettable and unwise things, and these things have serious consequences. I'm not trying to deny that. But with the freedom to explore our limits comes the freedom to make occasional tragic mistakes. People have been trying to learn from their mistakes since the dawn of time.

Rhymes With Zen

Reading through Slate, I came across a reference to this fancy new Green Tea beer. The microbrewery behind this New Age tonic claims that the flavor "transcends beyond anything you have ever experienced before" and makes sense for those in search of "something more mystical... magical... wonderful."

I may be wrong, but I always pictured the beer drinking demographic as the men to the left. Whereas the green tea drinkers of the world look more like the people below.

Between them, a gap not even creative marketing could bridge. But as always, I underestimated America. This new beer can create magic (if the possibility of a drunken one-night stand doesn't stroke your magic machine already.) And it contains green tea, a substance that (if we believe the hype) prevents cancer, cures the common cold, burns fat and enhances your sex organs to mammoth proportions, all without a single negative consequence. So what's the drawback?

I couldn't find one. But before plastering pro-green-beer posters all over campus, I paused to wonder. In my ongoing attempts to sculpt myself into this, I've explored (always guiltily, while pretending to be reading a textbook) websites for various diet and exercise regimens. I've checked out the Zone after a friend told me Jennifer Aniston had been on it for years. I read in-depth comparisons of Atkins and Ornish. South Beach. Mediterranean. Juice. Color. I didn't try most of these, but I examined them, I weighed their benefits and drawbacks.

I realize, objectively, that my attitude is the function of a selfish culture (I mean, 5 pounds? There are people dying in a genocide in Sudan. I could get off my ass and help them rather than whine about Jessica Alba) and an obsession with control (the user-driven life). There's no excuse. But it's an obsession that most of America suffers from, and I wonder, how far have we taken this whole 'diet' thing? Perhaps there are limits to what your entree can accomplish as far as your general appearance goes. There is no practical difference between the Color diet and the Mediterranean diet, or at least, not in terms of my expectations. You eat. You live, sometimes healthily. End of story. The ideal waist-to-hip ratio? Transcendental peace?Enlightenment? You can't buy that in a grocery store.