天丼

First of all, I went to the emergency room yesterday, for only the second time in my life (the first being when I dislocated my knee). I'd been craving tendon (tempura on top of a bowl of rice with some sort of tempura sauce) since I got back from Japan -- Val and I used to go once or twice a week to Fuji no Mi in Toyooka and both order the tendon set; I'd trade her the two shrimp on mine for two of the vegetables in hers. Finally yesterday we went to a Japanese restaurant and they had tendon (strangely, only on the Japanese menu, not the one written in English). I was so happy to see it that I ordered it without remembering I was in America and could tailor dishes to my vegetarianism; when it came, it was topped with three shrimp. Well, that's nothing I wasn't used to; Aly took the shrimp, and in return offered me some sushi she'd gotten that was just some sort of cucumber or pickled cucumber. The tendon was delicious, and so satisfying...but just after the meal, I felt a tight pain in my lower jaw. Odd. Suddenly the room was unbearably hot, and I felt sweat all over my forehead. My friends felt far away, my limbs liquidy like they might not quite support me. My whole body was hot. My jaw still hurt. Definitely not normal. I panicked. My friends told me I was okay but I disagreed. Me being me, I started whimpering that I was going to die. I couldn't concentrate on anything but I wanted to stand up and get out of the restaurant, so I did, and stumbled out into the street as my friends quickly paid the bill and grabbed my jacket and purse; I called my mom and started repeating that I was dying -- not quite what a parent wants to hear. My arms started tingling, like someone turned on the vibration switch on them. I started yelling at my friends to get me to the hospital. I thought the tingling would spread to the rest of my body and stop my breathing.

Well, it didn't. Instead it started to slowly fade after a few minutes, and I started to believe that my throat wouldn't close up. By the time the ambulance got there my jaw and throat still hurt, but that was about it. So my panic morphed into shame and guilt for having made such a big deal. My parents, who had been on their way home from Cape Cod, turned around and came to the hospital. Mark stayed the whole time, until almost midnight when they finally let me out. Aly and Satomi came to the hospital with me, but weren't allowed to come into the emergency room (one visitor only, although by the end I had Mark and both my parents, heh). My parents drove me back to my apartment, stopping to buy ice cream on the way, and we sat around eating ice cream until they went to bed, after which I talked with Adam for a while and he taught me some Greek words. ^_^ Satomi texted me to make sure I was okay, and I even got a text from Katie, who must have heard from Mark.

I'm embarrassed that I panicked, but there's no denying that there's something nice about having things like this happen once in a long while, because it really helps remind me how incredibly lucky I am to have people who care about me so much.

Meanwhile, on a completely different subject, I'm doing reading about "Web 2.0" for my classroom practices class, which is making me cringe. So much jargon! This article has the ring to me of someone writing about a culture they don't quite understand, or at least aren't really a part of. The article so far is full of fancy praise for the new era of collectively constructed and fluctuating reality -- wikis are the pinnacle of knowledge because they represent that knowledge is ever-changing and evolving; twitter allows listeners to give constant feedback on everything they're taking in; facebook statuses allow us to share "snapshots" of our lives; YouTube allows creative collaboration between normal people from all over the world through video postings and comments. Comments? I'm sorry, but has the author of this article ever read YouTube comments?? That is going too far.

I think there's a lot about the new internet culture (which I refuse to call Web 2.0) that is fascinating and leads to interesting exchange of art, humor, ideas, etc. And I'm not suggesting that blogs and wikis should all be shut down or ignored. But please people, let's not ignore everything that's questionable about this new enthusiasm for "user generated content" or whatever people want to call it. I love that I can keep in touch with people from all parts of my life; I love that I can have something I want to rant about and post that rant here; I love that things like xkcd can exist and be so popular; I love failblog and fmylife because they make me laugh. I love knowing that almost any random fact I want to know I can find quickly in Wikipedia. There are great opportunities in all this technology. But sometimes I get frustrated that quality doesn't seem as prized as maybe it ought to be. I was watching CNN on some public TV recently and along the bottom they scrolled one-sentence comments sent in by viewers. That's nice and all, but who are these people and why should I want to read their random thoughts? I don't think my thoughts are worthy of scrolling on a major cable news network. The article I'm reading talks about people having their phones out to "tweet" on during speeches and lectures as a good thing. What happened to paying attention, absorbing, reflecting, assimilating, thinking? Is the most important thing really to share with everyone you know your first reactions as you sit there half-listening to something? Even Wikipedia is realizing that maybe having editing be open to everyone isn't the best way to maintain quality -- edits to pages on living people will soon have to be approved by an authorized Wikipedia expert or whatever, and I bet other categories will follow. Almost every YouTube comment I have ever read is inane, petty, or malicious. This isn't just about the internet. Other parts of pop culture have this new emphasis on "real, normal people" -- things like reality shows. It even pervades political discussion: when did it become understood that "expert" was a pejorative term (at least when applied to actual experts, rather than random citizens who happened to post an angry YouTube video or something)? When did we decide that what we want in our political leaders is for them to be indistinguishable from any random person you might meet at a bar or a hockey game? I can't help thinking it's all related.

Listen, I love communicating; I think the explosion of content that's out there and the access the average person has to the general public is a positive thing. But only if we don't abandon the idea of quality -- of information, thought, art, and so on. This isn't an original insight of mine, I know. But I don't see enough people saying this, and when people do, I feel they're liable to be dismissed as stuffy and old-fashioned at best, and oppressive/"elitist" at worst. It's not oppressive to want quality. I want politicians to be more informed, more thoughtful, more insightful, better at governing than the average person. Just like I want to watch golfers who are skillful at golf (rather than the amateurs on "The Big Break" or whatever golf reality show they've come up with), and read comics by people who are witty. The ability for the average person to put every thought or creative idea they have out there for the world to see isn't a bad thing -- but it's not all there is. The goal should still be quality, especially in things like political and academic debate. There is such a thing as just not knowing what you're talking about.

And if anyone thinks this post is ironic/hypocritical, as I appear to be presenting my opinions about how we shouldn't just automatically care about the opinion of any random girl sitting around her living room feeling frustrated, you probably have a point.

And in (kind of) other news, today's xkcd had me laughing for five minutes straight. Not the comic, but the redesign of the site. Check it out quick before it changes back.

Okay, back to reading. Here's Ian Anderson's take on things:

Pass the Merlot, dance the three-step
Cut to a better chase.
Align yourself with no proposition
and simpler thoughts embrace.

Let’s talk about me. Let’s talk about you.
In a world of private rooms.
Hide awhile from dark stormbringers –
sad messengers of doom.

Sadly you can't be Ralitsa Vassileva;
You’re just hand-me-down news in a cookie jar.
It’s a long way from here to CNN in America
and a red-eyed opinion too far.