Really cool article about the politics of the energy industry in Texas. Wind companies battling natural gas companies! I’ve been learning in the last few months that alternative energy is much more a business concern than a moral one.

My Chinese film class is giving me exposure to lots of beautiful Chinese actresses.

But in those moments when you feel bodily your loneliness, and you’re walking through a light snowstorm in the dark, the world takes on filmic aspects. Enya’s sighing “Only Time” drifts through the streets of Cambridge, and the sky weeps tiny snowflakes into shining rivers under the streetlamps.

At the HPR dinner last night, I sat with a group of senior editors. Strange how glasses of alcohol can make a one year difference in age seem like a millennium. So there, in supplication before those Jewish sages, I listened silently to discussions of Jewish Guilt.

I was surprised – a guilt felt for disappointing one’s parents?  It sounds exactly like the Chinese adolescent experience. But perhaps I’ve somehow moved beyond it; my hours spent in a dark bedroom this semester were filled with guilt towards myself. How can I be this way? So closed, fearful, and laggard? The middle school horror of myself resurfaced, wide-eyed. But is there any use to wedging myself into the subaltern spot? Does it bring me any closer to stumbling onto that shining, fantastical me, again?

This week, I’ve felt like I lost a half of myself. But it was a good thing; I have sometimes misplaced my phone because there is no one to call. And when that happens I have time to maintain an ordered room and start to walk back towards myself.

Here is a short list of my non-complishments these past few weeks

1) learning to be confident.

-> this isn’t as easy or simple as it seems! can one really change one’s personality in the hours before a job interview? each walk (of shame) back from the ocs interviewing facility is an entire existentialist struggle. “why am I so apologetic? I should be more like an Olympian! was I confident? overconfident? was it hard for them to hear me? should I have expressed more enthusiasm? doesn’t expressing too much enthusiasm make me seem rabid?”

2) twitter-azy

-> knowing nothing of domestic politics; head completely empty of health care legislation knowledge, I have become one of the official twitter-ers for the hpr. outside of reading twitter, sharing blog posts on facebook, and reading mashable, that social media blog, I have done little else that can even vaguely be claimed to be “productive”. Although perhaps serious social media divas can justify the time they spend as “building important social media skills for possible career,” I can only watch the slowly growing number of followers @harvardpolitics has with a glazed over expression. It’s like that summer I spent leveling up my neopet in middle school, all over again.

3) thesis-crisis

-> social studies demands that I find an advisor and narrow down to a thesis topic. the word “methodology” has been rattling around my brain like some kind of torture device. sometimes, in desperation, I start to write stream of consciousness word-association paragraphs about my supposed “academic interests”. Below is an excerpt of the ramblings of a confused product of “liberal education.”

Russia. civil society. happiness. transiiton economy. informal practices? legal theory? ledeneva?! Pravda! Wow I know about Russia! Yeah, like about Putin and oligarchs/silovarchs and the Kremlin; about problems with federalism and minorities, voting fraud, other parties, alcoholism, foreign policy issues with Ukraine, Poland, natural gas, Gazprom, other huge conglomerates, tunneling, but I can’t read those newspapers…where will I get my data from!? Oh I know! I can do a paper on China! Yeah! Even though I can’t read Chinese papers either. Wait, wasn’t I interested in Foucault at some point? Yeah! I want to learn about perspectives and level of trust in government and stuff! But I can’t do ethnographic research…and there are no surveys…all avenues are blocked…

Two points on this article.

1. Wow, the government is powerful. It might hit Goldman Sachs for $1 billion profit just to be vindictive. What about all the private equity shops that will lose investment capital? How does this trickle down to middle-market PE shops such as Audax, which invest in America’s smaller and growing companies? I wonder what the positive and negative ramifications of this will be for certain small businesses. Maybe not so much, if the big banks really only invest in the huge private equity funds like BarCap and Bain Capital.

2. I’m actually interested in these topics now. What.

Kelly showed me the above video today – I guess it’s someone from the Westboro Baptist Church doing an anti-gay parody of Bad Romance.

I know, I know. These are crazies and wackos and, as Kelly described, “incredibly offensive.” But I think there is something brave about their offensiveness. They are actively trying to create what in my freshman seminar was called a “norm cascade,” in which societal norms and values change. For instance, the concept of human rights, which had not been previously accepted, has gained popularity around the world due to a norm cascade.

Perhaps some would argue that the norm cascade they want to create is wrong. These people preach hate and one should be absolutely tolerant toward gay people.  But those same liberals cannot claim that they are greater proponents of freedom than someone who would create this video. In fact it’s easier for the liberals because their values are not unpopular. Ideas such as the environmental movement and tolerance of homosexuality (perhaps not marriage but just in general) today make up the “hegemonic ideology” of modern America.

In many ways it is tiny conservative groups like the Westboro Baptist Church who are really trying to fight the status quo, the hegemonic ideology, who “resist” and are isolated for their beliefs. They are America’s version of the dissidents who we so idolize in other countries…

But finally I was able to break out! Yesterday (January 1st!) was the moment I woke up to Barnes and Nobles, located convenitently 5 minutes drive away. I brought Crystal along. She read Twilight, and I picked up a book from the “Best in Business Section.”

Sounds awful? It wasn’t! I read a little book on management and then a book by Mireille Guiliano called “Women, Work and the Art of Savoir Faire.” The cover enticingly promised another hit from the author of “Why French Women Don’t Get Fat.” I’m glad that I was this time undeterred by Frenchy snobbishness and the eagerness of “Women in Business”…I picked up the book…

And it was actually quite fabulous. Mireille wrote, surprisingly, on a topic that greatly interests me: LVMH, the owner of a huge conglomerate of global luxury businesses, including Louis Vuitton. The fine lady had headed one of its biggest wine holdings, and using her elegant French accent and the power of advertising on radio, she was able to increase the US market share of the wine company she headed from 1% to 25%. I liked especially her sense of the importance of self presentation (style, weight “proportionality”, hair and perfume) are all, according to Mireille,  very important to the modern businesswoman’s success. Furthermore, the woman must learn fine manners, make friends, make people feel appreciated, personalize thank you notes and send gifts to clients, and always dream big about her future.

She had a nice part about where the famous women of today were in their careers when they were 30 years old. Many of them had very lowly jobs. That kind of made me feel, for once, that life is long and full of possibilities.