Catching the Dandelion Child

My Billy by Paul Rudnick in the New Yorker, April 3, 2006. If you can find this, you must read it. It's up there with the funnier things ever. My favorite line in this one page satire of a doting mother who thinks her problem child is a whiz kid? "A series of other schools were equally repressive, and all I kept hearing was 'Billy refuses to sit still,' 'Billy can't interact with a group,' and 'Billy covered another child with green finger paint and told her that now she could get a scholarship.'" Hahaha take that affirmative action.

Speaking of whiz kids, anyone else thing Harvard's decision to remove early decision is kinda retarded? Maybe I wouldn't think it was so dumb if I understood how early decision is a way of favoring rich kids, but I've been reading a lot of "great, this puts everyone on a level playing field!" and no one who's successfully explaining why. Is it more expensive to apply early? I don't think so, so why is this a rich kid's advantage exactly? I applied early, it was the best thing ever to know where I was going, and, more importantly, to have only filled out one application, and then I was free to not waste my time applying to colleges I didn't want to go to. I don't remember money or my upper-middle-classness/fancy private school coming into this anywhere.

And while we're on the subject of Harvard, um, the new Facebook - ew? I mean, I'm happy they've got some privacy controls (although I don't understand why you can't keep EVERYTHING from going into the news feed, which is what I thought I was doing when I unchecked a zillion things) and I'm definitely happy that Mark Zuckerberg actually acknowledged that people were pissed, but thing about Facebook (or a thing at least) was that we controlled how stalkery we were, and it was a fun guilty (but secret) pleasure to stalk certain people's profiles. Now I feel dirty, like I asked for all of this information, like I just needed to know the second Jason posted on Becky's wall or Sarah joined a certain group. It makes me feel even creepier than I already am, and I, queen of wedding tables and lip gloss collecting, did not need that.

Alas, today is also the last day of fashion week, aka the week where something cool actually happened to me. Of course, that got dampened by going to a crappy show last night (Custo Barcelona) where I got kicked out of my front row seat by some bitch in security who seemed to think I thought I could get away with pretending I was Stan Williams. They didn't even have goody bags! And the only celebrities were the Queer Eye Guys, who I was sitting next to until I moved, and which was totally lost on me because I don't watch the show.

That's all for this week, Shabbat Shalom! (and Refuah Shleimah to Laura - hope this helped keep you entertained)