L A S T+W E E K March 23, 1998 In Search of the Slow Missive Taking Bets: What's Coming Next? Work Life - - - - - - - - - - - - Posts of the Week No. 104 | 103 | 102 | 101 | 100

POSTS OF THE WEEK - - - - - - - - - - - - Self Mutilation - Why? Science and Health Stephanie Dobler - 06:46am Mar 27, 1998 PST (#30 of 36) I went through several bad bouts of depression a few years ago. During some of the worst of it, I found that sometimes the only way I could calm down and stop crying was to cut myself. I didn't cut very deeply, and I didn't want to feel pain exactly. But there was something about getting out a razor blade, looking at my skin (on my thigh, so no one would see it) and pressing the blade and watching the little beads of blood well up that was deeply soothing. I know that sounds strange, and I don't have a good explanation for it. Maybe the brain produces endorphins in response to the stress of cutting? I know that the act also expressed a lot of self-hatred I was feeling at the time, and I think the idea of making the inside manifest on the outside was also important. But unlike with some people who self-mutilate, i.e. borderline personalities, it wasn't a cry for help or an attention-getting strategy; I did everything I could to hide the evidence. I don't think... that it was a question of my not having good boundaries. At least, people usually take that phrase to mean overly-permeable, weak boundaries. If anything I felt surrounded by an unbreakable wall. My mother said that during this time (she didn't know about the cutting) that I reminded her of Rapunzel, all alone in a high tower. Maybe the cutting was an attempt at opening, at breaking through the too-tough boundaries. But metaphors aside, the conscious reason I cut myself was a practical one. I needed to calm down and stop crying and that was sometimes the only way I could do it. - - - - - - - - - - - - Oscar Watch '98 Movies Matthew Keller - 02:14pm Mar 24, 1998 PST (#111 of 208) Favorite moment: Stanley Donen. Donen is part of what America came to love about Hollywood. Now our love's turned into this dish-throwing, name-calling, psychologically-unbalanced sexual affair, where we only want to fuck the stars, the stars only want our money, and the movies become the dirty Polaroids of this unholy arrangement. Maybe I'm being romantic to think it used to be different, and that Donen was more interested in art than box office. But I felt it last night, and I still feel it now: say what you will about TITANIC, Audrey Hepburn would have never worked with James Cameron. I actually liked Madonna's boredom. She said what everybody at the party I attended felt, anyway: "Big surprise: Titanic." The song sucks, and the movie wasn't much better. It's sad that the Academy and a country of shrieking, prepubescent girls are in perfect critical accord. - - - - - - - - - - - - Another school shooting Headlines Asher Wilson - 07:52am Mar 25, 1998 PST (#23 of 211) Guns don't kill people. Children kill people. But like I always say not as fast if they don't have a semi-automatic weapon. Listen carefully. The government is not preparing to come and get you. It is really, ok. You don't need an armory at home. It is really, ok. And in the mean time we have a really serious public health problem with all these rifles and handguns around. I say let every home have a machete and lessons on how to use it properly, including on how to throw it. Then when all that rage wells up in family quarrels - no standing off and punching the ticket of a loved one. Oh no, you have to get up close and personal and take a limb or something. And in the present case - that teacher who took the bullets ending her life - she might be alive with just some nasty cuts.