The View from My Recession

We found a new flatmate. He's our thirteenth in three years. Or maybe the fourteenth or fifteenth; I can't keep track anymore. He seems to have two girlfriends. They spend alternating nights at our place, and my first thought was that I must be truly awful at recognizing faces. An ex-addict, current law student, barkeep, and apparently manslut, he does seem interesting, maybe a little too interesting, which is why he wasn't our first choice to begin with. But then, our first choices do keep on disappearing on us--

It's that time of year again; time to apply to yet another masters program that I may as well have picked out of a hat; time to beg profs who don't remember me for letters of recommendation; time to make up a coherent narrative in which I travel smoothly from point A through point B all the way to point C when the true story is much more Lynch than Hollywood; time to ask my boss for money; time for all this merriment, and ah, could it be a more wondrous economic clime?

At least I have a job. A full-time job, with so many people underemployed. I really should not be complaining. My own personal recession could be a lot worse.

I'm late to work all the time now, almost every day. But today I biked to the train at sunrise with brain and body in full revolt, and it was kind of nice. Arriving at the station I felt warm and awake in my windbreaker while everyone else yawned and shivered in their coats. Maybe that's what success feels like.

Screw narrative. This isn't narrative. I don't remember narrative. I don't read novels or stories anymore, I just click through blogs, follow links across the Internet, skim the Economist, apply to three radically different programs in three consecutive years; maybe the lack of narrative is narrative enough. I'm just confusing myself with words now and I think I need another tea. I'll be back again sometime.

Re-Resolution

I'm done applying. Again. For now.

Writing my statement of purpose was once again painful, a belabored reminder of both how much I hate selling myself on paper and how much my writing ability has deteriorated. I sat in a cafe, staring at my laptop screen with my hands limp over the keys, listlessly typing out the flattest sentences imaginable: I want to be in this program because... ugh, delete. I believe that this program would be the best environment for me because... no, delete. Also, I think that... ew, "also"? Delete, delete, delete.

For months and months now I've been writing material for the second grade, so it's no wonder I'm struggling with the adult stuff. And rather than taking classes requiring papers, I've been taking classes requiring problem sets. Then there's the issue of journals: I used to keep journals all the time, from the first grade onward. But ever since I started living with my boyfriend, I've found journal-writing to be nearly impossible. Hence the blogging, but I haven't been doing much of that, either.

I used to have a few friends I would email regularly--a few long emails a month, narratives really, unabridged stories that, if printed, would span five or six single-spaced pages. Whether or not that's desirable (probably not), at least it's writing practice. But I can't remember the last time I sent an email to one of these friends. A year ago, maybe?

I am anyhow awful at writing these days. Solution: blog more. Can I, will I? I think I will try.

Gender and Writing

Via Andrew Sullivan, this website uses an algorithm to predict whether text was written by a man or a woman.

I fed it three blog entries. The first was deemed overwhelmingly female, the second overwhelmingly male, and the third just barely female.

I gave it a piece on Sputnik and DARPA that I wrote for work, for which I was determined to be very male. Then I gave it a paragraph on the health risks of trans fats, which was apparently very female. A term paper on neoconservatism was slightly female. Another term paper, on intelligence reform, was way, way male.

Looking at the keywords, it seems that the algorithm is designed to detect gendered topics rather than the sex of the writer. Or perhaps to detect the sex of the writer through the gender of the topic. Pronouns like I, me, your, she, hers, we, and myself are supposedly female--so if you're writing mostly about yourself and other people, you're a girl. (Livejournal is overwhelmingly female, I hear.) So is "was," which might be used to talk about recent events. Prepositions like "with," "where" and "when" are female, too. (E.g., "I was with so-and-so when we ran into so-and-so in the bar where I met so-and-so.")

The male keywords contain more spatial prepositions (below, above, at, to, around) and present forms of be (are, is). Non-gendered and indefinite pronouns--like it, what, who, these, and many--are male as well. Articles (a, the) too. So if you write about objects and the concrete realities of the world as it is now, you're a guy.

I may be completely wrong, but suspect that if this algorithm works on most people, it's because of topics. You're not going to find much room for "I" "me," "hers," or "myself" in a paper about intelligence reform.

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I think that something profoundly stupid will happen this weekend. Maybe several somethings.