Quodlibets

Loop

I've been struggling with the issue of whether to make myself write posts, or to only do it when I'm truly itching to say something.  The thing is, I've got all this stored up writerly energy, and it makes me want to post post post, but then I start thinking about what I'm going to write about, and I freeze.  Which, incidentally, is why I didn't blog here for almost a year; I had the above experience nearly every week, and it was enough to keep me from blogging completely.

Even now, I've just erased three different paragraphs that said three different things, all about this topic of not blogging.  Or blogging.  I don't know why, but I'm suffering from the fear of putting a word wrong.  I have things I'd like to talk about, but I also don't want to....start something.  That's a weird thing to say, right?  I'm talking about writing about personal things, and I have very strong feelings about some things--many things--and where I used to just let it all hang out and type it all up like a battering ram, now I am mindful of the silence I've kept for the last eleven months, and unsure.

If you know me, you're probably yelping from the hilarity of me keeping any opinions to myself.  Probably I didn't when I was speaking in the last eleven months.  But writerly silence is still a silence of a particular type, and in those silent eleven months I mourned the loss of writing; now I am mourning the breaking of that silence.  It's a very weird loop to be caught up in.  When I am not writing, I am thinking "I would really like to write again," and when I begin to write, I am thinking, "I am wondering if I should actually type these things so people can read them.  Perhaps not."

I don't know how to reconcile the loop.  Again to the options of the first paragraph.  I could force myself to write, thus hopefully breaking the loop.  Or I could wait until I feel really compelled, and hope that compulsion comes more and more often.  I don't know what I will choose to do, but I do know that November will in fact break the stalemate in my head, because I will be doing NaBloPoMo this year.  The original month was always November, and so November it is.

Love is not a victory march

So I heard a fact on This American Life that had me wondering.  The fact was this:  people don't stay in love for longer than 18-24 months.  And if that's true--and the person who stated it was a psychologist--and think about that for a second if you've been with someone longer than that period of time--if that's true, then what is it that I feel when I'm excited to see Sam across a crowded room?  Or when I got that little frisson of joy when I saw him coming down Broadway on Wednesday afternoon?  (And might I add that we were doing the most mundane of things, picking up our bikes from the tune-up place, and he was carrying his bike helmet in one hand and was just, you know, in everyday work clothes.)  I'm not saying that the psychologist wasn't telling the truth, but then...I want to know the answer.  Am I deluding myself?  Is that what a psychologist would say is happening when I feel those things?  That I say I'm still in love with him, so I'm somehow creating a way for it to be true?

I obviously don't know the answers to these questions, because otherwise I wouldn't be asking them.  I do know that over almost 6 years (on June 11 or 12, we never are sure), things have mellowed.  There is definitely a missing sense of urgency that characterized the first few years of the relationship.  Hell, the first 6 months, even.  Of course, any sense of mystery is completely out the window, but I wasn't shocked by that.  I was prepared for it.  In a way, I welcomed it, having a pragmatic view of such things; I've written here in the past about the idea of companionship, and how our relationship having been built on a friendship really gave me a strong feeling that our companionship would drive the relationship in its later years.  And I don't know if that's true, quite, but it's certainly something that's going on here.  He IS my best friend, and I do enjoy just being around him.  He's the person I look for to tell things to, and quite removed from anything sexual, I genuinely enjoy being in his company.  Isn't that companionship? 

But right now, it'd be really wrong of me to say that the main mover in this relationship is a desire for companionship.  It's not for me, not yet.  And maybe not ever?  Maybe companionship will always be a secondary component of what we've got going on here.  I think that right now, our prime motivation for being here is love.  It's nearly impossible to dictate why I know that, or exactly what that means except--yes, I do miss him when he's not around, and yes, I still do get excited about the fact that he's mine to love, and that furthermore, he loves me too.  I can literally feel it in my heart sometimes.  I can't explain that either.  But I know it to be true. 

So to the tricky question of "in love".  Does it matter, really?  We've always expressed that idea, the "I'm in love with you" statement, as opposed to "I love you", and that's not really stopped after our first 24 months together.  But maybe we're not "in love" anymore.  Maybe being in love is deceptive, and maybe it's not all it's cracked up to be.  Maybe the more important thing is if you can stand to be with someone for 16 hours a day and still tell him you love him, and still get excited when you see him after 8 hours apart.  Maybe the most important thing is that something bigger than "in love" has grown up in the place of "in love".  A deeper commitment.  I don't know, because I'm not 100% sure I'm ready to relinquish "in love" just yet. 

What does that word "in" mean, really, except that I choose this person on a higher level than those I simply love.  I love my mom.  I love my dad.  I love my sister and brother.  I've loved many, many friends, and many more family members.  But there is only one person who can have the "in" label, and that's Sam.  Maybe what the psychologist and I are talking about are different things.  But there is only one person whom I love like Sam, and that's Sam.  Historically, maybe we've needed some way to denote that, and that's all that "in love" label means.  I'm not ready to relegate Sam to the "just friends" bin, no matter how much I love those friends, so for me, "in love" continues to be a useful way to talk about our relationship.  We're "in love".  And we are, too.  We're still amidst a great amount of love, and I can think of no other way to say it. 

It's spring! I'm stressed!

• Wow.  Typepad is new.  I wasn't going to start with this, but it's quite a shock.  Everything's different on the "Compose Post" screen, and it's moving very shakily and unsteadily, especially when you try to delete.  It's making composing this post extremely awful to compose.  I suspect it's doing some sort of autosave thing, because it seems to come in waves.  It's horrendous.  I hope this doesn't last, and I hope they fix it, because the new compose post page is quite nice otherwise.
• I got a haircut.  Kind of a big haircut.  This might be the first time my hair has ever actually been styled, and it's pretty great.  I've been living with a blunt-cut bob for years and years and years, with very few interludes (and those interludes I absolutely hated), so this is quite nice.  There aren't any pictures of me (so far as I know) with the cut, because even though it's incredibly different for me, I don't think it's that different for anyone else.  But I have a fringe, as it were, so there's that.  The back is also very different, I think.  But some people at work haven't noticed at all.  Or (Quel horreur!) they've noticed and it's bad, so they're not saying anything.  But it is taking me quite a bit longer to style in the morning, and it's required the development of a whole slew of new techniques.  And some new product.  I doubt this is interesting to very many of you, but there you are.
• One year and three months ago, it cost me between $17 and $20 to fill up my car.  Now, it's over $30.  I'm not sorry at ALL that I bought the hybrid, because it's undoubtedly saved me hundreds.  And having that Beamer right now would be hideous, so it's great news.  But it's pretty hard to imagine how this current situation will be sustainable for a long period of time.  I'm surviving the commute because the hybrid is so cheap to fill up.  If I was driving something else, I'd be in over my head.
• Is it ironically cool to wear shirts with dramatic cartoon renderings of animals on them?  You know the ones.  They were cool for a brief period in the 90's, and they're usually dark shirts with something like wolves or dolphins on them, in some vividly colored environment that is meant to mimic the animal's natural habitat.  Is this cool because Bret wore them all the time on "Flight of the Conchords"?  I've seen a few guys wearing them in the past few months, and each time, I'm curious as to whether this is a giant nerd, giant in a way we can't possibly understand, or some hipster who thinks it is genuinely actually cool to wear one of these things.  The answer, I am afraid, is NO.  No it is not cool to have a painted wolf on your shirt, no matter how ironic it is.
• Dear SixApart, Please fix TypePad right now.  If you do not, I will have to stop blogging, because I'm cutting this list short because it is so painful to be blogging right now in this halty horrible way.  Love, Mano

What You Remember

Last night's "This American Life" TV show was about "making history".  What gets remembered, essentially.  One segment involved school pictures and high school, and how inadequate a picture is to remember certain years.  Which actually led me to think about what I remember of elementary school, in particular. 

Kindgergarten, Mrs. Lichner:
-I remember the layout of the classroom exactly, with the play area to the left of the blackboard, and the letter people along the back wall of the classroom, near the ceiling.  The bathrooms were mini-sized, and only the kindergartners used them.
-I remember making some sort of Thanksgiving food item.  Crabberries, maybe?
-I remember sitting in the hall with a volunteer mom (?) and telling her one of my mom's recipes.
-I couldn't tie my shoes.  Which was cause for some worry, maybe?

First Grade, Mrs. Miller (?):
-Art colored too hard with his crayons, which was BAD, because it meant his parents always had to buy him new ones.
-I went down to Mrs. Reynolds classroom for enrichment, and though I don't remember what that entailed, I do remember that at one point, one of the first graders had a full body cast on.  That was very interesting and exciting for a kid.
-I had a speaking part in the Xmas program.
-At the end of the Halloween parade, they called anyone who was "Anything Else" which included me, a Strawberry.

Second Grade, Mrs. Kanies:
-I liked Mike, who sat next to me.
-I knew what grades were.

Third Grade, Mrs. Pool:
-I remember learning what the word essay meant, and that it was actually essay and not SA.
-We made butter, with carrots.  To make it yellow.
-We did an exercise where we were supposed to listen to music and draw based on the music.
-Someone (possibly Timmy?) said I was sexy in my jean skirt, which I thought meant I should walk around with my thumbs hooked through the belt loops.

Fourth Grade, Mrs. Godden (?):
-This is where things get hazy.  I remember reading a book during a classroom learning game that was too easy for me.
-I think this was the year we visited the Stock Exchange, and I think my dad went with as a chaperone?  This is what my memory tells me happened, but I don't know the veracity of it.
-This was also the year my dad told me I didn't want to be a lawyer, because would I really want to lie as a job?  Turns out that he was right.  I would never want to be a lawyer and have to blur so many lines.

Fifth Grade, ?:
-I remember being embarrassed by a sub because I didn't know how to spell some word that involved "i before e except after c".  I still have problems with those words.
-I did the splits in another classroom.  I seem to remember that most of us were doing the splits, by which I mean, the girls.

Sixth Grade, ?:
-I had a crush on Brendan. 
-Someone gave me a Christopher Pike book, and I must've read it a million times.
-The teacher was a man.

Amorphous elementary memories:
-A spelling bee, during which I got colonel confused with colonial.  Thus ending my spelling bee hopes.
-The library, specifically the "Little Mr. and Ms." series.  You know, the books with the colored shapey people who were emotions.  Mr. Happy.  Ms. Sad.  Those sorts.  They were in high demand, those books.
-A school musical in which I sang "Good food is good for you, so eat lots of _____, it's good for you."  I can still hear that tune.
-A music class involving a recorder.
-The smell of the lunchroom.  Now it strikes me as an absolutely disgusting smell.
-One recess, all the girls were doing cartwheels, which I couldn't do.  So I convinced someone to sing a song from the movie "Look Who's Talking" with me.  I can't explain.  Acutely embarrassing.
-Stripey cotton dresses for the fall and winter with something on the front chest.  Like, an apple.  Or a dog.

That's it, as far as I can easily remember.  I could tell you with precision where each of these classrooms was.  I mean, I have dreams involving my elementary school, and all of it is very vivid.  If I went in the school now, and if it were as it was (which it probably isn't, because it's a middle school now), I could lead you to each classroom.

I suspect that my foggy memory from 5th and 6th grade is because I myself became somewhat foggy during that period.  If you've read Reviving Ophelia, you know that this is the point where girls may start to lose themselves, and I think I went through that period a bit.  I wasn't cute or popular, no boys (that I can remember) liked me, and I was awkward to the max when it came to physical things like recess or gym.  I never stopped doing well in school, but I didn't figure out who I was for a long, long time after that.  I don't have a really good sense of myself as a person again until 10th grade.  What is that, a five year disappearance?  I do have memories from middle school and early high school, but a lot of them are bad memories stemming from a move and a very rocky transition.  Then I have memories galore from late high school through college right up until now.  But those years, yeah, those 5 years are just kind of gone.

It's weird what you remember.

Clumsy

That word, clumsy?  It doesn't look right.  And now saying it in my head, it doesn't sound right.  Nevertheless, clumsy I am, and I don't think that's ever going to change.  If I haven't grown out of it by 28 and 11 months, I don't think there's much hope.

For instance, yesterday I bit it hard in the street at work.  I was going to my car to run and get lunch (Subway, which for some reason hit the spot.  I seem to have broken the Chipotle spell, at least for now.  Although now, talking about Chipotle makes me want it.  Sigh.) and something happened, and I was on the ground, sprawled in a very ungainly position.  Somehow, I turned my ankle in the process, and am rather gimpy today.  And actually, it's not my ankle that hurts, but my foot.  Specifically the inside arch on my left foot.  It's preventing me from putting weight on it, which means I look completely stupid walking.  Which only compounds the stupidness I feel knowing that pretty much the entire campus watched me lose my shit and tumble so elegantly (snort) to the pavement.  I did pick myself up quickly and just go, and there were no tears, which if you know me, is rather impressive.

I have this tendency to injure myself like this.  I don't even know why I fell; whenever I say "Ow" and Sam asks what's wrong, how did it happen?, I usually have to tell him I don't know.  Because in general, I usually don't know.  These things happen to fast to process what the actual process of the injury was.  One time, I bumped my head on the garage door at my mom's house.  But get this: the garage door was going up.  It hurt a LOT, the kind of hurt that brings immediate tears to your eyes with no effort.  The kind of tears that are 100% spontaneous.  I still have no freaking clue how you can bump your head on a garage door going up, but I managed it. 

Yes, I'm a champion clutz.  With my own body.  I'm not really very bad when it comes to knocking things over.  I don't generally disturb the space around me, that is.  Just me.  Sometimes I just...stumble.  Nothing around me.  I'm not so very coordinated, how about that?  I don't think I've quite mastered my feet.  It's utterly ridiculous.  I have two pairs of pants (one green, one khaki) that trip me almost every time I wear them, if I have to high step over something in them.  Apparently, my feet cannot manage cuffed capris and a high step.  I've nearly killed myself at least a half dozen times in them, which is why I don't wear them while sitting around at home anymore.  Better to just wear something safe, like pajama pants.  Although, I've used those as deadly weapons too.  Clean tile floor + flannel pajama pants = certain death.  I've luckily never fallen on said tile floor, but it's been close, I'll tell you. 

All this is to say, I'm not very steady on my feet today.  Ouch.  It hurts to walk.  I suck at walking.

El televisor

One of the only TV shows that I try to reliably catch every week (as opposed to tivoing and then maybe watching, maybe not) is The Office.  Once upon a time, I didn't like the show at all.  In fact, actively avoided watching it.  It made me uncomfortable.  Specifically, the character of Michael made me uncomfortable.  But the Dwight-Jim dynamic, and especially the Jim-Pam relationship drew me in, and now I'm addicted.  The season finale is tonight, and I have to admit that I'm not sure the long months of strike were very kind to the show.  These short spring season episodes have been weak, and they've been sending me into that very uncomfortable places, the ones where I really hate Michael, and thus really hate the show.  Even the Jim/Pam thing can't save the show when Michael is really bad.  And it seems that the writers have been sinking him back into that old sort of character, where he's downright mean, and his stupidity doesn't seem stupid but malevolent.  I thought last week's episode was terrible, just plain awful.  All these weird separate storylines that never went anywhere, and Michael being a mean jackass.  The kind of mean jackass that I'd rather not spend time watching on TV.  I can't get emotionally invested in a character that awful.  Just can't.  At least with the dinner party episode, his bumbling-ness wasn't so much mean as just...bumbling.

The Office's comedy is supposed to be more real-life, which is maybe why the meanness doesn't play, for me.  I also reliably watch 30 Rock (Sam, in fact, is a 30 Rock superfan.  He loves loves loves Tracy Morgan.), and that humor is not based on real life.  I mean, they're not seeking to turn Everyman experiences into comedy.  They're exploiting their own medium for fun, more like...metahumor.  Sometimes I think I like that kind of humor better, because when someone is mean to Kenneth the Page, it doesn't feel so bad.  Kenneth is utterly ridiculous in every way, as is Tracy and Liz Lemon and the whole lot of them.  Phyllis, from the Office?  Doesn't feel so very fake to me.  It's exaggerated life, for sure, but it's still based around the idea that you might know one of the people who work in the office (and I hope it isn't Michael, though buffoons like him do exist).  And thus, for me, it gets uncomfortable. 

But I must say, both shows have made me laugh very hard.  I don't watch much other comedy on TV; frankly, Sam and I don't watch much else reliably on TV.  Law and Order, and a whole slew of Travel Channel and History Channel shows, Top Chef and PR, Bill Maher when he's on, Weeds and Big Love, and....that's about it.  There isn't much else that's making me laugh.  (Hardest laugh since strike:  Liz Lemon as Cathy:  "Chocolate chocolate chocolate.  Ack!")  So it's not like I'm dumping these shows.  I am worried, though, that if an Office spin-off materializes, it'll be to the detriment of the Office.  And that makes me sad.  I'd hate to see the show descend even farther into mean-Michael territory because the creator's attention is stretched.  I guess we'll have to wait and see how things shape up in the fall.

Dichotomy

So last night, Real Sports continued the horse racing abuse story, right on the heels of Eight Belles racecourse death.  This story was about the underbelly of the sport, specifically the selling of losing racehorses as meat.

Surprisingly, I have very little problem with the practice.  I have problems with the way horses (and indeed all meat animals) are slaughtered at your common factory-esque slaughterhouse (and the footage was gruesome, let me tell you), but the eating of horse?  Not so disturbing.  In fact, I don't know that I'd have a problem eating horse (or horse fat fries, which are supposed to be incredible), and I might taste it if offered it.  In America, that's not a very cool thing to say, and I understand that humans' relationship to horses are very different compared to how they relate to cows, but I just can't bring up a whole lot of outrage at the idea of horses being eaten.

The people interviewed on Real Sports were passionately upset about the whole thing, and dude, I can totally agree that maybe it's best if we figure out how to kill the animals with a modicum of humanity, but otherwise, yeah.  Total lack of outrage.  It's an odd little dichotomy, eh?  I don't want to watch these horses being bred for break-down, but what amounts to breeding for food...eh.  I can't explain it, except to say that I've seen pigs race, and I'm a-ok with the slaughter (and eating) of pigs. 

It's true that Thoroughbreds aren't raised for meat, but still...eh.  What if they were?  That also wouldn't bother me.  Of course, now slaughterhouses in the US are forbidden from doing horses, which means that humane slaughter is even further from happening, as much of the slaughter is happening in Mexico, where there are no standards.  If this is what animal rights crusaders were looking for when they pushed for these no-slaughter laws in the US, I personally think they've erred big time.  Horses are still going to be sold as meat, and at least if it's happening here we can regulate it.  Now we've lost all chance of that.

Still, like I said, I'm not against Europeans and Asians enjoying horse meat.  To each their own.  Doesn't really bother me.  It's just that I wish we'd endeavor to give animals a dignified life, and then a dignified death, if we wish to eat them.

The Walking Wounded

Yesterday, on the way home from dinner (and a few assorted errands), Sam and I passed a girl on the street that I'm sure was anorexic.  There's a certain look that kind of girl has, and it's in the face.  There are naturally slender people, yes, and their faces look healthy.  But this girl on the street last night, her face was like skin stretched over a skull.  There was no softness in her face at all, and I'm nearly certain that that look belongs to eating disordered individuals.  She looked...unhealthy, to say the least.  Besides the skull-esque look of her face, her clothes looked...hollow.  They were probably the smallest adult size they sell, and it was almost as if there was nothing in them, no legs or arms of any substance.  It was scary as hell.  I'm not lying when I say I did a triple-take.

I don't know what to say about it exactly, except that I was walking home with a full stomach (a happy full stomach) and a bag containing some hummus leftovers (that I fully intend on eating at some point), and that I'm happy.  And that it's hard for me to imagine that girl was happy.  In fact, perhaps it was simply the look on her skeletal face (drawn, and sad) that made me feel something, but I really think she was miserable.  Maybe I just want her to be miserable, because I can't feeling even one moment of joy while looking like that.  Not even the briefest moment of joy.  She looked miserable.  The look on her face wasn't happy.  She looked scary. 

I don't know what the answer is, but the more I read, and the more I hear (I have a co-worker who is extremely fat-prejudiced, and I love her anyway, but still), the harder it is for me to imagine a world where we can all just eat.  Just give it all up and eat.  Just stop hating our thighs or our tummies or our arm flab and just love ourselves as we are.  I don't know one woman who unreservedly loves herself.  I don't know any woman who doesn't occasionally make a comment about how bad she is to be eating x food (where x equals something sweet or something fatty or something delicious).  I don't know any women that don't occasionally indulge in a self-bashing session, and that easily includes me. 

I guess there are just some people who take the self-bashing and turn it into physical bashing, because anorexia is the slow destruction of your body.  It's that psychological abuse turned frighteningly real.  And it seems like we're not even close to figuring out how to end the psychological abuse, which means we must be even farther from ending the physical stuff. 

I don't have any words I can possibly say to that girl on the street, the starving girl, but I want to.  I want to, but instead I'm just sad for her, just unspeakably sad (I'm not doing a very good job of expressing it here, after all). 

The TAL effect

One of the things that happened when I first started blogging (4 years ago, almost; during the campaign leading to the 2004 election) was that I started to experience events as if I was blogging them.  Things acquired a narration in my head, and that narration was attached to my blog.  That's somewhat faded over the four years of this, though some events I blog in my head still--concerts especially. 

I'm sort of embarrassed to admit that something else has really taken over this blogging in my head phenomenon, and that's the "What's my story?" question.  The question is in reference to "This American Life", which has taken over my brain.  Taken over my listening life, along with "The Bryant Park Project", "Fresh Air" and "The Story".  But it's "This American Life" that I love the most, and that really, really has me enraptured.  And I don't know if this is normal for all fans of the show, but almost every day, I think about what my story would be if I were on the show.

I think about what the theme could be, I think about if I would just be narrating a story, or interviewing someone.  And sometimes I wonder if could be the one interviewed.  It's a flight of fancy, of course, because even though the show is about "ordinary people doing ordinary things", it's not really.  Most of the stories are in fact about extraordinary people doing extraordinary things, and I'm not that.  There's nothing in my life that seems to qualify as interesting radio.  But nonetheless, the fantasizing continues. 

Am I alone in this?  I know that fans of the show read this blog, and I want to know if I'm crazy.  Am I nuts for doing this?  Or do you other fans sometimes indulge in flights of fancy where you are a subject of the show?

Roses

I've mentioned here before that I never quite grew out of my adolescent girl's love of horses, and so it still is.  I find them extremely beautiful, and there's nothing I like so much as watching the three legs of the Triple Crown in the early spring.  I love most of all the feast of horseflesh on TV; when else can I see such lovely creatures for such an extended period of time?  And the history of horse racing has me enthralled as well.  I told Sam yesterday, while watching the coverage of the race, that I love looking at historic portraits of winners of the past Derbies.  The black and white photos of horses are especially evocative to me, and I could look at them for hours.  Indeed, I even love to read books about famous Thoroughbreds, horses like Secretariat, Man-O-War, Citation, Seabiscuit, Native Dancer, Ruffian...etc.  The list could go on for ages.  I simply love everything about the horses, and the sport they are.

But you know by now, if you watched the race, or if you've keep up with news, that yesterday's Derby was both triumphant and hugely, deeply sad.  If you don't know, here's the short of it:  the filly in the race, the filly that took second in the race was put down right on the course immediately following the race.  She was euthanized past the second turn, while a crowd of people cheered for the winner, Big Brown.  The filly, Eight Belles, broke both of her front ankles, and though it's unclear how, what people keep saying is that horse racing is hard on the bodies of horses, and that this sometimes happens.  And it does.  The winner of the 2006 Kentucky Derby, Barbaro, broke down in the next race, the Preakness.  And died, later, after much intensive vet care that simply could not save his life.  Traditionally, a broken leg has always been a death sentence for horses.  And so it was for Eight Belles.

It's hard to feel good about a sport that seems to be getting more and more fraught with these sorts of fatal injuries.  From what I understand, it's a combination of factors.  The horses are getting more fragile with increased inbreeding, and because of that, the hard dirt of most race courses is more dangerous.  (There has been a movement to invent a better surface, a less dangerous one, and Arlington Park, Chicago's home course, has a synthetic track now, to try to prevent such injuries from happening.)  Horses are less hardy now, there's no doubt about it.  Past horses ran many more races each year, and with less trouble.  Drugs may be part of the problem, allowing for the masking of such symptoms that might indicate troubled racing. 

I don't know if there is a solution.  I'd hate for the solution to be an end to all horse racing, but it's really hard to know about yesterday's breakdown without wanting to see an end to that kind of pain for horses.  If you love them.  One thing I think would be beneficial would be to space out the three legs of the Triple Crown.  Would that have saved Eight Belles?  No, of course not.  But might it have saved Barbaro?  Who can say?  Of course, not all breakdowns happen around these three races.  I don't understand the precise economics of horse racing, but to make money, a horse has to race.  And I'm sure it has to race a certain amount of times during a year.  Perhaps too often than what is good for a horse?  I don't know the answer.  I don't know the answer to any of this.

But as a fan of horses, and of racing, I can only say that what happened yesterday--and seeing the pictures and the video of the injury (NBC briefly showed video footage of the horse down on the track, before the equine ambulances moved in front of her so they could put her down, and I moaned to Sam, "She's down, oh she's down" and I knew that it was so very bad if she couldn't stand at all.)--well, it tests the boundaries of your love for such a thing.  I loved the idea of that filly winning the race, and I loved that she came in second; I was more excited about that than Big Brown's win.  To have it end so is nearly unbearable.  Nearly unbearable.