Today’s New York Times magazine has what may be the most interesting article published in the dead tree journalism world this year. It’s Malwebolence, about trolls. Trolls, of course, are those web users who seem to exist for the purpose of stirring up trouble and making other people’s lives miserable on the internet. One can hardly be on the internet these days without having run into trolls, whether you use that word or not. Trolls often hack, in their most virulent form, and can do things like send endless pizzas and paid escorts to your door, expose your Social Security number, or just “follow” you around bedeviling you. The reporter actually meets some trolls of the more public variety — the superstars of trolling, if you wish — and finds out who they are and what they are like in the real world and discusses their thinking about what they do and why. I found the piece totally fascinating and very highly recommend you spend some time reading it.

On the “Ickky” front, and again from dead tree journalism, is the cover of this month’s Nichols Hills Magazine. Does anyone else remember the controversy surrounding an MSNBC’s talking head description of Sen. Clinton as “pimping out” her daughter, Chelsea? This month’s magazine cover is a photograph of one of this year’s 21 Oklahoma City debutantes, Janell Law Fryer, a University of Kansas coed and the daughter of Ms. Tricia Law and Mr. Peter Burchfield Fryer. She’s wearing a yellow frock, has her left hand on her hip and is looking over her shoulder, a mass of auburn hair blowing amongst a flowered background. She’s fresh faced and virginal in the photograph (God only knows what she’s like on campus in her life). My first reaction was “ickky”. My second reaction was: “ickky”. I find I can’t even make the “shoulderpad feminism” argument about it. The word “ickky” just keeps blocking everything else out. For half a century, there have been OKC debutantes in my reality. Most years, I think about it not at all. It’s not part of my world to any great extent. I don’t care about debutante balls in Oklahoma City at all except to think it’s kind of a silly imitation of the New York City debutantes. The notion of parents presenting their daughters “to society” seems 19th Century and beyond quaint. It’s ironic to me that the phrase “coming out” has been co-opted to mean something alltogether different. Maybe it has something to do with Sen. Clinton’s campaign for president being so far past such idiotic ideas as parents owning children and women as chattel. I can’t even parse out all the reactions I have except to say: “Ickky!”. Ickky! Ickky! Ickky!

MCARP has been writing some recently about being depressed without being depressed “about’ anything. Just wanting to isolate and stay home with the cats. I second that emotion, Smokey Robinson. The past couple of weeks, maybe three, it’s been a real battle inside myself to get out of the house and isolating has won as often as not. I have to really force myself to engage with other humans, even the ones I love the most. I’ve been more than a little reluctant to meet up with my cohort of friends for Wednesday dinner or Friday art stuff. No Thursdays on the roof; heaven forbid. I haven’t really had a choice, in a way, since my beautiful, wonderful, happy, smart, totally awesome sister has been in town since last Monday and absolutely nothing in the world could keep me from spending time with her, not even my depression since that’s not nearly as important as she is. I feel your pain, MCARP. Part of it has to be the heat. It just has to be. It drains the very life out of me to be outside for even a short time. However, even under the air conditioning running 24/7 inside my home, I’m stand-offish. I don’t even really want to post here because that’s a form of reaching out to the world and I don’t want the world to reach back to me. No one’s had to bring me fish and chips (and no one’s offered, I might add), but I have not wanted to go outside even if it meant not eating or eating thrown together crap out of my freezer. I have the usual alcoholic/depressed person’s issues with romance and finance (all problems of alcoholics are said to fall into one of those two categories, an oversimplification but a useful one). I don’t think that’s it. However, I’m not MCARP and have been somewhat more proactive about things (I hate the word “proactive”, btw). I’ve doubled my antidepressant and have an appointment tomorrow with my therapist to try and get out of this cycle. On a less rational note, I also blame a big part of this emotional trough on the last full moon, which is when things took a decided turn for the worst.

I’ve learned the hard way that isolating is not a good strategy for me. Isolation only begets more isolation in Blogblah world. I find myself inside my head more and more and, being a few degrees off plumb to begin with, the more I’m away from others and inside my own head, the further off the beam I get. A few years ago was my last time to make that mistake, if it’s possible for me to have any say about it. I became suicidal, literally. That’s why I’ve “gutted up” and taken myself outside when every instinct I’ve had the past three weeks is to pull the covers over my head. For me, that way madness literally lies. So, I got out. Here’s some things I’ve done:

I went to see two “superhero” movies, “Dark Knight” and “Hancock”. Both were more interesting to me than most superhero movies. I thought the Batman movie was interesting because it left Good versus Evil and became Order vs. Chaos and those who praise the late Heath Ledger’s Joker were spot on, IMHO. Will Smith’s venture was not as good but had a special attraction for me because he became an alcoholic superhero. No matter your gifts, alcohol can ruin your life and lead to bad behavior. I took some of that right to heart.

I went on the First Friday Paseo artwalk, sans the Oz couple, and withered in the heat. Jim Polyester and his wife, H, nailed things, I thought, when they said the art was OK, but nothing to bowl one over. I got to meet Amanda’s fiance, J, and he seemed like a great guy; even better, her band played Sauced and I heard a really terrific set while sitting not far from Skip the Grey Eminence. A friend said I walked through the Sauced crowd like a politician, shaking hands at most of the tables, and the sister also complimented my ensemble, something I always like.

I’ve spent some really deeply satisfying time with MindOverMary, and enjoyed her childhood friends and a couple of evenings at Isis with her and Dave Z and that crowd. Kelley O brightened my day (although not as much as her landscaping landowner) and she looked SO good in a white dress against her dark summer tan at one of the Isis visits.

Last night, I got in some dancing with the super-secret GF after dinner at Pearl’s, where we chatted with the new Mrs. Brian the Chef.

Brennschluss was at Red Cup with L, his SO, and just as I was leaving I discovered from NunzioX that his Austrian Squeeze was there as well (I didn’t recognize her and I suppose I went even higher on her deep freeze list because I once again didn’t engage her, but I was in a rush to get to work before noon).

I’ve had some food at the new Iguana Lounge on 9th Street and it seems like a new, good, hip place to eat and was led to go around the corner to see a house at 4th and Oklahoma that is very modern and cool looking from the street. I’m told people I know also know the homeowner. It’s certainly worth the driveby.

My friend the Ultimate Webmaster came to town and spent the night at my house, but on a sad mission to see his Mom through a cancer surgery that was not completely successful. A shout-out to all my Stillwater peeps and their finned, feathered and furry friends.

Finally, Flibbi, who writes recently about the power of touch. Hugs are the deal, I think. She mentions that newborns require touch to be healthy, but fails to mention that nursing home residents clearly do better with hugs — human, caring touch has been proven to lengthen their lives. Why would we doubt the power of hugs to keep those of us between infancy and senility more healthy in mind and body? This brings me back to one of the reasons I think isolation is a bad strategy for me. I honestly believe I literally need hugs to stay healthy. You don’t get hugs huddled in your bedroom. It’s therapy.

Well, I’m headed to Mom’s for a Sunday afternoon poolside get-together for MindOverMary. This was, I guess, just my way to procrastinate since I again don’t want to get out of the house. Hope to see some of you there!

Blogblah!

midnight update: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has died at age 89, according to the International Herald Tribune. His books are brilliant, but Gulag Archepeligo was horrifying to read; it was a car wreck I didn’t want to see but from which I could not look away.