Incredulous D

I, too, dislike it.

2010-02-02T23:59:00.003-06:00

I come home with plans. Not in any particular order or priority, but plans nonetheless: finish books, write out reviews that have been stewing for weeks, copy out the pages of Jillian Weise’s poetry by hand to commit them to body-memory. Clean up my itunes library, process my laundry, write the emails that need writing, fuck, that I want to write because I owe them to people and miss my friends and mentors and don’t want to let people slip out of my life because of my own reckless, selfish negligence anymore.

None of it happens. I barely made it out of the office, spent ten minutes with my head on my desk contemplating sleeping there, the second time I’ve had this debate with myself this week. Then I coddle myself, swaddle myself, listen to indulgent music on the train and have someone deliver dinner because I should have one full meal today. I sit in bed and kill hours reading what other people are thinking about art and politics and psychology. I read six months of archives of a stranger’s blog, pick up my guitar for ten minutes and put it back down.

Yesterday I read this essay T.S. Eliot wrote about Hamlet, which basically says that Hamlet, and by extension any critical mind interested in Hamlet, is a pathetic half-breed artist who, despite his innate creative drive and sensibilities, is unable to create, and therefore becomes a critic of art. The worst kind of critic, the kind whose analysis always carries a biting resentment of the artist’s ability to produce. The critic who attempts to stifle confidence and the creative urge in others because he himself feels so helplessly stymied.

I don’t want to be that critic.

What I’m really trying to say, I think, is that my skin is far too thin for all this.

I come back again and again to the Maryanne Moore poem that is the title of my blog, the first line of which I have been contemplating as a tattoo since I discovered it as the guiding principle of my interaction with the world and its art and its people. “Poetry: I, too, dislike it.” Moore tackles the thing she loves most, the thing to which she has devoted her life, by systematically dissecting it, pointing out its every flaw and misuse and potential for harm, by “reading it with perfect contempt for it.” And by the end of the poem, she has justified for herself how that thing, poetry, can still be important, can still be her focus, can still be loved (“above insolence and triviality and can present for inspection, ‘imaginary gardens with real toads in them,’ shall we have it.”).

I don’t know how else to approach the world except from this same position: the things that delight me are flawed and likely unimportant in the grand scheme, and I am obligated to acknowledge that, and grapple with it, and ultimately to justify my delight and devotion by discovering in them some measure of significance.

And I don’t know how to do that without starting every conversation, internal or external, from a strong point of view. It’s like the difference between trying to write by staring at a black screen, and sitting down to revise a draft or beginning with a prompt or idea. How can you create anything without a structure to push against? This is, of course, why I have always been drawn to poetry and theater. In poetry you have rhyme or meter or tradition as structure, and creativity comes in finding the way to say what must be said within or in spite of the set form. In theater you have a script that is a static structure that must be made to breathe, again, in spite of itself. I need that same structure in everything, in opinion and argument and conversation and relationships. I need to start from someplace solid so I can push against something, so the conversation or relationship or thought can test the boundaries of the initial structure and accept them or revise them or live in them more fully and responsibly and actively.

I know that this way of being gets me into trouble. I know that I come off as aloof and argumentative and contrary. I know that this is because I always begin working from an assertion or conviction, even when I don’t have the facts to back it up. Because defending and refining the conviction, and understanding its opposition, allows the facts in question to come to light in their most genuine form. I know that this method only works when all parties begin in good faith, with trust and respect; that contrarianism without love is just nastiness; that you can't have tough love without demonstrated love.

I don’t believe truths throw themselves at you: I believe one must earn them, must fight for the right to know them. I don’t know how else to learn or how else to relate, and frankly I don’t want to. Happiness and comfort are false idols. I am interested in struggle and epiphany. I crave hard-earned, righteous, fleeting moments of ecstasy before returning to the trenches. I want to be pushed and to be comforted, but not in equal measure.

That's why I want those words inked in my flesh:

I, too, dislike it.

Because I am tired of being told that analysis and criticism are antithetical to creation: they are the precursor to creation. Because I am tired of being called negative: I am struggling to justify my joy and understand that which is beautiful. Because I am tired of the assertion that a real artist is unequivocal about hir craft: I am wrestling with the significance of my art in a world of immense suffering which art will not alleviate. Because I am tired of hearing that my sadness is unproductive: it is the thing that spurs me to action against injustice and creation against the void. Because I am tired of separating art from politics: every moment we devote to a task and every word we speak is a political choice, and I want to stand behind mine.

I have been struggling to find myself and define myself since leaving school, and especially since losing the relationship that was standing in for the structure of my life. These fragments I have shored against my ruins, out of which I must attempt to construct a self and a philosophy on art and love and righteousness and action. “I, too, dislike it.” That's what I've got. Nothing is sacred and everything we love must be justified and loved despite its flaws. I don't want that understanding pulled out from under me ever again. I want the words etched in my skin to make it thick and make me strong.

I, too, dislike it.

“The same thing may be said for all of us, that we do not admire what we cannot understand.”
We are obligated to try and understand.

“If you demand on the one hand, the raw material of poetry in all its rawness and that which is on the other hand genuine, you are interested in poetry.”
Words matter, insofar as they are offered in the spirit of genuine communication. I want access to every thought and feeling and argument in the world, and thus I must read poetry with a perfect contempt for it. I must split the baby, destroy everything I love and believe, in order to reconstruct a fuller truth.

I, too, dislike it.

Here are some things I believe. This is the structure from which I can begin to create. I would love to trouble this structure with you.

I believe in the value of contradiction and paradox but not ambiguity.
I believe in advocacy but never philanthropy, even when both mean fundraising.
I believe in kindness but inherently distrust anyone who is “nice.”
I believe in the concept of responsibility over the concept of rights.
I believe in radical solitude, but also in our nearly infinite capacity for empathy.
I do not believe in causation. I believe that faith in causation is callous disregard for human suffering, and a denial of one's own privilege.
I believe in absolute beauty but not absolute truth.
I believe in forgiveness but not absolution.
I believe in unconditional love, but will not practice unconditional support.
I believe we are responsible not only for our intentions, but also for the unintended outcomes of our actions.
I believe that individual accountability and group responsibility are not mutually exclusive.
I do not believe in conditional apologies.
I believe that accepting love and help can be a radical act.
I believe in the power of collaboration and mutual respect, but understand hierarchy to be a temporarily necessary evil.
I believe in epiphany and the power of the subconscious, so long as it has been fed proper research and compassion. This includes an immense faith in the nap and the long walk.

I believe that only that which frustrates us, which engages us, which challenges us, has the power to change us.

I, too, dislike it.

What about you?

Prop 8 speculation: just the thing for a rainy Saturday in January.

2010-01-17T16:47:00.002-06:00

Gay Marriage supporters fear Supreme Court ruling was an omen -- LA Times

If every new motion, decision, and media-spectacle of the Prop 8 trials is this fraught with speculation and hopelessness, the outcome of the case will not matter, for we will all have collapsed in a heap of emotionally whiplashed, heart-wrung queer bodies. Which is a real shame, because the actual bodies and lives of queer people are the furthest things from discussion in any of this coverage. Our flesh-heap might merit brief coverage if it's real gory, on Fox News at very least since it'd be easier to spin our story than cover Haiti, which requires compassion and reporting and all that.

Unfortunately, I happen to side with the pessimists on the likelihood that our current Supreme Court will have the conscience or the gonads to overturn the independent decisions of 40 states to discriminate against a minority. For reasons beyond my understanding, SCOTUS has recently displayed a bizarre desire to limit its own power to overrule both state and federal over-reaches of jurisdiction. In a perfect world the Judiciary would be an excellent solution to the gay marriage problem, since the basic point of contention, the majority’s ability to limit minority rights to access government services and protections, has already been decided several times over. But this isn’t a perfect world and the court is stacked against us, and the specifics of the case provide any number of easy outs for Justices who have no internal compulsion to do the right thing.

That being said, the following was perhaps the most jaw-dropping excerpt of the linked article:

In their opinion, [SCOTUS] worried that opponents of gay marriage and their paid witnesses would face “harassment as a result of public disclosure of their support” for the ban. They concluded that the Prop. 8 defenders “have shown that irreparable harm will likely result” if video coverage of the proceedings were made public.

This is one of those free speech debacles that really ties one’s brain in knots. While in the abstract I appreciate SCOTUS’s protection of representatives of an unpopular opinion from disproportionate retaliation, and their understanding that cameras in the courtroom would have a chilling effect on free speech for witnesses for the defense, my gut reaction of anger and disbelief reigns supreme. The most common misunderstanding of “free speech” is, in my opinion, when bigots aver that “freedom of speech” means “freedom from consequences of speech.” Conservatives usually love accountability, except when it applies to wealthy hate-mongers instead of “Welfare Queens.” I’d never advocate violent retribution against the bigots willing to testify against my basic human rights, but I’d sure like to be able to boycott their businesses and thumb my nose at them on the street and such. Which we will still do without live-camera coverage, but I don’t quite see why these people are receiving extraordinary protection from the civil repercussions of their own sworn testimony.

There’s also a certain irony in the claim that the witnesses for the defense will suffer “irreparable harm” from the distribution of their testimony. I think we should all be a little more interested in the “irreparable harm” caused to millions of queer Americans by systemic inequality, lack of access to services, and dearth of protection from the constant threat of emotional and bodily injury. You know, the irreparable harm to a family that can’t legally adopt their kid or the Queer who dies in a hospital bed alone because hir partner has no legal recourse. But hey! Who asked me.

Anyway, the one thing I can’t really get my head around at present (ha! so untrue, but my heart will give out if I write about this for too much longer) is why it matters so much if Judge Walker sets clear rules for proceedings or not. Everyone knows this case is getting appealed up to SCOTUS regardless of the result, and given the high court’s unusual early-intervention with the trial already, they’re clearly not going to abide by the usual rules of the game, wherein appellate courts don’t reexamine evidence, just rule on the legality of decisions, the validity of the applied precedent, etc. Whatever Walker does in that courtroom will be purely incidental to the final decision of the case, as far as I can tell, although it will determine the specifics of appellate strategy.

Anywho. Another great day to be a gay American in the era of Hope and Change.

"The Phantom Menace" may refer to the Patriarchy. Correct me if the film points to any more plausible thesis.

2010-01-09T16:30:00.004-06:00

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review (Part 1 of 7)

What I did with my afternoon: watch this 70-minute takedown of The Phantom Menace, compare it with Nick Davis's review (a startlingly solid B- if you can believe that), youtube other Star Wars documentaries, marvel in the brilliance of the original trilogy, and wish I could analyze movies and their making like the pros.

Normally I wouldn't share or recommend a video like the review above, because the creator deems it necessary to mix in a lot of tasteless and triggering "gags" that position the narrator as an abusive, misogynistic sociopath, which a) does nothing to help the ever-beleagured public image of people who like Star Wars/Sci-Fi* as socially-inept jerks, and b) is the most tired strategy for producing an easy chuckle outside of the Poop Joke.

But the fact that the review melds dramatic criticism of plot and character, meticulous cinematographic analysis, and careful research of the process and reception of the film with a shtick-y narrator and cheap editing tricks to produce a biting, compelling, and often genuinely funny attack on the film makes me willing to hold my feminist objections at bay for a hot second and tell you to watch the thing.

In combination with my recent [slightly manic, sorry] obsession with that Le Guin essay, I am wondering today how it is possible, in one lifetime to, consume and analyze art, create effective art, keep up meaningful relationships, and have any sort of impact toward improving the welfare of humanity (which one must feel compelled to do as the result of all the former pursuits, which reveal a flawed world of injustice and pain but usually some hope for redemption). I know this work/life/art balance conundrum is not a new thing, but it's taking on new relevance for me as I cast off the wonderful shackles of coupledom and still can't find time or brain-space for art, work, and friends.

[What does this have to do with the video? I guess that it is, in itself, an overt balancing act between the critique of art and the creation of art, produced by (I believe) a single artist, in which both the referent art and the critique-art attempt to complicate the high art/low art dichotomy by exploiting the peculiarities of their respective media, with varying degrees of success. Although, notably, the video artist is male, which may undermine the validity of this comparison to Le Guin. But I'm going to roll with it anyway.]

I think the answer to the balance question has something to do with the power of culture to change minds and circumstances, and the power of the individual the influence culture, but I am also wondering if it does not specifically have to do with science fiction -- that is, art (of whatever medium) that challenges the basic assumptions, environments, circumstances and ideologies by which we live. Art that is currently dismissively labeled as "genre" because it challenges the status quo in emotionally compelling, widely accessible ways.

Unfortunately, I suck at film analysis and have never thought up a half-plausible science fiction premise (let alone plot) in my life. But maybe those are two things I would like to work on. Even if the genre (sci-fi) and the medium (film) never become the vehicles for my own creative pursuits, I think there is a tremendous power in each (and both) which, if I could better understand, I could harness to make art that is more meaningful, accessible, thoughtful, revolutionary and joyful.

*See also: readers of comic books, players of video games, etc., with a heavy cross-over with bloggers, queers, new-agers, and anyone else who prefers art/recreation/communication/lifestyles that differ from and therefore challenge dominant culture, which has a vested interest in stigmatizing the above groups in order to maintain its dominance and the very hierarchical thought system which allows "dominance" to be accepted as the natural mode/consequence of relation between and among individuals, groups, ideas, and nature.

2009 wrap up, because one must.

2009-12-31T09:40:00.000-06:00

2009... ah.

Well, I’m probably in a lousy position to write about 2009 with any sort of balance or perspective, but that’s what year end wrap-ups are all about. Projecting your current predicament back over a year, or decade, or lifetime. Much like therapy.

In 2009 I

wrote a collection of poetry which made me truly proud, earned university honors, and totally escaped the interest and reading of my family (for better and worse).
found the sort of group of friends I’d wanted to find all through college, and spent six or so fabulous months with them, writing and match-making and dancing and eating.
wrote 50+ cover letters in the face of constant anxiety attacks about the future.
turned down three job offers.
accepted my first full time, adult job.
moved to New York City, most overwhelming place on Earth.
played out an inevitable relationship to great success followed by great failure, with the hope of another shot at both.
lost my cat, Sadie, who got me through some very dark times and wore a tutu like a champ.
started a blog I feel good about sharing with the world.
started therapy, medication, and possibly started taking care of myself.
co-produced a night of jazz and slam poetry, something totally new to the university and totally awesome by all accounts.
performed my poetry for the first time, and promptly forgot how good that can feel.
lived, briefly, with two straight boys.
missed Chicago more than I ever would have thought possible.
watched a friend endure a horrible accident and hospital stay, realized I could do nothing.
cooked more, for more people, and realized what a wonderful thing that is.
started building real relationships with my siblings as people.

In 2010 I will

write more
spend more time alone because I want to
spend more time with friends because I want to
read more books
talk to my brother and sister every week
explore cities by myself
pack my lunch
keep my space cleaner
do better at working during work time
take steps towards law school
make casual friends
re-learn to just hang out
spend time with children
make it through another year.

cum hoc ergo propter hoc

2009-10-25T13:05:00.001-05:00

I've been considering working these words into a tattoo for about a year now. Cum Hoc and Post Hoc are logical fallacies of causation: roughly, that correlation suggests or constitutes causation. There are philosophers that go so far as to argue that causation itself is a logical fallacy, based on our unproved assumption that the future models the past. I don't know if I'd go that far, but I find deep questioning of our collective reliance on causal thinking appealing. Causation allows us to wrap things up neatly, to feel we understand how the world works, to believe negative outcomes can be easily fixed or avoided.

This is especially damaging when dealing with issues of privilege. In a thousand small ways, we harbor the belief that good things happen to good people, and conversely, that those who suffer brought it on themselves. This allows for an enormous degree of indifference and cruelty, especially toward the poor, the sick and disabled, the fat... any group in which membership should be morally neutral, attributed to chance and circumstance, rather than some underlying moral turpitude.

One of the major arts in education groups here in New York released results from a study that found a strong correlation between arts education and increased high school graduation rates. I think most readers would find this utterly unsurprising. The surprising part was that, despite presenting absolutely no evidence of a causal link, this group made recommendations to increase arts funding in order to increase graduation rates.

Why might schools with good arts programs have high graduation rates? Because they are better funded. Because they have a better staff to student ratio. Because parents who have time and energy to advocate for arts are likely to be operating with a high level of privilege across many categories, and have more time to support their children's education. You know what? I might even believe that arts programs act as incentives to come to school, and allow challenged students to shine, helping them stick it out through graduation. But the survey didn't prove it.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could correct our utter failure of an education system by throwing a few million dollars at the arts? Wouldn't that fit right in with our liberal priorities, our notions of well-rounded education? It's certainly more convenient than addressing the massive economic and power imbalances in public school education. It's easier than tackling poverty.

This is still just a jumble of thoughts, I guess. I just wonder if there's an underlying theme here, some sort of connection between causal thinking and privilege that I'm not yet capable of articulating. I do know that it helps me to think reasonably when I'm asking big questions about why bad things happen. The answer is always multi-faceted, always bigger than a simple trigger and heap. To ignore confounding factors, systemic inequality and plain old chance is to enforce dangerous notions of Personal Accountability as the ultimate truth. Maybe: To think progressively is to challenge convenient notions of causation.

An update on Sadie's health

2009-08-28T07:34:00.002-05:00

Hello All

I thought I’d give you a bit of an update on Miss Sadie, who has been doing spectacularly poorly lately. She’s been staying at the vet since Tuesday, where they admitted her to try and identify the cause of her jaundice, weight loss and weakness. Since then we’ve been through a host of diagnoses, conflicting and complementary. At this point they’re treating her for a blood parasite (which doesn’t show up on any of her panels, but a tech thinks he saw on the blood slide), and she has a feeding tube to deal with her Fatty Liver Disease, which is the big danger.

Fatty Liver basically means a happy, round cat got unhappy and stopped eating. Sadie didn’t take well to my mother’s house or the week with a cat-sitter. She may also have been feeling lousy because of this parasite. Whatever the reason, she stopped eating, and her liver clogged up from processing her body fat into food. Lack of appetite is a vicious cycle in cats, and it’s pretty impossible to get her to eat at this point. The only treatment for Fatty Liver is to get the metabolism back up, to nourish Sadie and flush out her liver, hence the feeding tube.

I’m going home to collect her tonight, and moving her to a sunny new apartment in Hell’s Kitchen tomorrow, where the feeding regimen will begin. The vet is recommending a 4-times-a-day feeding schedule, meaning ever six hours Sadie and I have to wrestle some mush and meds down her tube. Eventually this comes down to 3-a-day, and in the long term she (hopefully) starts eating again on her own. Her prognosis isn’t good, even with this near-constant care, so I’m banking on her being young and more resilient than the doctors give her credit for.

It’s been a rough week around these parts, but nothing compared to what the kitten’s been going through. Keep her in your thoughts if you can, and if anybody around New York is interested in visiting (or helping me with lunchtime feedings, I have no idea how this is going to work with my full-time job) drop a line. We’d both appreciate it, certainly.

1 train, 11PM Sunday

2009-07-26T22:30:00.003-05:00

A woman walks on the train wearing thin old clothes, but clean. She passes her eyes up and down the aisle before launching her speech, which begins the way of each jolting train pitch: Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize for the interruption. She goes on to explain that she is hungry, has nowhere to sleep, is trying to provide for her little ones. That she is looking for a job but cannot find one. A man begins shouting back at her, loudly enough for the whole train to hear. At first he offers the usual epithets: Get a job. Leave us alone. I heard this story from you last week.

The woman continues, doggedly avoiding his glare, but her detractor grows louder. The woman informs the train that she was just like us, that she never thought she would be begging on the subway, that she would gladly make use of anyone's leftovers or candy bars. The man begins shouting louder: I heard this last week, get a job. Another man shouts back, says let the woman talk, don't you have a heart? The man does not seem to. No one is buying your crap, he says. They defend you because they've never heard you shill before. Last week you were blind. The week before you had one leg.

Finally she locks eyes with the man: And I suppose you gave me yours then, two weeks ago? And it has only just grown back. Generous soul.

Having collected a meager handful of change, the woman storms off at the next station. The yelling man gets off with me on the Upper West Side, and I climb the stairs to the street behind him. He walks with a limp. His legs are swollen and pocked -- I have seen this before only on homeless men and women, who cannot get their medication or basic nutrition. The man hobbles down the street in black jean shorts and a black shirt which do not look dirty except from very close, and re-cocks his bright white baseball cap atop his head, the brim flat and strong and new.

***

I walk home and think sickly of my own discomfort. We ask our government to care for people like these two so that we can ride the train undisturbed; so the veracity of their suffering is someone else's to decide. We do not care that this woman eats, so much as that she stops asking us for food. Let her go to a beuareu, an agency, a line. Let her be cared for and out of sight.

It is amazing to me that the rich do not want this too, do not want the poor off the street and train and out of the way. It would cost no more than landscaping: a surface level renovation at most. But the rich do not ride the trains and do not walk the street, and there are no poor behind wrought iron gates nor at the top of office buildings. Is this why the middle class votes blue? To help those who need it, and thus delineate ourselves as those who do not. To vaguely support the bringing up of others and never again feel its sharp discomfort.

This is what free speech means to so many: the right to beg where one pleases. The right to talk back to beggars. The silent desire of two dozen train riders for silence, for peace, for keeping dignity and disgrace safely under wraps, elsewhere.

You do not have to read my lists.

2009-06-17T12:02:00.003-05:00

Things to do: very short term

Obtain newspapers.
Pack up kitchen with said newspapers.
Pick up cap, gown, convocation tickets.
Take all art off walls.
Clear out closet.
Pick out interview outfit.
Pick and print resume, writing samples, and references.
Finish building roof rack.
Trim kitten's nails.

Things to do: relatively longer term

Find a therapist.
Build a website.
Find a 9 to 5 ringtone.
Write a tome about representation of women in Away We Go and the world.
Start researching law schools.
Read more Michael Pollan books.
Upload all Riff videos to youtube.
Calm the eff down, things will be fine.

On Sotomayor

2009-05-26T11:41:00.003-05:00

Obama's first choice SCOTUS nomination is not a big surprise -- people have been speculating Sotomayor since before he was elected. If she makes it through confirmation (which she should), her judgeship could have a massive effect on the course of US case law. If the baseball ruling is any indication, Sotomayor has an eye for the "little guy" (even when the little guy is huge athletes making millions of dollars annually), which bodes well for labor relations and the like. She's relatively young, only 54, combined with the fact that she's a woman suggests the likelihood of a long tenure, i.e. sustained influence.

What I find really fascinating about the coverage of the SCOTUS tapping, though, is the focus on Sotomayor's apparent assertion that a person's life experience, including but not limited to their race, gender, religion, social status and (duh) specific legal preparation will inevitably influence rulings. Conservatives are all up in arms about this fact, and this left me scratching my head for a while. How could anyone make judgment calls from anywhere but their own skin, their own experience? Then I remembered that conservative courts consist almost exclusively of straight wealthy white men. So the issue is really ruling from the body and history of a middle aged Latina from the Bronx.

The belief that one's experience is universal may be the crux of privilege -- all types -- male, white, hetero, cisgender, economic, and so on. In order to believe that a judge is impartial in an absolute sense, one must believe that he speaks from a place of absolute authority and a pure world view -- we wouldn't want our justice contaminated by particular compassion for oppressed groups, for example. If creative nonfiction classes have taught me one thing, it's that Americans need to think harder about our notions of objectivity, truth, fairness, and that whole universe of ideas. We need to become comfortable speaking from our own bodies and histories, and not subjugating the truths we live to a so-called universal norm. Sonia Sotomayor's experience reflects that of some part of America, and I'd wager, a much bigger percentage than just women of color -- the experience of any type of oppression changes world views, and in my opinion, changes them for the wiser.

And that is why I'm stoked about Sotomayor -- because we may, on a national level, get to have this discussion about universality and truth. Also because, as Blanca points out, she used to have a little now she has a lot and no matter where she goes she knows where she came from (the Bronx).

Oh hey

2009-04-01T21:49:00.003-05:00

It would appear that I do not use this blog anymore. Mostly I have moved over to Tumblr, where the format makes me feel guilty for foisting too many thoughts on the faceless void, which can only be a good thing. Come say hey.

I, too, dislike it.

While we're at it, you can check out the group blog I just foolishly committed myself to for the month of April, aka National Poetry Month:
A Rose is a Rose is a Poem.

I may pick this puppy back up for longer posts, probably political posts, which require more breathing room to arrive at a point. Maybe not, though.

Thoughts that have nothing to do with the new year.

2009-01-07T15:23:00.002-06:00

Check it out, The Weepies on the tv! Deb Talan continues to be the cutest. I know nothing about this Dirty Sexy show but it looks boring.

As much as the Obama transition team is making questionable and hurtful decisions *cough* Rick Warren and Sanjay Gupta *cough*, they bring us some very exciting news on equality as well: the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is going to be the first vote in the new Congress, along with another measure to protect those who disclose their earnings to encourage transparency. This puppy got filibustered in the Senate with the help of candidate McCain's ambivalent nastiness last year, it's enormously exciting that it's coming back and a strong showing out the gate for equal rights. You can tell your congressperson how you feel about the matter right here.

This is a really good argument against speed cameras. Leave it to over-privledged high school students to invent a more convincing argument for the fallibility of using machines as sole evidence of wrongdoing than law scholars in Texas, Maryland and Iowa.

I am thinking about getting myself a Tumblr. Getting back to school has made my brain kick back on all at once -- I'm excited about classes but I also want to be doing a bunch of other writing and sundry projects. I only worry that I am too verbose for the scrapbook format. Hm.

2008-12-21T21:09:00.001-06:00

This is only a test -- got an ipod touch for hanukah and it might be the coolest thing on the planet.

-- Post From My iPhone

Last Day in E-town, what what

2008-12-10T17:06:00.007-06:00

So, this song mixes Dolly Parton against Destiny's Child and some AWESOME DANCE BEATZ. I'd call that the epitome of music, wouldn't you?
Dolly Parton & Royksopp - 9 To 5 - Soulwax
You can be sure it'will be playing at the next party at Hogwartz.

I don't know where Finding Dulcinea falls on the spectrum of scientific reliability in internet sites, but I was less than impressed by the article I stumbled across today entitled "Males of All Species Are Becoming More Female". Even if it was accompanied by the best possible picture:

Synthetic hormones in the environment are, of course, a huge public and animal health issue. And the article is in the science section, so the specifics of the harm they're causing are important. But that title wants you to map the feminization to humans and think OH NO OH NO, don't let our men get less manly. There are health consequences for women too... increased risk of breast cancer, anyone? But that is less important than the FATE OF OUR MENZ AND THEIR BURLYHOOD. Wouldn't want to miss an opportunity to cash out on the evolutionary psych trend, or actually have our science talk about science or anything. Cute baby, though. Guard your testes well son.

I know the re-cutting innocuous movies to look like trailers for horror films thing has been done, but this one is real good. There are two tiny Lindsay Lohans, they are plotting to manipulate their parents, and they have swords. Beware.

I'm driving a million hours to get back East tomorrow. Thank goodness for Harry Potter books on tape and the fact that no one can hear me singing along to vintage Dido from the womb of my Alero. Send me safe driving thoughts.

DONE like your mom every friday night because it is a double mitzvah on shabbos.

2008-12-09T16:54:00.007-06:00

First, allow me the indulgence of announcing that I am DONE. FINISHED. BRAIN OFFICIALLY ON HIATUS. It got pretty bad near the end. My text analysis final was basically a seething mass of words and nothing more. I wrote a cool memoir piece for Eula about raccoons and insanity, but my two page statement connecting it to her class essentially read "blah blah blah appropriation and accountability I want to Alison Bechdel's girlfriend."

Let me channel this manic done-with-school energy into some pretty things for you to look at!

That is what an echidna looks like, in case you were wondering. We could not remember over dinner last night. I would like to own one. Wikipedia says they are the closest living relatives of the platypus, have tiny mouths with toothless jaws, and also they LAY EGGS. Science is so cool! I'm enamored with their little Ausralian claw hands.

This is a page full of the coolest graffitti ever. Knitting! The street signs might be my favorite, although I do like the gesture of clothing the poor bare trees for the winter.

Additionally, I would like to attend this rally (wawwy!) while I'm home. Would you like to join me?

That's all I got for today except smug, smug self-satisfaction. YEAH YEAH YEAH.

2008-12-08T10:39:00.002-06:00

NO FREAKING WAY, CHECK THIS OUT.

Fran Drescher is running for Congress! She wants Hilary's seat and she wants it now! This is incredible, what does our government need more than another mouthy Jewish woman? C-SPAN will become infinitely more enjoyable.

meet charla

2008-12-07T19:06:00.003-06:00

I am subjecting you to PETA's latest campaign because it's the first in a while to avoid atrocious misogyny, and I think the one right-minded human on their marketing team should be lauded.

Create Your Own Sea Kitten at peta.org!

The basic premise seems to be that "fish" has become a pejorative term that encourages cold-blooded killing of the slippery-slimies, so a large and nebulous group of marine-life should be rebranded as "sea kittens" to make omnivores feel bad. I mean, that's fine. I think fish are animals too. There are so many moral quandaries I get to avoid by not eating anything with a face, it's sort of awesome. Besides, they let me give my fish a water bowl, and I like a flash animation with irony.

It is so good I'm not taking a crazy courseload this winter...

2008-12-06T18:30:00.002-06:00

I accomplished next to nothing today. I blame the inexorable distraction of falling snow and the massive freakout I've been having since seeing this video. Monetary theory: why the fuck were we never taught any of this.

I need to pull things together enough to skip town on Weds or Thurs. This weather is probably killing my car and being on Reno Road was nicer than I expected it to be this Thanksgiving. A memoir, a final and a big packet of words for David Kersnar, and I am out of here.

love-hate relationship with cable news lands on hate today.

2008-12-05T11:56:00.004-06:00

File under: things that are entirely inappropriate.
Girl booted after 'sexting'
Courtesy of CNN.com, who is selling this headline on a poly-cotton blend t-shirt! The whole situation is maddening -- a boy circulates naked pictures of a cheerleader by texting them to half the high school, and the cheerleader gets suspended. Whaaaaaat? I believe pretty firmly where this is one of those "the punishment IS the crime" situations, and nothing the school could do could possibly match the humiliation that girl is already feeling. But even so, punishing the cheerleader who is already stuck toeing the virgin-whore line of burden, while the jerk who illegally distributed her likeness gets off scott free? Color me repulsed. There should be child pornography charges made, if you ask me. But really, this girl has to live out the duration of her years seeing the not-even-clever CNN pun branded on t-shirts nationwide? I hate news-as-entertainment in most forms, but this one seems particularly repugnant.

In other news:
sweater chair
really beautiful old map
and truly upsetting, Gatsby-esq L Word spoilers.

Finals hopefully done by Tuesday. Gearing up for another roadtrip with the cat and a month of lounging decadently on my mother's gigantic couch and eating warm things.

Also, google analytics tells me that this blog has at least one reader in ALASKA and that I am now getting referrals from google searches for TILA TEQUILA. Mission accomplished.

Gay Marriage ads, a little late though

2008-12-03T11:22:00.004-06:00

Now, I'm no great fan of Jack Black, but put Alison Janney in anything and I will watch it beginning to end. This is actually a ridiculous array of people and I love it. Kathy Najimy? Margaret Cho? Yes and yes. And all for mawwiage eqwawity!

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

For what it's worth, I happen to hate the "you don't listen to other things in the bible so lay off the gays" argument. It's irrelevant, and as someone with family members who take pains to follow every single commandment in the universe, it isn't an effective argument in a lot of places. Especially because the other examples of biblical bullshit are still very real problems, like the domestic violence and lack of fair wages that Mr. Black chose to include in this video. Same sex marriage is a separation of Church and State issue plain and simple, or an issue of equal protection, or even of sexism if you want to go there. But don't try to beat the bible thumpers at their own game, it's a truly stupid game to begin with.

(Musicals are generally a good tactic, though.)

Indulge me.

2008-11-19T11:18:00.004-06:00

I know I'm probably the last one on the Mika train, but I can't stop listening to this sucker.

MIKA - Lollipop
Uploaded by Mika-official

More media? Ok.
In one of those "I do this only because it keeps my mother happy" moments, I agreed to get a senior portrait done today. Dressing makes me anxious, but I figure I can retain my dignity if I go for Rachel Maddow chic. A little femmier even! Look at me go, ma!

One more, then I promise I'm done.
Schedule for next quarter = SO SWEET. Tues/Thurs only, 11-5, plus a weekly meeting with Ed at some point. So little getting out of bed in the snow. Great great great.

After this I'll be done with every single requirement... technically I guess I have to take one class next quarter. This leaves me room for awesome projects like:

Learn photoshop!
Retake Creative Nonfiction!
Make slam poetry night of magic happen with Eric!
Further ingratiate myself with the writing department!
Find a job!!!!!!

New reports show a high correlation between people who read a lot and people who are happy. Eat that, television. Also, there is a world outside of Chicago and it treats me a lot better.

Friday Bric-a-Brac

2008-11-14T12:36:00.005-06:00

I am so sending my kids to this school. Run by the Blue Man Group! Creative thinking! Saying good morning in foreign and fictitious languages! Hell yes.

I could spend a highly amused afternoon listing off all the reasons I would fail the Obama team's background check. I'm already toast by number 13, because I have sent various forms of electronic communication that might be a source of embarrassment for the president elect should they become public. 14, have kept scandal-filled diaries. It gets boring through the financial sections, but picks back up again in the 50's when you're asked to list any complaint ever voiced against you by anyone. Government jobs, clearly not for anyone born into the internet age.

New York New York, perhaps I will find my fortunes this weekend.

Well I'll be...

2008-11-13T15:21:00.002-06:00

Look who's expecting another kid.

T-minus one class til the weekend. Which I will spend in NYC. It will be interesting if nothing else.

Labor of Love

2008-11-12T10:32:00.004-06:00

I know it's trashy as all get out (he was on Oprah, after all...) but I want to read this memoir SO BAD.

Coming to the library is no longer any sort of guarantee for getting work done.

Bloggers in Pajamas

2008-11-12T09:40:00.002-06:00

Gotta love it when Rachel stands up for our rights:

I've had a rocky relationship with my pajamas this week. Yesterday I could not escape them. This morning is likewise proving difficult in the separation department. I got all excited this summer when the mono passed and I obtained something approximating an adult sleep schedule, but alas, once the temperature drops it would appear that my body reverts to teenager, "give me sleep all the time or I will make you miserable" mode.

This is a self-parking car.
This is a really beautiful Katha Pollitt poem.
These are Dennis Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment, which may seem like sour grapes now, but wouldn't it be great if our congress actually insisted on accountability...

No more shots at love

2008-11-09T17:46:00.003-06:00

Having already readied the world for its complete acceptance and celebration of gay marriage, as evidenced by last week's elections, Tila Tequila is on to greater things. The world needs her. What a fucking humanitarian.

Sex as advertising is pretty revolting, but at this point normalized... if one tried to take issue with its every instance, nothing else would get done. But this is above and beyond. If people aren't going to move themselves to do something about a Human Rights crisis in Burma, Tila doing a strip tease isn't going to help. But hey, at least she minimized the issue. Plus that scene is surely illegal -- pedophilia much? American youth are just so damn apathetic, it'll take a little asian sexpot to get them interested in anything.

To whom is this ad NOT insulting? Ugh and ugh.

Happy Days / Forget Your Troubles

2008-11-05T11:51:00.004-06:00

I'm trying, Judy.

Last night in Grant Park was unreal. I don't have much to say except that I am thankful. And I'm glad to have been outside the fence -- the hundreds of thousands there without tickets had absolutely no reason to show up, they were not the elite or the chosen to attend an exclusive party, they were just folks who wanted to be together and not alone when the world changed. I've got a hell of a lot of respect for that instinct. I'm glad Obama's girls are getting a puppy, too.

It's hard to fully celebrate, given the news on Prop 8. Rationally I understand that it's good that Obama elevated this election above the culture war, that his mandate will be based on issues and not identity. But it would have been nice if the country could have accepted some identities too. I am certainly grateful that the regressive abortion measures were defeated, but have a hard time reconciling that with Prop 8 and the other defeated Equal Opportunity measures. Do you think people are people, or not? We've got a long way to go.

Keyser and I also hung out with Robyn Schiff and Eula Biss last night. Oh hey, great American literary figures, what's up. It is pleasant and strange to realize people are invested in you, in whatever capacity. The word for the day really is grateful, isn't it.

Civic duty, check.

2008-11-04T07:40:00.002-06:00

Keyser and I woke up at the buttcrack of dawn and dragged ourselves down to the polling station. The whole thing didn't take more than 45 minutes start to finish, and the line got shorter as the opening backup dissipated. Not bad at all. All that remains is to gallivant around town collecting free goodies from corporations who are glad I voted. And, you know, to pray a lot.

I feel ok. Squarely ok. Hopefully tonight will be restful.

i'll sleep when the polls close.

2008-11-04T02:12:00.004-06:00

At the risk of sounding a bit angsty, or of sounding like a voter who (gasp) wishes to cast a ballot in her own self-interest, I'd like to register my intense ambivalence about what the fuck I'm going to do tomorrow morning. I think I know. I mostly agree with myself. But there's a part of me that isn't quite ready to rally and party and celebrate the matter. Barack Obama is a black man. He should understand the meaning of separate but equal. I find my values reflected in 95% of his platforms and policies, and my identity rejected by that lingering sliver.

Chances are good that I'll end up pulling the lever for straight Dems tomorrow, but I fully intend both meanings of that statement. My mom taught me that sometimes you have to vote against your interests to do what is right, and I can live with that. I just wanted to say it somewhere, you know? I don't want to have to wait much longer. I'd really like to get married in the foreseeable future and I don't think that's unreasonable.

toss turn toss turn

2008-11-02T22:51:00.004-06:00

I'm finding it hard to sleep for nervousness about the election. Which is ridiculous. It was apparent in July that Obama had a lead significant enough that early in the game to all but guarantee victory, and that was before all this economy nonsense. Despite what the talking heads on the tv tell us, there is no realistic scenario for a McCain win. But Americans love nothing better than our scare tactics, and the Democrats are using them well in the final days of the race... if they didn't make a strong case to the public that the race was still tight, it would be harder to convince constituents to come out to the polls. So on a tactical level I appreciate what Axelrod and co. are doing, and am equal parts glad and terrified that the media are playing along... although I guess it's in everyone's best interest to play up the drama of the race. Everyone except, you know, those of us who experience debilitating anxiety that defies the rational mind. It will be fine. I just hope the culture of fear stops at the election, even if that fear is a unifier right now. It's no way to live.

This weekend was full of intellectual treasures. Yesterday we saw Anne Carson give a reading (?) at the Harold Washington Library. It was, needless to say, incredible. Classy broad. And it was oddly nice to look around and see the vast majority of Northwestern's creative writing community had all showed up. I can't think of a theater event that's ever had that sort of turnout. Today we saw Mark Doty and Achy Obejas, also through the Humanities Festival. It was smaller and queer-er, but still poignant and full of charm. Feeding the brain, feeding the brain. Hopefully this will help me write poems soon. Yes.

I also saw W. finally, with Chris. It wasn't bad as far as movies go... well plotted, high stakes, complex family relationships. As a matter of history though, I refuse to believe that the fate of the world came down to a guy trying to prove himself to be better than his dad. It just has to be more complicated than that, and the movie didn't cop to it. Also, I did not know that Cats is the president's favorite play. I'd have thought a republican would like something with a little more plot, frankly.

Warning: Un-pithy pseudo-psychological vom to follow.

2008-10-28T02:30:00.002-05:00

Ever have a day that gives you whiplash?

Monday at the office was horrible. I still like working there very much, but it is hard to fight the gloom and doom of an overworked and slightly dysfunctional office. Believe me, I tried. I sent out pictures of puppies, told very funny jokes, made presents, all to no avail. Eventually I got bogged down in the mire of despair too. The biggest challenge is coping with long, involved projects -- even when you're making progress, it doesn't feel significant if you can't check a whole item of a list. This is a mental exercise in framing more than anything and I need to get better at it. That exercise is: set goals that are attainable. Do not become infatuated with the unattainable. Hint hint euphemism.

Anyway, it took most the evening and a little imbibition to shake the blues. But it is nearly three and I am settled in with my writing and I feel great. The apartment is quiet and warm. I just kicked one paper's ass and intend to, at minimum, fight the other to a draw. These tasks are manageable and I am good at them. The whipped cream on my contentment pie? The following message from Maor, the strange and bounderish love of my life, who took only two months to respond to my email:

hey girl, its been a while your right. i finished my studies and im starting a whole new ones. i wrote and directed a play that was very succesful and im having a good time un the thing i start loving the most (after the kualla bear and sex with ants). i moved to tel aviv and it is the craziest city in the world. and i miss you alot. you remind me of good times only. and every time i see a lesbian i think of you. :)

Degenerate illiterate that he is, that Israeli man hits the emotional nail on the head. Things take time to fall in place. Do the thing you're good at. Love your friends absolutely as much as possible, and try to remember to tell them.

Alright, enough with the sap. I have a lot of angry posts pent up, rest assured you will be hearing from my come-down grumpy ass tomorrow.

Marry me, Maddow

2008-10-13T22:56:00.002-05:00

Go and watch this video immediately. The important part starts about 3 minutes in.

What Maddow hits on here is one of the biggest media fallacies of our time: that fair reporting means reporting equal blame and legitimacy. That our media, rather than serving truth, serves balance. That a holocaust denier can sit onstage with a credentialed historian and be given equal footing not only by the visual, but by every framing device of the journalist, even though one account is demonstrably wrong. The way it's been leaping out at me recently is this weird assertion by journalists that identifying / decrying racist rhetoric is a sin (!) on the same order as employing racist tactics. As if "crying racism" or "playing the gender card" was a valid accusation in the first place... but in cases where racism or sexism is clearly present in an objective evaluation, that demanding that someone answer for that racism / sexism is a smear and a piece of nasty politics. Absolutely ridiculous.

Maddow hits on a hundred more fallacies of current Republican rhetoric -- that rabble rousing is the same as civil discussion, that coded racism is not racism, that caution and thought are cowardice. In passionate advocacy of an ideology close to my heart, she defends the playful and sarcastic handling of sensitive issues as legitimate, and rejects categorizing it as negative or divisive. She's basically the shit. Thank you, thank you, thank you Rachel.

I have a hurricane within me...

2008-10-10T11:40:00.005-05:00

The other day David came marching into the living room demanding the source of a quote which had been rattling around in his head. For the life of me, I could not remember if it came from Leaves of Grass or Elizabeth: The Golden Age. What a world, what a world.

I contain multitudes...

I have my first real meeting with Ed this afternoon. I'm obviously terrified. But I did some pretty thorough atoning yesterday for Yom Kippur, so hopefully there's a little bit of positive karma stored up. That statement deserves an award: Most Botched Understanding of Eastern and Western Religion Demonstrated in a Single Sentence. Having a clean slate is nice, though, however briefly.

5 Friends

2008-10-04T11:50:00.002-05:00

I can't be the only one who found this video surprisingly compelling. If those actors were given scripts half as convincing as an ad lib imploring Americans to vote, our movie landscape would look entirely different. Laura Linney basically made me sob. Even the asshole comedians were effective in their own way. For Christ's sake, Ellen accused me of watching internet porn and I loved every second of it! Watch this video and enjoy feeling patriotic for a little bit.

Really, anything that makes Jennifer Aniston and Leo look this relevant is accomplishing something. Vote and care and vote.

Civic Duty! Heck Yeah! Doggone heckuva job!

2008-10-04T11:22:00.003-05:00

Keyser and I just registered to vote! I did not expect to feel this excited. I've voted before, but only absentee from DC (at a steady 92% democrat! electoral college rocks!), and never for president, so I guess this is bigger. I tried to register a month ago, and the clerk lost my application. The whole registration concept seems in itself to be an disenfranchising force... reading the guidelines is confusing, I never have a utility bill on me when I run into folks registering voters on the street, and you still need an ID. So it serves the same purpose as states which make you bring a drivers license to your polling place, no? I'm sure there are well thought out reasons that this registration system makes more sense than, say, dipping our thumbs in ink, but all the red tape makes me long a little for that fledgling democracy authenticity.

Ed Roberson and I are terrified of each other. One day I may look back on this and find it adorable, but right now it's a major stumbling block in the thesis process. I also feel like a jerk who goes to his readings only to corner him about setting meetings. Whatever, that's not true, his poetry is incredible and I love watching him read it. Grow a backbone. Grow one without all the alcohol it takes to face him at Columbia College.

It's funny being a senior and finding these readings that come up a million times over the course of college. Just this week I read Aristotle's Poetics for the third time and Orwell's Politics and the English Language for at least the fifth. You know, they're both pretty good...

adolescence = paralel universe.

2008-10-03T11:16:00.003-05:00

Also from the google annals of eternity: the website Rachel Cohen and I built in the beginning of high school. What a weird thing to stumble back upon... a surprisingly large number of the teachers we poked fun at have since passed away. How bizarre to have our little high school jabs at them be around after they are. I don't know if anything we wrote seriously breaches the barrier between in good fun and mean, but I can see how it toes the line. I'm shocked we never got in trouble for it. I'm shocked it's still on the internet. My, but we always have been clever little devils, haven't we... I hope we can keep that site around for long enough to make trouble for someone's Senate campaign. Personal archiving is awesome and strange.

2008-10-03T11:00:00.002-05:00

It's been a while, huh. The short update consists of school promising to kick my butt, work promising to calm my anxieties about the job market and my place in it, and my emotional life promising to catch up with me.

Google opened up its archives in honor of its anniversary. What fun. Here is the blurb me and my best buddy Big Gabe put up on the interweb in honor of our b'nai mitzvot. I was really into justice? And basketball? Oh how the times change.

B'nai mitzvah this month

Dinah [Redacted]

Bat Mitzvah September 2

My name is Dinah Fay ***. I am 13 years old and attend the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School. I am entering the 8th grade. Some of my interests are piano, softball, basketball, and acting. Much to the disgust of my friends and delight of my parents, I love math. When I grow up, I hope to be an architect to target my talent.

For the past half year, I have been studying religiously (ha ha) for my bat mitzvah. I hope that this event will help me with my transition into the adult Jewish world.

In my parasha, Shoftim, G-d tells us the importance of fairness in our justice system. "You shall not pervert judgement, ...you shall not accept a bribe, ... for the bribe will blind the eyes of the wise and will make just words crooked. Justice, justice thou shalt pursue." G-d is helping us realize that there will always be people who want to corrupt or pervert our justice system. We also need to understand that it would be human nature to forget what is moral for personal benefits. It takes a tzadik to stand up for what is right and put themselves after fair dealing.

Gabe [Redacted]

Bar Mitzvah September 2

Hello, my full name is Gabriel [silly middle name] [Redacted], and my bar mitzvah will take place on September 2. I'm 13 years old and am going into eighth grade at Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School.

I enjoy roller blading, computers, and music. Our math team at JDS placed first in the country last year.

Out of the checks I receive as gifts, one-third of the total amount will be donated to Chai Lifeline, an international organization that helps Jewish children with serious illnesses, and their families.

I would like to thank Rabbi Berliant and Rabbi Seidel for tutoring me, and my mom for organizing everything.

Waitress, or, Cloying Cinema Makes Me Want to Vom

2008-08-14T19:38:00.004-05:00

I'm sorry, but what was all the hype for? I just saw Waitress, at the urging of about a thousand friends. And listen, that was not a good movie, don't make me list all the reasons. At the end of the day that's not a big deal, there are piles of movies I don't like. What ticks me off is that I just sat through ANOTHER damn movie that touts itself as some sort of feminist triumph, when in reality it's just about a woman who "actualizes" through learning to be nice and nurturing and having a baby. Sure, she doesn't end up with either of the schmucks her small town world offers her. Woo hoo! It's still the same narrative. Babies ---> Make you a real woman. There weren't even believable friendships. Not even Adrienne Shelley's beautiful and ridiculous glasses saved this film. UGH.

Bleh. Moving makes me grumpy. So do other people's babies. Speaking of, Baby Gap called me yesterday and pretty much offered me a job. That would have been a great job. But school starts soon and I do not want to drag my butt to Old Orchard five times a week between classes, so that is that... even if it means giving up the American Dream of hanging around pregnant ladies and tiny shoes all day. Poop.

I wish this blog did not account for the most serious writing I've done all summer.

2008-08-13T00:22:00.004-05:00

Why, you must be in college!
The other day I met a winsome stranger on the train. I was reading some borrowed Sontag and she wanted to know if I was reading it for class. I said no, no I am just a loser who enjoys feeling guilty about all the things Susan Sontag says I should be feeling guilty about. So we talked for five or ten minutes about war photography and authors who make wildly unsubstantiated claims but are still charming, and then went our separate ways at the Davis stop and I consigned this story to the well of "stuff that happened to me during my university days." Other things in that category include almost getting elbowed in the face by Michelle Obama and sobbing in a sandwich shop full of suits over a Joan Didion memoir. GROSS.

Why, you must have an internship!
The majority of my week thus far has been spent wading through the tax code, or more accurately, other people's interpretations of the tax code. GOOD THINGS TO KNOW: I am not smart or patient enough to be a lawyer. I've been set the task of achieving some sort of understanding of the regulations on how much "lobbying" a 501c(3) nonprofit can do without endangering its tax exempt status. I sort of volunteered for this gig, mostly because I get the feeling everyone in the office was secretly concerned about this but too busy and avoidant to check it out.* I've got a grasp on the law and its loopholes now, but I am getting lost in the murky ethical ground of Why anyone has the right to tell you how to communicate with your elected officials, especially if you are working in the public interest. Maybe if civic involvement were less terrifying, more people would engage.** Especially because there is a separate, lower cap on how much grassroots campaigning a group can do -- one is permitted to spend three times as much talking to congress than talking to the public. This whole thing leads me to what must be the tough part of practicing law: leaving your own Big Fat Opinions at the door. Or perhaps being good enough at manipulating the system to make your Big Fat Opinions arguable policy.

On the topic of the office, I'm really starting to settle in there. With the exception of one truly horrendous project which largely consisted of replacing ampersands with the word "and" in a 10,000 member database, I am reading and helping with things that are interesting, and more importantly, I am observing the bizarre and fascinating world of office politics. Any sort of small community on the scale of an office intrigues me, because quarters are close and everyone MUST work together to achieve goals, and in the case of nonprofits, save the world. Even when there are monumental personality clashes. Memoirs and memoirs to come, I'm sure.

Why, you must have emotionally stunted friends!
I want to put out a public service announcement about dating. Namely: experts name the mourning period for a relationship as equal to between half and the entirety of the duration of that relationship. Experts tend to be right. I wish there was a way to wrench people outside their bodies for short periods and force them to watch the silly and destructive decisions they make from across the street. The Ghost Busters probably have some sort of patented technology on the way, but until then, I will continue screaming ~~into the wind~~ at my friends at regular intervals.

* In no way am I passing judgment on this sort of avoidance; it is why I never go to the doctor and have a hard time cleaning out the fridge. But when breech of tax code is in question, it's probably better to roll one's sleeves up, and it's not like I don't have the time.
**Tangential thing that worries me about the Obama campaign: the rhetoric that without big donors, lobbyist or special interest support, BO will be accountable to the regular folks making small contributions when he ends up in the White House. Seems to me, then nobody's got enough sway with the man to hold him to anything. I mean, a conscience could do the trick, but I'm still reserving judgment on THAT whole kettle of fish.

Baggy Clothing and the Criminalization of the Body

2008-07-31T00:03:00.009-05:00

This image has been sitting in an open tab on my computer for literally weeks. What with this blog being a repository for my teeming brain and all, I thought I could unload it on you, and maybe it'll stop haunting my browser.

[To really get the full effect, you'd have to see the flash-animation version of this sucker, which I am now too useless to lay my hands on. The slow and shameless alternation of the images, with asses disappearing and reappearing, with pants floating in and out of acceptability, is truly mesmerizing. But this will do.]

In a nutshell, the police department of Flint, Michigan decided there wasn't enough real crime to fight, so they came up with a series of violations in pants-positioning. Varying degrees of bagginess will earn the offender some combination of fines, jail time, and a heaping helping of public shame. To get the obvious points out of the way first:

These laws are blatantly aimed at a certain section of the population of Flint. Their enforcement will necessarily target people of color because the laws are designed to do so. Not because those people are any more or less moral, or stylish, or anything else -- because they are being singled out by the legislators. Period.
The illustration addresses only the male body, and a shirtless one at that. [Aside: I'd bet my whiskers female bodies would and will be treated radically differently, not the least because shirtless women are outlaws in practice if not in legislation.] Whether a woman sporting low-slung pants would be treated as a criminal under these guidelines, or as a common sex object "asking for" the unsolicited attention she receives and not meriting societal protection, in any particular instance, is anyone's guess. But either way, I can't imagine the laws would be enforced similarly on a female body.
Don't even get me started on "disorderly conduct." Sir, your body is so OUTRAGEOUS that showcasing it in any way is likely to cause society to topple into chaos. I mean, come on, wearing clothes is hardly conduct at all, and it certainly isn't rabble-rousing.
It is pretty damn ridiculous that the time and care was given to this issue not only to hash out what level of buttock/underpants exposure constitutes what level of criminality, but to turn it into a helpful flash animation and image set. I wonder if they made posters or radio adverts in any attempt to warn folks they're about to be picked on, or if they made no effort whatsoever and just started handing out citations and smug self-righteous superiority.

Those all being on the table if not sufficiently delved-into, I'm going to press on.

I think that animation has lodged itself so securely under my skin because I can't wrap my head around why the government has any right to tell you how to dress, ever. My ever-indulgent roommate tried to play devil's advocate with me, and invoked the counter-example of flashers -- that is, people deliberately exposing themselves with the intention of scandalizing the viewer in some way. Which is fair. I don't want to see a penis when I'm out for a stroll unless I specifically ask to [which is incredibly unlikely, for a litany of reasons]. But then again, that illicit penis would only scandalize me because I'm so unused to seeing them. So it's a circular system, wherein the current indecent exposure statutes have to remain in place because we are upset by indecent exposure because we haven't been exposed to it, so to speak.

So, what is that about? Does it have to do with our insistant sexualization of the body? Between the ubiquitous conflation of flesh and desire in marketing, the media representations of nudity as inherently sexual, and our lingering Puritan sensibilities (whereby, in our effort to repress the sex drive, we connect absolutely everything with sex, often erroneously), it's hard to think of instances of nudity we encounter regularly that aren't sexual. Children may or may not be the exception, but again, we immediately become suspicious of bathtub pictures and the like.

Are we afraid of men in baggy pants because, in our culture, that level of exposure is tacitly sexual? That's one connotation of "indecent," but certainly not the only thing the term could imply. But: any non-majority group expressing sexuality is necessarily problematic to the dominant paradigm, i.e. cis-gendered able-bodied straight white dude-bros [etc etc etc]. To assert sexuality is to assert personhood, which is very scary indeed if you're black or female or in any other way "non-normative." The logical extreme of this thought process is the burqa, in societies where women's very presence is sequestered because it is seen as provocative, and keeping them covered is an inherent part of keeping them disenfranchised. This whole thing in Flint may just boil down to an excuse to throw more black guys into the sordid interior of the justice system, an attempt to shame huge swaths of the population into assimilation for the comfort of the oppressors. But on another level I think it deeply relates to the problematic way we define what bodies are acceptable for consumption, in what capacity, when.

This is where my thinking runs into about a thousand walls. To revert to the example of the bare-chested woman in public, is the right solution to promote toplessness in women, in the hopes that breasts can eventually become normalized in all their functions, including but not limited to the sexual and baby-feeding ones? Or is that counter-productive, because in the interim those women who are trying to reclaim public space and their bodies become objects to onlookers, undermining the personhood they are fighting for? Do we have an inalienable right to comfort in public spaces, if the action which makes us uncomfortable is committed without malicious intent, or in fact, with the intention of empowerment or celebration?

My gut reaction is that every person has the right to do precisely what they please with their bodies, so long as he/she is not using that body to intimidate or harm others. But already that got murky, because we can't control what other people find intimidating, no matter how enlightened we think ourselves personally. And living in a pervasive rape culture, personal safety is constantly at stake, especially when juries are willing to blame the victim for attacks rather than condemning actual criminals. I may be feeling all knee-jerky because it's so reminiscnet of the abortion debate, in that a woman's right to her body comes into question at the point where the fetus attains some sort of personhood, and the two have to be negotiated. But using that to guide my logic here seems unfair, because I am so far on the "women should do whatever they damn please, whenever they deign to" side of the fence it's borderline insensitive. If one tries to make the free-speech analogy instead, folks should be able to put whatever they want into the world, free of consequence, unless they are posing a specific, demonstrable threat. But again, doing so might not be productive if the society receiving them is so well programmed to objectify and make otherwise pornographic all attempts at reclamation of the body that the deviant action falls into their oppressive paradigm, or puts the doer in physical danger. It feels like a Catch-22, but I may be missing a big hole in my argument, or thinking on the wrong scale -- these things are common at two in the morning.

So here I am, stuck. I know these laws are wrong, and that is more or less all I know. If you want to help extricate me from the tangled mass of my brains, by all means drop a line.

Un.Canny.

2008-07-30T10:31:00.003-05:00

Russian Judge Rules Sexual Harassment OK, Since it Ensures Continued Breeding of Human Race
It's just too much. All in one article, a complete refutation by example of why Evolutionary Psychology is bunk. See, if every action we take doesn't answer to that highest value, being, men making more little men by any and all necessary means, that action just isn't worth it. But any action that does? Rape, war and Viagra? Go right ahead, sir.

It actually is weirdly reminiscent of the bizarre arguments all the McCain surrogates are trying to make for his position that health insurance should cover Viagra but not birth control. Because sex is a lifestyle choice for women, but a god-given right for men. Except when men want it from their subordinates at work, at which point it is a requirement for women. MY BRAIN, SHE HURTS.

In other news, we got caught in a torrential downpour at the beach last night, work is funny, and the fam is coming to town. All in all, life is good.

Sally Field -- Force of Nature

2008-07-25T23:44:00.003-05:00

I don't have real things to say at present, but this was too good not to post immediately.

Damn right, it's better than yours.

Anywho, work is good. Summer is good. My back is bad, but that's boring. I could probably watch Steel Magnolias a hundred times and not get tired of it. All those women! In it together! Even the grumpy one! Movies like that and Mamma Mia that allow for that joy of female friendship to be seen and celebrated are the small revolutions, I'm telling you. Plus, you know, they get the best actors [Shirley McClain? Meryl Streep? Dolly Parton? Oh hell yeah].

And another thing

2008-07-22T00:35:00.003-05:00

Sorry internet, today was just too full of wonderful, I can't keep it all in.

Sadie broke in to the super glue. She got it all over her tiny head, and managed no permanent damaged, but looks as if she tried to style her hair like the most tragic of Israeli teenagers. It is priceless and I love her.

Isn't it funny how we use the adjective "evolved" to mean opposite things for people and animals?
Ex. animal: My, that lizard is so evolved! He does whatever it takes to survive, often to the detriment of his less able compatriots!
Ex. human: My, that fellow is so evolved! His yoga mastery, radiant inner peace, and positive influence on those around him are astounding!

So in a sense, we have evolved past Evolution, in the derogatory Social Darwinism sense; if that turn of phrase is to be believed, actions of survival in the cut-throat, dog eat dog sense are to be discouraged in favor of a holistic understanding of the best interests of a long-term community. I realize this is three towns past Wishful Thinking-ville, but I do believe that language has an intimate relationship with societal values and I hope to my core that we'll see a shift to a kinder and, well, more evolved sort of thinking.

People who are clearly far past the making sense mark include: me.

So I will leave you with this: Even if it is only once in your young life that you get to sit in a lifeguard chair in your skivvies in the wee hours of the morning, taking in the lake sounds and cool breeze, you are a very lucky girl.

Here We Go Again (My My)

2008-07-22T00:22:00.004-05:00

RE: the ad on the side of my facebook homescreen, offering me access to humorous Jewish video content -- Why does facebook know I’m Jewish? I’m very sure I haven’t told them, or if I did, it was during high school. My current religion is definitely listed as “tries not to be an asshole,” which, let me tell you, is a demanding spiritual calling. But really. Are they just guessing based on my last name? Are they triangulating from my high school and university to some sort of hypotenuse of Zionist privilege? It’s freaking me out, man.

I could continue about chosen versus assigned identities and the historical significance of OTHER PEOPLE DECIDING WHO IS JEWISH, but I’m just going to leave it there. I don’t know if this is worse than the relentless weight loss adds (THIS IS WHY YOU’RE FAT), but it is indeed unsettling.

Also, I just had the most incredible movie-going experience of my adult life, and its name was Mamma Mia. Whoever sat in an exec meeting and had the guts to pitch "Meryl Streep making fun of herself for two hours, wearing overalls, accompanied by muscled boys in flippers" should be given a medal. Full disclosure: I only saw the first hour. BECAUSE: the bulb burned out in the movie projector, resulting in a black screen and the blaring soundtrack and, I shit you not, an IMPROMPTU DANCE PARTY / FREESTYLE SESSION until they (very civilly) ushered us out of the theater. I’m pretty sure I’ve never been so thoroughly filled with joy. I’m also pretty sure that movie was the secret feminist triumph of our times, but that’s hard to say without the ending and a significant dose of sobriety on my part. Ask me again tomorrow, ok?

The presumption that women are idiots, part seven thousand

2008-07-20T10:24:00.004-05:00

South Dakota Abortion Script Goes Into Effect
Place me somewhere around hopping mad. Hopping.
The legislation which goes into effect immediately, since its hold has been overturned, requires doctors to read a script to a woman seeking an abortion no sooner than two hours before the procedure. The script is intended to do nothing less than guilt, shame, and humiliate women who are already, doubtless, in one of the worst places in their lives. It includes passages about the "constitutional rights" and a "constitutional relationship" with the fetus that will be "terminated." Constitutional rights? Like, THE RIGHT TO YOUR OWN BODY? Because yeah, women have that still, despite your best efforts, you fucking bastards.

Defenders of the measure like the script because it provides women with a "broad spectrum of information." Including, you know, the wrong and unhelpful kinds.

Never mind that fewer than 700 abortions a year happen in SD anyway. Never mind that hearing this script after coming to a painful and difficult solution with one's doctor could send harmful mixed messages about what the doctor thinks is best. Never mind the blatant intrusion of the outside world into a privileged space, the doctor's office. Never mind that no woman on the face of this earth is stupid or reckless enough to not "understand" the consequences of an abortion (No baby. Ok, we get it.).

Can you imagine a law like this being passed and upheld if it had anything to do with men's bodies? If they were required to run the gauntlet to get their tubes tied or ask for a Viagra prescription? Absolutely fucking not. Because the assumption, as always, is that women are somehow deficient in knowledge, the ability to make rational decisions, and accountability. This shit is blatantly unethical and makes me physically ill. Excuse me while I skulk to the kitchen to nurse my crippling depression with something greasy.

Oh hey July, where you goin?

2008-07-17T14:19:00.005-05:00

Do you ever find, in the reading of a number of novels or stories or poems in close succession, that there is a theme you can't escape? I remember my roommate putting down God of Small Things and, despite our mutual affection for the book, sneering "Again with the incest? Really?" Recently, for me, it's been all miscarriage all the time. It's popping up everywhere and boy is it depressing, because I know my family medical history and I know enough math to not like my odds. It's an odd thing to read next to the news, as well, where we have plenty to worry about on the Abortion Rights front. To hold both things in ones head simultaneously: the necessary right to abort for any and every reason, and the desperate desire to stop the pain of women losing children, is very difficult. Enough with the cognitive dissonance, I'm ready for a new season of Project Runway or something, get me talking about concrete things again.

As for the life of Dinah Fay, things are slowly picking up. I got a neat internship with CURE, a small nonprofit which raises money for epilepsy research. It's a small office to I get to be a fly on the wall and see what these people do all day, while doing menial work for them, which is just fine. Better than just fine. I am productive and around folks who know what they're doing and I get to be helpful, so really it is great minus the fact that there's no money, but whatcha gonna do.

Other than that, the goal has been to get at least two things done every day. This doesn't sound like much, especially when things that count include "update the blog" and "change the cat litter" and "get out of the apartment," but really it's a vast improvement. This summer is floating by pleasantly, and I don't feel obliged to make it do more than it is. I am seeing friends, devouring books, exploring the city a little bit at a time. I think this is what a life not in the arts looks like, despite the fact that in the real world people work more. I sort of like it.

Also, call your senators. Especially if they are Repubs. They're threatening to filibuster the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act this week, which is some bullshit. If you like getting paid for the work you do, this might be a piece of legislation you should defend.

Nothing worse than an "I told you so"

2008-07-09T15:53:00.005-05:00

Except maybe an "I told you so" that can now be recorded, free of consequence, by the government and used against me in some sort of criminal proceedings as a result of any one of several loopholes in the new FISA bill, which passed this afternoon.

Three guesses on which way the Senators from Illinois and New York voted, respectively. I'll give you a hint: if Obama ran towards the center any faster, he'd be legally required to proclaim a hardy "meep meep." If she even thinks about taking an offer for the VP slot I will pull my hair out, we cannot afford to lose her in the Senate if she is one of only 27 to vote nay on that steaming pile of legislation. Protection from illegal search and seizure isn't even one of those debatable privacy rights, it is right there in the Constitution, but who asked me. Between this and Obama's late term abortion horseshit of late, I am all geared up to vote Green and not lose a wink of sleep.

To try and temper bad news with good, or at least with amusing, I enjoyed the federal appeals court that cited Lewis Carroll in their decision in favor of the rights of Gitmo detainees. I haven't read the poem, although with a title like "The Hunting of the Snark" you know it's on my list. The citation, "I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true," is a pretty accurate description of the current media climate, wouldn't you say? I employ this logic regularly in repeatedly telling my roommates I will do the dishes, and I will say that it appeases in the short term. There's something satisfying to the implied admission that the current state of our civil liberties can only be conceptualized by a NONSENSE POEM. But when a major governing body quotes your work, that's when you know you've made it as a writer, for sure... I'd give my left arm to be referenced in anything written by Ruth Bater Ginsberg (swoon).

Hiatus... over.

2008-06-23T09:47:00.005-05:00

Good morning, Evanston. You are rather lovely today. Makes it easer to convince myself that I want to be here, that.

Yesterday the kitten and I ventured out alone for long drive up from DC. As always, it was completely uneventful, which only makes me more sure that trucking school is in the cards for me after this Bachelor's nonsense. The only things that made the drive mildly interesting were, a) that Sadie insisted on riding on my lap, which is not illegal but probably should be, and b) getting honked at, gestured obscenely to, and otherwise harassed by three different trucks, all in Indiana. I am loathe to admit that this made me laugh... good to know that my tits look great from a steep vertical angle! Thanks guys! I should be a very angry feminist. Work on that, D.

The shape of my summer has changed so many times, it's hard to keep up. Right now I am attempting to wake up for an interview for an internship. In all honesty it will probably amount to a lot of data entry and odd jobs, but the fact that there's a theater attached to it makes me feel like less of a waste of life. Then comes the search for a part time job, followed by a search for friends who are here, I am no good at remembering.

Oh, and I finally saw a doctor, how about that. It seems that my mono is in end stage, which is great, but I could have told you that seeing as I am mostly feeling better. This is good for two reasons: the first, it is proof that the mono actually existed, ergo I am not crazy. The second, maybe this won't take over my whole summer, even if my liver and spleen are still slightly enlarged. As much as I hate anything medical, it's nice to get a (mostly) clean bill of health. That's a whole arena of anxiety that can be eliminated for at least a few months.

2008-06-08T02:43:00.003-05:00

It is pouring in Evanston. This is undoubtedly a good thing, as it has been stiflingly, disgustingly humid for the past few days. I figured living somewhere that was not a long-drained swamp* would mean more manageable weather, but nope, the Midwest never fails to disappoint.

Finals was not a good choice for "time to relapse into mysterious illness." I was stuck in bed all day, which leaves tomorrow as the only time to wrap up two big ol' English papers. But after that my little brother is flying out so that I won't have to drive the 14 hours home alone, and it will be nice to see him, and nice to have a little break from here.

I don't know exactly what else I wanted to tell you, except that if you don't hear from me for a few days you should be concerned that I am dead, and since my roommate has utterly disappeared, it could be days before anyone finds me. And, on a lighter note... puppies?

*DC is disgusting in the summer, for real for real. But it has an excuse.

Small world. Or small media, at least.

2008-06-05T14:37:00.003-05:00

Do you watch A Shot at Love 2 with Tila Tequila? Because if you do, you might enjoy this article. Recently evicted contestant* Sirbrina Guerrero was badgered by ushers at a Mariners game for "making out" with her date. It's cool that it's getting this much publicity, because Seattle is generally pretty LGBT friendly, and people are sticking up for them. I am just disappointed they didn't post a picture of her and the date, because I have my suspicions of who she might have been cannoodling with after getting the hell out of Tila's place...

*Her shot at love ended, by the way, for being too cute. You sure know how to play your cards, Tila.

god bless early evening margaritas, but sometimes they are not even enough to knock me out.

2008-06-05T01:35:00.005-05:00

Sometimes I wish I could turn my brain off. Often, in fact. It is nearly two in the morning and I am exhausted, but there she goes anyway, whurr whurr whurr.

It is the end of the quarter, and there are many papers due. At times like these I wish our English department were less legit, and more like the crones with smoker's rasps I imagine in cinematic greyscales. Instead I have all sorts of creative papers due, when I'd almost rather blow through ten pages of analysis and be done with it all. That's what Mr Feeny would let me do. Come on now.

Is it possible to get jobs without lying on resumes? Not that I'm considering it, but after a week of scanning want ads, it has become apparent that I am not even qualified to sell you shoes. Having kind references will probably do wonders, but having no useful skills or work experience (besides managing theaters and asking you if you have a minute for the environment) is no longer cool.

It is possible that I am awake because of Anne Carson. I've been rereading Autobiography of Red, and it is wrecking me again, to the surprise of absolutely no one. Fact: quality creative non-fiction is just poetry for people afraid of line breaks. That's why Carson is ours, and you can't have her. You neither, fiction. As much as I grumble about law school all the time, I secretly know the arts have me because I love the feeling of being emotionally destroyed by something and only being 35% sure of the reason. I want to unlock the secrets of that, but only in the making, I never want to read for it. That whole deal is where poetry wins, too... there is a thousand times more going on than you know, or want to know, but damn if you don't feel it.

I have a great fear of remaining massively unproductive. And no follow up to that assertion.

OBESITY CRISIS: more interesting than talking about poverty

2008-05-27T13:39:00.004-05:00

Sorry, I am on a serious anti-media jag today. And Keyser is still out of the country, so the internet is my only available repository.

The headline: Shrinking Snacks Concern Consumers.

The story: food prices are climbing in sort of a scary way. Rather than raising the cost of individual items, producers are often decreasing the package sizes, e.g. selling a 45 oz tub of butter with the same design as the old 48 oz tub for the same price. The article claims that most consumers don't notice the small decrease in the amount of product they receive, but would notice a price hike for a package of the same size.

It's an interesting and important story, frankly. Unfortunately the reporter chose to frame the story with a four paragraph introduction about ice cream, and a title that resonates with the weight / diet / obesity crisis meme rather than the actual issues at stake. The cost of eggs and milk are sky rocketing. These are staples. Expensive ice cream is a little sad, but won't negatively impact the lives of millions of Americans. And this has nothing to do with "snacking," a term only used to sell you things or lambaste you on "The Biggest Loser."

Dear media: I promise to read you even if you report things the boring old accurate way. Leave the spin to O'Reilly and the bloggers. I want the news. And that means reporting difficult and scary stuff too, like how hard it is for real people to make ends meet.

Sex and the City: you can't come unless you like the penis

2008-05-27T13:30:00.004-05:00

Boy, I am getting mighty tired of this kind of article. Did you know: Sex and the City is for WOMEN? And HOMOS? And if you have a penis but don't like to interact with other penises, there's no excuse for you to be at this movie.

Listen, I know SatC is far from perfect as a woman-oriented film. But how long is the media going to keep feeding us this bullshit line about men's stories being universal, while women's are a special interest draw? More than half the population is women! That is not a niche, that is your audience! Cut it out with the hemming and hawing over whether you can "afford" to put your massive resources behind protagonists who look like the majority of your audience. It's just embarrassing.

And furthermore, you'd think it's plain old bad marketing to so blatantly push men away from the theaters. Why yes, we are still invested in a notion of masculinity that is directionally proportional to Things Blown Up in the movies we enjoy. If a dude wants to watch vapid characters make fools of themselves onscreen, by all means he should be encouraged to do so.

HOLY SHIT WHY IS THIS NOT ON THE NEWS

2008-05-23T17:41:00.004-05:00

A HUGE NUMBER OF WOMAN-HATING DOUCHE BAGS WORK TO INSTITUTE A DOMESTIC GAG RULE

If you aren't familiar with the global gag rule (shame on you), it's a matter of foreign policy instituted under every Republican presidency since Regan which denies any US aid to international organizations who counsel women on issues of sexual health and make any mention of abortion. It applies not only to abortion providers, but educators and doctors whose job is to disclose a full range of options to women in a bind. As a result of this policy, vital services for women run out of funds and become unavailable.

AND NOW THEY ARE TRYING TO APPLY IT HERE. IN AMERICA.
Family planning clinics would be absolutely fucked without the federal and state money that keeps their doors open. I don't understand why I am reading this a week later on a blog when I read the paper every damn day.

[in which we consider the merits of the Scientist Church of Christ]

2008-05-20T23:26:00.005-05:00

SOMETHING THAT IS NOT GREAT DURING TECH WEEK
I am 98% sure that I have mono. I have not swallowed properly in a week, and three days ago I started to feel like someone had drained all the blood from my body and replaced it with slightly heavier blood. I'm sure this will make five hour marathon rehearsals all the more enjoyable, especially when I am passing out after trying to stand for more than five minutes at time.

Three people a day, give or take, try to send me to the doctor. There is no reasoning with these people. Why yes, it does make perfect sense to drop serious cash so a dude with a degree can tell you what you already know and offer nothing by way of treatment, why didn't you put it that way before. Also, doctors are TERRIFYING and I do not like it when they touch me.

SOMETHING THAT IS GREAT DURING TECH WEEK, AS WELL AS ALWAYS
I took the kitten to the vet today to get her sutures removed. Apparently she threw such a tantrum last time she was in, they sewed her up with dissolvable ones so they would never have to touch her again. My daring warrior cat had those vets and nurse-vets so shock-and-awed, they would not even take her out of the cage. They just shook it a little 'til Sadie showed her belly and they could see that she's healed. 'Atta girl, Sadie. You know how we feel about doctors in this house.

I have a number of ranty, ranty half-written posts about backlash-y articles that may or may not ever make their way into the interwebs, depending on if I survive my various ailments of body, patience, and dignity. The clamouring of a hungry public for this sort of discourse, however, will surely steel my determination to Get Them Up.

(If you live in or around Evanston, you are cordially invited to see this staged reading I directed. It is on Friday. It is about robots. One of them loves to garden. It's pretty charming.)

April was not the cruelest month, not at all.

2008-04-30T13:45:00.004-05:00

Things that are dumb:
1. Reusing Cardboard Postal Boxes Illegal
2. Shell President: Produce More Gas in U.S. to Cut Oil Prices
3. Smith College Students Drown Out Anti-Gay Speaker

I feel compelled to comment only on the last item, which turns my stomach. The lecturer was accomplishing nothing but spewing hate speech, which is obviously despicable, but the day that our side starts suppressing dissident voices is the day I want out. I can even commiserate with the argument that Smith is one of few truly safe spaces for queer youth in this country -- I have been realizing recently how much I have internalized the instinct to censor myself for fear of harm or simple, debilitating disdain from people I respect. But holding rally that did not drive out the speaker could have created the same assurance of safety, of community, of support, without compromising the value of an open society. Let's do better.

Things that are at least kind of awesome:
1. Ecuador to Legislate Good Sex for Women as Inalienable Right
2. This lady's artwork
3. Combing the internet for old, forgotten livejournals of acquaintances. It's priceless, really.

My economic stimulus check should cover the damage I did to my car in a fender bender almost precisely. Too bad my darling Honda is Japanese made. Poor planning, U.S. government, that money is not staying here to stimulate the market even a little bit, but at least it is not going to China? Many factors in my life are conspiring to give me mono. I should just give in to the inevitability of the disease*, as it would give me a convenient excuse to drop a miserable class. So far I have been very good about abstaining from pleasant things like sharing ice cream cones and making out, but neither of those is a sustainable abstention.

I watched a video of a bear cub falling asleep today and got so sad and hopeful all at once, there was nowhere to go but to bed for a nap.

*It is a disease. Not an illness or a bug or whatever. That shit is a strain of herpes and it never leaves your body once it enters, like a bad memory of a stupid thing you once did, it just sits and incubates and flares up at inopportune moments to make you hate living in your own skin.

April was overall not that bad, despite that cryptic and horrible footnote. I only wish that my life was a little busier, and that my friends communicated better, but spring continues and I am open to life being good.

2008-04-25T22:51:00.004-05:00

I am a grumpy, grumpy girl right now.

A PROBLEM WHICH NOBODY ELSE HAS:
On a scale of one to responsible, I'd say I score a "generally on top of my shit." Meaning if there is rain in the forecast, I almost certainly have an umbrella with me. My friends, however, get significantly higher marks in flakiness. Three times in the past two days it has rained, and I have found my walking companion to be without an umbrella. And I can't very well leave them to walk a few feet away, hovering just outside my circle of dryness. So when they ask to share I always say yes. But I am very short. So my companion always feels the need to hold the umbrella. Meaning at the end of the day, the umbrella gets held a solid foot above my head, in such a position as to keep me dry not even a little bit. And I arrive at my destination sopping wet, and my dry friend hands me back the drippy umbrella with a grin. Tall people, you do not know the hell you put us through.

Something in my room smells like cat pee. There is no way to figure out what; once one thing smells like cat pee, absolutely everything is vaguely infected. The only option is to wash everything I own. But I am feeling despondent and generally hopeless, and that is a very daunting process so for now I think I'll just go sleep on the couch or something. Fuckin'... fuck.

no, this campaign is not about gender, not even a little

2008-04-24T12:55:00.005-05:00

So, check this shit out:
McCain Opposes Equal Pay for Women
McPain doesn't like the Senate legislation because he thinks it is designed to create all these new law suits to clog up the justice system. Let's follow this logic a moment. Statisticians are in agreement that women still earn circa 77¢ on the male dollar. McSame is not debating this. In fact, the implication is that SO MANY women perceive themselves as being paid unfairly that McNasty fears the courts will buckle under the weight of the caseload. Which obviously means the problem should not be dealt with.

This actually may be the most disjointed logic I've seen in a while. It concedes the problem of pay equity, and explicitly says it is not important enough to grace the dockets of judges who are also not busy hearing cases on domestic spying or denial of habeas corpus rights or whatever. Freedom and justice for... huh? Sorry, we got distracted by John Edwards chasing some ambulance, our country is just so full of frivolous law suits. Dear women, John McCain does not think your work is important enough to be paid for in a fair manner. Unless your work consists of cookin' and not aborting babies, in which case you should be paid the overgenerous privilege of being allowed to suck his cock (alongside the media -- wait your turn).

The text of the bill is also perfectly logical and reasonable, for the record. It's not like it opens up any huge loopholes. It just repeals the 180 day limit on claims, so that if your employer covers up their criminality effectively for a while you can still sue him/her/it. Statutes of limitations don't make a lot of sense to me in general, as I haven't heard a great argument for receiving a get out of jail free card for keeping quiet about your criminal activity for long enough. But in this case it seems pretty unreasonable to assume that employers will make their illegal pay practices obvious enough to be discovered within six months. Fuh fuh fuh, this country is going to the dogs. Well it's throwing its women to them, anyway.

2008-04-22T00:51:00.003-05:00

I am not loving the new Weepies album. This worries me, but I'm also pretty sure I felt this way on the first few listens last time around, so maybe it will get better. It feels like they rushed the pace on every song just slightly, and the harmonies are getting repetitive and less charming. Also, I am a big old grump today, so whatever.

Springtime has been great but today I kept looking at people on the street to find their eyes small in their faces. It could be allergies. It could also be that spring does not magically solve every single problem as we had hoped. I bought a bunch of Brian Andreas books today in a bid to make something useful of this grouchiness, such as: melancholy. Melancholy is endlessly useful, and generally rather sweet. I've been thinking about the word "brooding," and how I can quietly reinstate it into the public vocabulary.* All of the good words for moping have been replaced by gruff, sticky words. It's high time to romanticize sadbess again if we are ever going to overcome Pfizer and their antidepressant culture. Or something. Maybe I just want to see Mary Louise Parker cast more often, and she pretty much only plays sad desperate women who turn their anguish into something active, and anxious, and brilliant.

*'I will be sequestered at home this evening with my brood.' 'The old hen is brooding again.' It feels so good in your mouth. Brood.

William Butler Yeats was a fox. "Our souls are love, and a continual farewell." Sing it, sister.

2008-04-20T19:47:00.003-05:00

It's that time of year again. You know, the time when the Lord Almighty freed my people from their bondage? And asked us to commemorate that by giving up everything tasty? I'm not biting that whole Passover lure this year, but shh, don't tell my mother. Or my angry old-testament God. I do, however, feel obligated to cook sans-leveaning for the THREE DIFFERENT DINNER PARTIES that I apparently am throwing this week. The springtime gaiety may be getting excessive, but whatever, there is always leftover soup and I'm into that.

I bought this cheese at Whole Foods that is studded with cranberries. It is surprisingly delicious. Food seems to be the only thing I want to talk about right now. Remember that debate last year about whether weed is kosher for Passover? I wish I could remember the final answer.* But the fact that I can't remember probably indicates which way I personally came down on that question.

There might be a girl? Yes, there definitely could be a girl. The world is small and funny. I had a dream about a pile of bacon while sleeping in her bed, do we think that means something? I hope not, bacon is repulsive.

If you have not heard of JayMay, you should look her up, her music is quite charming. That's all I've got, it has to end here before food works its way into this paragraph too.

* I'm pretty sure the answer they came up with was "who fucking cares, it's illegal, don't be an asshole and don't try to use Rabbis to enable."

Smart People: they are sad and desperate, says major hollywood production

2008-04-12T00:07:00.003-05:00

Alright, blaaaaaaahg, the time has come to test the parameters of this relationship. I will try to respect your boundaries of restricted emotional vomitude, and in exchange, you should try and have an increased tolerance for half-baked political anger. Let's give it a whirl.

Recently I have taken up an aggressive Pedestrians' Rights campaign here in Evanston, IL. Mostly this consists of wearing bright colors and refusing to stop before crossing the street in places where I have the clear right of way, ie any intersection without a light. Occasionally I verbally assert my displeasure at the infringement of said rights in the clearest possible terms to drivers with open windows. There have been a couple of instances of hood-and-trunk banging on cars casually drifting through crosswalks, although sadly these are only possible when I have large male escorts because yeah rights are cool but so is not getting my shit jacked up. I am thinking about ways to take this to the next level. It is (wo)man against machine here, and if we refuse to stand up for what is ours we may as well just sell our babies to the robots already. Or something.

What brings you to the internet on a fine spring night such as this? you may be asking yourself. I suppose the answer is that I am still slightly tipsy from a single drink enjoyed hours and hours ago, and thus feeling a little loquacious. Did you see Smart People? I did.* You shouldn't. Why? I can detail the reasons if you really want.

Let's put aside for the time being that it was a shapeless script without a single likable character or memorable scrap of dialogue. Let's ignore the inflammatory pot-shots it took at feminists and gay men -- those jokes are so easy! Feminists are angry and gay men are pathetic homemakers groveling for your acceptance into polite society! Let's even look past the disgusting, lingering shots of Dennis Quaid's paunch as the director's only tool to visually convey how pitiful and sad the main character is, because we all know that fat people are required to be miserable because hello they are fat, and what a sad state that must be, although the lazy fucks probably deserve it for not taking control of their stupid fat lives.

My actual Big Issues with this movie were twain: the random pregnancy-as-fulfillment subplot, and the attempted portrayal of the characters as archetypal "smart people."
1) Correct me if I'm wrong, but there seem to be a lot of pregnant chick movies out recently. And again, correct me if I'm wrong, but abortion never really seems to be a serious option in any of them. Sure, Juno had a mildly funny scene about fingernails, but mostly abortion is just a bad option a minor character has to propose so that it can be shot down and the chick can make with the gestation. All women want babies, most want to be pregnant, and all end up finding some sort of character redemption and massive fulfillment of purpose on the other end of the delivery room. We get it. Movie making has actually regressed at least 30 years in the past 2. I am really, really over it.
2) If you are smart, you are most likely aloof. You certainly lack social skills, and are probably alone. Your interests are banal, and you assume that everyone around you is less than human. Oh, and you are UTTERLY MISERABLE. I know this cultural hatred of intelligence is not new, but it certainly is scary. Why the media and entertainment industry insist on spinning this myth of unlikeable, unpersonable smart people in opposition to the fun-loving, true of heart masses of midling intelligence is beyond me. This is probably not unrelated to our failing educational system and rapidly decreasing role in science and innovation on a global scale. When our culture denigrates the desire to learn, and insists that intelligence must come hand in hand with pretension, it's not surprising that so few of us make it through higher education and that 3/4 of the people around me are assholes. Just saying.

And, we're done. Thanks for listening, old web old pal.

*I will have it noted for the record that drinking jug wine with David and seeing Sarah Jessica Parker movies was not my original plan for the evening, but my hot date bagged on me,** and I do sort of like Ellen Page.
** Columbia College, it would seem that all of your students are sort of cute but extremely flakey. Based on the two I have met. This episode of Sweeping Generalizations brought to you by Carlo Rossi.

2008-04-10T00:56:00.003-05:00

I need a test post. Yadda yadda, I can't sleep normally anymore, words are taking over unprecedented quarters of my brain, Sadie is in heat and reckoning with one's cat's sexuality is a strange experience indeed.

Yep. I am feeling feminist guilt about getting her tubes tied. Also about not fucking her with a q-tip, as the internet so fervently suggests.