tangential

it all comes down to this

2006-10-31T16:10:00.000-05:00

I would characterize ~~seventy percent~~ eighty percent of my anxiety as arising from concerns about money. For a few weeks I've been feeling off kilter and aggressive, teetering between low and just plain angry. I realize now that it is pay day, that the fact that i don't have the prospect of two bounced checks hanging over my head, the sense of doom I've been hauling around is lightened. Not a lot, since there are still overdue bills whose checks haven't even been written, but there's a lightness to it nonetheless.

This worries me to no end, the fact that not having enough and not being able to keep up, even with a good job and a healthy salary (not great, it's just not as anemic as the rest of the non-profit world) means that my whole life is going to be like this. I'll always be biting my lip right around the end of the month, always pacing around in my head, entering and re-entering my budget into excel spreadsheets, hoping that some new formatting will make the tally at the end of the column change from a negative into a positive sum.

This, of course, is something I have always known. Something I thought I had accepted many eons and decades ago -- in middle school when my friends had new Espirit bags and not a stained hand-me-down from their cousins or in college when people flew to tropical places to get tans on spring break while I took a two-and-a-half day Greyhound bus from Massachusetts to Florida.

But apparently not. Apparently every few months the enormity of my debt, the hopelessness of crawling out from under it and the utter frustration of a hole in the heel of my boots has to re-hit home.

Still, it's pay day. Which means I got to pay my overdue cell phone bill. And I'll get to make the first of many (late) installment to my dentist. And perhaps a drink this lovely hallow's eve. Maybe I'll even allow myself to buy real gloves this winter -- not the $1.00 thin wool kind I usually get at the dollar store.

Nature versus Lack of Nurturing

2006-07-19T12:19:00.000-04:00

I am sort of thrilled that the preiminent scientific publication, Nature, has published this commentary on the reality of gender bias in the sciences (and, one can assume, the world writ large.)

The story, by neurobiologist Ben Barres, tells of his experience as a scientist on both sides of the gender "divide." But, as he writes, "Anecdotes, however, are not data, which is why gender-blinding studies are so important. These studies reveal that in many selection processes, the bar is unconsciously raised so high for women and minority candidates that few emerge as winners. For instance, one study found that women applying for a research grant needed to be 2.5 times more productive than men in order to be considered equally competent."

There's a good article in the Washington Post about it. Elizabeth Spelke, a Harvard scientist says, "I think we want to step back and ask, why is it that almost all Nobel Prize winners are men today? The answer to that question may be the same reason why all the great scientists in Florence were Christian."

In his study Barres writes, “I am suspicious when those who are at an advantage proclaim that a disadvantaged group of people is innately less able.”

the first step

2006-06-30T16:54:00.000-04:00

In repairing a broken state is here.

I am celebrating.

RIP Favorite

2006-06-30T16:10:00.000-04:00

RIP Favorites

Number of times I've seen Sleater Kinney live (estimate): 20
Number of "super fan" weekends: 4
Number of years they've been together: 11
Number of times I've considered crying over a BAND breaking up prior to this one: zero

I feel like I want to blog something long and in-depth about why this is the end of an era or how they were so important to me. Or the side projects I hope each one picks back up on or how angry I am that some asshole from craigslist tried to get me to pay $400 for tickets to their new york show (why or why didn't I buy last week?). But instead I'm going to mourn quietly and post pictures of them like a fucking sixteen year old super fan. Which I am. But I'm also an adult fan who really craves and hungers the intellectual and political weight they brought to their music. And a sad girl who has a huge crush. And a music fan who has so much respect for how they played.

At various times I say that feminism saved my life. Or that riot grrrl did. But what I really mean is that Sleater Kinney, Heavens to Betsy and Bikini Kill articulated something critical for me that helped me progress as a person. The summer I spent as a college temp, doing data entry in uncomfortable suits with the Hot Rock blaring in my ear was the moment that I gained the self awareness and courage to do something with myself. I was 18, back in Oregon for the summer, and trying to reconcile my shame with my rage. Through sleater kinney, riot grrrl, feminism and friends I found something completely different -- hope and drive.

The pure energy of their music has been something I crave and await, their shows are always a rejuvination and discovery for me. I don't know how to describe it. They are that band for me. They arrived at a moment in my life and sustained a momentum that helped me progress.

I am really grateful to them and glad they made the records they did.

Thank you.

fundamentals

2006-06-27T16:42:00.000-04:00

I have been awe struck to read the long list of articles about the Islamization of the West. From the NYT magazine ("After Londinstan") to the Economist ("Eurabia"), this trend of articles goes on and on about the schism between "Islam" and the "West."

I do not underestimate the threat posed by terrorists, religious fundamentalism or the Wahhabism movement. However, the focus of these stories on integration strategies (and their less than subtle zenophobia) is astounding when the real resistance and real struggle is not taking place in the West. Why? Because the same facism, with different faces, is trying to take hold.

We cannot rebuke facist anti-democratic forces with different anti-democratic facist forces. In Europe and the United States far-right movements that rival Wahhabism in their rhetoric (if not their actions) have gained enormous power over the last few years. We have indefinite detentions, torture, apocalyptic religious rhetoric, illegal government kidnapping, spying on citizens, in the US we have major news outlets (note I said major, not legitimate) calling for an "office of censorship."

What is the point of talking about assimiliation to the West when the very basic structures of a liberal society are being eroded around us. There is a culture of religious fundamentalism and political purity that does not offer a new model, but a different version of the authoritarian dictatorships that dominate other parts of the world. We do not have a vibrant political discourse in this country about issues of importance -- cut throat US capitalism rules the today with little or no international checks, to suggest other models makes you a commie and a has-been.

What I am arguing is that there can be no real change in the world climate and no answer to violent Wahhabi rhetoric that encourages murder and lawlessness unless we reaffirm those values at home. There should be no condemning of a free press and no action being taken by brances of government outside of the law. What do you offer someone who is angered by the poverty and explotation of the world's poor? Assurances that the US is big, bad and will get you no matter what? That there is no rule, no convention, no inherent value to human life that "presidential perogative" can't trump?

Until we reaffirm the value of basic human rights principles -- fairness, equality, justice and humane treatment for ALL people (good, bad, foreigner, combatant, citizen) there is no war to be won. Only a fight between two rival versions of evil.

the butch is back

2006-04-28T10:45:00.000-04:00

My musing from a few weeks ago:

I'm cutting my hair tonight and this has sparked no end of conversations (mostly with myself) about the way in which I related to the world in gendered and or sexualized terms. Which is to say that I've lost a lil' of my mojo with longer locks.

Yes, there is something delicious about burning my hair between two hot ceramic plates in the morning and when I recently discovered that I can do that fun rock-a-billy girl thing with the front of my pony tail I was thrilled, but the drawbacks include that I never get hit on by the ladies anymore and I don't swagger as often. I don't feel the swagger. Having girly hair makes me feel. . . . girly. In all the bad not-reclaimed as empowerment ways.

And I want to think that such a thing is possible. That the explosion of "reclaiming hyper femininity as a way to turn it on its head" culture is possible -- ala the mainstream claims (at least in the beginning) of Jane or the semi-less mainstream arguments found in Bust -- or the general surge of indie-girl culture that focuses on pretty bags, hair clips, and pony purses. I'm all in favor, but can't escape that for me playing to the "girl" in me often requires employing a lower self esteem factor. While playing the butch in me (which I like to think of as the "laaady" in a really sort of low and funny voice) makes me more confident, feel less vunerable and more engaged.

Which may all be some form of fucked up internalized misogyny. Definitely is -- right? My annoyance with this is that I feel like after careful consideration, years of purging, etc -- a cultural assumption should be forced to go away. I should be able to don a dress and feel as cocky and sure of myself as I do laced up in a tie. Alas, alack. I only feel that way when I have a suitably butch haircut. Then I revel in the contrast, the juxtaposition. In dress with long hair I feel. . . like I'm going to church : prim, proper, contained. Properly packaged with pink bow.

Which is how I've been feeling anyway -- slightly contained. The new job schedule is hectic, robbing me of the extra two hours that I didn't used to realize made my evenings feel whole and complete. Who knew six-to-eight was such a vital time for rejuvination? Either way, the hair goes tonight.

A post haircut post-script is pending.

the sacrifice

2006-03-22T12:48:00.000-05:00

I haven't spent much time thinking about what it meant for my father to re-enlist in the military until recently. Or, to be more specific, I didn't think about the risk to his safety or his life. Instead I've been preoccupied by what his involvment may mean for his ethics, his politics and his morals.

My father was in the Marines and reserves for 16 years, which means that he is four short years away from a military retirement. He informed me last summer that he was "considering" re-enlisting, doing weekend service as a JAG, and putting in his four years so he could have additional retirement income. Our conversation revolved around how I found this to be a uniquely selfish and short-sighted decision. He said that he had about a 50/50 chance of being assigned to a six-month stint in Afghanistan. This was all preliminary talk. He has constructed an intense set of justifications which include separating Afghanistan (which he views as a justified occupation) with Iraq (which he feels was an unjust war.) My objections to this include many, but the largest being that they are not separate conflicts from a military point of view and that people from Iraq and around the world are being transported, detained and tortured at known and black site prisons in Afghanistan. My personal objections to his leaving were about my family, my youngest siblings precarious age and unstable living situation and the overwhelming feeling that this was not about retirement, but escapism and the desire to play soldier in a real live war.

In the course of our discussion, my father seemed to change his mind. He did not speak of it the rest of the summer or that fall. Then eight months later, he was abruptly taking physicals and driving to Ft. Vancouver, WA to re-enlist.

We have not spoken extensively of this decision since it was made. Partially because he did it in relative secret and partially because I am afraid that we will run out of things to say to one another. As a JAG my father will play a critical role in advising soldiers about the legality of their actions in the arena of war. I send him reports from Human Rights First and accounts of soldiers being lied to about the restrictions of the Geneva Convention. I trust that he is doing the best he can to incorporate his own high standards into a compromised and corrupt system. At this point in this little endeavor, I can't ask for much more.

That has been consuming my thoughts. What role he will play in the continued abuse of detainees and citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the degredation of our troops by their leaders. I worry about his mindset, his self respect and his ability to withstand the new mentality that has permeated the military. But I have not worried much. If nothing else, he is a gentle, sentimental man enamored with the rule of law.

But on Monday I remembered that other thing he mentioned. Going to Afghanistan. I had not taken the time to process that risk or tabulate what it meant in my life and his. I have not allowed myself to process the danger or worry about his safety. To say I have avoided imagining it is the least -- I have actively pretended otherwise.

I'm sure my father thinks nothing of offering his service and potentially his life to the military. Perhaps not to the President or this war, but to his country and to his "brothers and sisters" in combat he is -- at least on the surface -- unflinching.

But I am not. I am horror struck by the prospect. Not just of a six month tour, but of the idea of sacrificing one's self to . . . well what? I can't even imagine what it would be for, who it would benefit, in whose honor or in pursuit of what abstract idea? I can't name one that seems solid. Patriotism? Honor? Freedom? Democracy? They meaning slips out from under the words and becomes immediately ironic, mocking, cruel.

I grew up in a small place. I went to a high school where kids (like me) were bussed in from rural areas north, south and east of town. When I went there, in the mid-90s, there were still less than 750 students at any one time.

So far, three soldiers from my high school have been killed. My neighbor Tyler Troyer. Joe Blickenstaff, who graduated the same year as me. And Kevin Davis, who was 41.

Three sounds miniscule, but when I talk to many people in my life -- they have numbers. They say 3,000. They talk about stories they heard on the radio or the news, blogs they've come across, films. For me, it is trying to recall Joe Blickenstaff's face -- to really hold it in my mind and not confuse it with his older brother Eric or his sister Susan. Three is a lot to lose, from a small place.

I am struck also by where they came from. Reading through the casuality list of soldiers from Oregon that have died is like reading a book on obscure places: Scapoose, Elgin, Pendelton, Corbett, Lebanon, Halsey. These are tiny spots, with multiple soldiers represented in the casulities list and innumerable more camped somewhere, fighting something. All of this was enough to make me feel removed from the esoteric conversations that often happen about the war in Brooklyn bars or my Manhattan office. But the reality that I have not been facing is something I can't even seem to articulate. My father is enlisted. He may go.

(post to be extended soon.)

The Petty Old Woman I've Always Been

2006-02-22T16:53:00.000-05:00

Last night as I was smoking my goodnight cigarette a hail of paper came fluttering down from a window which was then promptly slammed back shut.

At first I thought someone had thrown a stack of pictures onto the street -- which I thought was a dramatic and beautiful gesture. But upon closer inspection I realized they weren't photos, but fliers. Fliers for house music. Fliers for a record release party for a house music DJ. That's right -- the same house music that rockets through two layers of brick with studied regularity on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights. That pounding boring monotonous racket that does not stop. Not when the clock strikes midnight. Not when the clock strikes one. Not when I march next door at 1:30 in my pajamas and ring the bell repeatedly.

Editor's Note: I am not a puritan. I do not mind loud music. But I do work and I do get tired. I also am aware of the wonderful invention of the modern age -- headphones.

But there at my feet was just what I needed to make it all better: his name. Steve Porter. Steve Porter who is so boring and cliche that his album is called "Porterhouse". Get it -- he plays HOUSE music and his name is PORTER. And Porterhouse is a kind of meat. You see?

But that's not the satisfaction. The satisfaction was dialing 311 and reporting a sanitation violation. Hope that $50 fine keeps YOU up at night Stevie.

guantanamo blog

2006-01-16T23:58:00.000-05:00

my favorite blog right now is aclu attorney ben wizner discussing the tiki bar and player piano tinkling tunes at guantanamo.

schism

2006-01-09T14:05:00.000-05:00

The way I think of myself is often through paralell -- I am in similar standing and position to __blank___. I am the opposite of ___blank____.

But if the blanks are reversed, then suddenly I have created a new person. Or a schism where two of the ideas that I use to organize my persona have switched places.

I have experienced a few major schisms in my life situations. The first leaving the west coast and going to college (the other option being stay, get pregnant again, follow a very worn path.) Perhaps there were more options there, but in my mind there exists a good golly who gave up other ambitions for desperation. She's a very active part of my current life, she acts as a specter who I can tell myself tales about, a ghost motivator. She helps me work long hours and she operates a large portion of my dream life -- nightmares of failure.

I face a smaller schism now, although still in the conversation phase, in terms of my standing in relation to capital. To have access to something I have never imagined for myself. Something that would take me even further away from that other future I maintain through my imagination. To imagine that schism, before it even takes place, has become an operation of fantasy and worry. I would be placed as the opposite, the reverse, of how I currently imgaine myself. It would remove me, in some ways, from my closest friends. Creating a space between our situations that worries me to no end. Of course, turning down such an option would be a false denial, one that would not benefit me nor would it prevent the shift -- since the option of a financial step up is enough to disrupt everything.

That being said, I have not yet won the lottery. That ticket sits on the desk in front of me, taunting me with the fasle hope of being able to lift myself, my family, my favorites to a more solid place. Oh the home I want to buy for my brother, the savings I want to put aside for my aunt so she can quit that telemarketing job before she grows old, gets sick, sinks further into poverty. How I want to wipe away those student loan payments and ease the mind of E.D. and S.T.

What would that mean, to my thinking about myself. Imagine being able to plan what you want, rather than what is necessary. That's the fantasy I engage in once a week, when I purchase a single quick pick ticket. So far beyond golden that I'm dizzy for an hour afterward.

What the JT Leroy Says About You/Us

2006-01-09T13:55:00.000-05:00

NYT reported today "The Unmasking of JT Leroay: In Public, He's a She"

This following the long, somewhat repetitive expose in New York Magazine from last October titlted: Who is JT LeRoy? The True Identity of a Great Literary Hustler

I have a number of thoughts on the matter. First, there is little surprise that JT Leroy does not exist. And even less surprise that the people involved in inventing him are not from hyper-dysfunctional homeless West Virginian families -- but from a family so tight that the younger sister is playing the public persona, the mom is heading the front company, the the writer/co-creator continues to give interviews and post information about herself (not the character) at www.jtleroy.com.

I am not necessarily interested in who JT Leroy really is in some senses. The mystery seems like a thin film to deter larger conversation. I don't care who is writing the accounts, it is the work itself that I take so much issue with. But when a person is created -- a "real live person" to vouch for it-- the debate is deadened and lost in the debate about who this person is, what's behind the mystery, etc.

That is the drama that literati and celebrities alike were so quick to embrace, without any regard for the problematic nature of the products this kid (collabrative, co-op, family, what have you) is pitching.

Here's my issue: from the first time I heard about this book, it was from people who were incredulous that this "whole world" of tranny-truck stop hookers existed. Everything was so traaaashy, so surreal. Cross dressers and brutal sexual abuse, doing lines off the floor of bathrooms, kidnappings and underlying it all "isn't it crazy, I mean, how poor people live?"

When I read Sarah I was equal parts interested and offended. It did not read as well as I had assumed it would (given the attention) -- something between an adolescents first novel and something from francesca lia block. it had that faeries and LA vibe to it. Something very Hollywood, west coast and slick.

Then I read up on JT and I was even more offended. The account of this truck stop boy, who floats to SF only to be rescued -- whose sheer talent (which I don't have that much regard for) lifts him up, betters him, separates him from his past, his family, his people (read: poor, from West Virginia, red state, not NY or SF) was too much to swallow. Then you add the whole AIDS thing, the won't be seen in public, hangs out only with celebrities, wears a weird wig. . .

Mary Gaitskill has said the most interesting thing so far on the matter.

“It’s occurred to me that the whole thing with Jeremy is a hoax, but I felt that even if it turned out to be a hoax, it’s a very enjoyable one. And a hoax that exposes things about people, the confusion between love and art and publicity. A hoax that would be delightful and if people are made fools of, it would be okay—in fact, it would be useful.”

The fact that it has so clearly been a hoax for going on five years is remarkable. And that these writers -- Sharon Olds, Dennis Cooper, etc -- were so taken by this story, by this account of poverty and prostitution that was so romanticized on the one hand and so demonizing and explotative on the other is clearly indicative to me of how cartoonish the expectations of poor people continue to be. How much people delight in the confirmation of their ideas, how they will fight tooth and nail to prove that their prejudices and their inventions are real -- how far they will look to find the example, even if it is wigged and their accent is off -- of what they know to be true of the world.

What would be interesting for me is if part of the creators intent, rather than simply fame or money (the major motion picture release of The Heart is Deceitful Above All Else is due out soon) was to demonstrate some of the fallacy of that celebrity. To demonstrate how much Winona Ryder and Sharon Olds alike are smitten with the idea of a strung out prostitute who reads a little Keats on the side -- as opposed to engaging with the everday realities that are not quite so surprising, not quite so romantic, and involve people who wouldn't be invited to the party. I don't mean to say that I believe a truck stop tranny prostitute isn't capable of loving some dense modern poetry -- as the story of JT goes -- but rather, it's not likely. Not because of their capacities, but the ways in which poverty operates, the voices literature imploys, the audience it seeks, and the stark and awful truth that a kid who never attended school probably isn't the best of readers. But of course, part of the disgusti I have for JT Leroy is the pull yourself up by your bootstraps nature of the story. Well -- he's not your average uneducated bloke. He's better than all of them. He's deserving. The implication? They are not.

In the meantime, I do think that nonfiction is critical, that lives are things that can speak and tell us things. There are plenty of kids, free of celebrity and without big advances, who are making art that is worthwhile and monumental.

Ashley Nelson is an 18 year old New Orleans resident who wrote a book called "The Combination" about one of N.O. oldest public housing complexes, the Lafitte.

"Ms. Nelson's interviews let the reader hear from voices rarely engaged, from the owner of the corner store, to the Residents' Council, to the members of the community more often profiled than listened to. She writes about and photographs much of Lafitte, from second lines to ward signs, from the Wild Side to the Real Side, from Dooky Chase to Southern Scrap, it's all here."

You can find out more at http://www.neighborhoodstoryproject.org.

today in civil liberties

2005-12-20T17:54:00.000-05:00

All day press, all the time.

I miss my blog. I mourn it. I shall find some way to return. Especially over the holidays when I have unchecked country time to wax eloquent on family dynamics.

there's always trouble

2005-12-06T11:56:00.000-05:00

But 'Trouble in Numbers' especially.

For your perusal.

all apologies

2005-12-06T08:28:00.000-05:00

things i will blog on soon:

manic flight reaction by sarah schulman;
the new harry potter;
torture and accountability ;
winter and romanticism;
the strain of the holidays.

In the meantime, my time is sparse, my head keeping me from sleeping through the night, funds are tight, weather is cold, and I've been smiling like mad of late.

i know it's overkill, but bear with me

2005-11-14T15:13:00.000-05:00

KP lays it down again in her column this week:

You're always so glass-half-full in public," my editor says at this point. "But in private you're as down as Dowd." Well, not quite that down. But yes, I thought we'd be further along by now. I feel for young women today--somehow, between the irony and the knowingness and the 24/7 bath in pop celebrity culture and its repulsive values, it can be harder for them than it was for us to call a sexist spade a spade. They've been bombarded from birth with consumerism and Republicanism and hyperindividualism, and told in every possible way that feminism is deeply uncool and unhot. Dowd is such a credulous audience for backlash propaganda it doesn't occur to her that she is promoting, not reporting, the problem she describes. I'm amazed, actually, that feminism is still around, given the press it gets.

Dowd, for example, thinks feminism may be a 'cruel hoax' because it keeps women single--men are scared of spunky, successful women. (In interviews Dowd denies she's attributing her own unmated state to her fame and fabulousness, but that's how she's been read.) Well, some men definitely want the young compliant type. But--anecdotal evidence again--most women in my circle are paired, and we are all feminists and really, really great. Men hold a lot of cards in the mating game, but fewer than they used to, and women hold more than before. There has never been a better time in all world history to be a 53-year-old single woman looking for romance. Besides, as ferocious young Jessica Valenti put it over at Feministing.com, 'Feminism isn't a f***ing dating service.' Out of the mouths of babes. "

(from The Nation)

For the Orphans

2005-11-14T10:58:00.000-05:00

"Perhaps all unsheltered people are angry in their hearts, and would like to break the roof, spine, and ribs, and smash the windows and flood the floor and spindle the curtains and bloat the couch." -- Marilyn Robinson, Housekeeping

"Loneliness is an absolute discovery." --MR

Reading it out of context, the quote might seem more general, related to the dispossessed, the poor and the homeless. Which of course, it is. But this morning on the train, in the voice it is spoken, and in the reader, it was all family.

There are times, when I hear people speak about their families, their parents, their meals, their homes, their emails, their support, their lives -- when I want nothing more than to march up their porches (decorated, I imagine them, with the appropriate holidays dressings and cleared entirely of leaves) and split open their front doors. I want to flood their bathrooms and invite strangers into their kitchens, to eat from the cabinets and leave the drawers swung open, crumbs spread out.

I want to walk in on the domestic bliss (love, comfort, no abuse) and sit down amongst them like a troll. I want to run a slimy knarled finger over their cheeks and stain them with the generational residue that marks me. I want to empty their pockets and see if they still smile so brightly. I want to crack their flat flat tvs and chip all of their glasses and see if they are so perfect, so good, still.

I want to know the difference between other families and mine. I want to know if they have been pushed to hard or if they are just weak. I want to know if all those mothers who call on the phone, who send care packages to their grown children, who know the names of their friends and who counsel in times of need simply have all the leisure time in the world or if they are wonder-strong and as shiny as they seem. Who are these fathers with wide laps and big grins, who aw-shucks and chuck balls about the yard? Have you seen them?

It's not simply the lack of shelter I feel so intensley, but disbelief in roofs in general.

For reference: The Organization and Formation of Blizzards as Seen by Satellites: A-Z by Ander Monson (Indiana Review)

defining one's chances

2005-11-09T14:47:00.000-05:00

I can't get the Lotto out of my head this week.

Ever since I was a small child, I had the implausible and unshakeable conviction that I was going to win the lottery. This weekend I'll write about Ed McMahon and my baptism dress -- how they are inexorably linked for time and all eternity.

But for now I have to ask myself: why is this fantasy so persistent. It involves many layers. There is the trust I would set up to pay for the education of my family's descendants; The loans I would pay off for friends (promises I have articulated to them, years ago, and probably every few months since we've known one another); the lit mag I could start; the graduate school I could afford; the loans I could pay off; and then there is the ultimate -- something I wasted an entire subway ride on yesterday -- how I would tell my parents.

I could tell them to print out a credit report, wait for them to do it, and then tell them all of that worry, all of that stress, all of that burden -- is over. I could send a crew of construction workers to the house to finally patch those uncovered vents and the decay of the barn. I could scream or I could deliver it deadpan (my preference). I could call my grandmother first and let her break the news to them. I could fly out, arrive at their doorstep with a check to pay off their mortgage. I could. . . you see how this goes on. I get stuck in the vastness of that moment -- the gift, the relief, the burden lifted.

I can't stop thinking about it. Powerball, Mega Millions, King Kong Millions (for a limited time only). I think this is how gambling addicts start, right? Playing Keno or video poker. Luckily, that's not legal here. I got snowed into a hotel in Portland (iced in is more accurate) and they had video poker in the bar. It was a long strange night. I don't think I could actually spend large sums of money -- just time, energy, and all of this idiot hope*.

(*that being said, I partially wrote this entry so that when I win it will look like prescience.)

Other good news

2005-11-08T23:24:00.000-05:00

It's only 11:15 here, so nothings for sure, but it looks like Prop 73 (parental notification bill) is going to fail in Cali. (!)

And Corzine won in NJ (take that Pataki). Maine passed a resolution outlawing discrimination against the gays.

Sadly, Ohio rejected the voting reforms it needed to make the state function democratically. Oh well, as long as Blackwell never becomes governor. Never, ever, ever.

Okay, I'm going to check the lottery results. If the VA election is any indication, things are going good golly's way tonight.

Trumpeting for Kaine

2005-11-08T23:11:00.000-05:00

Archivists amongst you might note that the first few entries of this blog came in the sad mid-november days of last year. And I called then for a look ahead, for the signals of 2005 and activism to motivate for next year -- one that will surely mark either a turning point or a state of continued insanity for our country.

Tonight, I am pleased to report, our fair state of Virginia elected Timothy Kaine to be its next governor -- defeating a well-funded and vitrolic opponent who ran ads last week that claimed Kaine would have been opposed to the death penalty for Hitler.

"Equally significant, Mr. Kaine's victory was a major hit for Mr. Bush, who campaigned for Mr. Kilgore Monday night even though his own approval rating had dipped below 50 percent in Virginia.

Mr. Kilgore's aides said Mr. Bush's appearance was crucial in increasing Republican turnout, but Democrats and political analysts said it might have also energized as many or more Democrats and independent voters to turn out for Mr. Kaine.

Democrats are likely to trumpet Mr. Kaine's victory as evidence that Mr. Bush has become a detriment to local and state Republican candidates in advance of next year's midterm congressional elections." (from nyt)

While "Democrat" is far from my first political allegiance, consider this entry to be one of the chorus tonight that plays the first note of "Taps" for the neoconservative movement.

national book award reading

2005-11-07T15:16:00.000-05:00

What: National Book Award Dinner

When: Nov. 15th

Why: Because it's 21 readers for $10

Get yr tickets. I'll smuggle in skittles. We can hold hands if you want.

who hates time select?

2005-11-07T15:07:00.000-05:00

I do. I do.

the length of one's self

2005-11-03T09:49:00.000-05:00

The length of my hair is an obsession.

I don't have that many. I have plenty of things I can talk about endlessly, but they don't consume me the way this does. The length of my hair is something I choose to dally over, to measure with the stroke of my own hand. I think about it all the time, make decisions, change my mind, map out a five-year-plan.

It is a larger question than brown or black, light brown or chesnut, bob or razor bob. My hair represents -- in it's micro fashion -- the entirety of my gender expression. There are certain outfits that when my hair is short, I cannot pull off. A dress, one with layers or movement, doesn't look right. Looks like drag or camp -- a performance of a good-golly girl self. Likewise, now that my hair is stretching out toward my shoulders (touching them daily) the tie I used to wear quite freely feels like some attempt, some joke at another person. A laughable tomboy.

Those polars are wrapped up in so much more -- there is a sense that my adult clothes, the things that allow me to manuever through "professional" or "mature" settings are inherently more feminized. Meanwhile, my sneakers, jeans, even button downs have an adolescent flavor. It's hard for me to wear something fancy, wear something for a job interview say, and have it maintian the level of masculinity, or adrogyny, that I would prefer. Which I don't think is inherent in any way, but more a symptom of the way in which both ideas of myself have developed.

This is more complex then "when I was twelve I realized to grow up I would have to become a "woman" and learn to dress more like a girl". Which is, of course, true. But it is tied also to the realization that my more androg impulses are tied to a certain politic. One that might have me off making radical rather than typing on the high floors of a downtown building. That version of myself might not suffer through, nor place themselves in such a way to get invited to, a fancy dinner. There is a way in which I tied the version of myself at my most comfortable -- definitely boyish, although with a dyked out flair, tailored, sneakered -- is my most irreverent. But I also find this disturbing. I don't like that decked out in dress I feel more obligated to be demure, to shy my eyes, to flirt rather than pursue. I hate how easily tied those personas are to some kind of gender expression.

I wish that I felt the cocky ownership of the world in heels that I feel when I'm tailored down. I resent that I've internalized all of that so easily -- or more accurately, I resent that knowing it hasn't abated anything.

And so I am here. With almost shoulder length locks feeling detached from my body

feminism and straight sex

2005-11-02T12:38:00.000-05:00

My previous post with critique of Maureen Dowd's article in the NYT magazine is relevant -- the whole reporter trend of going after "women regress and love it" with faulty research is something that I want to call bullshit on.

But there is something more problematic about the original article and its replies. Why is the success or relevance of feminism measured by the ability of straight women to "catch a man"? Why is the ability to find marriage material how one should judge where to place the bar of social critique?

There is some argument to be made about the ways in which feminism (or backlash) has affected interpersonal relationships both sexual and political. All of these articles talk as if feminism actually "happened" in some way and we are going back, rather than arguing that feminism was articulated at some venture and continues to operate as an idea but not a reality for most women.

When I read the article this weekend, the first thing it made me think was "I'm gay." I stood up out of bed and looked around my apartment. For some reason it struck me very suddenly that I lived with another woman and that my concerns were very much removed from what Dowd was talking about. At the same time, I felt that most of the people I knew approached relationships (issues of sex, whose going to pay, and what is a successful relationship) with a lot more maturity then all of subjects of these articles. There is no crisis of faith, no attempt to recraft oneself as "the hunted," and while there are plenty of concessions I find depressing -- they often aren't intentional, let alone strategized.

My point is this: feminism has the potential to restructure all personal interactions. It could, if ever embraced, destabilize all sorts of sexual scenarios. But the merit of equality is not how many dates it gets, its not even how much things have changed, its that equality is desirable. Of course there are a million moral relativist claims to be made here. I'm just more interested in a real exploration of cultural forces and sick of feminism being relegated to the scapegoat for the dating woes of modern America. It has to mean more than that.

In the meantime, someone needs to explain hetereosexuality to me, cause I don't get it.*

*I mean, I get it. I get men and women sleeping together and dating and all that. What I don't get the belief that it's "natural" or "just what you are" anymore then I buy that claim for the queers.

Dowd right wrong

2005-11-02T12:14:00.000-05:00

Maureen Dowd annoys me usually. There's something grating about her columns and something even more frustrating that she is the lone female representative on the NY Times Editorial pages. But then she writes trash like ""What's a Modern Girl to Do?" and I just have to shake my head.

What is she talking about?

Luckily, there has been a response:

Why Dowd Doesn't Know What Men Really Want
11/02/05
By Rivers and BarnettWeNews commentators

(WOMENSENEWS)--A growing media narrative over the past year says men do not like high-achieving women.

It's been fueled by stories in, among others, The New York Times, the Chicago Sun Times, Toronto Star, "60 Minutes" and the Atlantic magazine.

This drumbeat reached its zenith Sunday in Maureen Dowd's New York Times Magazine piece, "What's A Modern Girl to Do?"

The article has become the most e-mailed article from the Times' Web site and has left Dowd fielding readers' mail on "the past and future of feminism."

What a waste of such a powerful platform. If only Dowd--capable of such wit, charm and political insight--had bothered to check her social science data.

"Decades after the feminist movement promised equality with men," Dowd laments, "it was becoming increasingly apparent that many women would have to brush up on the venerable tricks of the trade: an absurdly charming little laugh, a pert toss of the head, an air of saucy triumph, dewy eyes and a full knowledge of music, drawing, elegant note writing and geography. It would once more be considered captivating to lie on a chaise lounge, pass a lacy handkerchief across the eyelids and complain of a case of springtime giddiness."

For this surreal description of contemporary men and women, Dowd draws on "data" that shows her running with the media pack, yes, but sadly out of touch with serious social science.

An Alleged Trend

In particular, Dowd hypes an alleged trend of men rejecting ambitious women based on a 2004 study by psychology researchers. Those findings, by psychologists Stephanie Brown of the University of Michigan and Brian Lewis of University of California, Los Angeles, were wildly overblown.

The study was done on a small sample of 120 male and 208 female undergraduates, mainly freshmen.

The males rated the desirability as a dating or marriage partner of a fictitious female, described as either an immediate supervisor, a peer or an assistant.

Surprise, surprise! The freshman males preferred the subordinate over the peer and over the supervisor when it came to dating and mating.

The study, however, was no barometer of adult male preferences. Rather, it reflected teen boys' ambivalence about strong women.

Men, by contrast, do not reject achieving women. Quite the opposite. Sociologist Valerie Oppenheimer of University of California, Berkeley reports that today men are choosing as mates women who have completed their education. The more education a woman has, the more likely she is to marry. Unlike the single University of California, Los Angeles study, this finding comes from an analysis of 80 peer-reviewed studies.

Evolutionary Theory

Another major problem with the college students study was that investigators claimed an evolutionary basis, namely, that men's drive to reproduce their genes leads them to prefer relatively subordinate, docile females.

By the same evolutionary token, then, women should be "hardwired" to seek as mates men who are older, dominant and in control of financial resources. But that same college study found nothing of the sort. Instead, the young women showed no preference for dominant males over other males for either dating or mating.

The notion that women are driven by their genes to seek older, rich men has been skewered by recent research.

Alice Eagly of Northwestern University and Wendy Wood of Duke University provided a major review of mate-selection data with findings from 10,000 people in 37 countries.

It found that in societies where women have access to resources, they do not choose older "provider" males to marry. Instead, they go for men who are kind, intelligent and can bond with children.

Yes, when women can't pay their own way, rich older men look pretty good, even if they don't change diapers or listen to what a woman has to say. But when women bring home the bacon themselves, they start looking for something quite different in a guy.

Dredging Up the IQ Study

Dowd dredges up another study about men not liking smart women. This one was conducted by investigators at four British universities (Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bristol and Aberdeen) and found that for every 15-point increase in IQ score above the average, women's likelihood of marrying fell by almost 60 percent. The Atlantic published this research in 2005 under the title "Too Smart To Marry?"

Really bad news for bright women, right?

Not. Neither Dowd nor the Atlantic bothered to mention--apparently they did not know--that the data were gathered from men and women born in 1921; the women are all now in their 80s.
Should a study of octogenarian women be taken as a guide for today's young people? No.
Dowd also recycles Sylvia Ann Hewlett's argument, from her book "Creating a Life," that high-achieving women tend to be miserable and often childless. For a challenge to that data, read Heather Boushey of the Center for Economic Policy Research. In a 2002 published study based on several large government data sets, Boushey found high achievers little different from other working women.

From 36 to 40, high achievers are more likely to be married and have kids than other female workers, but they marry later than other women. Boushey found that women between the ages of 28 and 35 who work full time and earn more than $55,000 a year or have a graduate or professional degree are just as likely to be successfully married as other working women.
Dowd writes that many women today "want to be Mrs. Anonymous Biological Robot in a Docile Mass. They dream of being rescued; to flirt, to shop, to stay home and be taken care of." And so forth.

Irritating Fluff

Dowd's writing is fun, but is basically a bunch of irritating fluff.

As a piece of institutionally self-serving evidence, for instance, she refers to a recent front-page story in The New York Times about young women attending an Ivy League college who were planning to reject careers in favor of staying home and raising children. The article claimed that 60 percent of women in two Yale dorms wanted to jettison careers and be stay-at-home moms.
The story was not written by a Times reporter. It was written by a journalism student doing her graduate thesis who based her story on an e-mail survey. Slate media writer Jack Shafer found the "facts" in the story so flimsy that the reporter "deserves a week in the stockades. And her editor deserves a month." He pointed out that the writer used the word "many" 12 times in place of statistics.

Writing in The Nation, columnist Katha Pollitt said she had contacted a number of people at Yale, including professors and students who were interviewed. She said not one felt the story fairly represented women at Yale. Many students said they'd thrown away the reporter's questionnaire in disgust.

Physics professor Megan Urry polled the 45 female students in her class and only two said they planned to stay at home as the primary parent.

When Dowd bases her views of men and women on such poor research, it's no wonder that Dowd looks into the crystal ball of feminism and finds the picture so disconcerting.
Caryl Rivers is a professor of journalism at Boston University and Rosalind C. Barnett is a senior scientist at the Women's Studies Research Center at Brandeis University. They are co-authors of "Same Difference; How Gender Myths Are Hurting Our Relationships, Our Children and Our Jobs."

From Women's Enews

Adviser to Cheney Is Indicted in Leak Case

2005-10-28T13:48:00.000-04:00

Oh happy day.
Oh happy day.

When Scooter was (when Scooter was)
When Scooter was indicted. (from nyt)

My, my, Meirs -- I almost forgot!

2005-10-27T16:59:00.000-04:00

Meirs exits the race.

Franzen v. Other Artists; Marcus Just Wants to Dance

2005-10-26T12:39:00.000-04:00

Boo on this piece from Slate , which misrepresents Ben Marcus' essay in last week's Harpers, making it sound much more pompous and overblown then it was.

Indeed, Marcus never argues that Franzen's mini-piece in the New Yorker was what led to FC2's trouble with the NEA, he only drew the lines of a larger argument -- which is that hugely successful Franzen (and narrative/realist fiction elitism in general) picks out avant garde fiction for ridicule when it is already a small, tiny flea on the greater scene, constantly trying not to be drown by other more dominant (and totalitarian) culture forces.

I thought the emphasis on Franzen in the essay was too much and occasionally too personal -- but I also understood that Marcus was writing for a magazine who needed to have an angle. To have Franzen's sins stand in for the larger literary establishment (see: all the brough-ha-ha about the "unknown" nominees for the National Book Award) and the entire reverse-discrimination claim of experimental fiction being elitist which permeates mainstream literary discussions (see: New Yorker, Harpers, NYT Book Review, NY Review of Books etc.)

You can read the entire essay (finally I found it!) here. More discussion to come.

Meanwhile, read this interview with George Saunders:

"My political position at present is: Sick At Heart. I think you can see the idiocy of a lot of the administration's positions by observing the level of their inarticulateness."

It will clean your palate after that trash I led this post with.

mourning the loss of a righteous anger

2005-10-25T17:41:00.000-04:00

Go safely and thanks.

"I do the very best I can to look upon life with optimism and hope and looking forward to a better day, but I don't think there is anything such as complete happiness. It pains me that there is still a lot of Klan activity and racism. I think when you say you're happy, you have everything that you need and everything that you want, and nothing more to wish for. I haven't reached that stage yet."

"Victory or defeat? It is the slogan of all-powerful militarism in every belligerent nation. And yet, what can victory bring to the proletariat?"

google image of yours truly

2005-10-25T15:17:00.000-04:00

For the last four years, when you google my name, she appears.

Sometimes I imagine I am her. I work as a secretary in Australia, but I spend most of my time at work writing romance stories that feature hybrid animals. There is something about the centaur that appeals to me. It's close to the way that I feel when I am asleep -- my body more powerful, my limbs less likely to tangle.

Anyone want to go to Virginia?

2005-10-25T15:10:00.000-04:00

"Republican candidate for governor Jerry W. Kilgore holds a narrow edge over Democratic Party rival Timothy M. Kaine, but the tight race remains well within the statewide poll's margin of error."

(from the DailyProgress)

This race -- a critical one that will set the stage for 2006 -- is going to come down to voter turnout. Voter turnout comes down to polling day -- to getting supporters to the polls. That means shuttle buses, phone calls, muffins.

Anyone want to go to Virginia in two weeks -- I'll bake.

Miers, IWF, and Puppetry

2005-10-24T10:43:00.000-04:00

"This was not a home run," said Jennifer Braceras, a visiting fellow at the conservative Independent Women's Forum, speaking about the Miers nomination. "This is a foul ball."

"On Tuesday, the IWF sponsored a discussion on "What Women Want, the other Supreme Court Issues," and neither Braceras nor the four other women on the panel, including well-known conservatives Victoria Toensing and Barbara Comstock, raised their hands when I asked who was speaking out publicly for Miers."

(from the suntimes)

When you can't get the Independent Women's Forum behind a Bush appointee -- you've got problems.

Really, I just wanted to post about how much I loathe the IWF. They were formed during the Clarence Thomas nominations in order to create some pseudo-feminist "support" for the candidate. Board members include senior officials in the Bush administration and his nominees are vetted on "women's issues" by IWF before facing nomination hearings. (WaPo)

If you can't get the wags who were created to back horrific judicial nominees to stand behind you. . . there's something wrong. Or right. . . the conundrum of conservative opposition continues to confuse.

What I resent most about the IWF is the way that this think tank of powerful and elite conservative men and women are often cited as the "opposing" view to any pro-gender equity group. Unlike NOW or the Feminist Majority, they do not represent a large membership. Instead they are a select and small group of a few hundred pundits. Not an organization, not even a think tank, but a loose assortment of wags that are allowed to "speak" for the "other feminists" (ie those who don't belive in pay inequity, who think that boys get the societal short-straw, and are conspiciously mum on abortion.) The media's continued utilization of IWF creates the appearance of an opposition whose puppet strings are clearly held not by the smiling stiff-haired spokespeople (yeah I'm talking about you Hoff Sommers!), but by the larger and more influential right-wing policy institutions. So nice that they went out and created a ladies auxillary.

in the buff

2005-10-21T13:33:00.000-04:00

This weekend I'm scheduled to interview someone I've seen naked.

Not homemade-pictures-passed-around-the-locker-room or anything, they were in a magazine, national if small.

Still, I loved those pictures. I looked at them a lot. I'm scared I'm not going to be able to stop thinking "I saw you naked. I saw you naked" and that eventually, the words will involuntarily spill from my mouth.

the fall

2005-10-18T16:59:00.000-04:00

From the world that is only electronic to the realm of the physical, everyone I know seems to be driving toward splitsville or otherwise made panicked by some strange and unpredictable circumstance (distemper... flooding ... rehab).

It is a decaying season. Moldy things are tumbling down. The rain has washed up lost shirts and revealed strange stains (lipstick . . .grease . . .)

This morning, on the walk to the subway, I discovered hundreds of albums thrown out with the trash. Not one or two bags, but a stack four feet high that stretched halfway down the block. I was late and felt rushed (new position, people to impress, etc) but I had to stop. I didn't think they could be salvaged for their sound; they were wet, sitting atop concrete, many stacked without jackets. But because they seemed so precarious there, so sad. Many of them were topped with cobwebs and dust, but others seemed more loved, with jackets worn through from thumbing, from being removed, from listening.

I grabbed a stack of seven inches with the intention of making something from them. Cheap wall art. Ashtrays with enormous holes in the middle. It was an abstract thought (fueled by the memory of financial gains at a college craft fair) but my only regret was that I couldn't take more. I couldn't take the twelve inches; I couldn't carry more than thirty small records in the plastic bag I scrounged from the bodega. And I couldn't come back later -- the garbage man was thundering up the road even as I stood gaping at all the stacked vinyl, someone's collection, some life.

And then it struck me. This was too huge a thing to throw out because you were purging or because you were clearing out room for your new records. Some of these were old, worn; they had been stored for some time. Not in a basement, they weren't all ruined; they had been in a living room. They had lined the walls of an apartment, taken up a large space in someone's life -- which meant that their owner, their collector, was most likely dead.

After that, my hands were covered in the dust of a dead person's records -- which I wanted to string together or melt in the oven or make invitations out of for some small party. It felt so sad, the garbage man approaching, the records shining in the sun, the leaves in large piles all along the curb.

A favorite used to claim (do you still?) that this part of the year always brought something awful. She called it her "autumnal crisis" -- which is one of the prettiest phrases for awful incidents anyone every coined. It was a bitter thing said with "that's is how it goes" assuredness. A resignation although not entirely a retreat.

So in the midst of this time, this time of rotting and preparation for hibernation (cleansing, clearing away, paring down, hurt) I just wanted to say:

I got some of your records out of the trash this morning. And the rest made a gorgeous crash when they tumbled into the back of the garbage truck.

today's tangential

2005-10-18T15:02:00.000-04:00

Albany police to get less-lethal stun devices

"Albany police are going ahead with plans to arm officers with Tasers even though a member of the department was injured during a demonstration."

The article goes on to state: "The department has had no reports of injuries because of the Tasers."

Well -- except for THAT one.

if a bard were formed of scraps and paste he would sing such amazing collage as this

2005-10-17T17:58:00.000-04:00

Ben Marcus made my week.

As I was shuffling around JFK airport at six in the morning last Thursday I thought I might buy a magazine. I went to the store, I frowned over my choices and then I saw the cover of Harper's exclaiming:

Why Experimental Fiction Threatens to Destroy Publishing, Jonathan Franzen, and Life as We Know It

Fourteen (14!) pages later, I was alight. Not because Ben Marcus put Franzen and realist fiction "in its place," but because it refused to do anything limiting, because it was so celebratory, because it was infused with so much mirth and joy -- the very things "experimental" fiction are accused of being void of. It was such a pretty pretty thing. I haven't heard such a call to intellectual arms in quite some time and never so tender a one made for "postmodern" lit. I made a phone call as soon as we landed, to report the publishing of this essay. I have reread it since. The excerpts and extended breakdown are pending.

Till then there's coverage at :
gawker
publisher's weekly
galley cat
and you can read the angry traditionalists by doing a blogsearch.

things to examine about self

2005-10-17T11:46:00.000-04:00

propensity for hyperbole:
Almost unprecedented. Able to say "always" after singular incident. Able to construct entire mountain ranges -- craggy and perilous -- out of abandoned and slumped mole hills.

propensity for tears:
At times, endless. But at other critical junctures face goes numb, jaw locks, the stares come on. Am a really good starer. Unsure if this is an asset.

tools of motivation:
My (in)ability to motivate through self reflection. Sporadic and energetic moments pared with extreme lethargy. Some might say manic phases of work. How to achieve regular mania without becoming maniac. See: control.

control:
Do things really drive me nuts or do I just want to be nuts? I'm not sure, but we should sweep more just to be safe. Wait. . .

Court allows inmate's abortion

2005-10-17T11:45:00.000-04:00

From Scotus blog:

"The Supreme Court, without recorded dissent, cleared the way on Monday for a Missouri inmate to obtain an abortion over the objection of state officials. In a brief order, the Court refused the state's request to stay a federal judge's order requiring that the inmate be taken to a St. Louis clinic. Justice Clarence Thomas on Friday night had temporarily blocked that order, but the Court on Monday lifted the stay Thomas had issued.

U.S. District Judge Dean Whipple of Jefferson City, Mo., last week had issued an emergency order to require the abortion. The woman, who learned she was pregnant after being arrested in California, is in the 16th or 17th week of pregnancy. She sought an abortion while in California, but was transferred to a women's prison in
Vandalia, Mo., before an abortion could be performed. State officials, citing Missouri's official view that abortion should be discouraged, told her that they would not arrange for an abortion that was not medically necessary.

The case is Crawford v. Roe (application docket 05-A-333).
The woman faces a four-year prison term, after being picked up on a parole violation."

This makes me so happy. Due to some professional ties, I read a letter from this woman about two weeks ago. She was so determined, so intelligent, and -- considering the situation -- amazingly calm in the face of overwhelming adversity and odds. When Clarence issued a stay on Friday I thought for sure the Court would delay so long that she wouldn't be able to obtain the procdure. Thank goodness.

Ewww. . . Missouri is so John Ashcroft about shit.

naming the creatures

2005-10-16T21:42:00.000-04:00

the size of her feet led to sneaks, which didn't work.

sk suggested converse, for her coloring.

chuck taylor seemed more appropriate.

but she's so wild and thus;

numchuck taylor was born.

oh to hear you sing

2005-10-14T14:35:00.000-04:00

Bette Midler touched my arm.

And she said 'hon.'

I try not to be star struck or at least, not to take my star struck status seriously. But my leg shook when she spoke to me. Shook.

All of this and Kate Winslet! David Bowie! Lily Taylor! Richard Gere! Why the star power you may ask?

Because Antony & the Johnsons were just that good last night. With plenty of buzz after winning the Mercury Prize in Brittain, the lovely boy took to Carnegie Hall and made every last eye stop being dry. And he introduced me to the lovely and amazing Jimmy Scott.

Ugh. My heart is still beating bigger.

relax. rescind.

2005-10-07T10:17:00.000-04:00

I just read an interview with Ariel Levy in Bitch. I might have to revise part of my earlier statement. But not right now. I don't have time.

Today was my last day at my job. I'm not going far, actually I'm just going around the corner. In my work life that is, going around the corner to a new department and, hopefully, a less stressful first of the month. Still, today I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to mask as many of my inefficiencies as possible, filing, doign things I have put off for eons (there is that file! I declared all morning). I have anxiety about ending, but I'm not sure why.

In my real life, where I don't sit beneath the constant hum of overhead flourescents, I'm going to the real city of brotherly love, the gay are extraordinaire, San Fran for an extended long weekend. My motivations are 1. family (younger sister, near-college graduate, teacher-to-be) and 2. fun (the beach, the club, the ladies).

I hope I have as baptismal a time as body mascot did last weekend - although I hope for no heart ache.

No heart ache. No heart ache.

it's a cancer vaccine for god's sake

2005-10-06T17:36:00.000-04:00

I want my cancer vaccine!

An experimental vaccine has proved highly effective at preventing cervical cancer in a two-year study involving more than 12,000 women, researchers reported today.

If it were widely used, the vaccine could save many lives. Worldwide, there are about 500,000 new cases of cervical cancer a year, and 290,000 deaths. Most of the cases and most of the deaths occur in poorer countries where women do not have regular Pap tests, which can detect cancers or precancers early enough for them to be cured. In the United States, where Pap tests are common, 10,400 new cases are expected in 2005, and 3,700 deaths.

What is holding it up? Well, the vaccine works by making women immune to HPV. So it would be an HPV vaccine too. The best age to administer the vaccine would be to pre-teen girls. And we wouldn't want girls to have permission to have sex. That's what saving you from cancer would be, a call to wild pre-teen fornication.

Or so argues the far right in this country, who have been making trouble for this research from the beginning.

Don't let them delay this any longer. Call the FDA (1-888-INFO-FDA ) and demand your cancer vaccine.

Cervical Cancer Vaccine Is Found Effective - nyt

the list goes on

2005-10-06T17:25:00.000-04:00

sweet-potato wontons.

fries.

onion rings.

snickers.

tofu.

apple fritters.

that's right good golly got the deep fryer of her dreams.

all things henceforth will be served golden brown.

speaking in tongues

2005-10-06T15:19:00.000-04:00

"She's back to her old patterns."

"She's in a rut."

"Missing a lot of work."

"That's what I'm talking about, she just doesn't listen to reason."

"She stopped going. She says she's cured."

raunch dressing

2005-10-06T15:08:00.000-04:00

Girls sexuality is all the rage. There's the new study about young women's changing sexual attitudes (via feministing) and all the talk about Ariel Levy's new book Female Chauvinist Pigs

At first I wanted to give this book a chance. I'm not sure why. Something about the explanation of a raunch culture, a discussion of sex and empowerment that includes an acknowledgement that empowerment requires change to make a choice meaningful. The ladies at Slate had a good discussion about the merits of the arguments. . . though it has it's own strange hetereo-normative prudishness to it.

But I knew there was something wrong with the take. Comparing the ladies of Cake to adolescent girls wearing "Porn Star" t-shirts doesn't complicate the issue enough. Something was amiss with Ms. Levy's book -- and it's inordinate amount of press. It seems neither rigorous nor entirely insightful. It does ring a bell for me, but then no one arrives to put out the fire. Then I realized that Ariel Levy was the author of Where The Bois Are the awful piece in New York magazine about the state of ftm transgender kids in nyc. It all became clear. No wonder it's sensational -- that's the schtick.

Still, I find it disapointing. In all of this discussion about how much sex young women are having -- there is no real information on whether or not that sex is getting better, more satisfying, or if boys knowledge of women's sexual pleasure is getting any more complex. This is what I care about. I don't mind kids bumping uglies -- but I want to scream scream scream when I think about sixteen year old girls laying back for a dry, unsatisfying screw.

All of this talk about girl's sexuality and their very real (and also supposed) explotation doesn't ever offer the information or drive home the point that could change it. If you are going to have sex, you need to know what goes where for your lady pleasure. I want a study that talks about that.

As for the "raunch culture" and "female chauvinist pig" argument -- well, I think that raunch culture is slightly abhorrant. The women I know who negogiate it best are able to adapt raunch in positive affirming ways that acknowledge the fucked-upness of it's roots but use it as a means to gain pleasure -- since the alternative is none at all. The sad underside to that is that many women and girls have learned to mimic "empowerment" -- they can say all the words of feminims and independence without being able to incorporate it into their daily lives. That mimicry is where everyone seems to get confused. Because if a sixteen year old says she wants to be a porn star, it could mean one of two things. She's been reading Bust for five years, she knows how to get down, and she doesn't take no shit. Or it means that she knows that gets her attention, she envies self-possession through sex (a self posession that is rarely modeled for women in other contexts besides vamp-sexuality and mommy-dearest homemaker) and doesn't quite understand the implications of her statement. It's hard to distinguish between the two -- and they could very well overlap in a million ways.

And female chauvinist pigs -- well I feel the same way I do about that term as I do "reverse racism." It ain't right. (ie Racism requires bias plus power and privilege. Plain bias is just that.)

That said the trap of women hating other women to get into the boys club is nothing new, but it does seem to have gained new cultural strength in the past ten years. The whole "being down with the boys" and "I don't have girl friends, they're too much trouble" line breaks good golly's heart. The aim is so misdirected, the cycle so self-perpetuating. Don't hate the players girls -- hate the manufacturer of the game.

Violence Against Women Act, diluted and dirty

2005-10-05T16:07:00.000-04:00

VAWA finally makes it through, but there's a hitch.

Stuffed into the current bill in both the House and Senate is a little, unconstitutional provision that would make it legal for police to obtain dna samples from all arrestees.

Prior to conviction. Way to ruin a good thing.

read the ACLU press release here

hey indiana

2005-10-04T16:52:00.000-04:00

This one is a dandy.

There is currently a bill before the Indiana state legislator that would require anyone seeking to become impregnanted NOT through sexual intercourse, file with the sate.

Sec. 5. (a) A petition to establish parentage may be filed by an intended 30 parent. 20061258.001/84 (6) October 3, 2005 (1:24pm) (OBDAR)
1 (b) The intended parents must be married to each other, and both spouses must be parties to the action to establish parentage.
2 (c) An unmarried person may not be an intended parent.

That's right kids, non-married (read non-straight, read single women, read anyone but a Bibilical mom-and-pop with dysfunctional parts) would be barred from reproducing through technological means.

Am I kidding? No I am not

i could have been a great artist

2005-10-04T16:26:00.000-04:00

If this lady hadn't stolen my medium. So pretty

research? sexism doesn't need no stinkin' research

2005-10-04T12:12:00.000-04:00

Katha Pollitt takes down Louise Story's bullshit "Women changed their minds, they want to stay home. Period. No Conversation. All of 'em. Promise, I did research" piece which ran on the front page of nyt last week. Of course, they're in good company. Every other major magazine and newspaper are chomping at the bit to find a way to prove that women are just hormonally inclined toward toilet brushes and poop-filled diapers.

Story gets schooled: Desperate Housewives of the Ivy League?

(addendum: this is not anti-stay at home. it is definitely anti the lady stay at home because moms need to be there, because it's natural, because it's a "choice." as long as men's earning power outpaces womens, as long as there is extreme societal pressure to bear the brunt of child rearing and homemaking, and as long as gender stereotypes of "motherhood" persist there is no meaningful choice to be made. )

Holla Back NYC

2005-10-03T15:38:00.000-04:00

What do we think of this? Holla Back NYC

(most of it sparked of course by Thao Nguyen (yeah for you!), who, after being flashed on the subway, took a cameraphone picture of the perv. It circulated blogs and web, eventually showing up in the NY Post and Fox 5 News. People identified him as Dan Hoyt, owner of two raw foods restaurants. He was arrested and charged. Gothamist has a good summary here. In late August I saw at least three or four other people posting their subway flasher photos. They all said that the act of capturing them digitally seemed to diffuse the situation, reverse the power dynamic, and make the flasher retreat. )

shout out to connecticut

2005-10-03T14:51:00.000-04:00

For over the weekend becoming the first state to institute civil unions without court injunction. Yes, that means my neighbor to the North had legislators who based their decisions on fairness and equity, rather than squeamish discomfort and propriety.

Or, did they actually do it to ensure UConn women's team stay as "top" as it's been for the past decade or so?

I'm not saying anything, but I did hear that Vermont and UMass's recruiting was way up last year. Go figure.

the spirit and the gene

2005-10-03T10:51:00.000-04:00

On a nameless youth-oriented networking site a cousin (16, boy, so-cal) has taken to posting bulletins that declare his love for Jesus through various calls to faith. The posts usually involve hideous anecdotes like the following:

Evil science teachers asks class can you see a tree? Yes. Can you see the sky? Yes. Can you see god? No. So God doesn't exist. Six-year-old girl replies can you see a tree? Yes. Can you see the sky yes? Can you see the teacher’s brain? No. Well, according to your logic, it must not exist. Ha ha ha, the girl is smart because she has Jesus. Atheists are simplistic!

Other ones blame terrorism and natural disasters on the removal of prayer from schools and Dr. Spock (don't ask).

This is a wants-to-be-hip kid who sends me messages about indie bands, who is painfully aware of his slim and somewhat effeminate demeanor, but has not transformed himself into a hyper-masculinized teen-beast to accommodate for it. I babysat him when he was younger. He was amazingly articulate as a child; He was speaking in full sentences at two and a half, memorizing rap lyrics at four. He was always enormously curious and quick. So I hate to hear this business coming from him. I hate to see the ways in which the respites of my youth (punk rawk! teenage angst! loneliness) are being invaded by pop-culture Christianity. Feel lost? Rock out in anger against the God-less. Amen. Oh, the evils of co-option, of cultural parasites, of mimicry. Do you have sexual desires and a broken home? Blame Charles Darwin. The connections are all loose, free-association gone amok, fear-driven.

I, constantly recovering from a religious upbringing, cannot help but say something to the kid. I sent him a quote I heard this weekend on Speaking of Faith (NPR's soothing voiced show on religion). It's from John Polkinghorne (a scientist and priest)

"God did something much more clever than create a deterministic world. Rather, the world has the freedom to make itself."

I just like how easily it ends an evolution debate. So don't believe in Darwin, so don't get down with the last hundred years of science. At least, in all your praise and admiration, give the almighty credit for some creativity. For perhaps putting into place something a little more powerful and awe-inspiring then a regular, unaltered, dude. Instead hope for growth, for change, for your free will (on the conscious and the cellular level) to actually have weight.

Then again, back when we had God and prayer in schools we could still treat our wives as chattel! We had lynching, segregation, and vigilante justice! You know, all those true and anointed markers of true human progress.

cronyism is incredible

2005-10-03T10:00:00.000-04:00

Harriet E. Miers has never served as a judge. So she'll have no pesky record to review and slow down the nomination process. Phew, I thought we were going to have to seriously consider this position of utmost importance.

As always, check out SCOTUS blog for the most in-depth coverage. Their take this morning is:

"Miers suffers, perhaps greatly, by comparison to the President Bush's other nominee, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and few observers would expect her to perform at anywhere near to his level before the Judiciary Committee. Only senators wholly committed to Bush's choice, perhaps solely because he made it, are likely to have an easy time with the nomination if her performance is visibly lacking.

Longtime Confidante of Bush...nyt

sometimes. . . this blog annoys even me.

2005-09-30T12:52:00.001-04:00

the weekend approaches.

2005-09-30T12:16:00.000-04:00

I have declared it (to myself, here in this cubicle) the first weekend of fall. Because of the chill in the air. Because I did not run the air conditioner last night. Because it feels dark and I feel insular. The activities I crave are not dinner on the street, dancing in a hot bar -- but something involving a sweater, soup, a movie.

Tonight I will see Capote. But next up on the list are the new George Clooney thing. Red Eye (don't ask, I can't explain) and Flightplan (This one is more morbid curiosity. In an interview I tried for days to find a quote from but failed, Ms. Foster explained how this part was originally cast for a man, but the producers in all their wisdom realized two things. First, a man could never care so deeply about his child. Second, a man would never "lose it" in the way the film requires. She went on and on about how a man couldn't really go nuts, not the way a mother can. No wonder she's still closeted, Jodie still believes the wandering womb business. Fuck her.)

Pending and of Note:

Standing in the Way of Control -- the new Gossip album is *a*mazing. I'm so obsessed that I've given myself headaches the last three mornings listening to it too loud in my headphones on the way to work. It doesn't come out until January, but in the meantime they are releasing a Le Tigre remix of the title track. Which should make something in your upper leg area quiver. You can buy it at KRS Oct. 11th.

New Coco Rosie album. Haven't heard it yet -- you? Awaiting in the mail.

New Fiery Furnaces. I just read something that described it as grandmother music. Which made me hungry.

Antony&the Johnsons at Carnegie Hall Oct. 13th. Delicate and subversive music played in the sacred spaces of America's upper class. Genius. I'm going to wear a cocktail dress or a tie. You can vote.

cubs game

2005-09-30T08:25:00.000-04:00

the litter mentality

2005-09-29T17:17:00.000-04:00

When I was small my older sister told me that Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson were the same person. She explained the whole urban myth -- how Janet was never around as a child, how they never appeared in public together, how the invention of Janet was a way for Michael to explore a new kind of music. To be himself, in some ways. Or a new self. A Janet.

This seemed entirely plausible to me. So much so that when I finally did see them together -- years after I must have realized that they were different people -- it seemed like it still may be true. There they were, cavorting all over a spaceship, yelling into the camera, demanding that the world stop looking, stop talking, stop wondering about them. It made sense to me that they were the same person and that they were brother and sister.

Much of my writing is an attempt to articulate that defining connection for me. In some way I cannot imagine how I am not the same person as my siblings -- my three sisters and brother. I wonder sometimes if when we are apart it is actually because we have become the same person. We are not gone, but moving together; we are in tandem and that's why we are not standing side by side. Our phone calls are actually conversations conducted between our split personality.
And when we are together it is something else. It is a movement so easy for me, so removed from the other questions of the world (there is no erotic, no question of committment or permanence, no inquiry that stretches beyond our intimacy, no reason to remember beginnings or imagine an end) that even here I can't say what it is.

Let me say this: my disapointments in them, in their gaps in knowledge about me, are the disapointments I have in myself. They are my own failures to live honestly, to share freely, to open myself. The things we have fill them: the cookies; the remote lodged in the plaster; the burn pile; soggy fields and darkened stairways; an aversion to the smooth brown of a prescription bottle; piles of names; the safety glass spattered on the freewaythe Pulsar, the Z200, the van, the Datsun -- all those backseats.

It is the meat of me.

My brother is older, strong, protective -- but he is my younger self, shy, self effacing, too sweet. There is the sister I abandoned, there is the one who left me, all our lives repeated in one another, all our regrets mounted onto the same frame.

I know how to reflect because they have always reflected me.

what could democracy look like?

2005-09-29T12:36:00.000-04:00

A short guide to how Tom Delay laundered money and what we can do to change the system:

House Majority Leader Tom Delay (aka "the hammer") realized in 2001 that the new census information was going to be used by the Democratic-run state legislature to redraw districts. He couldn't let that happen because it would threaten the gerrymandering Republican and white dominance currently enshrined in Texas district maps (thereby threatening the job security of him and his friends.) So he created Texans for Republican Majority (a local version of Armpac -- Americans for a Republican Majority).

Now state elections are prohibited in Texas from accepting corporate money. And corporations really don't have that much of an interest in state congressmen from Waco -- but they do have an interest in the House and they certainly have one in Mr. Delay (and by extension Mr. Bush). So companies like Sears Roebuck forked over dollars to trmpac, who then laundered that money through the Republican party (who was given a list of names and told who to give how much). Thus Mr. Delay not only participated in, but orchestrated a felony conspiracy.

My interest is not only in the ways in which this incident highlights the corruption inherent in a neoconservative agenda (read:greed. see also: jack abramoff, karl rove, and Scooter Libby. "Crony capitalism" and "Stench of Corruption" are headlines I have been awaiting for a long time.)

One solution to these dilemmas that I am most interested in is the re-democratization of the american voting system. One of the most interesting proposals came from the woman who Clinton nominated for Asst. Attorney General on Civil Rights and then left for the wolves, Lani Guinier. In her book Tyranny of the Majority, Guinier argues for various forms of voting and change that would end the "winner-take-all" model of American democracy. The most bold is cumulative voting in which a person has a certain number of votes and can distribute them amongst candidates according to preference (three for the lady you really want, one for the guy you'd settle for).

The one I am interested in and that might put an end to so much of the gerrymandering (see: Delay) that currently keeps the U.S. from having anything resembling a representative democracy. Guinier proposed a non-geographical based voting systems, or multi-member "superdistricts." This allows minority communities to pool their votes over larger spaces, to avoid ghettoization of votes, and better reflects the shifting location and shared loyalties that a border -- an arbitrary line -- cannot.

In this system one might have five votes for Congressman. Say there are three seats in your state. You have lived in the rural, Republican southern end of the state for your entire life. Your vote (as a bleeding heart) has never mattered. It has fallen into the well of the 12% that always vote Dem or Independent. Under this new system you could send your votes to the West to the strong Dem challenger who you really want to see in office. Or all the way up North to the urban center, where you could support the radical left candidate who can only get elected when their supporters are not split into conveniently divided districts. Hence you give three of your votes West, two North, and let the incumbent in your district stand. Suddenly all of those isolated "minority" votes have elected two members of Congress. Rather than three conservative votes for a state that is split 55/45 -- there is a moderate, a leftie, and a Republican -- something that actually reflects the mixed hues that the blue/red single-member districts refuse to entertain.

How a Tested Campaign Tool Led to Conspiracy Charges - nyt

thank you dr. edwards

2005-09-28T16:19:00.000-04:00

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, one doctor realized that needs were great, situations pressing, and decided to offer free abortion services to evacuees . Dr. Jerry Edwards runs the only abortion clinic in central Arkansas.

Thanks doc.

Arkansas Clinic Offers Free Abortions from wapo

Delay Goes Down

2005-09-28T12:32:00.000-04:00

House Majority Leader Indicted in Texas -- nyt

the most social feline

2005-09-28T11:03:00.000-04:00

"Tigers are lions' closest relatives.

Without their coats, lion and tiger bodies are so

similar that only experts can tell them apart. "

from the smithsonian

As we circle one another, sniffing out comments, watching the tics,

anticipating the breaks here. . . now here. . . we are a pride.

It must be that keeping these problems alive.

It must be that fueling all of this:

Our insulation, our survival, our dysfunction.

Even now, after turning on the young,

he will not be cast out.

We are not elephants.

the sanctity of our courts

2005-09-28T10:53:00.000-04:00

I'm not going to say anythingjust look.

going to the pound

2005-09-27T10:51:00.000-04:00

i don't even like cats. but who can resist a kitten?

damn those bisexuals!

2005-09-27T10:32:00.000-04:00

We all know the story of Roy and Silo, two gay chinstrap penguins who shacked up together at the Central Park Zoo. They even raised a chick together (after zoo workers replaced the rock egg they had been keeping in their nest with a real one).

But alas, all good things. . .

"Silo's eye began to wander, and last spring he forsook his partner of six years at the Central Park Zoo and took up with a female from California named Scrappy. Of late, Roy has been seen alone, in a corner, staring at a wall."

But the real news folks is the hope that Roy and Silo's offspring gives to gay parents everywhere. Tango, the daughter of the pair has paired up with another young lady named Tazuni. They are one of four same-sex penguin pairs at the park. Of course, they probably moved in together too soon but that's for another day...

New Love Breaks Up a 6-Year Relationship at the Zoo - nyt
via Gawker

2005-09-27T10:29:00.000-04:00

Tyson Foods is known for it's poor treatment of workers, it's corporate looting, and it's general inability to conform to safety standards. But, as with most things, the trouble runs even deeper. Twelve employees of a plant in Ashland, AL just sued Tyson for maintaining a segregated break room and bathroom.

According to the complaint, in July 2003, a newly-renovated bathroom at the plant remained locked except to a White supervisor and certain White employees. It alleges that a Tyson authority initially placed an “out of order” sign on the door although the bathroom was working well. “Thereafter, in August 2003, employees or agents of Defendant placed a sign on the bathroom door that read ‘Whites Only,’” the complaint states."
from the Chicago Defender

As subtle and silent racism continues to grow -- fed by it's "invisibility" overt discrimination is still alive, well, and thriving.

As a side note: when I did a google news search about this story only three sources came up. Two black newspapers and the UK Guardian. Apparently mainstream U.S. press still doesn't want to talk openly about persistent racism.

didion on grief

2005-09-26T10:28:00.000-04:00

An excerpt from Joan Didion's new book The Year of Magical Thinking ran in this weekend's nyt magazine.

You should read it.

returned.

2005-09-26T10:08:00.000-04:00

On Thursday i took the 4/5 to grand central. Retreated out the nearest exit and found myself standing in front of the airport shuttle I required. Bought a ticket, boarded a bus 1/2 hour earlier then I had planned to catch.

Riding through midtown, new rock n' roll blaring in my ear, it occurred to me that I had, in that exact instant and not before, fallen in love with new york. It felt like a new crush. Or like the dawning moment when a good friend becomes your crush. It came in a wave.
When I got to the airport a very nice lady named wanda got me a standby ticket on the earlier flight and I boarded an hour early and content.

It was a complete travel success that not even the worse turbulence I've experienced in years or the woman who insisted on hiss-breathing with her hands over her ears in terror, could dislodge. I made an early bus! I kept thinking. I got an earlier flight! This is luck, this is skill, this is navigating the world.

racial slurs at UVA

2005-09-22T15:27:00.000-04:00

Wapo's article about increased racist incidents (in the first few weeks of the semester) on UVA's campus was nothing new. At my own alma mater there was an incident of racist graffiti and then a mass reaction, which seemed to provoke even more graffiti. Single incidents seem to have the power to open the lid of a pot that is always boiling. What struck me as the only interesting thing in the article was a quote from Professor Paul M. Gaston. He said "This is more than a few jerks; it's part of a cultural movement."

A point well taken and one to keep in mind as we read about new anti-feminist groups on campus and the rise of racial harassment faced by students of color. This isn't some age old racism rearing it's head, the right has been trying to reinvigorate racism and sexism -- to replant its seeds and to instigate a backlash against responsibility and thoughtfulness. Just wanted you to think about that before you derogatorily label something "PC" next time.

lift and descend.

2005-09-22T11:26:00.000-04:00

first time: california. twelve and unhappy with the meal. my legs got antsy, my stomach flipped like when I rode the gravitron. I remember I felt old. Not mature, "I'm an adult now" but "make sure the baby has her bottle / will this never end" old.

Since then planes have become a constant part of my routine. Holidays equate to airports and love is dictated by oil prices and ATA timetables. There's something sacred for me about the ritual. There is the line, the arms extended search, the communal wait, newspaper, safety routine, the lift, the drop, crossing the barrier. I have favorites. Descending into PDX during the day, the Columbia River sweeping us along, the layover in Chicago, Indy at night. I am always hungry when I fly, unable to track down meat-less fare, and this leaves me frazzled and awake. But after all these years I have learned to surrender to my seat once it arrives. I can sleep through all but the worst turbulence.

I heard a radio piece once where a lot of people described how the silliest things made them cry on planes. Bad movies, sentimental airline radio songs. That it was a space where they found themselves overcome. If you were to happen upon me at 6 AM at LaGuardia you might find me ashambles. Shaky from a too-early-to-smoke cigarette. I'm always leaving someone and so I cry a lot. One week at home makes me feel so connected to my family that leaving them feels like that awful night at the end of high school when I tucked in my youngest sib in bed and drove north, flew east, left. When she jokes about us abandoning her at home -- with those two lost souls that boo and holler and haunt her -- there is a pang so deep in my stomach that it is hard to identify as an emotion. It is more like a lever installed especially for her. She could pull it any time she wanted, any of them could really, and my body would be obliged to follow. They have never utilized it, never asked much of me at all, given me my space, my distance, my city. I wonder if they even know it's there. Because they never say "come back" they only look so excited, giggle so loud, when it is mentioned. They celebrate every possibility but they do me the favor of never asking. So they do know then.

All this is to say that I walked to work today tugging a roll-along suitcase. So much more convenient then the heavy olden thing I prefer to have on these trips. And I felt, like I always do, that I was about to leave it all behind again. That a move, a change, a cleansing was calling my name. That I was going home. Or again chasing that notion of home that I've never really felt and constantly yearned after. I have tried to imagine a place where all the people I love are reachable. A city so complete that it holds open space within it, where I am tied and set loose all at once. Where no one is twelve hours, two plane changes, and a three hour drive on top of it -- away.

What a strange world it would be. My parents living next to the radical queers, my aunt rooming with the young dykes, my grandmother in the entrance to the art opening. That would be home right, that would make this life whole -- if I could share everything all at once. As soon as I see it, it falls apart. The frame splits and the houses I have crafted fall away from one another, one back into the cavernous street scene, one cascading down the choppy river. My grandmother turns back from the canvas in horror and looks at me askew. I am made different, something in what she sees suddenly broken. My aunt -- maybe my aunt could hang -- but it would be a strange thing the way that my friends would take her, own her. I would hate the way they told her stories, used her life, her poverty, as their credibility. I know a woman named Deb they would say, she is this sociological example. She is this thing for me to use in conversation. Just like I'm doing now.

But I'm not even flying home. I'm going to the middle of some mid-western city to spend time with a family that is not my own. Still, I'm flying alone to get there. Which means an evening in an airport and cold Wendy's fries. I have headphones and a letter to write. I have to say something, although I have not yet been able to imagine what words will work. I'm sure I will find them more easily in that in-between piece of atmosphere. I have, at the very least, faith in travel.

an unexamined life...

2005-09-20T12:03:00.000-04:00

The news article about the "hordes" of "smart and attractive" women who are running from the boardroom are pretty constant in the last two years. I try not to give them credence or too much hype, since that's what a lot of it is. But this quote, from the end of the article, stuck out at me:

"Ms. Ku added that she did not think it was a problem that women usually do most
of the work raising kids.
'I accept things how they are,' she said. 'I don't mind the status quo. I don't see why I have to go against it.'"

This acknowledgement, that there remains a fundamental misunderstanding of how gender roles operate or how they affect various parts of your life, drives me bonkers. All these 19 & 20 year old girls declaring how they want to work for ten years and then give it all up. First of all, the class privilege inherent in these conversations is ridiculous. The whole article is written like "well, it's me at home or a nanny and I just don't trust the lower class to rear good rich kids." More than elite college grads, these are upper class rich kids who seem to have no worries about repaying student debt or needing to earn money for their families. Already that takes us into the top tiny tier of the U.S. -- not one that is a measuring stick for general trends.

There is an argument to be made that "motherhood" is often the golden ticket out of a working life that is not as rewarding or meaningful in the U.S. as it could be. The amount of time and exhaustion required to "make it" in an 80-hour-work-week environment is not one that anyone, in the long run, really wants. So some women are using toddlers as a way to get out of it, the way that in five years their boring gender robot husbands will use an affair or a trip around the world. There is something valuable, instructive even, about doing something other than work. At the same time, for this girl to be like -- don't want to look at the world, don't want to know how it affects me, don't see why things should ever change -- is just painful.

"Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood" - from the nyt

After Blocking the Bridge, Gretna Circles the Wagons - Los Angeles Times

2005-09-19T17:47:00.000-04:00

Gretna, LA is justifying blocking New Orleans flood victims from evacuation, claiming it was their fear of "people from New Orleans" propensity for "murder" and "stealing" that kept them from opening their hearts and roads.

Oh, cause I thought it was because of the racist assumptions you made about black people from New Orleans propensity to commit crimes that you kept them out. Now that I know better. . . hey, wait a minute!

After Blocking the Bridge, Gretna Circles the Wagons
(from bitch phd)

three point eight square miles

2005-09-19T15:57:00.000-04:00

measured upon recent inspection:
An elaborate ruse wherein a group of five cousins proceed to local rural school for free summer lunches, picking up other cousins on the way. Elaborate ruse used to ensure second set of children eat something "decent." The maneuver provides two things: long thin hot dogs served with generic and bitter ketchup; no prideful rage provoked. The ammonia scented man stays plastered against the fake wood paneling of his bedroom. Not at work on the night shift, not asleep.

That sad cowboys mustache you used to cover the gaunt bones of your face. As if we wouldn't know, this man who played me Luke Skywalker albums, who bounced across my living room to Living Colour. You of all people wearing that redneck chops stache. Everyone smiling through their mashed potatoes. You were only there a moment and so I did not have time to laugh.

My brothers guilty looks, eyes darting. How can he say what he knows without telling me what he's done. Even now he is a boy wonderer, so eager to follow you past the limits drawn for us. You promised him adventures -- cross bows, automatic weapons, pornography, all those big boy games. He can't imagine you wrong. Holding it out in front of me the new toys. Ice, crank, ghb, formaldehyde dips. The promise of all those broken teeth.

Older recollection:
You kept numchucks in your top most drawer. Folded your white outfit meticulously. Flipped us smaller kids onto the dirty mattresses grandma kept piled in the basement. I landed nose down and lay still, sniffing the aging urine there. How exciting to fly, to be looked at sternly by you. Ka-yah.

You would let me steer your run-down red fiat down the hill while you pushed until the engine caught. Then you would climb over the trunk and I would dodge under your legs so you could drive. You let me sit on the back, arms up, free to fall if I was dumb enough, free to ride along if I was smart enough to stay quiet. That car always died as soon as it would be a pain in the ass to walk back.

'Arrest us all'

2005-09-19T15:45:00.000-04:00

"In India, even to admit to being raped is taboo, yet dozens of Yadav's victims reported the crime. But the 32-year-old was never charged with rape. Instead, the women say, the police would tell him who had made the reports and he would come after them. According to residents, the police were hand-in-glove with Yadav: he fed the local officers bribes and drink, and they protected him."

After years of terrorizing women in his town, the rapist was set upon by a group of 200 women. After killing him in the white marble hall of the district court, the women told the police "Arrest us all" from the Guardian

meth on my mind

2005-09-19T12:38:00.000-04:00

"In Linn County several ‘entrepreneurial’ meth cooks have begun a garbage collection service to remove chemical waste material for larger cooks. These user meth cooks either cook off the waste or sell the materials to other smaller cooks. This type of ‘garbage removal service’ is not unknown in Oregon, however the change from the random service to organized agreements between larger and smaller cooks is a recent development."

From METH LAB AND CLUB DRUG ACTIVITY IN OREGON

2005-09-19T10:42:00.000-04:00

friday night started the dance party out right

with the gossip at knitting factory.

and sunday set me to sweating for sure

le tigre seemed grateful to be in new york. they did a summer tour opening for beck, which i'm sure was a contrast to the gyrating floor of fanatics that shook their butts, kissed each other with gusto, and pumped their fists last night at webster hall.

i watched from above, where I carved out enough dance room to work up crazy sweat. Danceable rock shows are the most cathartic experience; there is no other remedy like it. Even today, with not enough sleep, parked in front of a computer monitor at work, i feel tingly. The show was spot on. TKO and FYR prove that three letter initials make the best disco anthems. Thanx for the leg cramp ladies, thanx for the leg cramp.

(addendum: do not think i brought my digi-cam to the rock show. there is no time, no room for me to create representations of the experience I am in the midst of. Oh no, I steal pics from other kids who bring annoying digi cams, god bless 'em.)

pour myself a cup of ambition

2005-09-16T11:06:00.000-04:00

walking through lower manhattan yesterday, listening to "9 to 5" on the earbuds, I dodged some suits on the corner and avoided the splash of water the bus I was trying to board shot up at my feet.

For a moment, as Dolly sang "It's a rich man's game and they never give you credit. . ." I felt like I was in the midst of the New York I dreamed about when I was six years old and obsessively watched that movie. I don't even think that movie was set in New York, I think it was set in Chicago, but the point stands. That working woman, fast paced, musical version of the city happened for me yesterday.

Then I got off the bus and walked one block to the Kinkos on Houston where I spotted a girl with blue bangs and an octopus tatoo. I picked up the flyers and put the earbuds back on. Suddenly I felt like I was in the midst of the punk-rock dream of the city I had when I was fifteen. I had the fliers, I was going to pick up my cmj badge, the cute kids were preening on the sidewalk.

Most of the time the city just feels like a maze based game that I have to negogiate without soiling my clothes, but yesterday it was buzzing. The crazies were out and I was not ashamed to be dancing on the platform with them.

ooh ooh elections make me drool

2005-09-15T10:16:00.000-04:00

Very very good news from the Strategic Vision Poll

"Do you approve or disapprove of United States Senator Rick Santorum's job performance?
Approve 45%
Disapprove 40%
Undecided 15%

15. If the election for United States Senate were held today, and the choice was between Robert Casey, Jr., the Democrat and Rick Santorum, the Republican, whom would you vote for?
Casey 52%
Santorum 38%
Other 3%
Undecided 7%

gearing up for election season 2006

2005-09-15T10:01:00.000-04:00

WaPo has coverage of the VA gubernatorial debates

"Kilgore faltered under a series of questions by moderator Tim Russert, host of NBC's Meet the Press. Asked by Russert whether he would sign a bill to outlaw abortion if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade , Kilgore refused to answer, calling the question hypothetical.
Russert, who thrills in catching national politicians in contradictions on his Sunday morning show, followed up quickly by asking whether Kilgore would veto a tax increase. Kilgore fell for the trick question, saying he would.
"That's a hypothetical question!" Russert said, prompting laughter from the luncheon crowd of more than 500 Northern Virginia business executives in the ballroom of the Hilton McLean Tysons Corner.
"Kilgore was nervous and tense. He sounded bad. He argued badly," said University of Virginia politics professor Larry Sabato, who is scheduled to moderate a debate Oct. 9. "This was Kaine's best performance ever."

The governor's race in Virginia is one of the most important in 2005. While the NJ governors race will probably remain in the hands of Democrats and, unfortunately, NYC will keep falling for the "no NY republican is a real republican" facade of Bloomberg -- there is a real risk Republican Jerry Kilgore replacing Democrat Mark Warner.

Such a large and powerful red state electing another Democrat will not just be better for Virginia, but could bode well for the way that things will tip in 2006. If we are to make any real inroads to the growing conservative corprotacracy in 2008 -- we have to win big in the mid-term elections. We need to recapture state houses and the Congress.

So, quit your jobs and get to work.

Court Nominee Says Early Career Is No Guide - New York Times

2005-09-14T16:17:00.000-04:00

Court Nominee Says Early Career Is No Guide -- nyt

So throw us a bone johnny.

With only two years on the bench and a refussal to be frank (contradicted by Ginsburg, and to some extent Thomas, the last two people nominated to the bench), Roberts continues to seem like a slick, charming, handsome weasel, well versed in the art of revealing nothing. Revealing his stand on every case may not be appropriate, but having a frank discussion is necessary to the nomination process.

Bush Takes Responsibility for Failures in Storm Response - New York Times

2005-09-13T15:51:00.000-04:00

nyt says

"President Bush said today that he accepted responsibility for the extent to which the federal government fell short in the Hurricane Katrina relief effort."

Responsibility? Bush? Willingly? I'm going to need to see a transcript to believe that.

Trust Me, Baby by Kristen Lombardi

2005-09-13T14:21:00.000-04:00

From the village voice: Hilary Snookered on Plan B

"The latest development in the Plan B battle reveals more than just the administration's dishonesty, though. It shows how much the Bush White House remains in the clutches of the right's most extreme elements. Many conservatives actually support the idea of putting Plan B on drugstore shelves, says Ann Stone of the Virginia-based Republicans for Choice, who counts herself as one. 'Clearly,' she adds, 'the FDA is pandering to very vocal, extreme right-wing groups.' "

transgender murderers convicted/cleared

2005-09-13T11:39:00.000-04:00

From WaPo: "HAYWARD, Calif. -- Two men who had sex with a transgender teenager and then discovered she was biologically male were convicted of her murder but cleared of hate-crime charges. Michael Magidson and Jose Merel, both 25, face mandatory prison sentences of 15 years to life for killing Gwen Araujo, 17, who was beaten, tied up and strangled. The jury was deadlocked in the case of a third man, Jason Cazares, 25."

Isn't this what hate crimes laws were invented for? They murdered her because she was trans. The media insists on using Gwen's birth name, which was legally changed, further sensationalizing her murder and attempting to muddle the issue.

Remembering Our Dead has a great site that maintains statistics and information about the murders of trans folks. There is at least anti-trans murder a month in the U.S. They also have statistics about anti-transgender murders from 1970-2004

These crimes are often unreported, even more so the defendants often get lighter sentences and use the fact of their victims transgender status as a justification. As some of the most targeted and victimized members of our communities, we all must start expressing outrage over these crimes whenever they occur. You can read more about Gwen here

***

addendum: ewwww. I was just reading more accounts and realized how dirty the WaPo coverage that I first quoted was. It indicated, although somewhat vaguely, that Gwen had sex with the two men the night of her murder. In fact, she was friends with the men, not a stranger. They had become friends over the course of a few months and she had sex with one of them (maybe not both) on a previous occasion.

the real marriage debate redux

2005-09-13T10:53:00.000-04:00

Should marriage be abolished? I think so Apparently feministing don't. But they might be swayed.

Roberts begins march toward Chief

2005-09-12T23:11:00.000-04:00

For note: 43 Presidents have only elected 17 Chief Justices over the course of 229 years.

The network news ran light coverage of the hearings tonight , a bad sign. All three clipped his umpire metaphor and commented on his charm.

Scotusblog says "So far, to my mind, the most impressive Senators have been (in order of presentation) Specter, Feinstein, and Graham. The play-by-play is here.

gaza returns to palestinian control 38 years later

2005-09-12T17:27:00.000-04:00

I had to dig to find a non-sensational headline, but of course, always go foreign for objective news coverage. Jubilant Palestinians return to Gaza from the Guardian

birth

2005-09-12T17:14:00.000-04:00

three things:

a. A sheep when I was seven years old. I had a hand on its flank. I pulled as instructed.

b. A baby. I took photos of the proceedings. I was not overcome with awe so much as struck by an enormous feeling of empathy and connection with my sister.

c. that movie with nicole kidman. the boy in the bathtub and the way they made the city seem so icy and deserted, a snowbound place.

2005-09-12T15:36:00.000-04:00

I just wrote a rather long post that I trimmed for clarity, for brevity. There are more ideas, these are rough, rough, rough.

* * *

I thought today, without any real justification or evidence, that decadence is masculine. i.e. Decadence often represents a position of privilege or power that grants one the ability to indulge in overtly selfish acts. What I am struggling with is whether or not decadence can operate as a mode of resistance. I see the beauty in the idea; in Foucault's limit experience, in Bataille, even in Camille Pagilla (hi jr). But in my everyday life, in the operation and negotiation between myself and the world, I have little tolerance for what decadence has come to mean. Perhaps I'm not opposed to the idea, but only the 1960s-nostalgia-based pursuit of it that centers around drug use, casual (in this sense it might mean stranger based, but more accurately thoughtless) sex, and general self-abuse.

With some good reason, the community that has come to represent the greatest collective representation of decadence is gay men (often gay white men). Free from societal expectation of children/family, those "out" individuals often fairing from middle-to-upper class backgrounds, with all the power and privilege of patriarchy and skin privilege, were able to push boundaries of taste, culture, sex, models of living, etc...

I've thought about this a lot -- why I am such a prude. There is a responsibility I feel -- toward my family, my friends, my self, my community, to consciousness -- that preempts me from edge-walking behavior. Or rather, the tradition of decadence as it's developed in the U.S. over the last forty years. I think that other forms of decadence are easily accessible to me, interesting. Modes that are radical, that are revolutionary, but that are not without regard for others, for self, for ethics. When I consider decadence, I find that it often isn't radical, but a celebration of the unradical and a rumination in the individual-obsessed fiction of U.S. culture -- that we act alone, that we grow through taking the world on cowboy style, let the women and children fall to the side, shrug off the government, shoot-em-up ride, ride, ride.

More structured thoughts pending....

Hullabaloo

2005-09-12T15:18:00.000-04:00

this kids got it summed up. Hullabaloo

the work of repair

2005-09-11T00:39:00.000-04:00

phone call. birthday card. say hello to that person you live with... rudimentary evidence.

all signs of attempts at normalizing relations. appreciated and distrusted in almost equal measure. try to avoid conversations that encourage:

a. hypochondria
b. discussion about being a five-year-old girl.
c. connection

In the outside world: try to avoid people who talk about their mothers with devotion. Try to avoid conversations about medicine, illness, irritable bowels. . . do not think about that grinding knot that is your stomach.

Remember E.V. Spelman's elements of a genuine apology. Hold out, hold out.

for reference:

note to celebrity do-gooders

2005-09-11T00:31:00.000-04:00

If you have a lot of free time and money AND you want to volunteer with the hurricane relief effort -- that is wonderful. I'm sure celebrities at shelters brighten days and that extra hands are needed to help unload the truck.

But please leave your camera crew at home. The minute I see that you're trailing around with an Oprah crew or a Entertainment Tonight mic, it just doesn't seem as genuine. Why do I get the feeling that as soon as the little red light goes off, John Travolta and Lisa Marie wipe their hands and take three steps back from the refugees?

where was this when i was eleven?

2005-09-10T22:09:00.000-04:00

Apparently, the newest Seventeen magazine has a page dedicated to explaining the vag, replete with a rainbow array of legs to help illustrate.

This is incredible to me for many reasons.

1. The first bullet is the clitoris. Unlike my high school Health II teacher, who informed a class of mostly sexually active sixteen year olds that the "clitoris serves no biological function and will not be discussed," Seventeen lays it bare for the young ladies, basically saying "this is where the money is."

2. About seven years ago, I saw a similar spread in Cosmo -- except various men were asked to draw arrows to where they thought various parts of the vagina were. It was something like one in ten who could point to the general area of the clit. Everything else was vaguely "lips" and "junk."

3. Fuck yeah. Get with your stuff, you gotta know how to use it. Way too many twelve-year-old girls know the inside out and out of a cock and nothing about their precious precious.

via gawker

He used to host INSIDE EDITION, why do people listen to this prick?

2005-09-10T20:14:00.000-04:00

O'Reilly blames the poor

"The USA has mandatory education, but nobody can force you to learn. If you refuse to do the work, you're going to be ill-equipped, and all the government programs in the world are not going to change that. Every American kid should be required to watch video of the poor in New Orleans and how they suffered because they couldn't get out of town. And every teacher should tell the students that if you refuse to learn, you will be poor and powerless."

Maybe someone should tell Bill that lots of people get an education, work their asses off, and are STILL poor. Or maybe someone should tell Bill that since he and his right-wing friends have made contraception and reproductive health so hard to access in this country, innumerable women and men have been strapped with children at a young age, negating their access to the capital this country requires to get a foothold. And maybe Bill should advocate for some QUALITY education and some equity for the poor. Nah, let's call 'em welfare queens, underpay them, live large off their labor and complain about how lazy they are. That's worked for so long, why quit now?

if you scratch a little at the u.s. you will find. . .

2005-09-10T19:56:00.000-04:00

From The Guardian

"A Louisiana police chief has admitted that he ordered his officers to block a bridge over the Mississippi river and force escaping evacuees back into the chaos and danger of New Orleans. Witnesses said the officers fired their guns above the heads of the terrified people to drive them back and "protect" their own suburbs."

This American Life about the disaster after the hurricane was wrenching. A woman evacuated from the local hospital to the convention center describes her sincere belief as the days dragged on that the authorities were planning on killing them. She describes water trucks passing the mobs of people by and gives a grateful description of "looters" who brought food, protected the very young and old. In the second act you hear how one white family was able to cross the bridge -- and how they brought four people-of-color with them by pretending they were relatives. The woman describes feeling outraged that others were left behind and ecstatic for surviving, like she had "won the lottery."

The skin lottery, hadn't you heard? It's the oldest, most long standing game in the U.S. Didn't get your ticket? Don't worry, everybody is automatically entered.

today's tangential

2005-09-09T17:57:00.000-04:00

Oak pruning causes a stir

"The man who trimmed and thinned the majestic tree at Heritage Mall said he pruned the tree properly, but a certified arborist and others contend that he cut so much from the tree that the health of the 300-year-old white oak is in question."

I love local news.

dyslexic cake

2005-09-09T14:22:00.000-04:00

the lady friend may have reversed the numbers on the cake.

but when you get birthday brunches this beautiful, who are you to complain about the juxtaposition of shapes and symbols?

Representing the Oregon's 3rd Congressional District

2005-09-09T14:13:00.000-04:00

Prescience on the part of Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer's:

"Mr. Speaker, I recently had the opportunity to view the devastation in Southeast Asia as a result of the tsunami. As appalled as I was by what I saw, I must confess that occasionally my thoughts drifted back to the United States. What would have happened if last September, Hurricane Ivan had veered 40 miles to the west, devastating the city of New Orleans? One likely scenario would have had a tsunami-like 30-foot wall of water hitting the city, causing thousands of deaths and $100 billion in damage.
The city has always been at risk because of its low-lying location, but that risk has been increased because of rising sea levels, groundwater pumping and the erosion of coastal Louisiana. Twenty-four square miles of wetland disappear every year, since the 1930s an area one and a half times the size of Rhode Island washed away.
Considering the reaction of the American public to the loss of a dozen people in the recent mud slides in California, it is hard to imagine what would happen if a disaster of that magnitude hit the United States.
The experience of Southeast Asia should convince us all of the urgent need for congressional action to prevent wide-scale loss of life and economic destruction at home and abroad. Prevention and planning will pay off. Maybe the devastation will encourage us to act before disaster strikes. "

a short list of things

2005-09-09T13:23:00.000-04:00

"Being poor is knowing exactly how much everything costs."

from John Scalzi

The list has it's problems, but also some stingers.

roll call

2005-09-08T16:55:00.000-04:00

all the robot marketing spam get good golly blue.

so does the lack of chatter. i know yr there. leave a note for me (non bloggers, this means you). if the parish prez made you weepy, say so. if you think i'm full of shit when it comes to the hypocrasy of outing, i appreciate it. so, open thread.

roooollll calllll.

ps. i want yr stories for abduction season

local to cheney: "go fuck yourself"

2005-09-08T14:26:00.000-04:00

Jossip's got the live feed

thumbs up for gays in china

2005-09-08T10:53:00.000-04:00

Fudan University began offering the first class in China to deal with gays and lesbians yesterday.

Two questions: I wonder why the overheads are in English and I wonder why the story estimates the country's gay population at only 48 million. That seems a little sparse in a country of a billion+ people. Are they not counting people who get some same sex lovin' on the side?

A Chinese University Removes a Topic From the Closet - NYT

Bush's astounding arrogance

2005-09-08T10:44:00.000-04:00

From Salon.com: "That night, at the White House, Bush met with congressional leaders of both parties, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi urged Bush to fire Brown. 'Why would I do that?' the president replied. 'Because of all that went wrong, of all that didn't go right last week,' she explained. To which he answered, 'What didn't go right?' "