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July 27, 2000
I'm sick and tired of waiting around to get famous before someone asks me what my favorite album/food/book/human trait is!
I found this in my hamp account. It's one of those obnoxious forward-polls that people send around, which I filled out but never sent to anyone because I'm trying to cut down on cluttering others' mailboxes, especially with self-important tripe. I'm working right now on curricula for early childhood, and it's funny to me how much this poll is like the self-esteem and self-awareness activities people suggest for toddlers (imagine this written in fingerpaint on big pre-cut cat-head-shaped pieces of construction paper bound together with yarn and titled, "All About ME!", no?)
NAME: G. Andrews
SEX: sex, or gender?
AGE: 23
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT OUIJI BOARDS: It's funny that they made
passive-agression into a game.
YOUR FAVORITE TV SHOW?: I do not endorse anything that already has a
sickeningly large advertising budget to promote itself. So, ignoring the
fact that I cannot be pulled away from the local Fox affiliate between 7
and 10 PM on Sundays, or Sci Fi when MST3K is in reruns, let's just say
Iron Chef.
LIVING ARRANGEMENTS:I live in a dilapidated 1920s-era house in a
semigentrified part of Queens. I am housesitting for a
professor who, by dint of fate, has become a sort of extended family
member. Two goldfish, two finches, two hermit crabs, and a bunch of poltergeists share the space with me.
WHAT'S ON YOUR MOUSE PAD?: MC Escher's "Drawing Hands"
FAVORITE MAGAZINE: Harper's
FAVORITE SMELL: Some combination of clean active people, the papaya
shampoo an ex-boyfriend used to use, impending rain, and the foliage of
Caltech in early summer.
FAVORITE COLOR: Purple
WORST FEELING IN THE WORLD:
BEST FEELING IN THE WORLD: Yesterday I wrote this:
"It must be like having a racehorse. First of
all, there's some kinds of horse who just won't run their best if they're
alone on the track. They lollygag around ogling the stands, and the
stalls, and the palm trees around the track. My horse doesn't hit her
stride until her nemeses are gaining on her, just like some corny Black
Stallion scenario climaxing in a race with a mystery horse from overseas.
These ones aren't mysteries. Their names are Deadline, and Career, Debt,
and Mr.MediaEstablishment.
But god it feels good when she puts her neck into it, grabs the bit in her
teeth and runs. I am writing, and it's all words and in my head, but I can
feel the balance of it. It's a kendo balance, an architectural balance --
physics and art. I watch the words fly away under the cadence of my
pounding, don't keep track of my splits."
Some other day I would say something else. Usually feeling unloved and
misunderstood ranks high up there on my list of bad feelings. Feeling
competent at anything makes everything else feel good.
WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU WAKE IN THE MORNING-
"Goddamn it, I have to go to work again. I have nothing but hate."
ROLLER COASTERS-SCARY OR EXCITING? Terrifying. I hate being out of
control of my body.
PEN OR PENCIL? Nowadays, pen.
HOW MANY RINGS BEFORE YOU ANSWER THE PHONE? One
FUTURE SON'S NAME: Caleb, Lucas, Gilman Blake, or Riddley Walker. That's if I have kids, mind you. (I've been meaning to write about that lately. think I will soon.)
FUTURE DAUGHTER'S NAME: Octavia, Ruby, Cora, or (Eu)dora. Or Whoopi.
CHOCOLATE OR VANILLA? Pistachio.
DO YOU LIKE TO DRIVE: Oh god yes. Being a Californian without a car is
not a state of being I intend to slip back into. I do tend to get in the
car, turn on the AC and local Spanish-language station, idle the motor and have this awful feeling that I am wasting money and finite natural resources just by sitting there. But I grew up among old Packards and
Cords and Lamborghinis-- my father was never without a
partially-disassembled one in the garage-- and can't get over the surreal
beauty of old cars. We have to destroy them, because they are killing us,
but I am going to mourn when we do.
DO YOU SLEEP WITH STUFFED ANIMALS? Lots. Right now for some reason
the ones I'm sleeping with are all about the size of my fist.
STORMS - COOL OR SCARY: Cool. All-heat-lightning storms exempted.
IF YOU COULD MEET ONE PERSON, DEAD OR ALIVE, WHO WOULD IT BE? I just
wish Eqbal Ahmad were still around, so I could pick his brain and
let him know that I really did have more to do than just stand around watching my laundry spin in the Greenwich dryer. It scares me a little
that he is gone.
WHAT IS YOUR SIGN: Eat At Joe's
ALL-TIME FAVORITE MOVIE: UHF has been way up there since I watched it
again last June. No -- wait -- Nausicaa supplanted it last fall. Um... and
Michael Moore deserves mad props for the way he can make you feel like
you're watching a trapeze act instead of an interview in a documentary... I
don't tend to have lasting favorites of anything. I'm too much of a
dilettante.
ALL-TIME FAVORITE CHARACTER(S) FROM A MOVIE: Nausicaa, and Thomas
Builds-The-Fire from Smoke Signals.
FAVORITE BAND: David Byrne can do absolutely no wrong, in my eyes.
ALL-TIME FAVORITE SONG: I prefer Glenn Miller's "String of Pearls" to dance to, and I have to mention They Might Be Giants somewhere, so "Moving To The Sun" and "She's an Angel." At one point, it was "Do You
Know The Way To San
Jose?" (yes. that Do You Know The Way To San Jose.)
DO YOU EAT THE STEMS OF BROCCOLI? I should.
DO YOU LIKE SPINACH? yes.
IF YOU COULD HAVE ANY JOB YOU WANTED, WHAT WOULD IT BE? Right now my
goal is to find a job that will pay me to think out loud and move mighty
pieces of information around. And be creative in a variety of media.
IF YOU COULD LIVE ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, WHERE WOULD IT BE? Catalina
Island, with a dedicated T1 connection at least. Alas, they ain't nothin
there but tourists and transplanted buffalo.
IF YOU COULD DYE YOUR HAIR ANY COLOR, WHAT WOULD IT BE? Half
iridescent silver, half purple.
IS THE GLASS HALF EMPTY OR HALF FULL? I am greedy and have finished it
off by now! You are too late!
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SNAPPLE? I will not endorse anything with a
blah blahblah yackitty yak. And I have pledged jihad on anyone who advances the cause of presweetened tea.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SLURPEE FLAVOR? Ass. See previous.
ARE YOU A LEFTY, RIGHTY OR AMBIDEXTROUS? Right hand, left wing.
WHAT'S UNDER YOUR BED? I hope not much. A few stray stuffed animals, a
shoe belonging to the last girl who lived in my room, and probably
monsters from Laurie Nisonoff's childhood. Like, Joe McCarthy, maybe.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE NUMBER? Infinity. Or maybe four.
SAY ONE NICE THING ABOUT THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU: The Edel twins
are going to make the best husbands/"life partners" on earth. I wouldn't
pimp out my sisters to just anyone, you know.
And then I added some:
Favorite food: Miso soup with scallion and tofu!
Favorite human traits: Pathos and hypocrisy!
Would you rather have no arms or no legs?: I used to say no legs without
question, but nowadays I do so much dancing...
Favorite comic: Anything with a penguin.
Favorite inside joke: "CUSTARD AND BEEF! APPLES AND ONIONS! COFFEE
AND PIE! FROM THE SAME SPIGOT!"
* * * * *
Well, now. Wasn't that enlightening?
I saw Moxy Fruvous play at the Bottom Line last night. Damn their energy is unbelievable. They started with "Michigan Militia" and continued through what was it, THREE encores?!, one of which was a medley of Take A Walk On the Wild Side, Dancing Queen, Angel of Harlem, and I do believe it was introduced with a spoken-word rendition of Do You Know The Way To San Jose? as performed by a Lou Reed impostor. Or maybe I'm confusing things, because they also did covers of Do You Believe In Life After Love?, You're Gonna Lose That Girl, and oh good lord I can't remember what-all else. If anyone has boots of these I would love to hear 'em.
Posted by me at 1:51 PM | Comments (2)
July 20, 2000
Is this what democracy looks like?
On the train this morning I was remembering a conversation I had with Kellan in the midst of the madness in DC last April. We'd snuck away from the IMC to look for a restaurant sometime in the evening, and ended up at a place called U.S.A. Pizza, or something equally as patriotic. America Pizza? The place was run by Iranians, and had some of the strangest decor I've ever seen -- plastic flowers with fake dewdrops and a map of Iran on the wall, I think. (I would wonder why I don't remember these striking details so clearly, except that I know I got less than ten hours of sleep combined over that whole weekend.)
It was good being alone with Kellan again. That night he was expressing particular love for a slogan we'd all been chanting: "This is what democracy looks like." I liked it too. It's a nice way of reasserting the better parts of America, the parts that McCarthyites would like you to think are Communist, like labor solidarity and grassroots organizing.
But I've been thinking about that since. All this -- DC, Seattle, the coming storms in Philly and L.A. -- isn't what democracy looks like, is it? What democracy is supposed to look like is higher voter turnout, maybe proportional representation; what democracy does look like is a bunch of monopoly capitalists laughing it up in train cars with candidates who have less moral sense than a houseplant. It's sweet, but a little simpleminded, to liken democracy to a parade of college grads with giant paper-mache puppets.
So I'm sticking with "Whose streets? OUR STREETS!" which is what people were chanting when I got arrested. That one's true, and feels just as good.
* * * * *
I don't mean to be posting so many links to other blogs, really I don't, but this was irresistable. Not all of it. Just the entry on July 18th, 2000. File it under "This Modern World," you know? And this blog actually doesn't involve people talking about what soda they drank for lunch and what time they get off work, which is an improvement. I am still waiting for someone like Joan Didion or Scott Russell Sanders to make reading blogs worthwhile. I'd rather see blogs used as an art form than a bunch of pointless exhibitionist diaries, but maybe that's the pot calling the kettle black.
Posted by me at 5:25 PM | Comments (0)
July 19, 2000
Local schools and the etymology of "mamí"
(adapted from a letter I sent to my former roomie today)
I went to a meeting of local parents about the school system today. It
was, of course, infuriating. I found out that the school next door to where
I've been working ranks 656th out of 677 schools in the whole city. And it
just opened last year!!! Someone alleged that a high-level administrator, in
addition to screaming at kids and degrading teachers and parents, punished
some kids by denying them lunch. That's *illegal*. It's child abuse. Over
and over these parents were saying that the schools lacked certified
teachers... I just wanted to scream out, Wait, I can teach! Hell, I'll
take the principal's job, and I swear to you I'll do it better than he
does!
I feel like moving out of my super-low-rent apartment in this lovely part of Queens and finding a place up here in the Bronx and really digging in to the community, just teaching my heart out. It drives me mad
to hear these things are going on and not be able to do anything about it.
* * * * *
I meant to post something about the interesting conversation our office ended up having yesterday on the meaning of the word "mamí." I forget how it came up, but somehow we started discussing it when my boss came down to speak with a co-worker yesterday. We were trying to explain to her the meaning of the word, which presents a challenge.
"Mamí" wasn't a word I'd heard before coming to the Bronx, save in the corner of my hearing as I passed mumbling old men in Queens. "...mira mamí..." "...sexy mamí..." "...eh mamí que paso?..." If not for this charged context one might mistake the word for its American homonym, "mommy."
Away from the hot breath of lascivious old New York men the word takes on a different meaning. I grew aware of this as my co-worker, a demure mother of five in her thirties, started to call me "mamí" as an alternate for her usual affectionate "baby." I have since heard people of all ages call women mamí, with diverse implications. It seems to have spread beyond the Spanish-speaking Puerto Rican and Dominican community to neighbors. The phrase is at its most mind-bending found out of Hispanic context: every once in a while, I hear African-American or Jamaican mothers address their tiny daughters as "mommy."
My boss came at this with her feminist goggles on. "How fascinating... are they grooming these little girls for motherhood when they say this?" she asked, her curiosity running a little exploratory expedition for Queen Outrage. None of us thought so. As far as I can see, the flexibility of the word has almost divorced it from any implications of age or motherhood status. A few women in the office told stories about a family member or two who had become indignant and reminded strangers addressing them as "mamí" that she was not their mother. But generally, "mamí" seems to simply be a somewhat intimate form of address for a female person, as "papí" is for a male. Things I might not have learned if I'd never left Pasadena.
Posted by me at 1:33 PM | Comments (0)
July 18, 2000
Cancer!
Posted by me at 1:27 PM | Comments (0)
Links For The Day
Links for today:
Look! It's Slashdot! For Pokemon! (This is another Blogger-powered site. Thanks, Blogger!)
Anything that looks like a Mad Lib is fine by me. My Dadaist pals and I used to play them every day at lunch, alternating with Hangman, which we played with alternative spellings when the games started getting too easy. (You can only use words with Qs and Xs for so long before people catch on and start guessing those letters first.) This was in high school, mind you.
Actually, I don't feel like highlighting my friends' nerdy weirdness today. I saw Jaleel White's (Steve Urkel's) latest sitcom last night, and was horrified... As long as the Powers That Be continue to paint nerds and geeks as rigidly boring, irritating, sexless social retards, I think we should work to make sure nerd culture is hard to pin down. Or something.
really I ought to be working.
Posted by me at 10:42 AM | Comments (0)
July 17, 2000
Teach Your Kids To Invest!
I find this really disturbing. Teach your kids that playing the stock market is a better way to make money than working?! Not only does that idea make my skin crawl-- I'd rather see people try to change this system in which it genuinely isn't profitable to work-- it sounds genuinely dangerous. I just hope this book doesn't get popular.
Posted by me at 1:06 PM | Comments (0)
July 14, 2000
Why I Don't Trust Anything That Comes Over The AP Newswire
Three reasons for starters:
Exhibit A: Some guy shot a bunch of people in the halls of Congress a few years ago, around when I was working at Sunset Magazine and started browsing headlines every hour or so. The bulletins from the Associated Press went something like this: first they reported that a small gang of gunmen stormed the capital, and some sixteen people were injured. When I reloaded a half-hour later, they'd amended that to two gunmen and one person dead. By the time Reuters had published an accurate report -- there had been one gunman, and two people were killed -- the AP was still struggling to get their story straight.
Exhibit B: In the fall of 1998, Kofi Annan, the head of the United Nations, spoke at Hampshire College about education and the state of the world. Really an interesting and uplifting speech, which attracted all sorts of people and a lot of media. I was the editor of the student newspaper at the time, so I got to squeeze into the press conference afterwards. It took a while for Kofi to get to the room. Most of the press sat around quietly. Then a woman piped up.
Did anyone catch how many standing ovations he got? she asked. The question baffled the room into silence. Did you count five? she asked. No response. Well, the Associated Press says there were five ovations, she said, and wrote it down. I was alarmed. Was she really going to waste precious column-inches on that trifling detail when Annan has served up so many important statistics on the lack of meaningful education worldwide?
Exhibit C: Yesterday I got mail from someone who was ostensibly an AP reporter, who wanted me to contribute to a story. "Would you (as a demonstrator planning on coming to the GOP convention) be willing to talk by phone on the record to The Associated Press about yesterday's violent arrest of a suspect and whether the issue will be brought up by demonstrators during the convention?" she asked. I'm not going to the demonstrations, and if I was, I wouldn't be there as a protester; I'd be reporting for the Independent Media Center. What really baffles me is that her net was cast wide enough that she'd bother to ask me. I'm not an organizer, and it's pretty clear who on the listserv she got my name from IS an organizer. I got the impression that she'd be perfectly content to base her story on information from a low-level source with no clear picture of what was going on.
So I'm less than impressed with the AP's investigative methods and content. They're syndicated all over the world and people actually accept what they say as news. Moments like these remind me that though news organs try to have the clearest view of a story, they are still made up of many many tiny flawed human beings. Which just makes me all the angrier when they get carte blanche to cross police lines or speak to politicians at protests, and IndyMedia reporters and people without "valid press credentials" get turned away by policemen who say they're not professional journalists. As if there was some magical mantle which falls on the shoulders of journalists in the hire of Big News. I don't think the policemen even know what it takes to become a journalist. This arbitrary dividing of media sheep and goats happens over and over to all kinds of small and lefty media outlets. I saw a Harper's reporter get turned away from a police line in DC, while Barbie Doll from the local ABC affiliate made it through sans hassle.
Posted by me at 3:04 PM | Comments (0)
July 6, 2000
Polka Your Eyes Out
This is disturbing... Someone's created a device designed to identify errant behavior. This kind of thing only makes me want to grab the giant puppets and go caper around in front of the damned surveillance camera, y'know? ("Ope, the alarm's going off in Sector G... What in god's name is that woman doing, Earl?" "Looks like the polka. Definitely errant behavior. Send out a unit for arrest.") Then again, I feel inclined to caper around in front of surveillance cameras anyway... like these guys.
Posted by me at 5:18 PM | Comments (0)