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June 30, 2004
names like crawford
"they have first names like "muffy" and "parker" and name their boys things like "crawford" or "thomas jennings bryce iii"... but i fix them by calling them things like "crackmonkey" and "slappy."... i find we all get along better when i do that.... no one wants to be called crawford." --martino, on his students and their parentsPosted by me at 12:18 AM
Things Are Looking Up
Roommate Jamie just returned from a Yankees-Red Sox game reporting that Dick Cheney was there -- and, when his face was displayed on the jumbotron, the crowd booed him until his image came down. Mind you, not only was this at a baseball game, it was during the singing of God Bless America. Yeah, it's New York, but could this maybe be a good omen?
Posted by me at 12:03 AM | Comments (1)
June 29, 2004
Dude, I keep telling you already,
... the LA Times is to the left of the NY Times. (Slight praise, I know.) When it comes to investigative and labor reporting, they actually come out sounding pretty progressive. But noooo. Nobody wants to read it, because it's from LA, and anything from LA is inherently evil. (grumble) Screw you, haytaz.Posted by me at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)
high school marriage
It really makes me much more relaxed. I should have been married in high school. -- bcPosted by me at 11:38 AM
June 22, 2004
Hey Lady! Give My Name Back!
Were you aware that Gillian Anderson has a blog? The Onion calls it "unusually deeply considered, for a celebrity blog." I'd heard rumors she changed her name from Gilliam when it was judged Americans would find it too weird, but I can't find any evidence of that in a quick Google scan. It was amusing when someone told me I looked like her before even knowing my name; having to correct plane reservations and the like is less charming.
Posted by me at 11:03 PM | Comments (1)
June 21, 2004
Regular-type Web Journal Post
Today my shrink noted that I talk about my interpersonal relationships a lot. It made me wonder. I thought everyone talked about that in therapy. What's she getting at? Does she think I have social anxiety disorder or something? Maybe I'm shadow Asperger's. That would be comforting.
Well, I'm happy for Roast Beef, at least.
(I'm not kidding about the Asperger's. aspies are cool. and then i'd have an excuse.)
* * *
Charlie and I had a tremendous argument a few weeks ago after watching Trekkies with a friend of his who read as a "normal person." The week before she'd watched Spellbound with him, and I left after realizing they basically wanted to laugh at all the "weirdos" in the movie. Should have known not to watch Trekkies with them. Charlie and his friend laughed at the over-the-top kid who's central to the movie, making much of a shot where the kid had his arm around – GASP – a GIRL. And GASP – the Internet let us know this kid was now married. Well, I swan!
I turned to Charlie and said, "How can you identify as queer and laugh about that?"
The argument on the train home went round and round... Charlie: The people in that movie were set up to be laughed at. Me: It's not actually the director's intent to have you laughing at that kid specifically because he's never going to have sex. For other reasons, sure, like when he yells at the friend who called him while Denise Crosby was interviewing him. But you were specifically rewinding to laugh about that shot again. You know he's going to have sex someday, so why are you laughing? Charlie: It's not like he was there. Me: Yeah, and if he'd been there, you would have been nice to his face and laughed behind his back. Charlie: I'd like to think I wouldn't. You're not giving me any credit. Why are you so upset? Me: Because you're perpetuating a negative and untrue stereotype. Charlie: Look, you're the only one around right now, and you know I fit that stereotype too. I was a Trekkie, you were a Trekkie, obviously we've all had plenty of good sex by now. But that kid was over the top. With someone that socially awkward, I would expect they would have a hard time having productive relationships with other people.
At that point I broke down in tears. It hit a little close to home.
The argument had started out on the wrong foot, sprinting quickly off after a red herring about politics (my fault for dropping in a cliche about the personal being the political). Because I dropped the argument when , I never said what I wanted to say, which was
Who will stand up for the painfully awkward? Don't they deserve to be loved as much as anyone else? (Hearing intimations from an aspiring psychologist that they don't is a little alarming.) And if they don't deserve to be loved, how can any of us ask for love? It's not like we don't have our moments. The hair that will not lie flat no matter how much product we apply to it. The zits which can't be banished. The secret love for books or television shows we are not supposed to love; the fear of the fall which will reveal us to be human instead of cool. Holding the nerd at arm's length only reinforces the limits of behavior and emotion we are allowed to display – that line you've just drawn, which you are now obligated to not cross. To dismiss any nerd is to dismiss the nerd in any of us.
I always think that there ought to be some kind of geek solidarity about these things. I'm sorry I dragged queeritude into it – what I meant was, How can you obsess so hard over leveling up your party in Chrono Cross (dude, it's not like it was even Final Fantasy!) and still laugh about that poor kid getting some ass?
ok, i guess we covered that leg of the argument, too. I'm sorry, Charlie. I shouldn't have brought it up again. you've got to obsessively level up Guile, I've got to obsessively finish my train of thought.
Charlie left yesterday to go on with the rest of his life. He blogged about it, and I think he's right – we're not going to see each other again. And it's not like the high school feeling I had that I'd never see anyone again, where it wasn't true because I did, and besides we were on email all the time. I really think I'm not going to see Charlie again. it's just that it's been less than a year that I've known him, and he was out being double- and triple-booked at dance clubs most of that time. I know how it's been with other roommates. somehow it never sticks. still he was half of my sense of security and domestic contentedness during that time, and wicked smart and never let me get away with a slack argument. his room is very empty now.
I'm really tired of losing people, bone-tired. I keep wondering when the losing stops. and then I remember how many of my friends have yet to get married and go off and nest, and then how many have yet to have kids. then I remember how one of my grandmothers only talks about who's died lately. we have a lot of losing ahead of us.
* * *
I went up on my roof today for the first time. Jamie was right; there's not really much to see. I'd expected you could see the Bridge, but you can only see the top of it and you can't see the river or the shore. there was a good breeze today, though, and even though the roof was as scabrous as the rest of the building it seemed like it might be a good place to hang out, maybe have a barbecue. the cats, meanwhile, are satisfied with the great show the pigeons out the window apparently put on.
* * *
wow. have I completely lost my sense of humor?
Posted by me at 11:55 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
June 16, 2004
brain fair
that's so totally hella brain fairPosted by me at 11:46 PM
June 15, 2004
softee conspiracy
you've stumbled into a Mr S conspiracy, I don't know if you will survive the night... ninjas will carry your head off in the dark... -- Brooke, on my appearance on NPR testifyin' against Mr. SofteePosted by me at 4:38 PM
severed hand
teh right person to woo me will skip right over the diamond and just present me with the severed hand of small child. -- alyissa, on DeBeers's use of slave labor to mine diamondsPosted by me at 12:11 AM
June 14, 2004
All Things Considered, It Still Tastes Like Mucilage
I am the world's eccentric memessenger this week... First the bearistas, and now a phone call from NPR. A brief re-creation:
Unidentified 212 number: Hello, I'm calling from NPR. We are doing a piece on Mr. Softee.
Me: (maniacal laughter)
NPR: We know you hate Mr. Softee. Google told us. Don't you think it marks you as an out-of-towner?
Me: Oh, probably.
NPR: Can we put you on the air tomorrow for All Things Considered provided nothing happens in world news that bumps this total potboiler doily-burgher piece off the lineup?
Me: (to self) I'm gonna come off sounding like an evil streetlife-hating suburbanite. What was it they taught me in all those activist trainings about giving good soundbite? Probably something about don't talk to NPR...(to NPR, giggling) Okay.
So, keep an ear out for me on All Things Considered, the evening show, tomorrow.
UPDATE: It's on! But none of my better quotes really got used. Oh well. Look for it around fiveish (may be earlier if you don't have much local news) on All Things Considered. If you missed it in the Eastern timeslot, you could try streaming it onKCRW at 8ish Pacific.
Posted by me at 5:23 PM | Comments (5)
June 13, 2004
A Day of Mourning... For the Bomb
I have received the sad news that my father sold the Orange Bomb, that classic of my teenage years. (We took it to prom. You wish you were as cool as us, driving to prom in an eight-seat orange '72 Vista Cruiser with a moon roof and racing stripes. Later its power brakes quit on the edge of Eaton Canyon and I had to flatten a poor old lady's mailbox to keep from going over the edge.) But cry no more -- it's still in the family; Dad sold it to my cousin John, artist and musician of Psycotic Pineapple fame. A more perfect match could almost not be made. I can only imagine how the brakes will do on San Francisco streets. Good luck, John.
Posted by me at 10:55 AM | Comments (1)
June 12, 2004
Flashback Summer: On Overheard Remarks
"Mood is especially important for children because of the ways in which they view television and overhear remarks... There is no framework of understanding into which their reflections can be placed. It is as if children's education were dominated by the overheard remark... It is not as if they see the adult world as separate and of no interest to them. On the contrary, they show such interest that they struggle hard to make sense of it in their own way..." Cedric Cullingford, Children and Society, quoted in PowerPlay: Toys as Popular Culture
I am two years old, maybe three. We live in Maine, out in the country. Very modern house which seems at times to be built around a long, almost untraverseable passageway. Fat, glossy wooden planks under my bare feet. I run up and down that hall in plastic pants.
I come into the living room. Big bulls-eye shag carpet in seventies browns and oranges. Mom and Dad are watching TV. I know the theme song. The name sounds good on my tongue. McNeil Lehrer News Hour. I am only half listening, and none of it makes sense. I cheerily pretend it does.
"Did he say Dow Jones Imbustrials?" I ask, grinning, hands on my hips. My parents will repeat this incident for years to come. I will repeat the performance again and again, because it has gotten a laugh.
I have no idea what I'm saying.
* * *
Bad words. I have learned them. Probably at the dim brown house of the woman who has been taking care of me while Mom is at work. I don't know how I know they are bad. Later, I won't even remember which ones they are.
It's a winter day. I leave the yellow dollhouse which is taller than me for a moment, because I want to get these words out of me before I say them when I shouldn't. In the hall I crouch down by the radiator strip, and whisper all the bad words into it.
* * *
We are all of us busily working out who everyone is and what it means. In my new kindergarten at San Rafael School, there is a girl named Guadalupe who has diamond earrings and shorter hair than I have ever seen on a girl. She amazes me. I watch her closely. One day she goes running off the asphalt kickball diamond, yelling to the teacher that she has a hangnail. Soon I have what I think is a hangnail too, and I run to the teacher for help. But it turns out a hangnail is actually something else, and whatever I have, it's not fatal.
Another day Guadalupe squints at me and asks, "Are you a Mooslim?" I tell her I'm not. She tells me her dad has told her about Mooslims. She thinks I'm a Mooslim, and so she doesn't like me. I tell her I think she's a Mooslim. I really can't tell what she is. Maybe she is calling me a Mooslim because she's worried about being one herself.
The next year I am in a different school. I am in the green reading group. The color is a code: nobody outright says it, but we know that we are the best readers, reading thick chapter books. You can hear it, because we sound like my mom when she reads bedtime stories. The other kids sound like they don't even know what they're saying when they read.
Janice is in the green group too. She comes over to my house once, and climbs the slick place where the bark was skinned off the avocado tree, to get to my cat. She never comes back, because after that she always asks how my cat is, and I think that's creepy.
In third grade I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and then, because I loved it, I read its lesser-known sequel. There is much international intrigue in Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator; at one point, the president of the United States gets on the phone with the premier of China and starts cussing him out.
Janice finally aggravates me one too many times and I yell at her, "You crazy Mandarin!" I am quoting from the book. "Cantonese!" she yells back. "Mandarin!" I yell at her. "No, I'm Cantonese!" she yells back.
* * *
I'm eight. I have only been in California three years, and I am still highly skeptical about most of the kids here. Most of them seem to be loud and rude to me. They like toys I think highlight their stupidity. I am pretty sure they don't like me because I am from Maine.
There are two girls Allison and Margaret who are a grade older, and who are genuinely mean. They tease me for my clothes, and for bringing My Little Ponies to school. Out by the drop-off area after school, I am busily stomping on the metal plate which everyone knows makes a great noise, minding my own business. They singsong and tease and won't leave me alone.
There is a situation I read about which I think will be useful here. I read a book it was by William Steig, I remember the jittery illustrations about a fox who is trying to eat some mice. One of the mice is a dentist, so he devises a trap to lure the fox to his office and incapacitate him. The fox, mouth aching, leaves the office looking resentful and tetchy. "Frank oo berry mush," he says to the dentist. Thank you very much.
"Frank oo berry mush," I say to Allison and Margaret, through gritted teeth. They look scandalized. "What?!" they say, the laughter building. "Frankenberry Mush? Frankenberry Mush! Frankenberry Mush!"
Now every time we pass their class coming back from the gym, they sing this at me.
Hunter is in my class for the first time. This year he is inseparable from Eliot and Tim. Hunter is trouble. Any group of boys he attaches seems galvanized to trouble. He will continue to be trouble on into high school, where the family of a friend of mine will consider legal action against the school as the teachers fail to stop him from singling my friend out for torment, calling her a bitch, calling her ugly, making comments about her body. Later, Hunter will come out of the closet. Later, we will find out his father spent time in jail for white-collar crimes.
This year, though, Hunter is just a small and angry force of nature, racing around the wooden play structure with Eliot and Tim. On my way to the tire swing, they leap out in front of me, blocking my path.
"We're not gonna take it," they sing. "No! We ain't gonna take it! We're not gonna take it! Anymore!" They flex and pose like pro wrestlers, then run off.
These California kids listen to awful pop music. I've never heard that song, and yet somehow I know that's what it is. I know a lot of folk music. That's what my mom sang to me when I was little. There was one song that went:
Muskrat, oh muskrat
What makes you smell so bad?
Comin' under the farmer's fence
Eatin' up all he had, lord
Eatin' up all he had.
A new boy named Peter has moved to my neighborhood. He's kind of weird. Me and this other girl don't want to play with him, but we're not about to say it to his face. Instead, as evening creeps in and he scours the neighborhood looking for us, we hide behind the low stucco wall enclosing my front porch. I teach her the song and we change it so instead of saying Muskrat it says Peter. I sing as many lyrics as I know. The other girl can't get the hang of them, and just ends up singing "Peter, Peter!" over and over again.
In the attic, I choreograph secret routines to a tape of folk songs some friends back in Maine sent:
Oh the Erie was a risin' (rise from beanbag chair)
And the gin was a gettin' low (sink back down, bob shoulders in exhaustion)
And I scarcely think we'll get a drink (pant like a dog who has not had enough water, because I am imagining that is what the songwriter meant by "drink")
Til we get to Buffalo-oh-oh
Til we get to Buffalo.
* * *
Fourth grade. An overcast day. A yellow Beetle pulls up to the curb in front of my house. I see it through the striped curtains of the breakfast nook and get excited. I overheard Mom say a friend of her friend Becca's was coming to visit. I like Becca. She is beautiful and warm, and when she comes to town we get to swim in hotel pools and raid her minibar.
The woman who emerges from the car wants to ask us questions. One at a time we go with her into the breakfast nook.
Mom coaches us: Now, if she asks you if anyone has ever touched your private parts, you know what to say, right? Only my doctor. It is very important you answer that when she asks, or they might take you away from us.
The social worker has lots of questions about sex. I perform fine. When it is Ariel's turn, I hear her crying as the woman interrogates her.
Later I ask my mom, That was Becca's friend? No, she says, looking troubled. Becca's friend came a while ago, and we didn't get to see her.
Later -- much later -- they tell me they think they know who called the social workers on us. There was an incident with neighbors across the way -- my sisters were over at their house, their son was in the bathtub, words about somebody's peepee were exchanged, never clear whose. The twins say the son brought it up. That is one explanation. Another explanation, Dad says, is the father of the family is jealous of his job.
It's the eighties. Every other week I overhear news about a molestation scare. Directly, they tell us not to talk to strangers, not to go to the neighbors' without telling them where we are going, to tell an adult if anyone wants to touch our private parts.
When Mom explains how sex works, I think to myself, I already knew that, somehow.
In the attic of the yellow dollhouse, now my height, I enact a rape scene between two My Little Ponies.
* * *
I'm eleven years old. My parents are going through their divorce. I had guessed it was going to happen. I'm old enough to know it's not my fault, and I don't have any of a younger kid's delusions that it means they will stop loving me and leave me. What sucks for me is having to carry baggage to school every Wednesday to switch houses; that visible sign of my family's awkward condition, which I would rather hide.
Star Trek: The Next Generation airs for the first time this year. My friends and I adopt it as a way of life, holding screenings and signing up for the fan club. We learn Klingon. I hear from someone that Michael Dorn, who plays the Klingon Worf, has the nickname "Speedbumps" around the set.
My parents take my sisters and me in for therapy together; as a family; alone; with one of them. I refuse to talk. The therapist searches me with questions. I can feel her looking at me even though I'm staring hard at my sneakers. My mom, ever one for pop psychology, asks questions too.
I say, "Speedbumps." They ask what that means. I say, "Speedbumps." I smile cynically to myself. They ought to get it.
What I mean is, "I'm angry. Why the hell am I in therapy? You're the ones who are messed up, and yet here you are, taking me to a shrink, essentially telling me that I may not know it, but there is something wrong with my mind, with who I am. Imagine if the kids from school heard about this. Yeah, I'm angry. That's the only thing wrong with me. Get me out of here and that problem's solved. Here, let me give you another reason to get me out of here: I'm not talking. I'm going to be stoic like a Klingon."
I write a song in my head about being a Klingon. Cold as a Klingon. Bitter as the Q. Something about Romulans. Then I overextend the metaphor, and there's some line about having teeth like a Ferengi.
* * *
The misunderstandings transcend childhood. The friends who were into Star Trek (Janice among them) have grown into a group of surprisingly thoughtful teenagers. We like to talk about the ineffables, but we still eff them up a little. Somewhere along the line we hear a song called "Existential Blues," a nonsensical talking-blues riff on the Wizard of Oz. Thereafter, until corrected, we refer to all surreal material as "existentialist."
Posted by me at 3:01 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 10, 2004
Washington Heights Impex, Ltd.
Items being shipped in or out of my apartment this week:
Checks, one box
Wooden planks, four
Thong
Books on multiple literacies, two
Tin of mango tea
Pajamas
Pizza box insulator?
Starbucks "Bearistas," each dressed as the Statue of Liberty, three
Pillowcase (forest green, gold lettering)
Chinese fungus dessert
The bears are bound for the Seattle chapter of the ACLU, believe it or not. On their request. The designers of he bears appear to have abandoned the "torch" idea, and instead the toys hold aloft what I can only make sense of as the Yes Men's "Employee Visualization Appendage" (a golden dildo) caught in a rusty, nasty-looking bear trap.
Posted by me at 10:49 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Sadly, there's your solution:
I don't hold with all this remember-Reagan-for-his-greatness crap, but I sure would like a day off. So I'll be observing the national day of mourning for Ray Charles tomorrow. Will you? He was a brilliant musician who overcame adversity to become a seminal figure in his genre and an international star. I think that's a better legacy than the Iran-Contra affair.
Posted by me at 4:27 PM | Comments (2)
How He Stopped Worrying And Learned To Love The Israeli Army Laundry Soap
"My plan, more or less the traditional one for Israeli conscripts who are unhappy with their role, was convincing a Mental Health Officer, known universally by their initials as the "Kaban", to give me a medical discharge. All recruits are given a physical "profile" number, the highest being 97 (it is said that the extra 3 points are taken off for circumcision)."
Itamar is apparently doing a series on how he got out of the Israeli army, a story I have always found illuminating. (He also had a rather poignant and unusual piece on going to university campuses recently.) I would recommend a visit. But I have a question: how does this logic work? 1) They cut off a part of your schlong because they say they have to if you're going to be an active member of the religion; 2) they pressgang you into a holy war; 3) they declare you somewhat unfit to fight said war because they have cut off a piece of your schlong. ??? I used to say Judaism was the only religion that I'd convert to, because it was the one that never came looking for me, but between this logic and the fact that Jews for Jesus have since made that claim inaccurate...
Posted by me at 11:51 AM | Comments (4)
June 8, 2004
Gus Sindex Mini: A Semester in Pictures
Normally I do some sort of karmic check-in late in the semester about how much I'm slacking off. Having failed to do so this year, I have instead belatedly posted pictures from the semester as a whole.
Posted by me at 12:40 AM | Comments (0)
June 7, 2004
Things Made Out Of Hands
A year or two ago someone sent me to FlyGuy, lo-res pixel stuff (which is somehow highly sophisticated) which took me back to the days before flying toasters. I hadn't checked back to the site of the animator, Trevor Van Meter, since then, but it appears he's been quite busy in the interim. And a friend of his writes video-game-style music which is also noteworthy. umn, ya.
Posted by me at 6:59 PM | Comments (1)
June 2, 2004
Yay! More Cancer!
The EPA says plug-in air fresheners may contribute to the production of formaldehyde, a carcinogen. Earlier this year we saw news that they also contribute to asthma. Hooray! I appreciate anything which might make America stop spraying Lysol in the air to try to cover up the unavoidable reality that life stinks. No more tropical passion aromatherapy cat box breakdown!
Posted by me at 3:51 PM | Comments (0)
June 1, 2004
The Following People I Know Will Be Sent Off To Die
was the title of a post I almost just wrote. Seeing as I feel weird about posting people's names (or even screen names) online, though, I'll refrain from posting the list of my friends and relatives who will be drafted if the legislation to re-initiate the draft in Summer 2005 is not stopped.Just know: it's anyone ages 18-26, male or female. You know who you are. You know who your brothers, sisters, lovers, sons, daughters, roommates, friends, and co-workers are. And if you do not want them sent off to have their lives wasted for the bogus purposes of a man who was not elected president, I highly recommend you write your congressperson a letter.
Posted by me at 12:18 PM | Comments (5)