The Dancing Sausage Web Journal: April 2005 Archives

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April 27, 2005

Arrivederci Espada

In a totally surprise move, my dad is selling the prize-winning car he has worked on for twenty years. The eBay listing reads like a gruff, sad farewell.

My dad is a bit of a horse-trader of cars -- once, when he was selling a lovely red chopped and slammed '39 Chevy (if I remember correctly), the buyers asked my sisters and me if we'd miss the car. We shrugged. Cars came and went almost yearly. The Espada did not. It is largely responsible for my being a "hot-rod orphan" all those years. In price, it is probably going to reach the equivalent of a year of my undergraduate education shortly, or possibly pass that mark. (No, no, wait -- it hasn't even made reserve yet... this should be a long one.) It really was a hell of a car -- Dad ran it on rocket fuel, when he ran it at all. I believe it was the car we were doing over-the-speed-limit in one dark night in La Canada when Dad slammed on the brakes without warning, then pointed out there was a mouse crossing the road. Good eye, Dad. Goodbye, Espada.

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April 26, 2005

Everybody East Side West Side Heyyyy-oh Heyyyyy-oh!

We all know by now that Achewood is awesome. Bot how many of us have been reading Chris Onstad's associated blog? Not so many -- I told you so! Dude, that man is funny. And having a baby seems to have played quite nicely into his surreal side.

Posted by me at 11:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 22, 2005

Neck Face In The Ivory Tower

Jessica Hochman of Teachers College displays a photo of a Neck Face tag in the course of a panel on grafitti as a form of youth-centered pedagogy. Part of the Cultural Studies Matters conference currently being held at Teachers College.

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Ugly, But Functional!

After months of despairing ho-humming about the state of my comment system (nonexistent; plagued by spammers), I finally decided to wise up and fix the damned things. They work! They're ugly, but they're functional. I am so happy that they work, I can't even describe it to you. The opportunity to talk with you guys, and have you talk with each other again on my humble blog, makes me so happy.

I want to hear from all of you! If y'all would just post a little something, anything -- smilies, haiku, insults to my mother, anything, just not the P3N!S VIAGARA H0T G^Y REAL E$T^T3 D33LZ which have been getting me so down -- and reassure me you're reading, it would totally make my day in a week which has been marred by antisocialness. Loves! Mmmwah! (Um, I guess I should specify that you should use the date and time link, not the Re: 0 link -- the latter, sadly, appears to still be brokez.) Arigato, we love you, arigato, we love you...

Posted by me at 12:40 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

April 19, 2005

A Very Tiny Circus

A few months back I was daydreaming about the horse video game I want to create, and got a little ridiculous -- started thinking about the headshot I'd want if I ever got interviewed about said game. Yeah. Vanity. Anyway, this is what came out.

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B!tch, B!tch, B!tch

My article on Free To Be You And Me has finally come out in B!tch, and I approve the edit job even though I didn't get to see it before it went to press. It is good. My apologies to my correspondants for that article if they feel like the editing was overdone -- that's more my fault than the editors; still, I tried my dangedest to be true to what you said in the limited space I have. Anyway, if you're at your local newsstand (or bookstore if you're not in NYC), look for the issue with the pink urinal on the cover. Great articles on chest hair and (o(k rock in addition to my piece. I just pitched some more pieces to them, so keep watching the rag over the next year.

If you don't subscribe to good ol' B!tch but have been toying with the idea, now's the time -- they are still struggling with sustainability after all these years and could always use new subscribers. I did think it was cool that one of the ways they're trying to cover their expenses is by auctioning off original art and things, but I can't seem to find a link to that stratagem anymore... hmm. You can, however, generally still find Lynda Barry's wonderful artwork (often with monkeys!) up for auction off her own site. Speaking of which, if you're looking for a birthday gift for me I do love those One Hundred Views of Marlys she does. Hint.

UPDATE: Some time ago I did a brief blurb on Cat And Girl for Bitch. I had not noticed that C&G's creator had subsequently posted a picture of her grandma reading it. Hee!

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April 13, 2005

Ol' White Guy News

Welcome to the second in a series of Crusty White Celebrity Guys Teach You How To Dance (the first, of course, being Christopher Walken in the Weapon of Choice video). Today's lesson: David Byrne is TEH $EX. It would appear he has somehow acquired Elvis's hips, perhaps at auction. And did you know he has a blog? Not that he wants you to call it that. He writes some good, though. Better than you!

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April 9, 2005

Mr. Rogers Was Wrong

I really like the concept of distributed cognition -- the idea that in everyday life we do a lot of our calculating, reasoning, and other thinking by making use of objects and other people in our environments, implying that stimulus-free environments like those demanded by standardized tests are not going to put any of us at our best. Being a longtime fan of anthropology, I also have been thrilled to discover definitions of literacy which go beyond traditional reading and writing, encompassing grafitti, webpages, almost any text you can think of, probably including tee-shirts and other means of signifying within given Discourses. Something bothersome about both of these ideas has been rattling around the back of my head for some time, though, and I think I just figured out what it is: they contradict some of my earliest ideas about what's important about a person.

I refer to this song by Mr. Rogers:

It's you I like,
It's not the things you wear,
It's not the way you do your hair--
But it's you I like
The way you are right now,
The way down deep inside you--
Not the things that hide you,
Not your toys--
They're just beside you.

I believe this, I geniunely do. I think this is one of the few places Mr. Rogers actually had an effect on me. (Mostly I found him patronizing.) I have long believed that how you do your hair or what you own is really not an indicator of what kind of person you are (with a few lapses, of course, in junior high and college). But if you're seven years old and the only way you can get division to make sense is by putting an equal number of Legos into each wall of a building, do your toys really not matter? And if our hairstyle means something very specific in our communities, and when we leave our communities we do not feel loved, supported, or even "ourselves," what then, Mr. Rogers?

But it's you I like--
Every part of you,
Your skin, your eyes, your feelings
Whether old or new.
I hope that you'll remember
Even when you're feeling blue
That it's you I like,
It's you yourself,
It's you, it's you I like.

And who are we, anyway? I've been thinking a lot about avatars recently, having just begun to try my hand at RPGs in a serious way and made two of my own... and talked to Neil about his adorable gnome girl avatar, Gulda... and scanned this Terranova post about avatars as they relate to plastic surgery this morning... and reconsidered Sherry Turkle's thoughts on the postmodern fragmented self, which have always rung true to me... Which skin, which eyes, which feelings did Mr. Rogers love, and if we were actually appearing rather than feeling blue, would he have gathered us into his arms? Mr. Rogers had a heart as big as the sea, but I can't imagine him copping to a belief in the selves we express in our avatars... and I can't help but think he might have viewed body modification such as we see on The Swan as a result of people not getting enough of messages like his as kids.

How are we to love our postmodern selves, and where is the kids' show which will love us back?

Posted by me at 4:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 5, 2005

April: Epiphany

I spent a lot of time over January running around Europe and as a result didn't have the kind of time over that break to do the thinking I'd done the year before. I've spent the semester apologizing for not being able to explain to people what it is I want to do. I hadn't really had time to rethink my direction since some major developments in my understanding -- most significantly, my discovery of Henry Jenkins's work on subversive writing in fan cultures, and other writings on people's uses, rather than effects, of media.

Well, I *thought* I hadn't thought about it. But I've done some talking to a few people, and tonight I decided that it's not that I haven't thought about it; it's just that I'm repressing my decision.

Tonight I overheard my roommate Jamie talking to someone about his plans for after his graduation this summer. I am unhappily beginning to accept that he's leaving. It's likely to really rip me up when he does. I only just recently got over my last roommate leaving. Ten years of moving and leaving and changes, and I still take it on the chin every time. There's a couple of other key friends who are likely to be leaving for the summer, too; if I'm in a deep funk come June, you'll know why.

I like people. (aside: they're the ones who can stand.) They matter a lot to me. And ten years ago, when I graduated high school, I would have beat myself up for even thinking that. My misbegotten feminism told me I was bad for caring about lovers and family and kids as much as my own intellectual and professional development. (Thanks a lot to the frigid soccer moms at my school who squelched any public displays of affection I made. That just about did it, guys.)

There was an even more insidious math to my way of thinking than I even want to admit. I recently managed to express its central equation as "those who can, do; those who can't, teach," though it's probably a little more complicated than that. I saw the English teachers I looked up to -- and my mother, who spent my earliest years at home and rarely worked in her field -- as creators manqué because they chose to spend their time with kids. I'm ashamed that I thought this way. I'm sorry. Even over the past few years I've confronted my mom about her choices to live with people she loved and abandon the professional studies she's periodically returned to. I didn't understand it, and I've had this inexplicable fear that somehow I'd end up doing the same thing, and it would be horrible and I'd feel trapped all my life.

But my mom... Around Thanksgiving one evening my mother told us about the Russian children a neighbor has adopted, and who she has been tutoring. She told us everything about all three of them, acted out with her whole body the way the little girl crumpled in frustration over her work. These kids, it was clear, had enveloped her. Mom loves people, too. (Mom passed along her love of anthropology to me, after all.)

Looking back, the only situations that have made me happy have involved caring, loving social groups, mentors and peers. I was desperately lonely when I lost them my second year at Hampshire. Despite all the talk of building community with the Independent Media Center, I felt completely alienated and unmoored during those first few years in New York. And the months of unemployment were just horrible, as I didn't even have people to go see every day. By contrast, TC has made me very content, and never more so than after the party we threw weekend before last.

It has slowly dawned that since I've been in graduate school, my fever dreams haven't been about writing the Great American Novel and being remembered for the ages. They haven't even necessarily been about changing the whole world, like they were in my last years of college and my first years out. They've been about becoming a principal and running a school that doesn't suck. I have had feverish daydreams about becoming a school principal and supporting teachers who want to do good work. And about teaching classes, in which I try to soothe the aches of kids who school is hurting. About being the kind of professor who teaches undergrads and has an institute which writes things that change policy and supports the community.

I've also been secretly coveting my stepmother's job as head of outreach for Caltech. I think it would be really cool to make the membrane between academia and the rest of the world more porous. Because the public needs some of the things that get talked about in there. Like, you know, evolution, for example. And proportional representation. And the Global South.

Is this because when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail? In high school I hung out with creative types and wanted to be a writer. In college I hung out with radicals, and wanted to smash the state for a living. In graduate school, I hang out with a lot of people who think being brainy is important and want to make modest gains in helping others become better thinkers, and so this is what I want to do?

I want to work to do good things for people I care about. God, but it's been hard to admit that. But at this point, what would be the purpose in being the Great American Novelist? I can keep blogging and writing the stray article. Having a story published wouldn't make me any more important. There's already so much useless information flowing around out there.

Anyway, I just feel happy thinking that maybe if I got my head out of my ass about admitting how important people are to me, I could do something good and solve my chronic loneliness problem at the same time. There's an additional set of ideas I need to settle for myself about media creation as it relates to media literacy and getting progressive messages out to the public... about how I came into this program wanting to be Michael Moore, and now, in the wake of things I've been reading, I don't really think that would be useful. but that is a procrastinatory excercise for another night. I have a paper due tomorrow.

Oh -- one last thing I have been meaning to mention -- I've seen a gastroenterologist who thinks I am probably NOT gluten intolerant. just to clear that up.

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