Katy Baggs Bloggs

nose problem

2010-02-18T00:03:00.005-06:00

I had an infection in my nose last month, and I dreamt that I pulled a large, marbled piece of bloody flesh out of it. Then I was embarrassed about it, so I hid it in a drawer.

Evan Post: NYT Article about Bart Stupak

2010-01-08T14:03:00.001-06:00

Here's a New York Times profile of Democratic Representative Bart Stupak of Michigan, the Congressman who believes that preventing abortions is way more important than health care reform. Jodi Kantor wrote this and it appeared on the front page of yesterday's Times, single column, above the fold. I found this article very interesting because it is an example of how a newspaper of record like the NYT does puff-pieces. Obviously the NYT has to be more discrete than Entertainment Weekly when it is heaping praise on someone, so it promotes Stupak's image by giving us ostensibly neutral declarative sentences about him.

In the article we find that Stupak is a tough man who endures "things others find unbearable" like the knee surgeries he suffered as a hero cop and the death of his son. He comes from a great state with harsh winters and beautiful summers. He enjoys football and beer. He drives his elderly Oldsmobile, a defunct American-made middling-price automobile brand, long distances to commune with his constituents. He stands strong on his principles even though this makes others hate him.

Who could hates such a fine American? The fact that Jodi Kantor doesn't bother to offer even the most cursory details in answer to this inevitable question is what makes it most obvious that this is a puff-piece. Apparently Congresswoman Denise Slaughter is one of the haters. Who is she? Well... she is a Democrat from New York, she is co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus, and she refused comment for this article. Also she hates the stoic hero defined in the above paragraph and might have been rude to him once. Apparently that's all we need to know.

Diana DeGette, the other hater who was willing to comment, provides Kantor with the fig-leaf of balance. After spending the front 2/3s of the article--which I believe is all most people read anyway--telling us what a great guy Bart Stupak is, she provides a short passage explaining the alternative viewpoint that he is actually a tool of religious interests and is grossly misrepresenting the extent of his mistreatment by the party mainstream. It's instructive to compare a couple of passages:

his freshman year in Washington, [Stupak] requested but did not receive a seat on the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee. "I had one or two members tell me I’d never get on because I’m right-to-life," he said.
...
two years after being elected, he joined the Energy and Commerce Committee, and now serves as chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.

Stupak's claim of committee members blacklisting him for his anti-abortion views is obviously belied by the fact that he got the seat anyway. Is there in fact anything unusual at all about a freshman Representative's request for an appointment to an important committee being denied until his second term? Probably not.

Here's another direct quotation I thought was particularly interesting:

"If he prevails, he will have won an audacious, counterintuitive victory, forcing a Democratic-controlled Congress to pass a measure that will be hailed as an anti-abortion triumph. If party members do not accept his terms — and many vow they will not — Mr. Stupak is prepared to block passage of the health care overhaul."

This passage has a really interesting failure of parallelism. The amendment's success is Stupak's success--in fact his "audacious ... victory" and "triumph"--whereas the bill's defeat is a neutral proposition, defined simply as other party members not accepting his terms. Victory is his child, defeat is an orphan.

Now to the question of the blog post.
Why was this published at all? The information it contains about the actual content of this fight is limited to two paragraphs, one containing a generalized summary of what Stupak's amendment does, the other explaining that there are now more conservative Democrats like Stupak in Congress. The NYT has already had any number of articles about the efforts of anti-abortion Congresspeople to use health care reform as a vehicle for promoting their cause.

Given my above analysis the answer to my question is clearly that the NYT chose to publish a transparent puff-piece for Bart Stupak, but why? According to Jodi Kantor's Wikipedia entry she has a history of pursuing low-content personal interest stories, but still, why put this article on the front-page? I don't understand the reasoning, but then again, this is the newspaper that not long ago hired Bill Kristol as an opinion columnist.

A lady tackled the Pope!

2009-12-24T22:02:00.001-06:00

It's a Christmas miracle!

What? He's fine.

cat video

2009-12-16T22:24:00.005-06:00

A dream and then I woke up.

edit many days later: I realized I just copypasted the timecode, which means the cat shifted position while I spoke multiple sentences in a small fraction of a second (COZ OF IT A DREAM).

zombie hospital

2009-11-12T23:20:00.002-06:00

A half-remembered dream about a hospital infested with zombies.

drawings

2009-11-10T23:34:00.002-06:00

Are guys still wearing suit jackets with jeans? Is that still happening?? It's like a high-end mullet: business up top, party down below!

I had a good idea recently, which was that gyms should put electrical generators on their stationary bikes so their patrons can help power the gym while they exercise! Eh? Eh?

Had a dream that Captain Picard was playing a text game because the previous night, Evan and I had stayed up watching funny TNG videos on Youtube. A fine evening!

drawing time

2009-10-28T22:12:00.006-05:00

So yes, Evan is blogging here now. I've told him that to reflect the 200% INCREASE IN WRITERS we should change the name of the blog. He said it isn't necessary, but maybe someday Evan's name will be there somewhere. I've realized that I can't keep up with blogging regularly because I just don't care, and that I haven't blogged in a long time. What I've decided to do instead, at least for now, is to draw comics of dreams that I have had and then post them. No, it's not stupid. Here are two dreams I've had featuring vehicles:

Things I wrote for No-Shame Theater

2009-10-21T02:52:00.003-05:00

post by Evan Schenck

Here's two short monologues I wrote for No-Shame Theater this season, with short notes to go with:

An Open Letter and Statement of Principles
by Evan Schenck

[lights up]

Dear United States Congress,

First off it is not just you that I'm addressing here in this letter, congress. I also want you to send copies of this letter to the pope in Rome, to the anti-pope in anti-Rome, to Barack Obama Alleged President of the United States, to the Rockefellers and Rothschilds and the Freemasons and Illuminati, to the Mafia, which I believe is also located in Rome but not at the same address as the pope, and to the media. Make sure you get a letter to all of the different media because I don't want anybody to feel left out. I would have sent copies to these people myself but I could not get their addresses so I want you to do it for me. My taxes would pay your salary, if I actually paid any. So you have to do what I say.

Anyway I am getting to my point now which is that you have got to do something about all the problems facing America. Dark forces are gathering. I am seeing you guys on the TV all the time talking about health care and the Panama Canal but you are always missing the point. This debate about public options, illegal immigrants, triggers, and so on, are not realistic and are not addressing the real problems of today. I am writing you to talk about the elephant in the room, the big issue that everybody is always tiptoeing around, which is that the president is assaulting the nature of reality through witchcraft. You all know what I am talking about, especially the pope. The President's idea of health care reform is to take health care from Americans who have it now, and transmute it from a written agreement between those Americans and insurance companies into a physical object. I have it on good authority that the President has already turned our healthcare into a series of delicate glass tubes. Some of these tubes will be smashed, some will be given to illegal aliens, and the rest will be shipped to the President's dual homelands of Kenya and Indonesia . The upshot is that foreigners and illegal immigrants will have healthcare in the form of magical glass tubes, and Americans will not.

This is not the only issue, by far. The President also plans to perform similar occult ceremonies on other abstract concepts including the emotions that average Americans experience on a daily basis. On Tuesday my daughter watched Obama's address to America's schoolchildren. She tells me that during this speech he cast a spell on her, and that when she got home from school and watched her stories she no longer found the Golden Girls funny. I am 110% certain that the president turned her laughter and amusement into a tiny man who now serves him as a butler. I demand that the president produce his true birth certificate showing him to have been born in both Indonesia and Kenya, that he cease his theft of our health care, that he cremate his secret dwarf butler alive on a pyre built from the wood of a sacred oak-tree so that my daughters sense of humor can return to her in the form of vapor, and finally that he resign from the presidency. I do not think these demands are unreasonable. These acts of witchcraft, which give physical form to imaginary goods, cannot go on. How long before the President turns the Pledge of Allegiance into a pair of shoes, or the nation's collective memory of Abraham Lincoln into a rocket-ship? Not long, I fear. Take heed, Congress, and listen to my warning, before all is lost.

Love and Kisses,
Evan Schenck

[lights down]

I don't usually perform political humor or even go near current events because I think it usually sucks, and I worry about that stuff enough without involving an innocent audience, but this piece was performed on September 11. Cloud-Cuckoo-Land was getting crowded and I thought there was potential for actual comedy there, even though the primary emotions I experienced over the death panel kerfluffle were more in the vein of bemusement and sadness. To get past that I resorted to one of my favorite devices, which is asserting a premise that is patently impossible or illogical--the real problem with Barack Obama is that he is turning abstract concepts into tangible objects. I like ideas like that, especially when they involve specific details.

This piece went pretty well on stage, aided in large part by an audience that was large and kind of jazzed up by the other performances. I brought a little more manic energy to it than my usual subdued method and I think it worked.

The Last of the Steam-Powered Trains
or
The Spirit of the 19th Century
by Evan Schenck

[lights up]

Joachim Wheellock Hammersmith was born in 1815. He was Joachim after the saint, Wheellock after the type of pistol, and Hammersmith after his father, who was a minor official of the British East India company based in Calcutta. J.W. Hammersmith made his first fortune growing opium in Bengal for sale in China. In 1845 he moved to the Ottoman Empire and made his second fortune by founding a company which claimed to arrange pilgrimages to Jeruselam or Mecca but which in fact simply robbed and murdered its customers. Hammersmith increased his profit margins and disposed of the corpses by butchering them and selling the meat to the local Arabs, claiming that it was actually lamb. After being chased out of the holy land by an angry mob, he moved to Britain.

Hammersmith was an early pioneer of the company town concept, in which he made his employees live in a town that he owned and forced them into debt so that they were effectively his slaves. A minor scandal occurred in 1852 when the Times of London reported that each family under his authority was forced to draw a pint of their own blood each month, which was collected by carriage and taken to Hammersmith's enormous mansion, which was a replication of Buckingham Palace sitting on top of a replication of Versailles. He refuted accusations that he was a vampire by revealing that he did not actually do anything with the blood but instead just dumped it in the River Tyne.

By 1888 Hammersmith was widely regarded as the wealthiest and most evil man who had ever lived. That year he was strongly suspected by many in London of being Jack the Ripper, to which he famously replied, “What's this fuss about five prostitutes? Think of my work in Africa. I have probably killed a million men and intend to kill several millions more, but the evil things I do aren't against the law.” To illustrate his point, he sent instructions to the American office of Wheellock LLC to cause the extinction of a major species, adding “I don't care which.” The last known passenger pigeon died in 1914 in the Cincinnati Zoo.

As he grew older, Hammersmith began to worry about death. Specifically, he was convinced that he was going to be condemned to Hell. Initially he funded scientific research into an immortality vaccine, but after a close reading of the Bible he realized that, even if he were immortal, he would still be damned upon the second coming of Jesus. He thus refocused his efforts. In 1900 he moved to the United States and hired Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla to build a machine to kill God, the enmity between the two inventors finally culminating in a fist fight. Edison pushed Tesla to the ground, sat on his chest, and rubbed a handful of pearl necklaces in Tesla's hair, mortifying the deeply obsessive-compulsive Serbian inventor and putting an immediate end to the project.

However, Hammersmith discovered a passage in the bible, Judges 1:19. “And the LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.” On the strength of this passage Hammersmith ordered a vast mobile tomb to be constructed in his Australian holdings, in the form of an enormous steam-driven iron chariot. Edison dutifully designed the vehicle, which was two hundred feet high, four hundred feet wide, and a thousand feet long. On the front of the chariot was a immense excavator and refinery complex, so that as it surged across the outback at forty-five miles an hour, the chariot could constantly strip mine the coal it needed to continue operations.

Hammersmith bought one hundred infants, 50 male and 50 female. He gave strict instructions that they be raised mute, without language, and taught nothing except the task of maintaining the chariot, so that when the time came to begin his journey they could be sealed inside with his body, living as his slaves after his death, bearing and raising generations of children within the black metallic confines of his cyclopean nomad mausoleum as it drove ever onward into eternity, defying the final justice of God himself. When J.W. Hammersmith died in 1916, his instructions were followed to the letter.

To this day, Hammersmith's tomb can still be seen traversing the deserts of Australia, carving the sacred land of the aborigine's into a blasted moonscape, spewing a column of fire and smoke a mile high by day and night, its 30 steam whistles shrieking an unintelligible babble of discordant notes.

[lights down]

This is my favorite piece of the several I've done so far this year and I was really pleased by it in spite of how heavy-handed the metaphors are. Mark Twain made an appearance in the first version but it was quite a bit too long and had to be cut. I found this piece fun to write and fun to read. It's a treat to toss off phrases like "cyclopean nomad mausoleum" or "blasted moonscape," but one so seldom gets the chance.

In performance it came on kind of slow, because it wasn't immediately clear to the audience what kind of story it was, but they eventually got that it was a kind of absurd narrative and they were laughing by the end.

There's another piece I did last Friday, but I think I might sit on that one until later on, in case I do another piece in the coming show.

Evan Schenck
also posted to his own blog

urgh, glob

2009-09-24T05:55:00.004-05:00

I have not blogged for almost a month. I have been a little tired, overall, since then because I have a new job and less free time means I'm ignoring the Internet more. But scoring GMAT essays is pretty good work. I'm in front of a computer all day, so I don't have to talk to anybody very often, which I like. But I'm always fidgety in my seat and by the end of the day I have eyestrain. At least we moved back to the ACT Circle building today, which was being remodeled when I started so I've been at a different building for the month. But now I have my own walled-up niche and a slightly more comfortable chair. And it is year-round work at good pay, so I won't complain further, except to say that a lot of people don't write very good essays.

My mom has been applying to a couple of jobs here and there. The plant she works at now - the plant she's been working at for >30 years - is closing down, and everyone is getting laid off. She has maybe a month left, and she'll look harder for a job after she and Dad get back from their Las Vegas vacation that they've been planning for a while. So Mom has been sending me her resume and some cover letters to look at because she wanted my advice, which I gave (call ahead to get a name to put on the cover letter, don't just summarize your resume but say why your skills are good for the job, etc). I'm happy to help, but it's kind of heartbreaking. I never thought I'd be coaching my soon-to-be-unemployed mother on this kind of stuff. At least Dad's job is okay and Mom's covered under his health insurance. She's worried that nobody will want to hire someone her age. But she took typing/spelling tests at Ottumwa's Workforce Center when two other women were there at the same time, and she peeked at their scores and saw she did better than they did. Go, Mom.

I realized that Evan and I passed our 1.5-year anniversary, so there's that. I looked way back in my Gmail to determine the day of our first date (it was a year and a half ago, I don't remember) and I found this comment I made to Janani about how sweet Evan is:

I could not have imagined he'd be such a sweet talker, nobody has treated me with such intense affection and sincerity. I may even have to step up my game (STEP IT UP 2 THE STREETS THAT IS).

It's still true. Evan, you're my favorite guy in the world, and I love you.

Also, I told Evan I wanted to read about the history of shipbuilding and navigation, and he said he'd check books out of the university library for me. Yeah!

a game

2009-08-16T22:52:00.002-05:00

Janani and Evan and I pledged to send each other our made-up names for right-wing entities. Mine:

Conservatives for American Prosperity
Concerned Mothers For Purity
Americans for a Traditional America
Flat Earth, Flat Tax
Libertarians for Rational Tax Policy
The Heritage Tradition
The Tree of Liberty Foundation
Masculine Men for Feminine Women
Creation Recreation (A Young-Earth Theme Park)
Nixon Vixens
Americans for an American America

home for the weekend

2009-08-09T00:33:00.007-05:00

Saw Julie & Julia tonight with Mom. Meh. It's kind of uneven because the parts about Julia Child's life are much more interesting than the parts about Julie Powell's life. Like Julia, Julie has a government job, Julie counseling families of 9/11 relatives about insurance (with slow-panning shots of fence memorials and the Ground Zero site to hammer it in). This and her wide-eyed enthusiasm over this newfangled thing called blogging come off as more dated than the other parts of the movie that take place in the fifties. Dated in the way that You've Got Mail was about email. AOL, even. In three or four years Nora Ephron will make a heartwarming chick flick about texting or Twitter.

Mom also took me to her bank today to get added as an owner to their account, her reason being that I'll be able to get into their lockbox and close things up if my parents should die (okay, when). It's kind of uncomfortable but it needs to be done sometime. Mom joked (half-joked?) that it's in case their plane goes down - Mom and Dad are taking a vacation to Las Vegas next month. I hypothesize that it's more that Grandma's passing several months ago has made them think of their own mortality more, as they've also taken measures to improve their health. I don't know if they're eating better - I hope they are - but I know they've been more active. Mom has moved the treadmill downstairs so she can watch tv while she exercises (or rather, so she can exercise while she watches tv). When I greeted my Dad today I immediately noticed he had lost a good deal more weight than the last time I saw him. His belly has partially deflated.

Speaking of Grandma, Mom gave me two boxes containing a total of seven rings from Grandma's lockbox. Her weddings rings are in there but Mom doesn't know which ones they are. All are gold or rose gold, one just has a design carved into the metal, most have stones, some are missing stones.

found comedy

2009-08-07T01:15:00.002-05:00

So I just started Sims 3 and it updated the game to the latest version. I'm reading the long list of bugs that were fixed. My faves:

Playable ghost teens and children are now properly assigned to a school.

Neighbors will no longer gather to watch a burglar that hasn't yet stolen anything.

"Befriend All Co-workers" wish is no longer fulfilled by switching to a job with no coworkers.

"Become Enemies with Child" wish no longer appears. (WHY?)

Fixes a rare case where a revived ghost could become stuck in the science lab if a household was split.

Parents will no longer wish to "See Sim Get Married" for their already married children.

Child Sims no longer deform after "Watching a Concert."

Fences no longer occlude sound.

Fish no longer appear on dry ground of lots that have been coverted to residential lots .

The best one is definitely:

Sims can no longer "Try for Baby" with the Grim Reaper.

playing with photoshop

2009-08-03T02:37:00.002-05:00

Evan! I put your head on some flowers!

there's a cat too

it's horrid

2009-08-01T18:51:00.001-05:00

Face Bank.

It's only a matter of time before someone tries to put their dick in it.

drew graffiti for Evan

2009-07-28T19:09:00.004-05:00

Next time the alien will pull out its map and be perturbed it's on Earth and not Venus.

I also like it because it looks like I'm consoling Evan for doing something stupid, which he hasn't.

oh man the side of the graffiti box is bumping into my tweets (is that dirty?)

only harry can do that

2009-07-27T15:12:00.005-05:00

yesterday: saw a stop sign on Melrose Ct. vandalized to read

STOP
VOLDEMORT

goodbye

2009-07-19T15:45:00.002-05:00

I just had to remove someone from my Facebook friends list because I got too annoyed with them always talking about how they don't believe in global warming. I hesitated at first because the remove button just said I'd be removing my "connection" with them and I didn't know what that meant (would it keep us as friends, but no longer say we went to high school together??). It also denied me the satisfaction of clicking anything that said "Remove Friend" and then getting the message "You have removed **** **** as a friend."

I wish it would have said "You have removed **** **** as a friend. Screw them, amirite?!" Perhaps I should contact the Facebook staff with this suggestion.

Canst þu ænig þing?

2009-07-14T02:37:00.006-05:00

Currently reading a book on the history of the English language and it's kind of blowing my mind. It's interesting to think that if something had happened differently, if people had translated something differently or if King Alfred's scribes had been from another part of England, or if different words found popular usage and ones I use now had instead fell into obscurity (invigilate?), I'd be speaking differently. It makes me wonder how the connections in my brain would be different if I'd grown up speaking another language or writing it if it were a logography and not an alphabet, and how it would feel totally natural to be speaking phonemes that I couldn't distinguish now because they're not in English. How it would feel to tell someone "Je t'aime" or "Te amo" everyday instead of "I love you." Evan is busy playing Mass Effect so I can't test it out on him right now. Sometime I will tell him "te amo" and see how it goes.

I asked Janani what Henry James novel I should read and she recommended Portrait of a Lady.

I signed up to take a tour of the Iowa City Public Library this Thursday.

Names I would give a cat:
Capture Scratch
Tumbles
Gobstopper
Æ ("Ash")
Cramps
Bushel
Stomps
Florian
Vulgaris

i also like those guys' pink wigs, very lazytown

2009-07-02T04:44:00.007-05:00

Gay sex - yeah, not marriage or wimpy civil unions, but plain old gay sex - is legal in India. Step in the right direction, though! And I love the caveat in this article:

"Any homosexual act without the consent of either partner remains a criminal offense, however, Indira Jaisingh, counsel for the nonprofit Naz Foundation which had challenged the law, told CNN."

Just in case you thought we were legalizing sexual assault!

The rep from the Naz Foundation is only talking about gay Indian men, though...finally, a reason to Google "lesbianism in India."

took an online test from the BBC

2009-07-01T08:55:00.002-05:00

and it turns out I'm FUCKING AWESOME at rotating 3D objects in my head.

I just have to brag about this because I got 11 out of 12 when the average for women was 7 and the average for men was 8.

I AM THE BEST

Seen in Iowa City today

2009-06-26T17:02:00.003-05:00

The Meachem Travel Service building is spraypainted with "4CHAN."

White Rabbit is capitalizing on death with a screenprinted shirt in their window that has a picture of young Michael Jackson and the words "Never Forget."

Several days ago: A handwritten note taped to the wall of the Dubuque St walkway tunnel that said, "This is probably the closest that you and I will ever be."

Overshadowed!

2009-06-25T17:46:00.002-05:00

Chaz Bono

2009-06-12T03:40:00.007-05:00

formerly Chastity, has come out as a trans man.

The AP seems confused: they're good about using the masculine pronouns - he, his - but they say he is having a "sex change" (come to think of it, I'm not even sure what all that means) to "become" a man. Like, he will be a man at some point in the future. The related headlines below the AP text refer to him as Cher's "daughter" and even "daughter Chaz." Son!

Evan reading in the tub

2009-06-08T19:14:00.004-05:00

Saved and blogged because I like documenting Evan's dainty and elegant hand gestures.

There's my handsome boy!

art portrait artsy books

2009-06-04T07:28:00.001-05:00

I got two from the library and am looking at them. I flipped the page to see Alice Neel's Self-Portrait, Skull, 1958.

I was startled!

Dr. George Tiller assassinated

2009-05-31T18:52:00.006-05:00

Fuck.

CNN says he was "shot to death." No, the wording is important here. This guy was assassinated. This man was one of very few late-term abortion providers in the United States - operations performed to save women's lives - and now he's dead. I've read about him a few times before on Feministe and elsewhere and I knew he was in danger, but it's still shocking when it actually happens.

Fffuck.

Nightmares

2009-05-23T00:54:00.005-05:00

I had two of them this morning: one in which my mother strangled a gray kitten and then I wept about it, and another in which I was trapped in a house with a creepy roommate who may have been a monster. I wandered the house, lost (my nightmares often involve me being trapped in a labyrinthine building that is impossible to navigate) but terrified of finding this person, and every time I did I was overcome with fright enough to teleport back to where I started: crouching under a dining table. My goal was to make it outside to the back yard (which was foggy and looked like a cemetery), and eventually I made it there but was still afraid of coming across the creepy roommate and starting over. I realized that he only appeared when I was most afraid he was going to, and that since I was unable to think of him without becoming afraid, all I had to do was actively disbelieve in his existence and he would never appear. Then I got confused about whether that meant he was only a figment of my imagination or whether he existed outside of my mind but my state of mind controlled his ability to appear to me. It wasn't a lucid dream, as I didn't know I was dreaming and I didn't have any control over what was going on, but I rarely have such complex and reflexive thoughts on my environment, my influence on it, and my own thoughts while I'm dreaming. Couldn't stop my mom from strangling that kitten, though. What the hell, mom?

After sewing that last dress that came out so well, I went to Jo-Ann today and used up most of my gift card on another dress pattern, a zipper, and 2.5 yards of fabric - a sturdy cotton twill in my favorite color, a medium grassy green.

I also want to sew another item for Evan and I asked him what he might like. A dress shirt, shorts, a dandy waistcoat? He said anything would be good.

latest sewing project completed

2009-05-21T02:38:00.006-05:00

The fabric.

The finished dress.

Cream lining and invisible zipper.

Me in it - nevermind the hint of armpit hair (and yes! Lydia, that is our "Cancer" poster you got us in the background and Janani, the beard poster you got us is in the kitchen).

I still have a $25 gift certificate for Jo-Ann Fabrics that I got from my birthday - I'll probably get a couple more patterns and some more fabric. Once I start buying fabric I can't stop. Someday I'd like to splurge on a nice dress form but right now I have no place to put one.

you're wrong

2009-05-16T15:32:00.011-05:00

On Salon.

Clark-Flory:

"typically snarky tone" "Those types of, uh, vivid arguments" "rude-girl slang" "generous heaping of the F-word"

THIS ISWHAT ALLOT OF ITERNET IS LIEK GOD

"knows how to make feminism accessible to a young, apathetic audience"

Feministing actually selects toward readers who are not apathetic, so no.

"Her first book, "Full Frontal Feminism" featured"..."a butt-naked lady on the cover."

That book's cover only shows a bare stomach, so no. But the cover's a little silly, so yeah.

Valenti:

"In terms of male virgins, I don't think they're affected nearly as much as women. As you said, male virgins are presented in this jokey way in U.S. culture -- you see them in a doofy movie and that's pretty much it."

Perhaps not nearly as much, but I think Valenti's underestimating the degree to which boys/men can be shamed for being virgins, as girls/women are shamed for NOT being virgins. I'll never be privy to everything that goes on among male-only circles of friends, but I'd imagine that there's pressure to have sex as well as teasing the guys who are seen as still being virgins, yes? For some dude-groups, not all.

"I think the way that they're most affected is in how they're taught to interact with women and to define themselves in oppositional terms. To be a man you just have to not be feminine -- don't be a girl, don't be a pussy, and don't be a sissy."

I don't disagree about how masculinity/femininity are often defined in "oppositional terms," but Valenti's doing the same here for different reasons and it's ultimately unproductive. I think it's unfair to say that masculinity is the absence of femininity, as it would be unfair to say that femininity is the absence of masculinity. I tend to think of those things as things and not absences of other things (is Marxism an absence of capitalism?).

"What I find really fascinating is that in Africa and places outside the U.S. we call it female genital mutilation. But, because you pay $4,000 for it here, it's a designer vagina? It's ridiculous! It's just another way of fetishizing virginity and young vaginas."

Okay, whoa. Women get cosmetic genital surgery because they want their labia to look different, or they want their vagina tightened, or they want a new hymen put in so they can "be virginal" again or some other damned creepy thing. "Female genital mutilation" is when someone else cuts off your clitoris and other parts so you can't fully sexually function, in a procedure that is often done in unhygienic conditions without anesthetic (and without consent), to small children. It's fucking gross that Valenti downplays how terrible that is by saying it's like a grown woman getting elective surgery from a real surgeon. And FGM happens in this country, too!

from the mouths of aggressive frat thugs

2009-05-08T21:15:00.002-05:00

Heard in the space of one hour in downtown Iowa City this Friday evening:

"Pepperoni nipples! Dinner plate nipples!"

"FUCK YOU, AARON!"

self-indulgence

2009-04-27T04:24:00.003-05:00

Put up an old No Shame Best Of show on Youtube tonight and embedding my own piece in it here.

Warning: it gets naughty.

after midnight

2009-04-25T23:51:00.004-05:00

Emailed Professor ******* recently, he referred me to a Mr. ***** who is a big deal library guy who sounds pretty cool. I will contact him soon and ask to talk to him. I think library science is what I want to do. I'm attracted to the prospect of doing practical work that is also really nerdy and interdisciplinary and researchy, and I'm thinking a concentration on archival studies would be very interesting. So I'll ask this guy what it's all about.

Went back to the library today and returned some things, I still have a book about Boudica to finish. I checked out a Larry Niven novel that Evan told me about, Protector (must be a novelization of the Tony Jaa film). I also wanted to read a book about libraries, but as usual my taste went to the ghastly and I checked out Books on Fire: The Destruction of Libraries Throughout History. I also wanted to read more about the kingdoms of pre-colonial Africa but did not find a book on such. Most of the history books at ICPL are about medieval Europe or ancient Rome.

I had a dentist appointment almost two weeks ago where I got two small cavities filled in a molar on each side (with no dental insurance, which was fun) and the dentist warned me that I might have some cold sensitivity in those teeth, and that if it persisted for more than two weeks I should come back (to do what? don't know). Oh jeez, I had HELL OF cold sensitivity for several days. It's finally going away now, but for a while I could barely eat: I could not drink cold liquids or eat very cold food at all - even something like a sandwich with turkey and mayo right from the fridge would send a powerful jolt of pain through both sides of my mouth. Also, my bite became slightly different - I am used to it now, but for days after the appointment I would accidentally bite the insides of my cheeks when I ate, hard enough to bloody them and leave shreds of flesh that I would keep tonguing because they were bothersome. My cheeks are healed now but they're still bumpy on the inside where I bit them.

The lesson is to not go to the dentist.

OH NO

2009-04-25T19:26:00.002-05:00

BEA ARTHUR

On the other hand, I just learned that Bea Arthur was a member of PETA for more than twenty years, proving again that those successful in the entertainment industry may be good at acting or singing but are often gullible and have poorly-thought-out opinions.

I'm going to be so bummed out when Betty White goes. You too, Rue.

essays

2009-04-23T01:07:00.009-05:00

I'm kind of sad that my latest scoring project ended today, and not just because I was sitting next to a very nice lady I made friends with. Scoring hundreds of essays all about the same thing is grueling, especially when you're tired and a lot of stuff is written in sloppy, illegible cursive. The essays blend into each other and eventually become an indistinct and viscous substance that is only Essay, that is an archetype of its own, there is one Essay that seeps into your eyes and slows down time and makes you forget your life before Essay. I read the same things over and over again, the same comparisons between readings, the same summaries, the same personal perspective (everyone writes about the subway!) until my back and neck hurt too much and my eyes are glazed over and I get to go home for the day. Still, it was okay.

Now, no essay is exactly like any other essay (unless someone cheated), and some are indeed memorable for being particularly good or bad or just weird, but most can be grouped into categories:

The Meh
Most essays. The basic mediocre essay that gets a low to middling score. Might summarize only the first few pages of the main reading, indicating that they didn't read the whole thing. Shows a lack of critical thinking and ability to analyze ("I agree with everything I read"). Usually has only the most simplistic thesis ("I will show that basic concept X influences this thing that X is a part of"). Often overuses and misuses words that they think sound smart, such as "aspects" and "utilize."

The Sore Winner
Some better papers fall into this category. The smart students who know they're smart and show it off in a dickish way. They feel they should write with a unique voice to stand out and project authority, so they adopt one that is snarky and elitist. Might outright insult the intelligence and writing ability of the authors whose texts they had to read for the exam. I wish I could downscore people for being annoying but that's not how it works.

The "Who's Your Audience for This Essay?" Essay
The rarer essay that approaches a topic from a religious perspective and doesn't consider or care that I, the scorer, might not be persuaded from doing a thing because it's "playing God" or "you can't top God" or that a thing is this way because we "have souls." This stuff is fine to put as your personal perspective, but it's not substantive analysis, and you shouldn't assume just any reader will find it compelling evidence for your case.

What else: Evan and I will be in Iowa City another year, and I have gotten as far as beginning to draft an email to a professor. Tomorrow I should just do it. No, tomorrow I will do it, and if I say it on my blog I can't take it back. I will not edit it out and pretend I didn't say it. Katy, stop assuming that you will fail before you even do a thing. That's not a good way to be.

it's 2 AM and I'm tired now

quick post before I go to work

2009-04-01T07:10:00.001-05:00

Watching CNN, G20 protests are going on, their live feed was on the police line. Scuffles between cops and protesters going on every minute. There's a guy yelling at the cops, his clothes look torn and he has an obvious head injury - big stream of blood running down his face and on his shirt. More than once Kiran Chetry suggested that maybe that guy "painted it on" himself. Brilliant coverage, CNN, just brilliant.

mad dog

2009-03-22T16:06:00.004-05:00

oh yes

2009-03-20T02:33:00.002-05:00

It's March 20, 2009.

Evan and I had our first date (dinner at Masala) on March 20, 2008.

Happy one-year anniversary, Evan. I love you very much.

of course

2009-03-20T01:09:00.005-05:00

The conservatives' "if a Republican had made a joke about the Special Olympics, they'd be crucified but Obama's getting special treatment" meme is already making the rounds. You think I voted for Obama thinking he'd never make a mistake?

It's dishonest to say he's not going to get nailed for this when it's already happening.

HORROR

2009-03-18T15:33:00.005-05:00

I found this through tvtropes.org's entry for "Nightmare Fuel," that is, stuff that isn't meant to be scary, or at least isn't meant to be as scary as it is, and scares the hell out of kids. Watch and be horrified.

The worst part is definitely (highlight)the few frames where the "woman mask" is being pulled off and OMG HER FACE IS FOLDING IN ON ITSELF THAT'S SO HORRIBLE TO LOOK AT

reading words from books

2009-03-12T14:04:00.007-05:00

What are some good horror/sci-fi short stories? I just read "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream," by Harlan Ellison. It was interesting, though unsurprisingly he hates women as much in his fiction as he seems to in real life. Same with Updike and Vonnegut, though I still enjoy a lot of Vonnegut's work (negotiated reading!).

I should go find some good short stories in these genres by female authors, so I'll have much less of a chance of reading about how women are dirty sluts who like to get raped. I've read "The Yellow Wallpaper," the Charlotte Perkins Gilman story, and it was good. I don't think Octavia Butler cared much for short stories, but Le Guin has written them. I'll see what James Tiptree, C.J. Cherryh, and C.L. Moore have written.

I also like Poe. What is some more good horror (or sci-fi) more than a century old? I will see.

I'd also like to read more Lem, Borges, Italo Calvino, and maybe I'll give Lovecraft another try because I still find some of what he's about interesting even though he's a terrible racist (negotiated reading un autre fois!). Ehhh, I don't know. I feel like I've already played Eternal Darkness a few times so fuck it.

blogging again

2009-02-28T18:54:00.003-06:00

Saw Coraline, it was a really good-looking movie. Venus is next to the Moon and it looks neat.

So some of my coworkers are stupid and racist:

1: What does Cinco de Mayo mean? What's it about?
2: I don't know. Don't know what it means.
1: Not even the Mexicans know what it means.
2: I don't think anybody does.
3: When's Cinco de Mayo?

Lesson: Mexicans don't know what their own holidays mean.

1: Did he get his papers yet, or is he still an illegal?
(later)
2: If I hadn't stayed in school, I'd be pregnant by now. I'd-a been pregnant three times, I just know it.
1: Three little wetbacks, huh?
2: (cute, singsong) Awww, you're not niiice!
1: Just kidding, heh heh!

Lesson: It's okay to be a racist asshole when you append your racism with a "Just kidding!"

hai im superrasist J/K LOLZKSHFW#R*&

grah

2009-02-10T22:46:00.007-06:00

having a job all day makes it hard to get thigns done druring teh day ldasjfeiovfe'lsdk because whena i get hoem i am so tierd and i just want to hang aboutttt GET THINGS DONE KATY

Will I see E. O. Wilson tomorrow? I'll see how I feel tomorrow. I think it would be interesting. I appreciate his environmentalist and secular humanist views, though I am suspicious about sociobiology. It smells a lot like evolutionary psychology, which is the field where macho scientists go to conjure up strange rationalizations for why women actually want to get raped (we don't), but I don't want to dismiss this sociobiology (or 100% of evo-psych either) as I haven't looked into it very much yet.

Today I read about how PETA members recently dressed up as Klansmen and handed out fliers comparing the American Kennel Club to the KKK. I registered my extreme hatred for PETA (they've done plenty of sexist ad campaigns too, as well as ones that were just dumb) via a Facebook status update, partly because I was mad and partly because I felt like being a little provocative. People are already ragging me on it. It is kind of fun because I know I am right.

I may go see Naomi Klein on the 18th.

Hey, you know what Thursday is? Darwin Day! What will I do to celebrate? I will have to see what shapes I have cookie cutters in. I know I have a Santa Claus cutter, maybe I can pass it off as Charles Darwin because of the beard.

Geez

2009-02-08T21:21:00.001-06:00

When is Silvio Berlusconi going to drop dead? It won't be soon enough.

it just became Friday

2009-02-06T00:00:00.002-06:00

I am letting myself stay up a little later tonight to write a No Shame skit because I took a nap this evening, I don't know what I did or ate but I was knocked out tired and then I woke up with a neck ache because I had slept on the couch with my head propped up on the arm all weird.

Transcripts were acquired today at Calvin Hall. More work to do this weekend.

I have also checked out a fascinating tome from the public library called The Worldwide History of Dress by Patricia Rieff Anawalt. Very interesting.

a job is a hassle in the assh'le

2009-02-03T18:07:00.007-06:00

I need to go get transcripts from the Registrar's Office and put some things together. Working on it. If I visit a few professors, I'm going to have to take time off of work multiple times, which I don't like to do. But it's up to me do this stuff now.

Even the Registrar's Office is only open until 4:30! Leaving work at 4, it takes me ~10 minutes just to get back downtown, nevermind the time spent finding a parking spot and then walking to the building. LOGISTICS! (BUT YOU HAVE TO DO THINGS EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE A HASSLE)

I also don't have time to go to University events like lectures unless they're in the evening, when I'm off work. There's a guy who's going to be talking about the history of museums, I may go to that.

But tonight is $1 pizza night at Old Chicago, and after that I hope to get some writing done. I have ideas for No Shame pieces at work and then I have to wait several hours to write them down. I want to hash some things out tonight because I have some ideas that I think are good. I'd keep my little Moleskine in my lunch tote at work but then someone would see me writing in it and they'd ask what I was writing and I'd have to explain it or make something up and that would be annoying.

My mom also had her cataract surgery this morning and I called to make sure everything went fine and it did.

Man, $1 pizza night! I am not even going to eat a snack before then because I want the satisfaction of vanquishing a strong hunger with large slices of cheesy, cheesy food.

he gets around he gets around he gets around

2009-01-31T23:20:00.004-06:00

So recently our tv got stuck in a k-hole for an evening and several channels were acting very strangely, stuttering along frame by frame and repeating the same short length of video for a long time. We can only assume Mediacom was having a Problem. It was very entertaining while it lasted.

pictures of flying machines in the sky and a picture of the sky

2009-01-31T21:52:00.005-06:00

Pictures kept large for detail.

WHOA ALABAMA

2009-01-29T19:49:00.007-06:00

There is a radio at work whose location I can't identify, but is near my usual workspace. The station it is always turned to plays the same songs - The Police's "Roxanne," the Vanessa Carlton song, some Sarah McLachlan song about angels, the Sheryl Crow song about how she likes the Sun, Gwen Stefani's "The Sweet Escape," Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful," etc. If it weren't for the ads and DJ chatter, I would have thought someone was playing the same bad mix CD every day. Today I was additionally punished with John Cougar's "Jack and Diane" but rewarded greatly with The Cranberries' "Dreams."

Also, hey, guess what year Alabama finally amended its State Constitution to repeal its ban on interracial marriage?

2000.

Way to be behind the times! One in five voters would have kept it, too! The law wasn't even enforceable after Loving v. Virginia (1967) but still. Get rid of it, yeesh!

Someday I'd like to get a cat. Evan has allergies but also has allergy pills, and he really likes cats and would get a cat. Things I would name a cat:

Otzi (like the mummy)
Hestia
Conservation of Angular Momentum: the Cat
Seerauber Jenny
Evan suggested Awesome: the Cat
Amitabh Bachchan
Sweater
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: the Cat (so you don't confuse it with the actual novel, Evan said).

New No Shame Theatre Season

2009-01-27T21:19:00.008-06:00

starting Friday, January 30. I will have to write a piece tonight or tomorrow night, as I am planning to hang out with a crew on Thursday, one of which will be spending a semester in Majorca shortly.

Congratulations to my BFF Janani who got a sweet editing gig at Cabinet Magazine. Someday we will visit you in Brooklyn and also you are awesome.

I've been talking to a former TA of mine about whether I want to go to grad school. At least I am in talks, at least I am getting advice right now. I think I might want to go after a few years - there is so much left to study, there is so much knowledge to gain and so much knowledge to formulate and add to pre-existing knowledge and all that. Even though I haven't thought about teaching a class, I think I could do it while I'm in school - I mean, I'd have to. I already have plenty of experience speaking/making an ass of myself in front of crowds of college students (see notice for No Shame above).

Thank you, "cold remedy" Zicam, for warning me that your product is homeopathic - now I know it doesn't work.

I am blogging again, it's been a few weeks and this weekend I am going back home to help Mom go through Grandma's room. Mom sorted out some of her clothes but it was hard to just look at all of her things. I think Mom is feeling a bit better; she doesn't sound sad on the phone anymore as soon as she answers before she even knows it's me, but it's going to take a while for things to feel okay again. I feel bad thinking about Mom coming home and then Dad leaving for work and Mom being alone in the house with just the cat.

While working today I thought of an experiment to do - and my repetitive work does let my mind wander to think of weird things. So here it is, the beginningmost kernel of an idea, even though it's not that great:

I'd have three groups of people, and half the people in each group would wear glasses.
First group is told, "Draw glasses."
Do they draw drinking glasses or spectacles? I'd hypothesize that people who wear eyeglasses would be more inclined than normal-sighted people to draw them rather than drinking glasses, as they are more familiar with spectacles and handle them more often. What would the normal-sighted people draw? I don't know, I'm not one.
Second group is told, "Draw a glass." And then, "Draw glasses."
What do they draw in each case? Here we have a differentiation between the singular and plural. How does that lead one to think of one meaning of "glass(es)" before the other? "Glasses" as in "eyeglasses" is used in the plural, while one would probably think of a drinking glass in the singular because one handles one drinking glass at a time (unless one bartends). (Question: How does one's everyday experience, especially firsthand tactile experience, lead one to interpret a word with multiple meanings when hearing the word without helpful context?). Would someone who drew a drinking glass at the first command draw more drinking glasses at the second command, assuming a continuity between the two requests, or would they then draw eyeglasses?
Third group is told, "Draw a glass." And then, "Now, draw glasses."
What do they draw? Here, the "now" might imply to some a contradiction between the first and second commands. So, would a person first drawing a drinking glass be more inclined to draw eyeglasses afterwards? I...don't know. But I was thinking about all this while packing boxes full of ACT test administration manuals this morning.

Fun with Homonyms!

Also, this morning my coworkers and I were discussing how to make a cube-shaped bubble. One of my suggestions was to blow a bubblegum bubble, save that bubble, pinch it at eight points to make a cube, and then freeze it. I've frozen bubblegum bubbles before, it can be done.

My mom called

2009-01-05T13:22:00.004-06:00

and said that Grandma died at about 8:30 this morning. She had been in the hospital for a few weeks and was very ill with pneumonia. The funeral is this Saturday.

Here's some good video of her that I shot last Thanksgiving. I titled it "Goddamnit Shut Up: A Grandma Story."

Myrtle Irene Fisk, 1918-2009

My two favorite things

2008-12-10T05:09:00.003-06:00

about the Blagojevich thing:

He said he was going to withhold millions of dollars from a children's hospital unless an executive of the hospital gave him a campaign contribution. A children's hospital! That's low.

And he called Barack Obama a motherfucker! The hell, man!

Also, a few weeks ago I blogged this:
So, Yma Sumac and Miriam Makeba. I guess this is the month when internationally acclaimed female singers who are closely identified with their native countries/continents who are also getting on in age are supposed to kick off. Take care of yourselves, Fairouz and Lata Mangeshkar!
I failed to guess who would be the next to go. It was Odetta, sadly.

so, okay, tea

2008-12-08T23:07:00.004-06:00

This is a way that I'm making tea now.

1. Tear a corner off the tea bag and funnel in some cinnamon through the topper of a honey bear container. I don't have a real funnel.

2. Close it again with a twist tie. The tie also acts as a handle for easy steeping.

3. Steep for a couple of minutes.

4. Stir in some sugar and vanilla-flavored soy milk.

Now you have tea that tastes like a cookie.

Also, some pictures.

Homemade chicken crisps.

Text.

Oreo milk.

Curtains.

Mismatching bathroom doorknobs.

Thanksgiving pictures

2008-12-02T16:44:00.006-06:00

Back in Iowa City.

I was looking forward to seeing Al Gore and Amitabh Bachchan at Live Earth India, but obviously that was canceled because, you know. Holy shit. My friend Janani is near Mumbai right now and I hope you have a safe flight home in a few days - you are my BF.

Pictures from my house:

My cat.

This is what happens when Grandma sits in her favorite chair after she gets her hair done (or did).

My Dad.

My cousins' ancient dog.

Relatives.

Their kids.

Our spread.

lists

2008-11-29T18:57:00.003-06:00

Highlights of my young cousins' Christmas lists:

Alex:
9'999 dollars
9'999 bakugon
fake and cool cell phone
really cool cloth's
cool musice
big screen tv
more blankey's

Morgan:
A pet fish
A real puppy
A little brush
Money for California
More money 4 California

Here's what I'm thankful for: my new sewing machine works like the most erotic dream. It performs stitches perfectly, and it makes buttonholes, sweet Jesus, it makes buttonholes. Dear God Lord Jesus Savior Christ Angels in America of Heaven's Glory, it makes buttonholes. O valiant Baphomet Joseph Smith Ganesh Saint Sebastian in Yggdrasil it makes buttonholes.

I am getting old. I had my first moment of grandparentlike helplessness in buying Christmas presents for a much younger relative when my mom and I went looking for "9'999 bakugon," whatever the hell that is. I eventually found that "Bakugan" is basically Pokemon except I recognize Pokemon when I see it and you could show me any anime boy character with spikey hair and I could believe he was from Bakugan.

Driving back to Iowa City tomorrow.

THNAKSVGIVNG LOLZ

2008-11-28T00:18:00.003-06:00

I'm in my parents' house, here in Ottumwa until Saturday evening/Sunday morning, whenever I decide to drive back home.

I just sent my boyfriend this email but I'll make it a blog post too:

****
I kind of miss having intellectual conversations and writing/researching/learning with purpose, so I made a cursory search for graduate programs on communication. It turns out that the University of Iowa is hot shit with Communication, which I already knew it had a really good Comm program, and the National Communication Association has ranked it #1 in my probable area of interest, Rhetorical Criticism, so at least I got my undergraduate someplace well regarded, I guess. Hmm. I'm not ruling out grad school is all I'm saying, I don't want to be in school again for a while but I don't want to say never. Maybe some years in the future, I don't know. I don't really want to teach though. What else I'd do, I don't know yet.

I guess I'm just trying to think of what I want to do and realizing I liked Comm better than Cinema. With film I developed my eye a lot and I mostly enjoyed getting technical skills and knowledge, which is easier to quantify, but I think I liked the Comm material (and atmosphere) better, which is much more loosey-goosey and about pretty much whatever so it's a lot harder to define, but I liked it more.

I fear that I didn't put myself out there enough to make myself memorable for recommendations. I wish I'd spoken up more and made friends with more teachers but I can't go back. It's really hard for shy people. Hopefully I do interesting things in the future that show I haven't jerked off a complete waste of my time.

I also want to look into shopping around some short stories I've written and see if anyone wants to publish them. Sometime. I want to get more things written, and I want to force myself to excrete a story more than two pages long. I think I am concise to the point of telling instead of showing, which makes my stories sound more like children's fables with adult subject matter, which is a style I like but I should push myself to develop things more.

Evan, can we write each other a story for Christmas? And if we procrastinate, for our birthdays? We will never write if we don't set deadlines.

****

My jaw hurt and I just realized I was clenching it.

Yo Gabba Gabba

2008-11-21T13:43:00.003-06:00

I've seen Yo Gabba Gabba before but didn't catch the title of the show. I'm pretty sure it is the hippest show on television and it is on Nick, Jr. It's obviously the product of goofy hipsters who took a page from Sid and Marty Krofft - the last episode I saw had Leslie Hall on it. Look at this insanity:

Glorious.

The things people leave in bathrooms

2008-11-18T22:52:00.006-06:00

So I've been scoring essay exams at ACT for a while now, which isn't the point here but okay so anyway the women's bathroom all right. Someone left four sheets of paper in there which turned out to be a vile, anti-Semitic screed writting by a total crackpot. It was dated that day, the 17th of November, so someone printed it off that morning and then left it in the bathroom. Something about "the occult colonializing the Western world" and stuff about the Illuminati and so on. I didn't read it carefully, I just saw a citation from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and I stuffed it into my purse before anyone came out of the stalls. I took it because it was bizarre, but also because I didn't want it to get any farther.

The monotony of essay scoring is sometimes broken by the occasional really bad or really good essay, but most are mediocre. It is depressing how many people are completely unable to demonstrate any capacity for critical thinking (I AGREE WITH ALL THE AUTHORS AND EVERYTHING THAT WAS SAID) and it is frustrating to me how many people's limited understanding of common terms makes them believe absurd things, like that only language counts as "communication," or that "literature" existed BEFORE "technology," which would blow the shit out of my fucking mind if people were writing sonnets before, say, the advent of stone choppers from the earliest human tool industries. Also, you can't have literature without technology first because writing implements are a kind of technology but you know whatever. Whatever!

Speaking of literature, I am reading Jane Eyre right now and am about 60 pages in. I'm enjoying it so far, it is miserable and cruel and I will see what happens when she starts with the governessing and the Mr. Rochesters and all that jazz.

I improvised a yummy chicken dish for myself. I made my basic meat rub I like to make: brown sugar, curry powder, chili powder, ginger, the merest pinch of cayenne, etc, but this time with more hotness and less sweetness, and let a chicken breast sit in it. I cut a pocket in the breast, stuffed it with cheddar cheese (the only cheese I had), crumbled more cheese on top, put a pat of butter over the mess, and baked it gathered up in a tinfoil bowl for a little over twenty minutes. It came out gooey and I liked it because it was spicy but also had the bit of bite that cheddar has.

Also, last night I had a dream where people were getting their heads cut off and frozen, and that Eli Wilkinson wanted to do it. And then there was a bright purple parrot and someone called it the Ku Klux Klan, and I said, "Aw, that's not nice, don't do that to that little bird!"

Even in my dreams I hold fast to my policy about not calling animals the Ku Klux Klan. They aren't!

Also, it turns out vodka isn't terrible. It turns out you shouldn't bother with the cheaper stuff.

FUCK THIS

2008-11-17T22:04:00.002-06:00

I just learned that Yma Sumac is dead, and has been for fuck two weeks. How come I never heard about it? My mom just told me. I guess it's okay as she had to have been very old, but she was one of my favorite singers. Behold:

So, Yma Sumac and Miriam Makeba. I guess this is the month when internationally acclaimed female singers who are closely identified with their native countries/continents who are also getting on in age are supposed to kick off. Take care of yourselves, Fairouz and Lata Mangeshkar!

aaaaaaaargh

2008-11-14T15:54:00.007-06:00

I could have ran into a bicyclist today. I started to pull out into my turn and then I saw a bicyclist whiz past because I didn't see her right away (she was behind a line of parked cars), looking at me like I was the asshole. I drove home, stewing about how she did not stop at her stop sign. After a few minutes of research, I can't figure out if bicyclists here actually have to stop at stop signs, or if they just mean "yield" for them. Anyway, the thing I hate the most is admitting that I may have been wrong, especially since I remembered that look she gave me and I hated her intensely for it. So I'll just say I'll look out for bicyclists more carefully and that I also hope she crashed on the way home. I hope she wasn't one of those bicyclists who also like to ride on the wrong side of the street so I encounter them head on. They are terrible.

Oh god, bike snobs. They are so awful. Not bicyclists in general, bike snobs.

Miriam Makeba

2008-11-10T07:53:00.002-06:00

has died.

Mmm

2008-11-05T08:10:00.005-06:00

Doesn't the air smell fresher this morning?

Doesn't the sun shine a little brighter?

Good day today!

I'm still worried about Prop 8 in California, though, and the MN Senate race. I'll see if there is news on that when I get back from work.

edit:
Prop 8 news: FUCKING SHITTY ASSHOLES FUCK FUCK SHITTY SHITHOLE FUCKFACE FUCK

Goddamnit. But last night: we (Evan, Travis, Lydia, Brian, Kristin, Justin, and I) hung out at our place and drank and ate pizza and watched the election returns, celebrated, watched McCain's concession speech and Obama's victory speech, and went out. The Ped Mall was disappointingly barren. I wanted there to be a crowd of people but we only got shouts from small groups coming out of the Sheraton. The most interesting thing we saw downtown was a couple blatantly having sex against the glass wall of an upper-level stairwell of a parking garage. We stopped a stranger to make sure he was seeing what we were seeing, and he looked up and said, "Oh shit!"

My mom sent me a picture

2008-11-02T00:23:00.006-05:00

Jolly fun Halloween party last night! I carved a jack-o-lantern and saw Lydia's new place and met her pet rats and some beautiful cats and fun new people and it was a time. Evan and I went as Grandma and Grandpa! I was Grandma.

Something amazing happened today, which was that while I was lying on the couch, a fly settled on the palm of my hand and I closed my hand into a fist and this was how I caught it. I threw it into the toilet but it flew off the surface of the water. I swatted it down with my hand and it went into the toilet again and I flushed it. This fly was totally going down and I made it happen, by luck? Nay, skillz, billz-paying skillz.

Also, got this picture today from Mom, giving a very sarcastic thumbs-up in front of a sign at a church on our street.

When you vote, think about these people and how horrible it would be if they picked the next President. They won't, though. But don't not vote!

list in progress pasted from notebook

2008-10-27T23:55:00.003-05:00

Christmas List '08

Daft Punk - Alive 2007
any more cds? (find that one compilation of jelly roll morton)

kitchen things:
bigger and better cutting board (research what material is best)
better knife - no bullshit plastic handle that comes off!
canister set? - meh, i should pick out my own
spice rack - the kind where I can read the spice names without taking the container out of the thing (i don't think i have room for this now)

several sewing things:
notions, etc., and supplies
sewing box/bin with divided compartments
are there gift certificates for joann/shields/home ec?

some nice scented candles or incense (but not candles in jars, because then what do i do with the jars?) soy candles rather than paraffin are nice

books
john hodgman - more information than you require
phil plait - death from the skies
sarah vowell - the wordy shipmates

what does evan want for christmas?

let's get another bookcase sometime - he says he doesn't want one, FINE
what else does he want

learning

2008-10-22T15:38:00.005-05:00

Sometimes I think of things I want to know or that I should know, and here I'm noting them so I can look them up later. Things I should bone up on:

1. Know all the state capitals
2. World geography
3. The parts of a car and what they do
4. How does pectin work?
5. What spices are commonly used in "garam masala?"

Also, Keith Olbermann quoted Talking Heads on Countdown recently and it made me happy.

My sewing machine that was my mom's old sewing machine has not been stitching properly, as in it only does a blind stitch even when I set it to every other stitch, and I was going to have it serviced but Mom called and said nevermind, I saw a new machine on sale so I got it for you, consider it an early part of your Christmas present. How nice! The machine is nice too, newer and fancier and apparently "featured on The Martha Stewart Show." I will break open the box tonight and check it out.

Did I ever blog about what happened to my mom's snowglobes? My parents were selling them in a garage sale, and the ones that didn't sell were boxed up and left with the other garage sale leftovers in the garage and forgotten about. It turns out you shouldn't leave a box of snowglobes in a garage over the winter, because they will freeze and burst apart! They opened a box full of globe bases and shattered glass, and realized: oh damnit.

project runway spoiler alert

2008-10-16T18:35:00.008-05:00

YES highlight--> LEANNE YES SHE WAS MY FAVORITE

Also, it would be great if potential employers would give me a follow-up call after they said they would, after I contacted them for an update more than once, to tell me that they didn't hire me so I'm not WASTING MY FUCKING TIME on them. Assholes. Guess it's ACT test scoring for me. I'll still be looking around, though.

Is there anything better than Indian food? Love, maybe, possibly world peace, not much else. The last time I was at Masala I considered one of my regular orders (Navratan Curry or Malai Kofta) but decided on getting something I hadn't tried before - the Coconut Curry - and was rewarded with deliciousness. I wish I could afford to eat out more often.

Other foods I have been craving lately:
Home-grilled cheeseburgers (done, thanks to George Foreman)
Butternut squash soup (Evan bought us a can of Wolfgang Puck's, thank you dear)
Manicotti

Evan and I were also talking about food trends, like when prosciutto got big, and when Evan watched Top Chef he would see people make seviches a lot. For a while now I've been seeing more and more Sriracha on Food Network. OH FUCK that reminds me I saw an episode of Iron Chef America where a chef was almost set on fire: the guy challenging Michael Symon was doing a thing at a counter and someone had left a butane lighter right next to a burner and it exploded and sent a huge plume of fire up in front of his face!

Also, Ina Garten: I'd totally hang out with her.

watched the debate tonight

2008-10-16T02:37:00.008-05:00

It was more entertaining than the last, and more infuriating as well. We all got to see just how dismissive of women's health John McCain is, enough that he put finger quotes on it.

Sewing machine guts:

It's a little dusty.

And a meal I made myself tonight:

Chicken rubbed with ginger and thyme, sauteed with green pepper and red onion, with an apple cider + soy sauce...sauce. I wanted to make something different to break myself of some habits (not cooking with fresh vegetables and just dumping a lot of hot spices in a food) so I wanted to make something simpler and sweeter. It was good. I just wish I'd made it hotter! I cannot get away from wanting the hotness. Also, good news: the rice cooker that Evan found by the Dumpster works just fine.

As well as:

Before Evan and I moved into our apartment, Janani gave us a box of her old books. I flipped through them and out of James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son fell two photos: a school picture of a devilish-looking boy, and a picture of what looks like the same boy years later as a handsome young man with seventies hair.

gaaahh

2008-10-13T04:15:00.004-05:00

OH GOD Junior Senior broke up and it's like NOTHING MATTERS ANYMORE. Daaamn it.

No, stuff still matters. I have been angry recently at the very nasty and increasingly-obviously-racist turn the McCain campaign has taken ("That one," painting him as "different" and "not like us," surrogates saying "Barack Hussein Obama," people at the rallies yelling "Kill him" and "Bomb Obama" and "Terrorist") and all this has been shitty, but it wasn't until just now that I, and I am going to embarrass myself here, Thought Of The Children. Malia and Sasha Obama, I mean. They're cute kids and they seem nice and smart, like they're being raised right, and I hope they're being shielded from all this stuff about how some fucking racist scumbags want to see their dad assassinated. I despise John McCain and Sarah Palin, but I don't want to see them killed, I'd just like to see them lose. And they will, and it's going to be sweet.

On music: I am adding Daft Punk's Alive 2007 to my Christmas list. There was a time when every damn time I turned on KRUI there would be a track from this playing, and now I want it. Other items on this mental Christmas list include more jigsaw puzzles (thousand-piece ones, probably Big Ben brand), a better kitchen knife (the plastic handle is sliding off and is now, as Brian once described his own subpar kitchen knife, "a piece of sucks cock"), and some other things that would be very nice but might have to wait until we're in a place with more counter space (a canister set, a spice rack, a bigger and better cutting board).

I'm also taking up sewing and I can already see that if I'm going to get very far, I'm going to have to go out and get more supplies. The last time that my mom visited, she brought her old (White, model 2220) sewing machine at my request (thanks, Mom) and now I'm learning how to use it. I only have one needle and I need more, and I don't have a buttonhole foot or a zipper foot, or any buttons or zippers, or more than one bobbin, or a good pair of scissors, or a seam ripper, or a pincushion. At least I could make a pincushion. I want to go load up - I know where Joann Fabrics and the Shields Sewing Center is, and I've wanted to go in that adorable Home Ec store downtown. But I also want to have some self-discipline and make myself get a job before I spend very much money, so I may have to put this new hobby on hold. I've had one job interview which I think went well, and they said they'd call me back and if they didn't then I should call them back which I did, and I've just had some trouble getting in touch with the guy I need to talk to, which I'd like to because I really want to work there. I guess I have ACT test scoring to fall back on if it doesn't work out, and I'm still looking around.

I can sew straight and remember to put the presser foot down, so I'm coming along okay so far. The machine case pops open for cleaning and easier threading, and I can see the moving parts inside. I like the beauty of working, moving machinery. I would get a similar joy from opening up a Bolex and feeding film through a projector.

I made a tiny, green sack. I have several spools of thread, one of them old enough that it has my mom's maiden name on it. I saw it and smiled.

an old email i wrote to friends expressing agreement to see Step Up 2: The Streets

2008-10-07T03:21:00.002-05:00

OMG U GUISE!!!!!!1111
STEP UP TWO THE STREETZZZ
YAEH WE DOIN THIS FRO REAL
WENZDAI NITE IT GOEZ DONW
DINER & A MOVEI STEPP IT 2!!
SEDN THIS MESSIGE 2 25 PPL BY MIDNIT 2NITE FOR A CHANCRE AT TRU LUVE THIS IS RAEL AN ANGLE IN HEAVIN IS WACTHIN OUT 4 U GOD BLESS

most of this was an email

2008-10-03T05:32:00.002-05:00

Evan and I watched the VP debate tonight. We got drunk on rum (if you want a good, high-proof but tasty rum, I recommend The Original Sailor Jerry Spiced Navy Rum, it's the bottle with the hula girl on it) and watched it. I just watched it again sober. We think Biden won because he presented his case well (and the facts were on his side) and nailed some crap that she said sometimes, but I think Palin won some points because (1) expectations for her performance were low and she didn't fail spectacularly, (2) she's an asshole who's not afraid to blatantly steer away from the topic at hand to recite a practiced talking point, and (3) Biden - sometimes he can't help it, Freya bless him - was a bit stuffy and Palin was really performing her folksiness tonight, a lot of "darn it" and "you betcha" and little charming winks and all the bullshit that shouldn't matter but does because a lot of people are stupid. But as far as knowing shit and having good debate technique goes, Biden was superior.

There was also a moment when Biden got choked up, which he does sometimes too, and he came off as human whereas Sarah Palin probably has a robot's brain with response formulas that dictate, "If x, then "hockey mom" and oh god she said "nucular" like ninety times.

Also, there was a moment when Palin mentioned Biden's wife Jill was a teacher and said "her reward is in Heaven," and I thought that was weird (Evan said, "Ew, don't talk about Heaven").

Also, there were a few times when Palin was straight up an asshole (replying to a statement Biden made by smiling and chuckling and saying, "Well, there you go again..." and also saying some foreign policy point Biden made was a "WHITE FLAG OF SURRENDER" no shit she said those words oh god she is such an asshole).

I'm glad my Mom forgot to call me for a post-debate rundown because I was drunk and I fell asleep on the couch. I think I'll just email Mom what I'm saying here, excising the part about the rum.

political (fan?)art

2008-10-02T02:43:00.011-05:00

Gross, embarrassing, unclassy.
HAHA LETZ PAYNT HR NAKID TAHTS JSUT GRATE WE ALL WNAT TO SE HER NKAED CUZ DUDE SHES HOTT BRO also, the guy's daughter was the model for the body, so...he painted his adult daughter nude. It's too late in the night for me to feel like going into the gendered nature of figure drawing and "artistic nudity," so I'll just say hey, let's paint naked dudes more often, eh?

Weird, kind of cute, but weird?
My favorites are 1 (taking a cartoonishly big bite from a turkey leg), 2 (solemnly lifting weights), and 5 (I guess the melting ice cream symbolizes his melting heart, also the illustrator drew Michelle with neck waddle probably by accident).

also sry for reading the chicago tribune online, i didnt go ther on purpiss i folowed a link kthxbai

As seen on Pharyngula:
This person's work is fun. Actually, yeah, I like this lady's work a lot, it's great. The picture of Sarah Palin riding a T. Rex is extremely funny.

Whoa, I just realized

2008-09-26T03:24:00.001-05:00

Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas is actually a brilliant satire on exoticism of The Other and cultural appropriation!

DEVELOPING STORY

2008-09-19T00:08:00.017-05:00

WALL STREET OVERRUN BY ZOMBIES

do you have the BRAINS for my BITING political commentary

the latest in racism brought to you by the fine people at Kahlua

2008-09-16T20:57:00.002-05:00

Minutes ago I saw a commercial for Kahlua where a white man and a white woman at a party touched a magical ancient artifact and were transported to another world, a scary primitive world of dark-skinned savages. The foreign-talkin' leader asks the man if they are kings, as they drink the drink of kings, the man guesses at some syllables, and the man apparently said the right thing as the next shot is of the horde of Scary Brown People in celebration, carrying the white people above their heads on thrones. And by the "latest" in racism, I mean this is actually a pretty old and common trope where white people tangle with a frighteningly Primitive and Exotic Culture (probably isolated on an island too) where they are kidnapped/threatened with cannibalism/worshiped as gods/hailed as rulers or whatever. See the work of H.P. Lovecraft, Pirates of the Caribbean, the King Kong films, Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode #802 The Leech Woman, and a lot of other stuff for many more examples.

In better news, Evan totally surprised me today with the gift of the game Spore, which was very, very nice.

oh man i said that so hard

2008-09-14T03:38:00.002-05:00

You know Samantha Brown? She is a lady on the Travel Channel who gets to go to awesome places and do cool things and we can watch her on tv going to/doing awesome/cool places/things. In one episode a guy was helping her belay down a crevasse and she was talking about his climbing stuff and she said, "Your equipment is amazing." And I said "THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID." Oh man I That's-what-she-said-ed her so bad and she will never know.

Is "Bigfoot" a space on the Jump to Conclusions Mat?

2008-09-06T15:54:00.005-05:00

This.

Harold Jackson is an amateur archaeologist

Very amateur, as will be seen.

"No animal footprint looks like that."

I know what he means, and this is just a nitpick, but people are animals too.

"I don't know anything about archaeology or anything..."

And yet, he feels qualified to say:

"It's got to be thousand[sic] of years old," said Jackson.

So what is it?

Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum, a famous Bigfoot professor

Oh my Christ, no.

Jackson said the print has made him a believer in Bigfoot.

NO NO NO STUPID.

I don't know what kind of Bigfoot it is, but there's a Bigfoot out there somewhere," said Jackson.

Well, apparently it's been through Tennessee.

Jackson said there is another similar-sized large fossilized foot imprint on his property but has been unable to extract it from the rock.

If it's a real fossil, and you're not a real archaeologist, get someone who is so you're not damaging in situ evidence yourself. But wait:

Channel 4 has yet to reach Meldrum or Tennessee state archaeologist Nick Fielder to comment on the artifact.

Yeah, Nick, I probably wouldn't consider it worth my time either. Still, I feel real scientists have a duty to do their best to clear the air of nonsense when it appears. I'm also reminded that there are state archaeologists, which is neat. Our is Jeff Doershuk!

errands

2008-09-04T23:16:00.007-05:00

Today I had to deposit two checks at US Bank and return Scarface to That's Rentertainment. Sweet bountiful mercy, I got a parking space between Van Allen Hall and Bruegger's with over half an hour left on the meter.

So I walked and visited various stores downtown.

Prairie Table: Smallish, fancy, charming kitchen stuff that is too expensive (I'm not paying $25 for a butter dish) and I didn't see what I was really looking for (a canister set).

Akar: Biggish, fancy, immaculate, with a lot of high-priced pottery (excuse me: earthenware, stoneware, etc.) that left me cold. Some stuff was neat, but I felt intimidated, like the store itself was going to spit me out for being someone who would never consider dropping $120 on a set of five small artisan drinking glasses.

Ragstock: They've shuffled around their inventory this summer to make it harder for me to find dresses, and they are still trying to get rid of all their kimonos and obis. My browsing was ruined by the sight of this shirt:

See, it's funny because bitches love money.

There is also a large, gorgeous, dark orange cat in the pet store window on Clinton St. It was very handsome and regal. It was looking up at something and I looked up because I thought man, that is a stately cat, it must be looking at something important (it was a raindrop).

mccain surprise

2008-08-29T13:58:00.005-05:00

After mulling over the kerfuffle about McCain's VP pick, I'm not that worried. She's obscure, has no foreign policy credentials, is anti-abortion, and in her short time as Governor of Alaska has already become involved in scandal. She's unqualified enough that the McCain campaign's real reasons for choosing her (HAI HILRAY SUPORTORS LUK @ DIS LADY) are embarrassingly transparent.

And it shows that McCain has picked up the Bush administration's habit of appointing people to jobs they are not prepared for. Palin actually asked what the vice president's job entails. She didn't know.

My only concerns are that her Down Syndrome baby will be played up enough that she could be seen as untouchable on the abortion issue (bullshit), and that, as Evan pointed out, Biden would win handily in a debate but could be painted as a Mean Guy for totally wiping the floor with her (also bullshit).

She's also a creationist. Uggghhhh.

In other news, David Duchovny is in rehab for sex addiction. I don't want to make light of his problem, but it did force me to imagine David Duchovny having sex, which I am ambiguous about, and then I thought about Mulder having sex with lots of sexy aliens on their sexy alien spaceship.

Another awful thing about Sarah Palin: her children are named Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper, and Trig OH JEEZ I CAN'T BELIEVE HOW TERRIBLE YOU MUST BE TO NAME YOUR KIDS THESE THINGS

no thx, imdb

2008-08-28T06:57:00.008-05:00

The Internet Movie Database has just assaulted my eyes with the creepy and annoyingly pink ads for a new Palahniuk-adapted film called Choke, featuring pictures of women in their underwear and a silhouette of a man's head swallowing a tiny sexy lady with her legs sticking out of his mouth. This makes me never, ever want to see this movie. However, I do like Sam Rockwell, I will give you that.

But seriously, I see sexist stuff every day on tv, film, and advertising, and seeing it all the time is discouraging. It makes me feel worn down, like I am being slowly poisoned.*

I'm tired of bullshit hypermasculine films that love to whip out their dicks just to show you how big their big, gritty, manly dick is and then jizz all over its parade of hot, sexy, sultry chicks who are there because they are sexy. But now I'm mostly talking about the upcoming Spirit movie written and directed(!) by Frank Miller, that foul, overrated pestilence.**

In other news, I've been watching convention coverage and am looking forward to seeing Barack's acceptance speech tonight. Also, I caught Project Runway and my favorite contestant won the Saturn car parts challenge and my most hated contestant was kicked off, so there's something.

*That's just what I recognize in media, I would be having a worse time if I personally experienced sexism personally aimed at my person, personally, every day, and I don't. I'm white, middle class, and I don't get outside enough.

**Though we wouldn't have the badass Batman we have today without Frank Miller, so I can't poop on everything he's done. But his female characters are only "fleshed-out" and "developed" in the sense that they have huge tits.

iron maiden + serial killer + fear of aging + electro-erotic maskplay

2008-08-27T02:35:00.002-05:00

man that's weirdness

Rachel Maddow

2008-08-19T16:51:00.003-05:00

will have her own show on MSNBC starting Sept. 8. I was expecting it as she's been subbing for Keith Olbermann so much, and now it's all over the internetz. Neat!

olympics

2008-08-16T23:15:00.003-05:00

I have been watching them. I have been ignoring the news of McCain and Obama at Saddleback Church because I knew it would just make me angry to hear how magical thinking and made-up stuff influence the policies of the next President of the United States of America. McCain's opinions are consistently deplorable, but I also did not want to hear Obama reiterate his piss-poor position on gay marriage that he must take to get elected. Congratulations on Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi who just got married. It was probably very nice with good feelings all around. Obama, why don't you visit them and tell them you don't think their marriage is real, ass. I hope your daughters are gay. Then maybe you'll finally turn around when one of them brings home an attractive and charismatic community organizer who is also a vegan chef named Tuyet.

LOLO JONES AND MORE GYMNASTICS TOMORROW

Is it a shame? [x]yes [ ]no

2008-08-09T14:12:00.003-05:00

Bernie Mac is dead. I was surprised to hear about it. I won't say anything nice about him now, but it sucks to die of pneumonia at a not-old age.

I called my mom yesterday to gossip about John Edwards cheating on his cancer-stricken wife, but I found she had already called me about it while my phone was charging. She was bummed out, she really liked John Edwards and caucused for him. It's a bad thing all around.

I played Morrowind on Evan's computer for a few hours. I was an Argonian (REPTILE SNAKEHEAD LADY) and I didn't care much for fighting but my favorite thing was going to people's houses and businesses and stealing their shit. I cleaned those fuckers OUT.

apartment moving into we did this

2008-08-06T19:44:00.003-05:00

August 6, 2008: Man, does today's Achewood have the lamest characterization of Molly or what? Chris Onstad, Molly is your only female character, really, don't make her lame like this, please.

We are moved into the place. It is nice except there were so many millipedes that first night oh my goodness there were so many. I am still picking them up but they are fewer and fewer. They go in the toilet.

Living room. Here you can see the table we just bought that was only fifteen dollars because it is a glass-top table with no glass in it. We will find a thing to fit there.

Kitchen.

Bookends.

miscellany

2008-07-29T19:12:00.004-05:00

- I was completely moved out of my Dubuque St. apartment two days ago. Moving and cleaning went fine, but by far the unclassiest thing to happen was someone in a moving car threw a McDonald's soft drink at my mom. It landed on the sidewalk and just missed her. If it had hit her I would have chased that car down and fucking keyed it while screaming at them. My mom was upset. All I could tell her was that some strangers (okay, groups of strange men) have been mean to me too and that there are people who are just assholes.

- I am reading the latest issue of People with the Obamas on the cover, looking at how adorable their family is. I wonder, what happened to Michelle Obama's left hand? In two pictures you can clearly see a long straight scar across the back of it. I'm going to say what probably happened was that she fought a ninja and blocked a throwing star.

- Velvet Goldmine was on tv late last night. I wanted to watch it, at least far enough to see Christian Bale put on glam rock makeup and masturbate, but I was too tired, blast it.

- I had a weird dream recently where two women came to the front door and were very nice at first but started talking crazier and crazier until they produced large signs advertising their website that was called "BBQKKKYoga.com." One woman was white and the other was black, I don't know what significance this had given the fictional URL.

tonight was worrisome

2008-07-28T01:44:00.003-05:00

We had a huge storm tonight! Very windy, raining hard, thunder and lightning. Our power went out several times, each time we tried to reset the digital cable everything would shut down again. We had ordered a pizza before it started storming, and when the delivery guy got here he said a tree limb fell that was big enough to block both sides of the street.

We had lights on long enough to eat pizza for a few minutes. I didn't see Grandma had been out of it until I asked her more than once if she wanted a piece and she didn't respond, and I realized her blood sugar was low. I got Mom and she made Grandma drink orange juice while I ran upstairs for her blood testing meter. The power went out again and this time it went out for good, and Mom had to test Grandma's blood by flashlight. Grandma eventually got her sugar level up to where she was lucid again, and an hour after the power went out she asked if there had been a storm.

Grandma was okay, so we went out for ten minutes of driving around and I got pictures of people's houses and cars that got fucked up. When we got back there was nothing to do except play Scrabble and go to bed at 9 pm. I woke up an hour later and saw the lights were back on, so I woke up Mom and Dad and they watched some terrible filth they had taped earlier (an episode of Big Brother). I went to sleep again and woke up with a racing heart after a nightmare about home invasion (I hear a radio story about "groups of maniacs" on the loose, I am trapped in a higher floor of a dark house, I look under the door and see a pair of feet, the door starts to open, I throw myself against it in a panic, I wake up) and decided I didn't want to go back to bed.

oh McCain lolz

2008-07-24T14:15:00.002-05:00

So Obama spoke in Berlin recently, and that's the main campaign news that's on tv right now. However, I'm more interested in the clip of McCain speaking in Columbus, OH, that's also on the news today, because look at it what the hell. Why is he speaking (1) over many loud chimes and (2) in front of a bright red sign that says "Fudge Haus?"

the worst thing (?)

2008-07-23T00:03:00.003-05:00

Why do my parents own this.

wait

"Santa Claus is Coming to Town" performed by Dokken

Winger covers "Happy Christmas (War is Over)"

I have to listen to this.

This person is in my parking space right now

2008-07-21T23:00:00.003-05:00

GET OUT OF IT

A small blessing: I have repaired my garbage disposal. It turns out the way to fix things is to do something outside the lease instructions.

I'm getting a haircut

2008-07-16T23:13:00.004-05:00

in about a week. I'm looking for pictures and so far I have learned that there are no pictures of good haircuts on the Internet.

I tried putting different haircuts on a picture of myself, but it didn't work very well and then I started messing around.

what happened here

2008-07-15T16:54:00.006-05:00

At 4 o'clock this afternoon I went out to buy bubble wrap and across the street, a couple houses up from me, two firetrucks and a police car were parked on the street with lights flashing. Another police car was blocking the right lane of traffic. When I got back at 4:40 (with bubble wrap and ice cream) they were gone, and I don't know what had went on over there.

edit: This is the incident logged that matches that time and location. I guess, er, a lady hit her head on a car and was knocked out. Huh.

oh my stuff i need to pack it

2008-07-13T14:53:00.002-05:00

I need to pack my things. I don't know where to start. I need to start.

Today I've gotten as far as moving a pack of unfolded boxes two feet (I took them out of the laundry hamper and set them on the floor). I've got this far.

I still can't get over the word "gotten." I don't know why it sounds so weird to me but I can scarcely believe it's a word.

My fingernails are long. This makes typing harder. I lost my nail clipper in my couch. Just a test to see how many mistakes I make when typing and I will not let myself fix them:

Today I found two comic books between my end talkve and my ocuch. They were Scapled by Jason Aaron and R.M. Guera. They belgon to Evan bu he left them here and they fell down between a thign and another thing so I guess he forgot them because he didn't see thenm.

bernie mac is a douchebag

2008-07-12T16:57:00.008-05:00

Goddamnit.

Bernie Mac, are you an idiot and an asshole? Yes.

Obama campaign, are you stupid? Yes. Why would you even let this guy onstage is what I'm asking. Come on. Nobody who might ever ever ever possibly ever call a woman a "ho" should be allowed within 100 ft. of any stage being used for an Obama campaign event. You know this. Come on. I also would have liked to see Obama himself actually say that hey you shouldn't call women hos. This looks really bad, like you let Bernie Mac onstage without having any idea of what his routine might be (sexism, apparently) and you were taken by surprise when he said a thing that suggested that women were sluts who by the way were not welcome at Obama fundraisers, and you were like oh shit and like you just pulled a complete boner on this, and also you (Obama) said you were just messing with Bernie, which no, is not the right answer, no no no. I'm not surprised that Bernie Mac said something shitty, I'm baffled that you would let it happen in the first place. WT Fuck, people.

Not only is this disrespectful to women (especially black women), it also perpetuates the stereotype that black men are chauvinistic. This sucks all around. I hope Michelle had words with someone.

Goddamnit this makes me so angry.

the a-word

2008-07-09T04:53:00.003-05:00

I have already blogged about Army Spc. Jeremy Hall (atheist soldier claiming discrimination) but he's in the news again, so I want to mention him again. As I said before, I wish him well and I'm glad this is at least in the news. However, I'm concerned that the facts that he was raised Baptist and didn't identify as an atheist until after a tour of Iraq will be used to push the stereotype that atheists don't become atheist after a lot of thinking but as a reaction to some kind of trauma.

BECAUE WE SWA SOMETHIGN BAD ADN IT SCARRD US OS WE TUNRED AWAY FOEM GOD

AN ANGLE IS WATHING US FROM HEVIN AND WE CXAN STIL BE SAVDE

In other news, Warren Jeffs has been hospitalized. I hope he has Galloping Diarrhea, which is a terrible disease I just made up.

"I am still drink" - a real-time log

2008-07-09T03:48:00.009-05:00

Between 7:46 and 7:49 pm I drank 4 1/2 ounces of Seagram's Extra Dry Gin (80 proof). I measured it in a plastic measuring cup and downed it in three gulps, with two sips of water inbetween each gulp. I am 5'5 1/2" tall and I weigh 136 pounds. I am wearing a black t-shirt and blue pajama pants. At around 4 pm I ate half a box of Annie's Alfredo Shells and Cheddar. About twenty minutes before drinking, I ate one Edy's Fruit Bar (lime flavor.) The air conditioner is set on "Low Fan." I am sitting on my beige couch. It is 7:52 pm. Tuesday.

7:53 pm
Why is Matthew McConaughey on the news? I turn off the kitchen light.

7:55 pm
I go to the bathroom. It was a numero deuce but I wiped both the Lady and the Tramp.

7:59
Countdown - interview with the Obamas. Their kids are cute and I like them. Rachel Maddow is sitting in for Olbermann, I don't know much abouther but she si alluring. Lt's wiki her.

8:02 pm
I wki her.

8:04 om
I feel all loosey-goosey.

8:21 pm
My face timngles.

8:24 pm
It feels liek I am watchign everything thorugh bincoculars but i feel okay

8:25 pm
Ogh I stod up too fast and had to put my head on ther floor

8:35 pm
I still feel tipsy an all tat but I think this is as far as it is going to go.

8:42 pm
my face is being magnetically repelled form the tv cesreenI am talkign to Janai thorugh gmail chat HEY YOU

8:48 p
o am making tupos when tuping but i also do when i am sober but when bosber i fix them and now for now i am not

8:51 pm
ah hey i just saw a burger kign commerical with the king guy and t kid ate french fies but they look differnet in the coommercial than they do in real life but i w ould still eat french fries rihg now

i swaetr i also make mistakes whe i type when i am not drunk but right nwo i am just not fixing them and also i am making more mistakes thean usual bacuase i am drunk but also my fingernais are kind of long righ tnow and mit makes tupign more iddicult jsut to say I'm not socmpletely drunk and i'm not goin to vonit or antyhing

8:34 pm
I succeded ingoing to thre bathroom (gettin gup an wLKING) WIHTOUT TOO MCUH GOING WRONG

8:65 pm
I am still drink. 8:56 X 80 proof X gin X 4 13/ ounces = 3081.6 druink units

9:11 pm
lydia is a cool anme

911 nevaer forget
I'm just hanging otu and watching tv

12:30 am
I got sleepy and took a nap. Now I'm bored and my mouth tastes bad.

*****

4:07 am - It certainly wasn't the most I've been drunk, but the typos are amusing. And I feel I know more about my body, like how awesome it is.

5:11 am on Animal Planet

2008-07-08T05:11:00.002-05:00

Whoa. I just saw koalas fucking. It was intense. You wouldn't think that something as cute and cuddly as a koala bear would have such rough sex, but they were hitting it hard.

Maybe Killdegard?

2008-07-04T16:08:00.003-05:00

On my short story: I have a couple of characters, a premise, a location, a beginning, and an end. I will think of the rest.

This has been on my mind: what's a better rap name, Hildegard von Blingin' or Hildegard von Bangin'? I think I prefer Blingin'.

Yesterday: Janani, Lydia, Evan, and I all went to see WALL-E and we liked it. It's a beautiful film with a lot of clever ideas and good gags and swell feelings. It's also the first Pixar film to have Actual Real-Life People (like, not animated) appear in it. Which was kind of weird, but I guess they did it that way to connect it more with the real world, as the film had a lot of Warnings about the Dangers of Pollution and Consumerism.

Also, last night Lydia and Leigh and Janani and I took a walk in Hickory Hill Park, trudging through the spooky, dark woods with flashlights. Two highlights: (1) sitting on the edge of a bridge and talking about Gary Jennings and slash fanfic, and (2) coming out into a meadow, turning off our flashlights, and staring up at the stars in silence.

What I'm watching now: a To Catch a Predator marathon. The current perp being Hanson'd is a puffy pink man in a puffy red coat who goes by the screen name "meatrocket8."

Short Stories:

2008-06-29T15:34:00.003-05:00

I'm reading some, and looking for more, and wanting to write one. Something will come to me.

Today in "heartbreaking 19th-century feminist insanity horror" I read "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

And in "if you enjoyed Chuck Palahniuk's 'Guts'" I read "The Girl Had Guts" by Theodore Sturgeon. Spoiler alert: it involves guts.

I also read "Some Zombie Contingency Plans" from Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners, a story which was okay but I was kind of getting bored with it until the end, which was a punch in the...fortitude. I'll read more of the Link and also hey people what are some more short stories you like.

Harumph

2008-06-25T19:36:00.003-05:00

I'd be a liar if I said that the flooding has adversely affected me in any significant way ("it was like my own personal Hurricane Katrina"), but there is at least one thing that chaps my ass: I have realized that with the closing of the Main Library, so closes the Info Arcade and my means of capturing and editing video. Damnit. I'm also saddened by the damage done to the arts campus and our No Shame hangout Village Inn.

In other news, I met some of Evan's family at their lake house and they are nice and it was nice and I went swimming and met kitty cats and ate cookies and that was all nice. I saw a grandmother pray in Swedish, which I had not seen before. I saw GTA IV, which was pretty kickass. When we got back to Iowa City, Evan found his previously lost wallet in my couch, which was fortuitous.

THA"TS NOT HWO U SPEL HIS NAEM

2008-06-17T15:39:00.001-05:00

The weather is all-powerful and it will betray you

2008-06-12T20:00:00.005-05:00

Everygoddamnthing is under water.

A picture of a blonde Cedar Rapids man on the front page of CNN.com wading through water and carrying two orange cats tugged at my heartstrings and made me go "Ohhhh" so I looked up the picture series on Getty Images.

http://tinyurl.com/6ksh85

Oh man, the cats' names are "Fry" and "Bender." Awwwww.