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Another lift from lolaj. This time with a new remark?
… Ancient Greeks were mostly G0ys…
Really? No. I think NOT really. I am pretty sure G0ys can only exist after inception of G0y taxonomy and certainly not into the antiquity. I am pretty sure saying ancient greeks were mostly g0ys (in addition to maybe being totally a load of hooey) is like saying that sappho was bipolar. Except worse. And except also not about a lesbian.*
*A geographical lesbian.
It seems everyone I know is blogging. Even myself in the past. I was innocently preparing my dinner (yes, of course it was cheese!) when it occurred to me that my blogger blog wasn’t my first one. Before that I had a ***** account. I tracked myself down as diligently as I have my exes and high school mistakes, even had to re-register a lapsed email address just to get my password back. I think I stopped writing it about the time I started visiting Nell in NY (c. 2005?) but it chronicles my whole relationship with Drew.
Fittingly enough reading those entries feels like being trapped in a soft-black construction paper room, walls shodily scotch taped together at the translucent seams. I remember other things about Drew now: being papered into his dorm room in the middle of a fight, lying on the lawn at Tufts, the red carpet of my room during the summer I was so completely alone with one album (Thought for Food) and rice, sitting at Radcliffe once we were really over, the beach with Gregnon. Once we spent hours wedged between a coffee table and a low bench in the campus center and now the whole thing’s been remodeled out of existence. He was telling me about the possibility of going to London for the summer. His roommate would never let me sleep over because he thought it would be disrespectful to his own girlfriend and Jesus Christ. I would wait until 2 and then sleep on my friend’s futon instead. I never anticipated what memory would feel like (heartbreak, but lower.)
I need to stop writing this. Reading old me has begun to degrade my new me writing. I’ll leave you with an age-old joke courtesy Ken Kitchin.
Monday, March 14, 2005
| my friend is so funny:The hypothetical title “Britain’s colonial aspirations: South America to India” is Colonial.
The Hypothetical title “Britain’s colonial aspirations; South America to India” is semicolonial. |
I implore you to stop thoughtlessly using expressions like:
“…which is exactly what the Judeo-Christian faith, at least, promotes…”(names have been changed to protect the person in my Lit Theory class)
What do you mean by Judeo-Christian faith? In this case she actually means the major monotheistic theological beliefs which she feels comfortable talking about. But how about using “religion” instead of faith. Or how about saying Jewish and Christian instead of Judeo-Christian. Judeo-Christian has become nothing but a handy hyphenation to throw around when we want to swiftly reference the moral and legal structures that we feel are implicated in something mysteriously related to religion.
While we’re at it can we please refrain from referencing the following TERMS as if they are the PRINCIPLES ON WHICH PRACTICE IS FOUNDED:
Virgin/Whore Dichotomy - your way of referencing why life is hard for women
Honor/Shame Society - your way of explaining why MENA has those familial structures. Oh! Those!
I should be thanking you. All of you. You make me a happy blagger.
You see, when you stumble upon my blag by keyword searching through Google WordPress kicks back the term you used. Then I read them and sometimes nurture deep, romantic, cyber attachments to you. Except when I’m mocking you mercilessly.
Sometimes I notice disturbing trends… like when for three weeks people were finding my page by searching for derivatives of “how to BLOW SKIRTS UPP” or “video of skirts blown up.” I know you are just after a panty-shot but I was wondering if you could rephrase the search to make it a little less violent. How about, perhaps, “I am a voyeur, skirts in wind” or “I think this doesn’t count as pornographic, women surprised by wind.” In either case, I’m sure you didn’t find what you were looking for here. I don’t have a video or a how-to or, even, a how-to-video. But my friends Scout and Susannah learned to swing dance on youtube so you might look into that.
Sometimes I notice you’re trying to figure out what my blag title means by searching such inconspicuous phrases as “what does femmephane mean.” It’s a good question and I go into that in my FAQ post which you might want to Google while you’re at it.
Best of all are those of you who come to my blag in really innocent ways that leave me with new completely unprecedented questions. Yesterday it was “santa cruz county topless ordinace.” Leading me to wonder 1. what is the Santa Cruz topless ordinance and what rumors might this person be trying get to the bottom of and 2. how deep into the search must one person browse in order to find my blag (a: 4 pages) and 3. Google has an auto-spelling correct function that gives you the option of linking to the right spelling of the word— why go 4 pages into the search instead of correcting it right away?
Runners recent up include: fake cat allergies, psychosomatic cat allergies, bloc 11, babyfeelings1, and anxiety symptoms.*
11.16.2007 Update new search term: PUT HER * THE STURRIPS. 11.18.2008: cure for the middle child syndrome
*Perceived correlations are, I swear, coincidental.
An excerpt from my 7th grade diary:
January
Dear Diary,
Today was Friday. The week was so long it seemed like three weeks.
On Sunday I am acolyting and then going to the symphony in Denver. A soloist cellist will be there and we don’t have to pay because we will be ushering. We have a four-day weekend. I do at least. Jessica and Cody have a three day weekend.
I got a C on my math mid-term and I’m so happy about it, I thought I failed.
I wore a dress today, too.
Yesterday we did a string quartet for the open house. I was so angry when Em and Emily just left. Mr. Jewell and Ms. Fiori played with us. Ms. Fiori was so GOOD!
I babysat for them [wonders now: who?] today. They were so mean to me. And it was not fun.
Kelly drinks! Adam told us and I believe him, too.
Anyway on to more important things. I can’t believe Jessica will be in 6th grade next year. There to tarnish the sparkling reputation f the Novacks. Lots of my old teachers already call her Novack. She already got Allen in trouble and Russel. What a year it will be!.
2nd semester starts Wednesday. I hope I don’t get Snowden. I am so afraid of him. But, of course, no one knows that.
I was going through an old diary when I liked Hotani last year, about how he got mad at me [sic]. He looks a lot better with his hair cut.
It is 11:30, I’d better go to bed so I can wake up early.
Until Tomorrow,
Love,
It’s been weeks and, believe me, I’ve barely stopped to tie my boot.
Time passes and passes and “[the] infernal beings in those lands are constantly subject to inauspicious colouring, poor metabolism, ugly bodies, horrible experiences and awful shapes, all of which multiply their miseries.”
I have become flooded and unrecognizable. The extant recognition now being programmatically nipped in bud by strangers and siblings.
My nicknames are being slowly encroached upon by people who are mad at me, by people who aren’t mad at me but have other things at stake. And new nicknames are cropping up from unapproved sources or for unapproved reasons.
That and– I’ve spent 9 days now, emailing the dean every single day, trying to get a grade moved from someone else’s transcript onto mine. How fitting that they would put my grade for an independent study on freakishness, monstrosity, and memoir onto someone else’s transcript. After five years of work with the same administrators day after day, they cannot remember my name, cannot remember I need their help to fix the mistake, and consequently cannot help but prevent me from involving myself in the next officious University. So much for confessing in service to something hegemonically corrupt but specially efficient.
I repeat myself over and over. I am periodically acknowledged– which is even more confusing. I feel like I’m trying to shout to people on the beach with my head well underwater.
This has been a shudder and leak-filled week. Yesterday, while diligently at work on my midterm papers, I periodically fell into dampness, tears pouring down my cheeks. There was no sobbing, just a little too much straightforward moisture for a cafe.
Last week I dreamt of a lesion 3 inches in diameter below my right breast. It was 1 inch raised, soft and discolored like an elephantine burn. I thought it was a grave illness but then my mother said there was piece of glass in my side. Of course! A piece of glass! An infection. She removed the triangular shard with her fingers like she would a splinter and the fluid drained onto my clothing. I sopped it up and she closed the wound with safety pins.
Forgive the water from my side.
As illustration I offer the uncannily apt: 
(mbc in very large chair, reflected. San Diego.)
Studying for the GRE using the Barron guide continues to enlighten.
I’ve now learned that the antonym to carnal is spiritual. Predictable, if annoying, perhaps. At least something I can figure out and select from the multiple choices, given the fact that we are thoroughly imbued in a Judeo-Christian (whatever that means) U.S. of A.
But I was a little baffled to learn that the GRE-certified synonym to buxom is plump. We’re really not going for precision of language here, are we? My book suggests “Once you read the definition, use the word in a sentence to help you remember it.” Okay…. eh-ehm: “My, what a healthy-looking baby boy you have. He is so pink and buxom! Does it sleep through the night?”
But what I could not have anticipated. The antonym to celibate is:
a. investing
b. retired
c. commodious
d. dubious
e. married
The answer is e. married.
By extorting “the personal” out of me and into public forum, my final women’s studies seminar is going to exhaust me. I arrived at the three-hour block last week expecting we might be talking about … well… Doing the Feminist Research that the class entitled “Doing Feminist Research” vaguely alluded to. Honestly, I expected a 3-hour weekly waste of time which would leave me a little angry about privilege at University. Boy, was I wrong. The real effect: I am exponentially more frustrated with class than poverty. I take WS and America Studies classes despite the people in them because I want the information. And usually the information is as personally rewarding as– say– talking to someone who understands poverty, hegemony, sex, and sex work.Within the first hour, I was regaled with the story of one of my classmates who was so poor this summer that she had to “go online and buy a bike and then drive all the way out to Natick to pick it up because [she] really couldn’t afford gas to get to her job.” Everyone nods, almost excited to be frowning, and then next horrible tale-teller picks up while I calculate: a car, a computer, internet-access, gas to get to Natick, money for a bike, a steady job? Yes. You definitely know what dire means.
Meanwhile, we’re all supposed to be sharing anecdotes in response to an article about how traveling is easier for couples. “This article acts as if gender isn’t an issue, what about traveling as a woman?” the class asks. Bike R Car pipes in again to tell us how once, in Spain, her parents wouldn’t even let her go out salsa dancing. THAT’S how hard it is to travel as a woman. OHHH. That’s how hard. And what I want to know: In what fucked universe is it acceptable to start a WS course by asking everyone to recount their tales of international travel?
Because I was silent through that one (go fucking figure), the professor called on me first to respond to an article about the pay gap. Yes, folks. After four years, it’s come to this. Statistics about pay gaps and completely disjointed analysis of newspaper articles on luxury lifestyles. “Isn’t it terrible,” I began, abstracting my reflection as far the fuck I could from my own reality, “that people who have the power to give you raises base the raise-amount on what they feel you need. Women are considered second-incomes and men, sole breadwinners.” But that wasn’t enough. They needed me to expand. “It happens with age too, like, if they think you don’t need the money or assume you’re subsidized by your parents or something, they’re less like to give it to you.” Read the rest of this entry »
The Atharva Veda is a composite text, closed about 1500 years ago, which forms 1/4 of the classical Hindu texts. Unlike the other three vedas, the Atharva Veda contains mostly personal prayers and spells, medical and alchemical writings, and coronation rituals. It probably survived on that last one– just another clever way people insinuate religion into wealth and power. Without an accompanying history lesson, however, the spells might be the most interesting.
Love spells for het men to say for het women: May her house sleep. May her horses sleep. May her dog sleep. May her siblings sleep. May her garden sleep. May her in-laws sleep. May [everything except my lover] sleep…
Love spell for het women to say for het men: [First she makes a clay effigy of the man. Then she heats up arrowheads in the fire. She throws the arrowheads at the effigy and says] May he burn for my voice. May he burn for my hair. May he burn for my face. May he burn for my lips. May he burn for my breasts. May he burn for my body… And may I never burn for him!
If all of the rituals for the king were put in to make the text more important and to secure its proliferation, I wonder about this. In contemporary google time, how do people know who to entrust to ensure a tryst? Is it the charming misspelling in the url that will make this page eternal? I found it by searching “ancient love spells” and I know it’s the real deal because it calls for pink paper and everyone knows the “ancients” had pink paper out their ears.
Dear Leonard Nimoy,
L’shanah tovah! I’m so sorry it’s taken me this long to get back to you. I miss you. I do. Really. But every time I get a chance to write or call, I realize I also owe all our mutual friends calls, too, and I know how you know everyone and I just don’t know who to start with. And now somehow it’s already New Years and honestly I’m writing you to ask small favor. But first: whats up how are you I’m well I do miss you what are you up to these days let’s have lunch soon. I found this great picture of the whole gang around the time you made Catlow. Remember that time we rode around in kiddie-size trains with Yul Brenner and I tried to get into the back seat of your sedan from the front because I thought it was a two-door vehicle? I’ll make you a copy. 
Anyway– I have this friend (I can’t remember if you met her at my last shindig) but she’s moved away and I feel like I should do something special for her. I thought of you because I just keep remembering that line from your poem “I believe in hopes, dreams, and decency.” Was that in Warmed by Love? Then that other one “Rocket ships are exciting/ but so are roses.” That one really haunts me. And I think either my friend or I might also believe in hopes, dreams, decency, roses, or rocket ships but we’re not very good at expressing our feelings to each other.
She’s a teacher and really busy and probably won’t even pick up if you call.. but I was just wondering, could you call her and tell her happy new year for me? Possibly you could send her one of your arresting photographs of nude women draped in tefillin or an exculpatory copy of one of your autobiographies
(either I am Spock or maybe I am not Spock, I just can’t tell which would be best because they’re both so different.) I’m sure she’s read them both but it would be a nice gesture. Just use your judgment on this one.
All my love and take care!
-Femmephane
p.s. If you reach her at home and you hear some commotion in the background that might be her roommate. FYI it’s his birthday today so many you could just say “hey” if you’re going to be calling them anyway. He’ll be reading my blag a lot today so I think it’s only polite.
Oh, just one more quick thing while I have you– thought you’d be the one to ask. Tinsel: neutral winter holiday trimming of the future? Or, achingly reminiscent of Christ-child?
It’s not like I’ve been hanging out in public. In fact, yesterday morning I went out for a few groceries and realized I hadn’t left my apartment since I went to the cemetery with MBCarryadyne on Saturday morning. That’s why it’s weird that independent of the encroaching anniversary of her death, I was already planning to write about Princess Diana today. First business was to wiki her for a couple of dates and then to do some ebay fact-checking and her face started popping up all over the internet. Am I subconsciously obsessed with her to the point that I remember her deathdate?
When Princess Di died, I got pretttty infatuated with her. “After she died?” J asked, “not before?” I assured her it was only after, “I hadn’t even heard of her before.” But I shared the immediate fallout of her death with an ominous shroud of depression and an urgent longing feeling. (Similar to the feelings that caused me to write very ardent letters to Lisa Lefteye Lopez and Andrew Keegan in the sixth grade.) Even then I had the same compulsion to organize a stranger’s life after news of their death. I did a whole series of subtractions to figure out how old she was when she died, divorced, got married, met HRH Ole Big Ears etc etc.
The three products of her death:
1. I read all my mother’s collected articles including one that gimmickly wrote the ABC’s of Princess Di and exposed me to some new and titillating vocabulary. I learned bulimia, post-partum depression, and philanthropy all in one sitting. The dictionary according to my mother– bulimia is when you are famous or a gymnast and you are really worried about your weight because of external pressures so you binge and purge. That definition fell flat since I had No Idea what binge and/or purge meant but was subsequently unable to watch the women’s Olympic gymnasts without asking my mother to gauge who was comparatively most bulimic. And post partum depression– when a mother has a baby and then she feels like her whole role on the earth is over and sometimes she kills herself. Now I’m wary of this and wonder if it doesn’t have more to do with the realization that her earth role will now never be over. Philanthropy is when a rich person gives a whole lot of money at once to something and usually abroad; sometimes they do it because they are touched my something like orphans in Africa or sometimes it’s because their manager is.
2. I took three or four blue plastic binders with my father’s company logo on them (a gift from the generous man himself) and printed out every single page of history section from the national British website and three-hole punched them and planned to study them later. This seemed like the very least I could do if I expected to understand England once I moved there. Read the rest of this entry »
(more facts brought to you by quantitative thinking)
Misc unnamed British researchers have finally disproved second-wave feminism in a SHOCKING new study. These intrepid brainiacs endeavored to get to the bottom of whether girls really prefer pink using the scientific method, a dark room, and a computer. I’m so glad they’re finally working on this pressing issue with godknowswhos funds. The experiment had 1000 British adults look at colorful rectangles on a computer screen and then pick out which they liked best. Then they graphed the results and make conclusions like:
“Boys like blue, girls like pink..” (adult men and women in London are apparently representative of universal girls and boys.)
Somehow they also deduced that the reason that boys like blue and girls like pink is evolutionary.
“…females developed a preference for reddish colors associated with riper fruit and healthier faces.” Meanwhile men don’t need to pick ripe fruit: “For men, thinking about colors was less important because as hunters they just needed to spot something dark and shoot it…”
This reader enjoyed MSNBC’s sparkling coverage of the story— especially the resigned attitude the journalist took to the newly reveal facts. “Boys like blue, girls like pink and there isn’t much anybody can do about it…” Sigh. How true… how will I ever make peace with my inability to overcome inherent desire for pink, Pink, PINK?
Fortunately, the scientist interviewed does bring it back to a universal point I think we can all agree on, giving me a newfound sense of trust in his dedication to scientific inquiry and the pursuit of Truth:
“As for Eve, Hurlbert added, maybe there was a different reason she picked that apple.”
Having just got back from California, all I can think about it going back. I just finished A Year Of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion and I’m trying to figure out how to say goodbye to Oakland without putting it completely out of my mind. I don’t think I know how to properly hold anything departed without making a new life that dismisses the void by forgetting the object.
I tried NC’s preemptive mourning towards preventing grief but it was unsuccessful. But it’s made me realize that my obsessive and intricate compulsion to commit things to memory is my own version of this.
Three goodbyes while I was there, indulgent in sentimentality:
Just yesterday morning, J and I took our last vacation run through Huckleberry Botanical Regional Preserve in the Oakland hills. The whole 1.7 mile trail is slender path cutting right across a steep valley. It was one of the first places J took me when I arrived in Oakland and made a perfect final day– especially since on our way out we heard a mountain lion screaming about 100 feet up into the bushes. Huckleberry’s microclimate is full of plant species from warmer days in the bay. J and I were both immediately charmed by the red manzanita trees, despite the fact that whenever separated we were each visualizing the other’s bloody death-by-puma around the next bend.
The day before I bid the state goodbye on my own with a seven mile run through the redwoods at Samuel P. Taylor Park in Marin. Later that day I got to see my friend from high school, DG, and we both had Pakistani food and liked who the other person, I think, had become in all this time. I’m ready to live a lot closer to her and we meant to get matching dead insects mounted for our apartments: butterflys or grasshoppers. In the end time and money limitations, interfered. I went home to finish reading a scary book with J and then go out to a messenger bar with three of her friends.
The Sunday before I left, we cooked a big family breakfast. Sara Seinberg and Ginger Robinson hosted and I made bacon and I met last two of a group of friends. Riotous laughter. Biscuits and gravy. Four southern queers who have been friends for 15 years all sitting around with their lovers telling outrageous stories about one another. Most of them– actually maybe all but J and I– are working on a big project that pairs visual artists with writers. It really was a family breakfast and I’m relying on plans to see Sara and Ginger in November to stem tearfulness. After eating too much J and I went to a Giants/Pirates game with J’s bestfriend and her homolover– where we could all talk about the ethics of steroids together and shout things in the sunshine for a few innings.
Diesel Cafe, a dyke-owned/operated coffeeshop in Somerville’s Davis Square, is spawning. Earlier this year Diesel made public their plans to open another store in Somerville’s Union Square, this location called Bloc 11. One of the only remaining historically African American neighborhoods Somerville, Union Square is also currently home to working class communities of Brazilian and Korean people. In recent years Union has become increasingly popular for young, predominantly white, mostly college-educated, queer and non-queer people looking to move to a cheaper area. Because Union Square is not yet accessible by the Green Line, gentrification has been a little slower– the bus-phobic caving to “pay a little more than they can afford” to live elsewhere. Most of the businesses in the area– a cafe included– are locally owned and operated.
Diesel Cafe’s invasive move is unethical and irresponsible. It will endanger other businesses in the area, attract more and more students and former students who can afford to pay more rent than families already living in the area, and drive people and businesses out. Beyond these obvious and material changes are another set of (equally obvious) disavowed changes. Colonizing one community as another population’s recreational area is divisive to the original population.
And as if it weren’t outrageous enough, Diesel Cafe’s owners have planned to open a large art space above Bloc 11. As if the cafe weren’t imitation-highbrow enough on its own.
It isn’t the responsibility of the people already living in Union Square to mitigate the divisive effects of Bloc 11, despite Diesel’s assertion to the contrary. First it is the responsibility of the owners of Diesel Cafe– who have already clearly demonstrated their unabashed racism and disregard for ethical decision-making. Second it is the responsibility of queer people to not contribute to this sort of thing. Not contributing to the gentrification being the absolute least one can/should/must do. Especially it is the responsibility of white, middle-class people– who are not off-the-moral-hook just because they can identify that what Diesel Cafe is doing is wrong. Recognizing privilege and feeling guilty about it isn’t actually enough.
I was already going to blag about Bloc 11 today when I received a disturbing article from my ladywife on insanity-watch at home. For those of you who don’t know Boston– Dorchester is a densely populated group of neighborhoods, (still) working-class Irish, African American, East Asian and Southeast Asian. But uncomfortable white queers, fret no more, developers plan to turn it into the next Southend– with “upscale” shopping and “classy” restaurants to draw in the gays. Just another opportunity for queer people to engage in the “time-honored tradition” of gentrification with a dash of progressive lip service before we scamper away to latte land.
Condition: Fake Allergies (Type I) see also “Food Allergies as a Lifestyle Choice”
- Most common faux allergies: Gluten, soy, wheat, refined sugars, nuts, dairy, alcohol, pesticides.
- Symptoms: Reported but rarely seen symptoms including rash, hives, sneezing, congestion, migraine, stomach cramps, gas. Sufferers may complain of specific food-related anguishes that mysteriously disappear or become less severe when the sufferer is confronted with a version of the supposedly noxious food that they really, really like. Sufferers hijack dinner plans, complain loudly and/or divert conversation to topic of their limited lifestyle, and can miraculously discover the allergy is over if they accidentally consume the food. They are also well known for using the phrase “I can eat a little bit of it.”
- Causes: Telling waitstaff to hold the offending product because “[you're] allergic” so many times that now you think it’s true. Heavily interpolated interest in a specific and discredited fad diets of the 1990s. Obsession with weight. Fussiness, middle-child-syndrome, center-of-attention-complex, desire to be quirky. Residual attachment to environmental illness and word “toxins” combined with awareness of stigmatization.
- Correlations: Requires a certain amount of access to Three P’s (Power, Privilege, and Gourmet Natural Foods) and willingness to talk about oneself. Oft-encountered in supporters of the Yoga Industrial Complex.
- Treatment: See Lysistrata— don’t sleep with them, they’ll never learn
Famously Fake Allergic: Madonna, Yoko Ono, Pontius Pilate (unconfirmed.)
Condition: Hysterically-inflected Faux Allergies (Type II)
- Symptoms: Psychosomatic symptoms including rash, hives, sneezing, congestion, migraines, sore throat, shock, hyperventilation, bruising, and heart palpitations. Sufferers believe it so hard it becomes true. They are quieter about their faux-allergies and pine for the days when they didn’t break into hives when they ate certain things.
- Causes: Admirably complex psychopathology. Nervousness. Anxiety-disorders.
- Correlations: Strong imagination. Contested correlation: A Womb.
- Treatment: Because they cause real symptoms, you should avoid the foods you are hysterically-inflected faux allergic to. Go to therapy. Try not to get upset when people with Fake Allergies (Type I) give you their advice which will probably include suggestions to meditate and participate in the Yoga Industrial Complex. Don’t engage them in conversations about the colonization of Buddhism and Hinduism by New Agers.
Famous Hysterics: Dora, Ms. EM, Emily Dickinson.
Condition: Feline-Intruder-Related “Fake” Cat-Allergy (Type II.b)
- Prognosis: trouble in paradise.
- Symptoms: Skin problems, sinus problems, sore throat, watery eyes, discomfort, headaches.
- Causes: Justified hatred of cats. General interest in keeping a clean/dust&hair free household, commitment to staying independent of the house, distaste for Litterbox.
- Correlations: Otherwise good character, preference for dogs or petlessness, reticence to talk about allergy with lesbi-friends.
- Treatment: OTC medications can mitigate effects of FIR allergies although there is no real cure. Also, Benadryl can’t outsmart your hysteria and so you can’t hope for a normal life unless you live in a cat-free environment.
two friends. It’s the same party.”
San Francisco is both warmer and colder than I anticipated. A recent windfall of tragedies has left me staying with J’s friends in SF. She has flown back to Georgia for a few days and I’ll be on my (wicked) own here.
Things I have learned about SF: 1. Most of the plants are not native. The palm trees were imported mysteriously by people who wanted California to look “more like California” and the Eucalyptus were carried over by emigrating koalas (circa the War.)
2. Things that you didn’t think whole groups of people would actually do, they did do. Case in point: the plastic bag ordinance.
3. City Lights Books actually smells like testicle.
4. Boulder, Colorado’s town twin is not– despite Boulder’s most vociferous claims– SF but, rather, Santa Cruz. It’s gourmet-type organic, full of very tan white people who wear shorts and flip flops despite the fact that it’s 10 degrees too cold, populated half by wandering tourists and half by famblies, aging purple hippies, and college students. Santa Cruz is almost half as big and 7% more Latino. Wikithanks in order for the last “fact.”
5. J doesn’t know what a redwood looks like but is willing to take advantage of the fact that I don’t either if she thinks I might be impressed by her botanical knowledge/believing a tree is a redwood.
6. Talking about how celebrity-sponsored Katrina animal relief work is a fucked up use of resources is about as palate-cleansing and light-hearted as talking about the ethics of cigarette taxation.
7. In case of emergency, pick 4.5x the amount of strawberries you think you need.
8. On Fauna: Seals and Sea Lions are apparently two different animals. Seals are a lot cuter than you’d think and Sea Lions probably have rough skin. Gardner Snakes can appear if you wish hard enough. One of the largest great white shark breeding areas is just 30 miles west of SF.
Well, it’s the season. The sci-fi kink crowd is prowling the streets. People of all ages are standing in five hour long lines. The Mennonites are handing out lavender Jesus brochures. My ladywife, Alex, has been reduced to the ole duck n cover into my shoulder every time someone mentions those magic words, “I know how it ends.” The familiar sirens and tubas of Mass Ave have been supplanted with child-type people screaming out of car windows at the top of their lungs: Harry Potter Rocks.
Leaving me with only two things to say:
1) I DO know how it ends.
2) People have got to stop telling me about how woe-is-them for always being mistaken for H. Pott. Dedicated readers might notice this is blag #2 on which I’m complaining about this phenomenon. That’s how annoying it is. Do you get it? Enough to make someone blog on two DIFFERENT sites. (I have closed down the other one, but thanks for all the good times.)
a. blogging hasn’t worked
b. must try a more direct approach to nip-problem-in-bud. See below a list of all the people I can think of who have made this inane conversation with me. Please feel free to comment with other accusations. Only you can prevent forest fires.
i. Alexander “pie” Weissman, “A to the K Ward” Kasia, Nicosystem, Spencer (reprieve: he’s 9), Tom White, most trannies,
ii. I will provide the email addresses, phone numbers, and shoe sizes of all these offenders for a small fee
*for reference see L. Coleman’s explanation of Foucault’s Discipline and Punish. In particular, the facts that confess themselves.
An old video favorite for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure. Link courtesy Erin.
