badgerbag: messy, surly, full of books

Retroactive blogger, 1188 A.D., Wales

From the introduction to Gerald of Wales' "The Journey Through Wales" (translation and intro by Lewis Thorpe):

He was intrigued by every place they visited, and familiar with quite a few of them. His personal enthusiasms seem to have had no limit: local history, local topography, folklore, animals of all sorts, clothing, language, weapons and warfare, religious houses, food, weather, demoniacal possession, mountain scenery, forests covered by the sea, silver mines, quicksands, geneologies, music. A witty exchange overheard between two monks who were laying table could set him roaring...

If you were with him for more than two or three days and he thought that your interest was worth cultivating, he would present you with copies of his books and expect you to start reading them straightaway, asking you each morning how you were getting on... If a golden oriole flew out of a bush, he made a note of it. If he saw a dog without a tail, he wrote the odd circumstance down... Before you knew where you were, he would have given a copy to Henry, Richard, or John... and then all your peccadilloes would be noised abroad.

Wow, after reading this I'm totally in love with Gerald of Wales. I can tell he's going to be enthusiastic and cranky and bizarre.

I peeked under the bandana at my hair; it looks splendid and the hot pink colors seem very bright. I'm leaving it in until tomorrow. My pillowcase will suffer.

Tomorrow - maybe going to the airport museum in San Carlos as there's some kind of kid-focused party... New Years' at Noon....? And then a kind babysitter will come in the evening, I'll do my hair straight up and go punk formal to the 007 party at Halflab; I like the idea of progressing to what would likely be insane squalor at the Transfer, downtown, but that probably won't happen. Other option is to end up at RJ's house. Moomin's friend Hamster is probably going to share the babysitter and stay overnight. Then on the 1st, to Debbie's, hijack my charming friend Jam from out of town and bring him back here. I'll put him in the hot tub, wind him up by asking him a question about That One Protest or the best route to bike entirely around the bay area, sit back, and enjoy... Maybe we'll go to the Mint and take a dorky tour the next day?

Oh Gerald of Wales! I love his craggy eyebrows (as described in the introduction) and his obsession with becoming Bishop of St. David's!

Today after I got home from extended errands & shopping, I went to lie in bed and rest my legs while reading. Moomin came in suddenly, leaped onto the bed, and threw himself into my arms. "Thanks." he said, almost sobbing with heartfelt emotion. "What... I love you too... but thanks for what?" "The mmmmmbbblembmml." What? "The CEREAL." I had bought a big box of 10 different kinds of sugary cereal in the tiny boxes... like they have in hotels. Oh! The cereal!

Undying love, for only $5.99 and a Cosco card!

And so to bed.

Breakin' with Sir Badger

repurpled, underneath
Originally uploaded by Liz.

We all just watched the movie "Breakin'" and were dancing around like fools. A stuffed rattlesnake joined us... "Snakin'"!!!

Terrycloth wristlets and sleeveless shirts were worn! Butts spun upon! Moonwalks walked! Rook knows how and has some background and talent in dance, so he gave Moomin a moonwalk lesson.

I bleached and purpled my hair today, and so had it up in a bandana with a hat over it, since heat makes the color stick better. At the drugstore I realized people were not sure of my gender and I enjoyed that more than I thought I would. Then at Cosco (the 1 millionth errand of the day) I got called "sir" at the checkout stand. The dude corrected himself a minute later, but still, I was pleased! Actually "pleased" doesn't begin to cover the insane and disturbing surge of happiness I felt. And they say I can't be butch... HA.

In my butch drag today (loose jeans, tshirt, flannelly shirt, too-big jacket wtih hood) I realized that as a guy, the pressure to smile was gone. People got out of my way more. Other short guys seemed to look at me as if sizing me up. It was different.

Oddly - it is just what I normally wear but without any girly touches if you don't look too close at the boots. That's all it takes to default to male. Not smiling was incredibly important and I wondered how much of my smiliness and head-cocking is gender based placating behavior and how much is "just feeling smiley".

After the sirring and a whole Cosco of people who didn't expect me to be the one to move out of the way, I thought of all the times people have touched my body disrespectfully. I thought of dressing rooms and people's comments on my being bulgy or fat. And then thought, that would not have happened if I had been male. I would have gotten punched in the face and had to play sports, or something, but for a moment I had a glimpse of the privilege men have of not having their bodies objectified and sexualized and demeaned, and their body images fucked with, and their whole being reduced to whether they are sexually pleasing enough to men.... and it looked sweet.

I looked around me today and saw all the other short men. They were wearing jeans, tshirts or sweatshirts, hooded jackets that went down long to cover their butts and kind of to disguise that they have butts at all. Their loose big jeans even when not falling down conceal the curve between their butt and the top of their thighs. They all had baseball hats on like mine, many with equally absurd slogans. They stood still and did not fidget or smile. They seemed aware of each other in an odd guy way - I think it is assessment of physical ability as if they are always keeping in mind who could kick who else's ass in a fight; who would be dominant, who to be aware of - the same way that girls know who the hottest girl in the room or the queen bee is and pay subtle attention or deference to that. Not like violence or a beauty pageant is going to bust out in the middle of Long's Drugs - but it's still there underneath.

I looked at all the guys today and saw them as women in drag. All of them had some flaw that might mean they were really women... maybe a little too much body fat or a round-ish jawline, or arms that weren't very hairy; everyone looked ambiguous.

I thought, "If I were a guy, then wearing the scruffy jeans and ratty tshirts and big jackets I normally wear when I'm not in girl-drag, that would just be normal. No one would be giving me shit for it and saying I have to 'grow up' and be 'realistic'. The guys are putting on a bit of an act, but it's not as much of an act as women with makeup etc... and it's cheaper."

Anyway.

As soon as I take off this ludicrous "bad to the bone" hat and my new-bleached straw like hair explodes in brilliant purple spikes I will revert to femmy butch again and will signify my acceptance that I'm a girl and my attempt to play with all that in the illusion of breathing space that I have to do that in.

Am disgusted with the WHOLE THING. I would so much prefer to be an alien or a robot.

Blogger out of beta and up my grill

Blogger non-beta looks fabulous, except that now I can't log into it with ecto because the api point thingie broke. Why, why, why! It doesn't seem to care whether I try the old login or the new google login - both of them return the same error:

Error NSURLErrorDomain: -1012 A list of blogs could not be retrieved. Please verify the account you have created.

Blah!

*** Update - I think that upgrading ecto fixed this - and using http://www.blogger.com/feeds/default/blogs for the api endpoint. So if you're having the same problem, try that url.

Let the great book overhaul begin!

I'm seriously tackling book organizing and weeding. So far there's two huge bags of books to give back, give away, or get rid of! I swear that by the end of the day my books will all be on shelves and at least in the rough area where they'll end up living.

Moomin and Hamish made Pokemon cards for their stuffed animals. I enjoyed watching their pokemon fight. "Wildrock, use tail whack attack!" "Ratatat, use Avalanche!" (*sound effects*) They like the idea of having cards, stats, and attacks with cool names, but they haven't grasped the idea of making a system that actually works, with rules to follow.

Now they're making each other "Mathematics books". Moomin being a bit pompous about how he "knows about tens and ones". Why "mathematics"?

I should take a break from my book organizing and play Heroscape with them, with rules! But it's so nice to have a bit of time to myself.

I have looming grant deadlines and should write about 3 book proposals, but first I need to be able to use my office, which means cleaning up all the books and papers and buying a bike lock so I can move the bikes out of there. It would also help to get the heater working in there.

Hard at work again

All is well in the Badgerian uterus and universe once more! It's a beautiful sunny day, my joints feel almost normal, my kid has a playdate with his buddy Tomas, and I'm at the public library writing some stuff for a possibly paying job. What could be nicer! Later this afternoon I'll make tea for Tomas's mom and we'll hang out, and maybe I can go visit Jo or take her kids for a while, the better to indoctrinate them in the Heroscape way.

If only I could make cookies, go hiking, write articles, blog, read poetry, and burn CDs all at the same time!

Cramps and poetry

Today I was writhing in pain in bed, with the nastiest worst cramps and most sudden-onset gusher of a period, ever. It started abruptly in mid-morning and by 4pm I think my entire uterus had turned liquid and fallen out. I was finally able to get up for real and eat something around 2. Somehow until then I kept Moomin amused, or he kept himself amused. The batcomputer came in for heavy use. He wrote some thank-you notes with only minor spelling help ("guess" and "laugh").

Since christmas day itself I've also been in pain from my toes, fingers, and knees, typical winter joint pain for me, but until now I thought I had escaped that hell! Dammit! What happened! It can't be the rain because it rained a lot this fall and nothing bad hit me.

Anyway, worst cramps ever, and mostly i just lay in bed groaning quietly on a heating pad and trying to distract myself by reading book after book.

On the other hand....

The last few days have been good for poetry-writing and translating.

I'm in this pleasant haze of being around other people, parties, enjoying hanging out and getting to see everyone.

Last night it was nice to hang out with Caraja - book sale, writing in a cafe, nice korean food, and we watched some more animated star trek - which, as I remember how much I liked it when I was little and how intense I felt about the short stories, makes me feel extra happy. I was thinking how much I wanted to be Spock, and about my male-identifiedness and how misogynist i was as a little girl. I hated girls, girliness, and all i knew was, spock was the antidote, he was my hero. If I could be spock, or obviously spocklike, no one would mistake me as someone who would have those loathesome girly qualities. I went around talking about how emotions were stupid (including happiness).

I thought a bunch about blogging, and love, and relationships, and old girlfriends from college, and the ways that places take on personality and hold memory so intensely.

A moment this week in the rain when the streetcorner suddenly looked like I think it would 40 years from now in my memory -- I could feel my future self there in the completely different place looking at a photograph or a memory of how it looked to me right at that minute. IN other words, my current reality looked old fashioned. It was like pre-nostalgia.

Poems are going on in me in response to reading lots of Carmen B3renguer and Maureen Owen while also deep into the "Women writers of the middle ages" book. B3renguer's poem "Mala piel" is mindbreakingly broken, excellent and weird. She's so verby!!!! I need to write her back but I'm feeling really shy about it.

Tomorrow I'll pull it together to write some job-type things (assuming the cramps will let up.)

Rook's reading "She-Hulk: Single Green Female" to Moomin in bed. Oh, a highlight of today was Moomin's delight in some Chip & Dale cartoons. He was completely destroyed by them, rolling around on the couch helpless with laughter.

Fabulous loafing holiday with feasting and loot

mmmm, spats!
Originally uploaded by Liz.

Someone was working, but it wasn't me. I laid around playing board games and eating tons of great food cooked by other people. My brother in law was the master chef today...

So, messing with computers, looking at books, movies, and just hanging around. It was so nice. And also yet another day of being around people who appreciate each other and how nice things can be.

Plus I'm in a 100% great mood because not only did Minnie make me the flowered spats, which fit my boots perfectly... there is also a great pink and black fleece hat with pompoms. And as I was walking out the door I was like... "Um lend me some of this book series? That our mom just got you for christmas?" and she was like "NO WAY are you insane? I want to read them" and then I pointed out that she'll be down here in 2 days and I'll have finished them by then. So now I have temporary custody of the first 6 books of some series by Marion Chesney... "Refining Felicity" and more extremely awful looking regencies. Hahaha, I'm off to take a midnight bath and rip through the first one. I have the extra pleasant feeling of having gotten away with something outrageous.

Moomin and I tested out a Heroscape combat and I think it was good for him to see how you can learn the rules as you go, even when they're too confusing to understand right away. Then we tried a more complex setup. And then Rook joined in and we had a massive battle! I can see it will be fun to play around with... It's Warhamster Jr.!

I was all remembering how insane I was at around Moomin's age to have anyone at all play Risk with me. & then how awesome it was a bit later when my dad would play Panzerblitz or that sort of game with me.

Rook, Moomin, Minnie, and I also played the Dragonology board game, which was lovely in design but extremely boring to play and not much strategy; a bit like "Sorry" with nicer props. In theory also you might learn a few things about a world map. It is also one of my pet peeves of games when they are so overdesigned and snotty that they don't put an explanation on the card of what the card does, even when it would be like 1 sentence. Instead you have to read and reread the rules until you remember about steamboats vs. hot air balloons, or the technicalities of using the Master Claw card. I can picture some designer saying that the text would make the card look ugly or too cluttered. Anyway, it has all the trappings of a good new-style or german-style game, but without the actual thought or interestingness, alas. Better to play zum kuk kuk or Lost Cities or Kahuna. Moomin liked it though, and he especially liked the little figurines of the dragons and dragonologists.

I can't even remember a nicer christmas. It was actually relaxing. Next year maybe we'll host and I'll have to haul ass on the cooking and cleaning and everything, and Minnie and Vim will have a squalling young sprog maybe crawling all over the place and vomiting on my couch, and I hope it'll be as nice for them as it was for us today.

Peanut was especially cute dancing around on the big red rug, and locking herself in the bathroom though that made me go crazy with worry... two and going "i'm going to lock all the grownups out so they can't open the door!" yes, in that complex of a sentence. Ha! She knew how to unlock it but it still freaked me out; though, I imagined, if there were some freak accident and she hit her head and passed out on the floor in there, Vim would easily just cut a hole in the wall, because he's handy like that, and anyway, I was being neurotic so it didn't matter. She was awfully sweet. She seemed to like the remote control snake that Moomin got for her.

We all wore our new pom pom hats made by Minnie as if we had just joined a cult of silly hats.

Best quote of the day: Moomin at dinner, giggling, incredulous, saying during a lull in conversation, "Did you just say "Merry Fucking Christmas?!!!" I forget who had said it. Awesome! Hahahah! There's no way around it since I swear all the time without thinking. As long as he realizes not to cuss in school or you get in trouble, and not to call people names.

Being surrounded by people who love people you love

I had a really nice time today and felt a huge surge of affection for D. I'm so happy that her new place is so perfect - and now I get why she was freaking so hard at the small details holding up purchase. It is so HER... perfectly in the woods near a hiking trail in the area she loves & very... D-like. Even the carpets are her color and it felt like a roomy labyrinth with baroque recursive corners and repetition, like a house in a celtic knot. D. was being at her sweetest (and is always at best when in a crowd of people who appreciate her - who isn't - but she is especially that way)

I had a lot of moments of being deeply happy that I was in a room full of fabulous intelligent interesting people who love and appreciate her as I do and who know her well, who have maybe played scrabble with her and eaten her asparagus and red pepper omelets, who like her books and her sonnets, and who might sometime be annoyed by the things that can be ... if you love someone... strangely endearing even if they drive you up the wall. And for a very slutty person who is also very sweet and loving and complex I think it is heavenly to be surrounded by people who have loved you a lot over time and who understand you well and accept your many levels of being.

I liked D's short speech about getting all the things she never thought she would get in life - degree, professional career, house, and wonderful friends - I thought of fears of getting older without having a partner and how she has faced that and yet, how many people do you know who are older, have a partner, and are still lonely, who have a partner to live with but no real companionship of mind or interests or soul? That seems so common. Anyway, there we all were feeling family-ish and appreciating each other - to me the feeling was very clear in during all of the party. It was an incidence of mass compersion so strong that it could have started another earthquake this weekend!

Hey doctor, it hurts when I press this button

A few nights ago in SF a little light flashed on my dashboard, "MAINT REQD". Was something wrong with the car? Did I forget to change the oil? (No.) I added oil anyway and then the next morning, got another oil change. The light didn't go away. So this morning at the Toyota dealership I was told the light would come on every 5K miles and that I had to pay 90 bucks to get the "service".

What! 90 bucks every 5000 miles? You're joking.. Is this necessary? To his credit, the perfectly nice dude working the service booth started laughing and said, "No... it's a scam." The amazing Dealership Service is a tire rotation, brake inspection, and oil change.

Then he performed the real service, which was to show me how to start the car up while holding down the odometer button. Doing that turns off the MAINT REQD light.

My agenda this morning is to loaf a bit and to clean the house. I made Rook breakfast in bed (french toast) and read a bunch of the "Hey Kidz" book I borrowed from Squid; it's a very good book!

Last night after vgqn and her partner's xmas carol-singing party I fell asleep reading an excellent book that Caraja gave me: "Women Writers of the Middle Ages" by Peter Dronke. Oh! It's got a beautiful, excellent preface! I will be typing up bits of that preface and praising it to the skies. It's the sort of preface that makes me feel way, way less alone in the world and in how I view things. I now have a swoony intellectual crush on Peter Dronke because at every paragraph I was like "Yes! Exactly! Neatly said! I must jot all of that down! You read my mind! We are on the same track! Hey, wait a minute, did you read my preface?" And much of it applies beautifully to blogging; the bits about immediacy and being outside established genre/writerly communities/literary scenes, especially. He mentions the attempts to say that Hrosvitha was a man, or a hoax, and ditto with Hildegard of Bingen. (Relevant always but particularly right now while Louise Labe's writerly existence is under attack.) And I loved the testimonial of Perpetua from something like 200 AD. That's as far as I've gotten in the book.

C. also sweetly gave me a hot pink tshirt that says "Word to your mother" with a sort of retro chick on it holding what might be a gun or a steaming plate of food; it's hard to tell - And some more books and a pile of comics. Some of my presents I got for people are still not here (I went a little nuts on Etsy, very easy to do) and I ahven't burned my solstice CDs yet. Think of them as "winter holiday CDs" and expect them sometime next week!

This afternoon we are driving in my NOT BROKEN car that didn't need any service, up to Marin to Doss's tree trimming where I am super excited to see her and Dr. Beth and my friend and lizard-sister Id3xa who I not seen since like 1996 or so. She has 2 kids. I think Doss's idea of treetrimming will satisfy Moomin's new aesthetic tastes. (He admired Ep's tree very much and also vgqn's, and pointed out again to me gently that our tree Sucks and is not as it Should be.)

Happy Global Orgasm Day!

It's definitely the holiday season!

It's a good day to enjoy schadenfreude as we read the email exchange between slimy Republican Congressional aide Todd Shriber and some computer security dudes as Todd tries to hire some hackers to change his GPA! And upon request, sends them two photos of squirrels in his front yard, to prove he's not an FBI agent. Oh, happy holidays... our government is full of lying jackasses.

It's also a good day to watch Dick in a Box in which Justin Timberlake parodies himself.

But in more horrible news, we are still in an enormous scary war that looks to be growing.

Meanwhile. It was a bit stunning this morning to open my newspaper and see an article with blacked out words, sentences, and paragraphs. It's an article about the US and Iran. I hope other newspapers being censored by the government will start following this practice of publishing with the blackouts included. The thick black lines are very effective in conveying the violence done by the state to freedom of information.

I emailed that NYT article to some people in hopes of having it pop up on their front-page "most emailed" list, perhaps even above the articles about how there's a lot of baby boomers (this is news?), how pancakes are cool, combatting clutter, parenting, exercising, and kiddie therapy. If every glurge article forwarded to me were about the horrors this country is committing in the war then ... well... then I'd have some political email in my inbox other than the sometimes useful moveon.org spam.

We provided the following citations to the board to demonstrate that all of the material the White House objected to is already in the public domain. Unfortunately, to make sense of much of our Op-Ed article, readers will have to read the citations for themselves. (See links at left.)

It really makes me think about "difficult writing" and the baroque - here is a perfect example of how baroqueness, by putting truth in the corners, in the tips of fractal branchings, can get around authority & censorship.

Schools, blogs, gender

Coffee with badass moms. School board stuff taking up 90% of my brain. A million conversations. Another mom stopped me in the cafe and got me to talk with board member CB who listened to my incoherent rambles... he seems to think that the schools will be able to be flexible and pay lip service. I think he is naive and this will not be allowed to happen; or at best it will be an enormous ongoing fight that might turn bitter and end up with a lot of charter schools.

Last night the board meeting was 4 hours; I took extensive notes; I spoke for 3 minutes in a somewhat embarrassing flush of demogoguery. I'll link to it when I post it on another blog.

Cleaned up notes. Wrote summary. Emailed it all to one list (and I should send it to others).

Visited Jo in the hospital. She's okay! Brought her gummi bears, lemon drops, and 3 kinds of fancy whole food clear juice. Her story about waking up and feeling immediately for the scar (if it was cancerous, they told her, then they'd slit her from her guggle to her zatch, the better to root around in there; if not then the incision would end at a lower point.) Manny had sat up with her in the night telling her over and over it wasn't cancer, but from the anesthesia, she forgot that... and so woke up and felt down there and went "whew, it's not too far up there, must be okay." Also she says she feels a sense of balance or maybe things will get better now.

Picked up kids. More intense school conversations on the way in and out. It's overwhelming. It will only get more so over time as we all learn about life in a suckass state mandated thingamajig; in short it blows; that is why some people at the PI schools are smirking and saying "ha, now they get to learn what it's like." not for long since all the rich parents will clearly secede. which will be a shame.

Heard some ugly racist assumptions over the last few days that I also find personally just exhausting to process and respond to.

Made hot cocoa for all the kids. E. was happy to hear her mom was joking and eating jello and that she was coming home likely sooner than we had expected. She said it was tough when the other times in hospital the stay kept extending. "Joking is a good sign for her sanity," she added. Well yeah...

Then she described a game of dodgeball in loving, boastful detail. I am scared of her; first tetherball that sounds so brutal I shrank in fear just to hear the stories. Now... the game from hell. She glories in it. Yuck!!!

My battle cry was basically, "Not in the face! Not in the face!" Or... more realistically, "Brute force annoys , scares, and bores me; I have to blow my nose; Ooops I forgot my kleenex; I'm off to the locker room on that excuse - where I will hide in the bathroom and read. See you!"

Sword construction. Bread baking. Perusal of bread baking bread machine book. "Experiments" planned. I cooked some more and did dishes. Shopped. Made sort-of-italian-ish- turkey meatloaf. (Better than it sounds.) Yesterday was all translation; no shopping or housework, so I have to catch up a bit.

Moomin lectured Sophie very prissily about not quarrelling and how it made no one feel better. Then I lectured him prissily about how prissy lecturing also does not help. Uh oh! Where did he learn it! It's a mystery!

All is quiet in Moomin's room as he messes about with Transformers and Legos and I take a moment to lie in bed with computer in lap.

I am somewhat emotionally drained.

For now, enjoy my mild rantiness over here: Gender and genre in blogs.

busy busy day

I spent all day translating stuff into final versions, good long random gossip with local librarian at lunch about kids' books and sf, and then picked up kids, hung out on the playground, gossiped about NCLB and the school board and district policies, hung a little with Squid, talked about kid behavior, met up with The Hippie and Dragonboy, then to my house, snacks for kids, 5th grade homework, gossip, books, more snacks, making more food for kids, dressup, and interesting discussion of "playing spy". It was fun to see them all.

Manny says Jo was fine, her anesthesiologist has her on all her correct meds and is aware of everything, all is well, and she is in surgery now.

Now I'm off the school board meeting. *whew*

Some hysterectomy and early surgical menopause info

Recovering from abdominal surgery

hysterectomy recovery a good week by week outline.

good site with personal stories and FAQ about surgical menopause

Menopause.org good organization and a good site

surgical menopause hrt/ert/heart considerations - talks about risk, different hrt options

Surgical Menopause

hystersisters message board with like 8 million ads, kind of annoying, might be info buried in there

anti-hysterectomy foundation heart-rending stories often from women who had hysterectomies and didn't need them or whose surgeries were messed up

Happy hysterectomy and the hers foundation polar opposite

early menopause organization - a good faq.

Technorati Tags: medical

I need a list of lists

Stuff I did this weekend:

- to the symphony with Rook and Moomin
- political house party
- role-playing game
- jobsurfed, read and tried to write a clip or two
- messed with new blog idea (fun, frivolous, possible money maker)
- read caraja's entire novel draft
- read some dumb zelazny books in tub and while falling asleep
- went to see xmas lights with Moomin
- took Moomin shopping (pajamas, presents for other people)
- mad activism for pta/schoolboard thing
- baking bread, cleaning, shopping, usual housewife stuff
- felt listless
- felt I was not working effectively OR relaxing effectively
- worried about my friend's health a lot, moments of bursting into tears
- had a long strange dream about a summer school and a poetry reading, life in a crowd of strangers who were weirdly distant; isolated; they criticised whatever I did as being aloof because i was a "famous poet". Nightmare!
- worried that I can't blog my guts out anymore in the way that people like and that I like to do; why? so many reasons. Do I respect them, really, at heart?

I'm not sure what to do right now. I look at it and I've got 4 hours to do ... something.

Meh. I will tackle a deadline
- LF article (god! why haven't I written it! *guilt*)
- Wsc0n interview question
- transcript for W. book; did i ever email out the updated version? do it again.

Tomorrow I need a day off from worrying and deadlines and jobs and duty. I would like to drive up somewhere and write poetry and end up in a diner by the highway eating poached eggs. A day trip to Pinnacles ? I've never been there. But it will be cold and maybe rainy. Perhaps a park closer to home; somewhere I've never been.

Inconvenient Truth house party

Larry, Peter, Mike, Renata, Mary, R. and I are all in my living room for a MoveOn house party to watch "An Inconvenient Truth." Of course I am super happy to have a houseful of total strangers.

I can't help giggling every time the titanium iBook, nobly backlit with logo rampant, floats up on the screen right after "Earth rise". WTF. I guess it's fine for Apple to have funded this cool movie.

Corrected Al on plate tectonics. It seemed a bit unfair. But then he explained it anyway.

I did not know that the majority of vegetation is in the northern hemisphere. What about plankton and stuff? Doesn't that contribute as much as trees ? Or significant amounts? Just curious.

The giant chart of co2 level and temperature is pretty amazing. Talk about the effective visual display of quantitative information. Edwin Tufte would be proud.

20th or so scene of Al gazing into the eyes of his iBook in soft focus with romantic lighting.

That's it. I'm gonna write the slash.

***

Peter talks about Treehugger.com and the chick who won the nobel prize in Africa for planting like 1 billion trees or something. And that it might not matter as much or at all to plant trees in the Northern Hemisphere.

We're talking about the movie, writing postcards to Congress right now, and watching the update on the DVD special features....Everyone is so nice! I am a bit of an alien to them with my computer in lap.

Gore is now talking (in the update) about Katrina... about typhoons and cyclones in other oceans.

It was odd while i was watching to recognize Nagin's voice and even to recognize and remember specific things he said. As the hurricane was about to hit and during and afterwards till I went to Houston, I was absolutely glued to my computer watching and listening and reading everything I could find - all day and far into the night.

***
Rick from Sierra Club is crashing our party near the end. We are happy for him to give us a short talk on the Kyoto protocol ... the seattle mayor challenged other mayors to meet it.

Loma Prieta chapter of the Sierra Club...

List of cities in the Bay area who have? 340 cities in the U.S. RWC has not signed up. Palo Alto has. Sierra Club, "Cool Cities Program", advocacy to put pressure on the cities and the mayors to sign onto it. The mayor in RWC does not have control of that, it would be the City Council to bring the idea or information to them.

I'm telling Rick to talk to SV Moms Blog, the local moms club, the trees people... he already knows the trees people. Rad.

Peter asks if any of us are part of any good organizations, progressive ones. He talks about Drinking Liberally... ha! Rick talks about Actera.

***
Everyone's left but Rook and I are talking (him as a former scientist, me as journalist-y person) about the irresponsible journalism that results in popular press always reporting "doubt" about global warming when there is no reasonable doubt in the international scientific community. They do it for tension in a story, or they do it for "balance".

Otherdimensional creatures

Random conversation following z-amber's story about the guy who shot (and ate) a 7-legged deer.

"Does it have two butts?"

"So, about the pushmi-pullyu. Where does it poop?"

"Well, it's sort of crossdimensional and in some other world, there's its counterpart with two asses."

"So... a poopmi-poopyu?"

Public school activism

I spent this morning NOT working on translations or writing projects with deadlines of NOW or the sample writing for a job I'm trying to get, but instead, talking with parents and teachers at Moomin's school about the NCLB changes.

There is a crucial vote coming up next week at our district. So I mobilized info and sent out emails and sent more emails requesting emails of parents at every school. It was hard seeing tears come to the eyes of many teachers I respect and to see how upset they were at the whole debacle. Even the most mildmannered and non-politicky of them (like Moomin's teacher) so boiling mad as to be incoherent. So I just spent 5 hours talking with people, writing up letters, and compiling information.

Meanwhile - go and vote for Blogher for Best online community in the 2006 Weblog awards! It's the last day to vote and I'd like us to go out with a bang even if there is no way to defeat the popularity of F4rk (which is pretty poor model for "commmunity" no matter how funny and snarky it is.)

Having huge fun at parties

Had a great afternoon with Iz and Moomin. They got along well. At both schools, I fomented a bit. Do we foment only rebellion? Why don't we foment other things too? Is fomenting like fermenting? Look up etymology later. IN the car going down 280 thought of poetry and various odd long poems worked on in my head. Was responsible and did NOT write poetry in my notebook on my lap while driving.

Blogher party - fabulous - good to talk with Elisa, Jory, Lisa, Maria, Karianna, Beth, Britt, and Tree - a strange amount of dudes looking a little bored and unsure, including someone who was like "My boss made me come here. So, what IS blogging...? Is it like, you write something and then you go, "to be continued..." and end on a cliffhanger? Is that how you make people come back?" - hahahah! That did NOT just happen! But mostly hung talking with awesome people like Britt and Maria. Caraja came a bit later. We both happened to be going to Quetzal beforehand and met up there...

I should add links to this post and clean it up in the morning.

- and then Good Vibes holiday ball. Hello. Most amazing burlesque dance with red feathers to opera. Ever. Fucking Margaret fucking CHO. Danced around with Leeann and Caraja having fun and being all spazzy as I like to be while dancing - and then as "Hot Stuff" came on, Hot Stuff herself was dancing kind of with me while shining the most peculiar smile at me. In halter top, little red skirt and with cute mohawk. I spazzed up to her and yelled suavely in her ear, "OMG You're such a hot dancer i'm having sort of a Perfect Moment because Hot Stuff is playing and, you're all hot, and we're on the dance floor having this Moment and I want to shower you with rose petals." And she was like "What?! I can't hear you!" and I said "Hahaha nothing!" and we danced for a while. I wandered off and she wandered off and then I had that vague feeling like I was looking for her but maybe I wasn't... And I was just wandering around to see people's outfits and see if I knew anyone. Ran into Daphne, and then Lori and Guy and some other people. Later we found each other again at the crowded party and traded phone numbers and then I met all her friends/exes/dates, they could have been any or all or a mixture, which is always the case with flocks of hot punky queers, and they were simultaneously all flirting with me and elbowing her and giggling as we sort of made out on the stairs. "What ... do you do?" "I'm a writer.. and blogger...um..." "I'm a vegan bartender!" "I have to um find my friend and stuff." "I'm sort of, in a Situation." We all are in Situations... it's funny that way.

It was odd to meet a crew of non-computer-geek people.

Then I ran off to find Caraja feeling very odd. We danced around a while... And then took off... and now I'm home all cosy in pajamas. In the car on the way home I thought about the essay i'm writing called Dance Dance Dance and about "fun" and my evolving ideas on Fun, about chocolate dildos in the center of the locked safe in the heart of the military-industrial complex in the decaying orbital mining colony in Alice Nunn's Illicit Passage, and of how things can suck so hard and yet there is always some chocolate dildo to be found and moments of joy. I had a lot of them tonight, driving alone making up poetry, feeling bloggity and loved (including Karianna going "and you have mysterious COFFEE at some mysterious PLACE every thursday around 10am and I always wish I could be there and I miss you and Squid!", which was so cool because she's so cool; wearing Squid's magnificent tshirt and having everyone want to take photos of it and blog it; feeling all bondy with Lisa and people; suddenly having a zillion Ideas while talking to all the fabulous blogher women; Tree saying she would pay me to trick out her blog and stuff (pay me! oh yeah, sweet words); party revving up at Good Vibes and the sugar dance (who was that? I should know) and again, Margaret. Margaret Cho, you ARE my chocolate dildo in the heart of the military industrial complex in our gritty mining asteroid colony in space in the middle of the revolution. So beautiful! And knowing it is possible to have fun with Caraja and feel almost comfortable and just, well, wanting to have fun with her despite whatever else; and again, the Hot Stuff Vegan Bartender who dirty danced with me against a railing until I was breathless. Driving home to good music on various channels & then some mashup or remix or something, "Shining Song" at the perfect time in my train of thought for me to be ready for that level of "dance dance dance" sentiment; Rook at home walking about perturbed to his soul about a movie about 3 australian girls who were taken from their families under 1920s(?) policies about mixed race children and their escape from the orphanage & walk home 1500 miles; their marriages, children, and then recapture & re-escaping. It is not often he is off balance like that and shows it. I hope my patting him and talking about joy and asteroids helped.

Seekrit tip for 12 inch ibooks

Anonymous tip from dude at Apple Store: for my old 12 inch ibook that started having intermittent shutdown failure, tape a sharpie or a pen to the underneath in a specific spot at a specific angle (lower left corner, cutting across the corner in a triangle) and push down on the lower left and upper right corners. He says that after you spend a couple of years picking the thing up with one hand, a short develops on one of the boards a nd it is somewhat fixable. and that his has that problem and it works fine as long as it's on a desk with the sharpie taped under it.

I wonder if it's even more fixable than that...

They're giving me a new MacBook because the old one had the latch failure and failure to sleep and then also weird intermittent total mouse freezes and shutdowns, AND the airport card kept cutting out in front of them. And I was just over the 2 week mark but they have a holiday special deal where around the holidays they swap it out for a new computer or some kind of "extended return policy" is in place. So, I'm super crossing my fingers that this model is not a lemon in general. My iBook 12 inch was absolutely reliable for 3 years. (Except for the power supply cord and battery.) High hopes and crossed fingers for the same luck with this new laptop.

MacBook problems and the DMV

I accepted that my old iBook was dead, and bought a new MacBook a couple of weeks ago. In the last week it has begun shutting down, perhaps at random, or perhaps because it doesn't actually sleep when I close it. And it's now crashed completely with a mouse freeze, three times. This morning I went to the Apple Store hoping that I could just hang around for an hour or two until someone had a free minute to look at it. I've done that before. But no such luck.

Instead, at least 6 different people told me to sign in - to go ask someone to sign me in - to sign in for procare - to go ask the genius bar people to look up my procare number - then that they couldn't help me. Each time I ran into a problem, I had to try to catch a new guy's attention and wait for them to be ready to talk to me. Then I'd get wrong, unhelpful advice and, "I'm sorry, I can't leave my station." When I tried to sign in on the "guest" computers I could not find anywhere to do that on the Apple Store web page; it turned out not to be there, but instead on the desktop if you close the windows and quit everything and click "concierge". Hello... non-intuitive, and there should be multiple paths. Then I was told by guy #5 to go to the studio area and ask those guys - then that I don't even have procare, I have Applecare extended warranty, and if I did have procare it wouldn't help anyway. "You should have signed up for an appointment from your computer, at home." Hey, dude, I would have, if my computer had been working. Then I got boiling mad and acted pissy, which I'm embarrassed about because I'm usually the soul of resigned helpful patience in that kind of situation, because not only is it politer, it works better. But I got mad... it was something about getting the runaround so many times in a row. Would it have killed them to say "So, what is wrong with your computer?" Instead.... "It's not like you can just walk in and get your car fixed the same day, or go to the DMV and get seen in 10 minutes," the Apple dude told me. Then they told me to go home and make an appointment tomorrow. I re-expressed my frustration and so finally the Studio guy made an appointment for me for tomorrow at 10am.

So I drove off slightly mollified but still in a huff, and mad at myself on top of that for having been a big jerk.

Coincidentally I was on my way to the DMV to pick up my new special license plates -- without an appointment and without the piece of paper they mailed me. Usually the DMV is like hell. It's usually dirty, noisy, frustrating, boring, kafkaesque, and inefficient. "Runaround" is the name of the game. So I tried to steel myself to be calm and patient and to hear "No" a lot. Instead I got there, got a number within one minute, and was seen by a helpful person in under 5 minutes. It must have been blind dumb luck, or rain, to walk cold into the DMV and hit it on an uncrowded day. They couldn't find my name in the database, or the license plate itself, though the person helping me looked it up many different ways. Then she *got up from her chair* and simply went to look on the shelf where the license plates were, found it in about 30 seconds, pointed me to another window, where I borrowed a screwdriver by turning in my license. I took the old plates off, returned the screwdriver and got back my license, brought them back to the first woman's window, got some papers, brought them to the 2nd window, got stickers, put them on, re-borrowed the screwdriver, etc. I was out of that place in 20 minutes.

The women behind the counter were intrigued by my "FMINIST" plates. "Oh good. Fight the good fight for us. You know that one woman, what's her name, married to Clinton..." "Hillary Clinton?" "Yeah. She'll be president. I think she's going to run. She seems pretty smart." That was a funny conversation.

Anyway, I'm sad that the user-friendly Apple Store turned out to be an annoying Kafkaesque experience while the DMV was pleasant - helpful - commonsensical - and actually helpful.

CAT scan; jury duty

The CAT scan went extremely quickly. I didn't fidget. While I was in the waiting room several very confused people in hospital gowns wandered in and out, asking loud incoherent questions... you wondered why they had been turned loose. One woman was very suspicious of the bathroom and why there was a sign that said "women" that looked like a bathroom sign but then it leads only to a locker room. "What do they want us to do, use the lockers like toilets? Where do I sign up for the exam? When it says exam on this form here what does it mean?" I answered her questions as best I could. But she was insane-o!

I like our local hospital because there is a lot of common sense and a minimum of bullshit. For example, they didn't make me take off all my clothes to get a CAT scan of my head. You can bet your labia jewelry they'd strip you naked as the day you were born at Staffnord Hospital, no matter what you said they were going to xray or how damned freezing it was.

I was shoved into the ez-bake oven of the CAT scan machine and watched the whirling magnety camera things for as long as I could before closing my eyes. "Don't swallow!" chirped the radiology tech. Immediately the urge to swallow was overwhelming. As I lay there I recited poetry and tried not to think about the pain in my jaw. I'm saying "jaw" but it is really my upper cheekbone to the southwest of my eye, near my temple. It's like a sinus infection or a bad upper molar toothache, but much worse.

Seeing photos of my own skull always makes me think of the surrealist Meret Oppenheim and her skull xray art thing. Doesn't she look kind of like she's smoking a cigarette? I bet she is. I've read before that she did this piece as a commentary on gender and art and portraiture.

About pain: I can function normally on a huge amount of pain, like a junkie on their drug... It's a willpower thing, and I have a lot of that. First you learn how to just live and endure pain. Then you add in a layer of optimism, cheer, and patience.

What really tries my patience is when people then treat me as if I must not actually be in pain, because I behave rationally and am working and walking around. Other people in chronic pain will know exactly what I'm talking about! You're damned if you complain and damned if you don't!

It strikes me that this winter my basic pain level is much improved. Usually I dread the rainy season because I ache severely all over, or at least in many horribly well defined places, as if I were Dr. Watson peppered by those Jezail bullets, and I think with a shudder of my future and wonder if I'll be doomed to live in Arizona. Arizona's not so bad, but I like San Francisco awfully much. I think my feeling better this winter is because my baseline of health and "being in shape" is steadily improving due to my iron will and determination to be extremely active.

Now I'm reporting as required for jury duty, in the civic center courthouse building basement. The security checkpoint seems to require about 20 officers to stand around nodding grimly, harrumphing. I watched a man humbly take off his shoes as we have been doing in airports for the last few years. Thank god no blaring TV screen telling us nonsensical procedure (as in the last few airports I've been in).

The jury duty assembly room is packed full of people. There's wireless! So I have a pleasant feeling of doing my civic duty while actually fucking off on the internets. Huzzah!

From the jury duty video training:

stirring martial music Jury duty! Civic heroes!
"We live in a state of great natural beauty. And harmony. And justice. But not always. (ominous music)
Joe Blow juror guy: You don't have to be afraid of jury duty. You get interested. You learn about the criminal justice system. And you are participating.

Even handed! We don't trust experts or single individuals to decide a case. No one person should have so much power. Instead we trust in the community! To make the right decision. This is our democratic ideal. Justice. Of the people, by the people, for the people. Civil vs. criminal cases. Common sense. Fairness. Impartiality. No special training necessary (except for this video!) " I was scared. I didnt' know anything about the law. And i had to wait around a lot. But, I brought a book. And it was okay. " Physical evidence. What is a bailiff? Deputies. The court reporter. HOw jury selection works. Swearing in; you promise to be truthful. The judge explains the trial. Do you have bias or prior opinion in the case or to the people involved? Privacy, confidentiality. You can ask questions of the judge privately. Lawyers asking about personal experience and personal questions. What "bias" means. Rules set by law in excusing jurors. Testimony... witnesses... What is truth? Everyday common sense. Closing statements by attorneys are not evidence; they are points of view to persuade you. Jury instructions from the judge, and explanations of the law and degrees of proof. Coming to agreement with complete strangers in deliberating. There maybe be a guidebook to help the 12 people on the jury organize themselves. It is your duty to give your opinion and to listen to others. It's important to speak your mind in that phase of the trial. On a civil trial, 3/4 of the jurors must agree. In a criminal trial, the vote must be unanimous. Everyone must agree. The end. The judge dismisses you. It's a deep and moving experience to be on a jury. You even might make friends! Tra la! It's not like a movie. It's a real experience! You have helped your community! Justice has been served! *martial music and trumpets again* *happy photos of california, law books, flags, and the constitution*

I love D.E.B.S.

Yow! I love this movie! It's hilarious and great, punky and queer and did I mention funny... campy... and serious as well in the best way of comic books. supervillains! serious lesbians! tough soldier women! love! betrayal! drama! big ridiculous guns! silly spy things! forcefields! gay-ass music but thank god not lesbian folk (barf me)! punk rock dance clubs! I liked the actors - the movie passes Bechdel's Law - great soundtrack - and the writer & director, Angela Robinson, rules. Now I'm dying to see the original short version.

OMG the diamond handcuffs!

Really this was a great comedy. Go watch it immediately!

After watching Moomin rate his recently watched movies on Netflix... Batman got 3 stars... Spiderman got 3 or maybe 4 on some episodes... and then he got to D.E.B.S. and gave it 5 stars, the highest rating. So after that I had to watch it myself and now I'm Angela Robinson's devoted fan!

Excuse me while I put a few more exclamation! points! in!

Technorati Tags: comics, movies, sciencefiction

Vote for BlogHer in the 2006 Weblog Awards!

As a contributing editor to BlogHer (World/Latin America and Caribbean) I'd like to ask that you vote (daily!) for BlogHer for best online community of 2006:

Vote daily for BlogHer as Best Online Community

If you like my coverage of Latin American women's blogs on BlogHer, or if you enjoy the many other amazing writers on that site, please click on over and vote for us!

I'm really happy and honored to be a small part of that fantastic community.

Technorati Tags: bridgeblogging, communities, blogher

Nice things that happened this week

I did a lot of complaining about the head injury and my jaw, so here are some of the nice things from this week:

- Moomin's whale dance and all the dances in that performance

- Moomin drawing a cool complicated picture and enjoying it, instead of staring at the page and complaining that he doesn't know how and that he wishes he could draw comic books

- Good long talk w/ Rook

- Hanging out with my sister

- Hanging with Jo while I wrote and she drew and the kids played nicely

- Went out to see The Fountain and liked it a lot despite cheesiness and some ugly racism and colonialism and general tormented-genius-white-guy-problems focus

- messing with my wiki install and structure, and discovering the wikichix

- Playing pinball with Shanana and singing punk rock songs at the top of our lungs in a bar - playing air hockey and galaga

- reading a book with the squirm-worthy title "When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit" and realizing it was fantastic

- Moomin's different hip-hop dances that he made up to "Spiderman", "Underdog", and "He's the Greatest Dancer"

- Getting Caraja's novel draft over email and printing it out and feeling all excited

- last but not least getting email from the author I'm translating!!! with friendly permission to publish!

Concussion aftereffects

I'm still feeling the effects of having a concussion. I'm basically functional, driving around and going places, but I need more rest than usual, and my head really hurts most of the time. "Something hurting" is not a reason for me to *stop doing stuff* - I am too used to that, I am easily bored, and for someone with tendencies to fibromyalgia and bad knees and various other joints-that-stiffen-up-painfully, it is a bad idea to lie in bed for days on end. So, I'm out and about.

But am feeling a little freaked about the continuing effects. My brain doesn't quite feel the same. When I start to try to talk it's a bit molasses-feeling, and I've been stammering a bit. Once I get going and warm up it's okay. But this is a weird and disturbing effect. I feel a little "underwater" in my head. It's really hard to explain, but...

Anyway I'm going to the dr. this afternoon. And I was going to read at the Shotwell gallery benefit tonight but might not make it, if they are x-raying my head and I don't have a long rest period before going out, then I probably shouldn't.

My jaw is also improved, but not quite normal fast enough for me not to worry. I can chew, but it hurts. And it is difficult/painful to open my mouth wide enough to take a reasonable bite even of something soft. On the pain scale I would say that my head is at 4-8 - never not aware of it, and at times nearly unbearable and i must lie down and can only think of it. The jaw is more like 2-5. I have difficulty with focusing my eyes, a bit. Again not major and not impossible, but it is a constant strain.

I think all those things are nothign to be freaked out about, they are expected in recovering from a concussion, but just so I won't go the weekend again wondering if blood is seeping into my brain or my jaw is fractured slightly, or something, I'm heading off to the doctor for a bit of reassurance.

Up early feeling tormented

Cold, snoring, cats leaping on me in a 4am frenzy, my knee hurting, weird dreams, and then I was tormented by various memories, letters written and unwritten and ones I was writing in my head, things unsaid, times I haven't listened, love unexpressed through action and caring, everything and everyone I have neglected, poems unfinished, translations in the middle of the 4th draft but not good enough, and thoughts of all, all, all the work undone that I want or need to do.

Aside from all my projects and things, I need to do the basic job of putting my papers and books in order. It's funny because it's a job I've done very competently for other people many times as temp work or just being helpful. But for myself it's a million times harder. Anyway, I need to get serious about it and go through everything. What if I died and left things in such horrible disorder?

After the 10th time of trying to compose my mind for sleep which I so desperately need in order to do any of the things that, undone, torment me, I gave up and now I'm at the table with computer, drinking some hot milk.

Technorati Tags: insomnia

My retirement account

My IRA just shot up massively this year so it went from piddly to just a little bit more of piddly. I think putting it all into one high risk fund that depends on cell phones in China was a good idea.

I feel weird & guilty about this - all that money just laying around??? But also guilty that it's too little for someone my age. It is now 8,000 bucks which for almost-40... I think that blows. And if I were suddenly disabled I think b/c of not working for so long I would not get much for benefits (where, before, when I was on disability, it was vaguely enough to live on in a squalid sort of way. LIke $1000/mo. even with my job having been not very well paid. (It is higher, the more money you made as your salary.) But without having worked it would be like 300 bucks a month. Enough to buy your tampax, toothpaste, and liquor as you live in the shelter or group home, maybe...)

And I wish I had not had to take out the retirement money I had built up from all my working through college. Blah!!!

But - My friend J. was just here visiting and he said that actually if you are married... the law right now is that surviving spouses get their partner's social security if it is higher. Even if you get divorced, if you were married at least 10 years you still get it. No one is divorcing anyone or dying, but it was kind of nice to know that I'm not completely screwing myself in my old age by this 5 years of little or no work and full time school-and-momming. As I contemplate it I think of class and heterosexual privilege and, as I said, feel weird and guilty. I hope I'll be working at least part time, soon, and will feel like I'm pulling in money on my own again.

Flushed with pride

The city installer dude just came out to give us our free low-flow toilet. It seems quite splendid - the old one was at least 30 years old and the handle was broken. So, a fabulous deal, free toilet, free install. Fast & a nice guy. He also offered and installed free low-flow massaging showerhead and a thing that replaces the tip of the kitchen faucet, which rotates and sprays and pretty much gives you a blow job while it's at it.

I commented to him that it's a nice job to have to give people free stuff and he said that's what he likes about it - people are so pleased - I am certainly ridiculously so. Plus you get to feel virtuous about the "low-flow" bit.

This morning my head feels way better! I'm alert and working and full of Ideas! What a relief! Also, I can chew almost normally. If I move my head too fast it's not pleasant - and I think I might need a nap in the afternoon. But I'm almost back to normal!

Jam just sent me a nice letter and a slab of chocolate with the seattle skyline. Sweet! Mysterious references to Naked Biking photos. How appalling! and, ouch! Still, it has a certain appeal to think of.

Convalescing with computers

I'm feeling a lot better. Tomorrow I am hoping to be totally back on my feet. I've slept a ton... and was walking around today, dazed, spacey, with a headache, able to eat a little bit... though I still really wish I had a lot of good soup.

- did laundry

- washed dishes (harder than it sounds, involves bending over)

- blogged a bit, read a bunch of blogs, messed with my wiki

- hung out with Pilot & Peanut (the hard part, paying attention socially, I am too spacey)

- read another Pamela Frankau book, The Foolish Apprentices, where everyone was hideous and I wanted to slap them all and it seemed again like *all the same people as in Dance to the Music of Time* but with different names. There really were only about 100 people in England at any one time. Can I just add how very strange it is that they should have people lay their clothes out for them and run their bathwater and bring them breakfast in bed, and that was just "normal"??? In Shaken in the Wind the British characters comment on how odd it will be to go to America where people make their own beds and have shiny refrigerators. I guess the people who made their beds for them and then went home and made their own beds were not "people". It is more and more clear to me that their sense of their own worth and entitlement and upper class status was (is?) based on their aesthetic sensibility. This should make us all very suspicious of aesthetics and our judgement of what is "good".

- read more Scrooge McDuck, which was fabulous. I didn't realize Scrooge had such depth of character! The obsessive world-building pleased me no end... all the tiny details! And then, Scrooge with Templars.

- shamefacedly wished i had the third "Sabriel" novel. Why?

- napped in between all of that for short intervals.

- need: cat litter (desperate!) - soup - bread - cheese - something nice like olives -

Invisible ninjas

Rook insists it was ninjas who bashed me in the head. "Did you *see* any ninjas?"

"No..."

"Well then! That proves it!"

I have been reading and writing a bit all day and then I fall asleep ... in 20 minute to hour long naps. I have tylenol now and I think could manage noodles.

For food I had some custard (4 eggs, 2 cups milk, 1/4 c honey, plenty nutritious) and some ritz crackers with cheese, which I could eat without chewing in tiny bites if I just sort of waited for the crackers to dissolve.

Oh, bored, bored, bored....

Trying to be: patient, good, cheerful, nice, brave
Feeling: hurty, scared, shaken, bored, whiny, lonely, irritable, hungry

Necromancer teenage angst books

I'm enjoying "Lirael" way more than Sabriel. Though I still want to make fun of it just as much, now I'm getting why it's fun. I can't ignore the stupid, but fun is in there anyway.

The book opens with a swirl of psychic priestess boarding school angst as the 14 year old orphan Lirael spirals into suicidal despair on her birthday because she doesn't yet have "the Sight". When she climbs up a thousand stairs to the top of the mountain glacier to throw herself off... instead she gets caught up there by the head priestesses, who assign her to be an apprentice Librarian because she doesn't have any talent and is shy. lo & behold she turns out to be a genius powerful magician and learns everything about the library and hacks her way into all the secret doors & etc.

The only thing missing really is some detail about how she is considered ugly because of her nose-freckles or her heavy red hair and unusual green eyes and being too skinny - but really I don't miss it and the book is just .001% better for not having it. The key thing is the detail of the angst and self-pity and envy as Lirael imagines the triumphant 11 year old classmate who just got the Sight today and wil be crowned with a moonstone tiara in the warm Great Hall right at the moment when she herself will be flinging herself off the top of the glacier to an icy despairing death. Oh yeah! And then - all the ways she decides to lie about nearly everything and invents elaborate cover stories.

I'm in the middle now after reading the bit about the Prince who is clearly her destined lover - battle with zombies, journey into death, a few moments of trench warfare, and some confused stuff about boarding school and cricket - Oh just one example of the badness. why is his sister described as his "fourteen-month-older sister"? WTF? do we care? just say she's a year older? is the 14 months important? And when the zombie grabs that other kid by the neck and "shook him like a milk shake"? I had to look twice - snake? shake? Does anyone shake a milk shake - no - they mix it in an electric mixer as far as I know - And who or what would describe shaking something by the neck to kill it as "like a milk shake" - so dumb. Details like this drive me insane.

Anyway now back to Lirael who suddenly is not only a happy though lonely librarian genius of magic but has a superpowered magic dog companion and also now she's 18 and can change into an otter, a bear, and a barking owl. you heard me. a barking owl.

Hahhahaaha!

***
Oh I spoke too soon about the lack of physical description and "un"beautifulness and not fitting in:

In just a few minutes she would be plain Lirael again, with her long, unruly black hair so unlike that of her blond- and brown-haired cousins; her pointy chin so much sharper than their round faces; her pale skin that would never tan, not even in the harsh sunlight reflecting off the glacial ice; and her brown eyes, when all the Clayr had blue or green...

oh horrors! a pointy chin! waaaaaah! how can she not die of shame! no wonder she hides behind her hair all the time in the depths of the library! Oh excuse me... the "Library", since everything in this book has Capital Letter Disease.

Hottie priests and funny comments

Calendario romano - a calendar of priest cheesecake. The best part of this: click on the comments button!!! OMG! 40 pages of gay dudes from Europe and Latin America, and women named things like "Mary Frances", saying "sexay!!!! bless me father!" and making jokes about going to confession right away.

Best comments:

As a strong Roman Catholic, and a family man, I'd like to say that
if I were the creator of this calendar, who I don't even know a thing
about (I'd like to learn about the history of this calendar), but if I
were him, I'd get down on my knees...and blow each and every one of these
men.

and (excerpt...)

....My Mom and I first climbed on our knees those 28 steps. On top of the stairs on the left sight we went to a small store where you can buy rosaries, crosses, e.t.c. Three old nuns were sitting there. My Mom bought sth and asked one of the nuns where she could find a priest, cause she wanted to have something blessed. While I was looking at a book I suddenly heard my Mom talking to a man, I turned and could hardly believe my eyes, cause I looked into the face of the most handsome young priest I have ever seen in my life! About half an hour later my Mom and I went to the evening mass in the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano, during the mass my Mom suddenly pinched me and whispered in my ears: "Look!". I turned my head to the left and saw this Adonis of a priest again. I definitely go to Rome this September again!
The priest on the front cover of 2006 is definitely my favorite priest...

oh and,

Avec son air intellectuel, sa figure hyper sexy, son regard pénétrant et sa bouche !!!! oh là là, qu'il est beau !!!!

you don't really need to know French to read that, do you?

and then there's the comments requesting another calendar of Anglican bishops.

Let's just take a moment to celebrate the general weirdness of people everywhere. Wow.

Fireworks, twice

parade and fireworks
Originally uploaded by Liz.

The parade and fireworks were great. But on the way home I walked into a pole and I think have a slight concussion... fuzzy-headed, dizzy, and very bruised. My head was sideways - looking at Moomin - and my temple and jaw went smack into a signpost. Something is not quite right about my jaw... walking seems to jar my whole head very horribly and it just feels all 'wrong'... The other time I had a concussion for real, i blacked out and vomited, and I don't feel that bad - but also, worse than "bumped my head". i am not sure if I can chew. Rook and Moomin are going out to a party. so... i am a little unnerved at being alone.

***update ***
I feel a lot better, but still can't chew, not even noodles. Custard & soup for me...

Send a teenager on civil rights activist history trip

Donate a few bucks to my friend's class trip. It's for the Sojourn Project - which takes high school students on a 10-day trip across the South, retracing the U.S. civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s.

A. is a great kid, 16 years old, and works her butt off to help her family and earn money for college. She started helping her mom in babysitting jobs for me and so many other people I know, years ago... she must have been 11 when I first met her, and since she was 14 or so she has been working independently, able to charge what an experienced adult would charge. Really that shouldn't have anything to do with it, but it has always made me admire and respect her... Here's the link to paypal or credit-card whatever you can! Really a worthy thing to do!

I notice that the Sojourn Project itself takes donations which it uses to underwrite the costs of taking kids on these trips.

Sojourn to the Past offers students, educators and parents the chance to travel for ten days through the South visiting the most dramatic sites and hearing the speakers that first witnessed and created the civil rights movement. This journey is important not only for the historic value, but more importantly to teach the real lessons of the movement — tolerance, justice, compassion, hope, non-violence and to help students today put those lessons into practice back at home.

So cool.

Technorati Tags: activism, history

Who wants a music and poetry cd?

Email me now with your address if you want a fun cd for a winter solstice present! Poetry & music, a very random assortment...

(at this address)

I haven't made the mix yet, but I'm plotting what it will be!

International internet formality

It is embarrassing, a little, when I write a formal letter and get back the cyberspanglish equivalent of "yo, wassup dawg, good idea, c u l8r, xox". Then I feel like a huge fool!!! and like I got caught being super bogus!

But then it's a huge relief, no more "estimado..."

Really funny sometimes! I wonder if there is a generational cutoff for that - the informal replies are usually but not always from 20-somethings.