badgerbag: messy, surly, full of books

Return of the ulcer; productivity!

Apparently I have taken far too much Celebrex and my stomach/gastritis/ulcer problems are back. For the last 3 days I 've been taking Prilosec and laying off the NSAIDs. I just ate lunch with some excitement thinking the pain was gone, but it hit me hard just now... so... I have to quickly shift onto some sort of very mild diet, and remember not to eat very small quantities even if I'm hungry...

Meanwhile, I'm filing papers, throwing away huge stacks of paper stuffed into grocery bags, and shovelling whatever's left over into a heroic attempt upon the file cabinet. Past half-assed organizations, excavated, collect in the drawers, so I have about 5 different "bills" files and several "medical" from different years; all were in different drawers or stacks or shoved sideways into the zine bookshelf in the closet. I'm not weeding closely, so far. Just gathering like-meets-like.

My new top categories are "official" for all the official papers, in the top drawer.

Then 2 drawers of my own junk, which is as follows:

Conferences
* ALTA, BlogHer, Gaming, Potlatch, SWSW, WisCon
Contacts
* cards, addresses, letters
Ephemera
* flyers, stickers, postcards, brochures that are nifty
Grad school
* official papers, junk, my own papers, other people's papers, teaching
Job info
* a scrapheap of hiring documents and old resumes
Poetry
* a million different folders, to evolve into my own poems, drafts, other people's poems, presses, contracts
Research
* a bunch of research for my anthologies, biographical info on poets I like, xeroxed things, other projects
Translation
* my translations, drafts, stuff i want to translate, papers about translation
Tollbooth
* my small press
Zines
* my old press with all its zines; some letters are here; manuscripts/xeroxable originals
* many boxes and tubs of old zines and letters are in the shed! ack! no room

(bottom drawer)
* unfiled (huge)
* Milo papers
* maps
* warranties and manuals for things going back 15 years

There is a foot-high stack of papers left to go! I've thrown *so much* away!

After that stack is filed away I could either
- go through the whole cabinet in a final pass to weed and consolidate
- go through the closet shelves of zines also to weed, and organize
- move the bookshelves around to put the bed on the other side of the room and make more room
- go through the 2 giant shelves of my project binders and figure out wtf is going on there

This is going to help my whole life to get this stuff under control, and let me know where all my projects are, and where to find things! I'll dig up projects that are 80% done that I have forgotten all about! I'll find whole completed manuscripts I've also forgotten, and talks from 2001 that are super awesome, and the drafts of essays that I might still like, and letters unanswered that will fill me with pleasant melancholy.

Head exploding, promiscuous trees

This started out with an intense allergy attack in the afternoon, chain sneezing, itchy eyes, crazy nose-blowing, and now I'm at the point where I have forgotten what it's like to breathe through my nose. Despite allergy and cold meds, my head is pounding, full of snot, and I have to keep vaselining up my nostrils every minute or two, because my nose is painfully chapped. I had to stop even trying to work at around 3pm.

DAMMIT!

I am wondering if this is actually a cold, and the allergy part of it was just random. I feel feverish!

Rook and Moomin and I had dinner with Iz, Sophie, Eliz, and Manny. Iz explained many things about cars, trucks, combustion engines, and the history of cars; classic cars; new cars. I shared every car fact I could think of. I think she would really enjoy seeing Severin's airplane and his workshop where he built it. The other kids told jokes, did tongue twisters, and talked about school elections. Manny showed me his fancy vintage Pentax camera lens that fits on his fancy digital camera. Sushi was okay, but it was hard to tell since I couldn't BREATHE or taste anything.

Cuss cuss cuss... I hate being sick... or having allergies... or whatever it is. If I can't drain this stuff out, I'll end up with a sinus infection.

Retrospective on the trip

The beach was glorious, my heart leaped as the surfers caught wave after wave, the water was warm instead of the northern California foot-numbing shock. I bobbed in the waves and shouldered the loving undertow. Salt scrubbed me clean. Moomin and I built sandcastles. On the drive I wrote poetry in my lap. The sun shone in over the mountains and under the rainstorm. Rook got to see his oldest friend, who is getting a halfway decent chance with his movie showing in a nationwide film festival. And my mom wrote me nice email afterwards, as I look remarkably sane compared to my aunt, and she even said my remark about being a gay atheist (to a persistent Mormon) was hilarious.

Last night after the long drive up I took a scalding bath & then drove up to the city to Zond-7. We stayed up far too late, but still woke up in time for him to catch his plane. Now I'm pining a bit, and exhausted. I've been writing a ton of poetry. My notebooks are happy. I'm walking well. I blogged at length over here about poety things, with less swearing than I would have here.

Technorati Tags: daily life

From the rainy south, family insanity and a video

I am in L.A., or really, Blahington Beach, in a motel, having spent the day rather hideously at my cousin's party. She's super nice... and I like her husband. It was mellow and a good backyard party. also i love their house and all the stuff. my cousin is a genius of design and organization... the thing she designed for an entertainment center was amazing. it had secret drawer, and card catalogue style drawers, and was full of nifty cleverness and good planning. i was like DAMN you could sell the design for this.. and you have so clearly thought of everything to do with function and use and flow, expansion and so on. She would make a kick ass ui designer i bet.

also i love it that they have a rec room. it made me die of nostalgia for my great uncle W.'s basement rec room where I played "Pong" in like 1978. and i am sure Moomin will never forget the cool room with hot whe33ls cars all over the walls and the pool table...

But, my mom's drunk-ass alcoholic sister, always a bit hard for me to be around, was hard to deal with. I hated seeing how my parents were uncomfortable at the idea of getting in their car when they were falling-over drunk, and yet could not fix the situation or get themselves out of it. I think if i had not been there they would have just gotten in the car. BAH... why they didnt rent a car! my aunt would have said OH YOU CANT and acted like if they did, she'd be insulted. anyway I am impatient feeling with peopel acting powerless and putting themselves in situations they dont like and then acting even more powerless. Everyone was nice and rallied round, my cousin's husband's family deliberately delayed my aunt's husband in conversation and coffee and crackers for *hours* and got him to lie down and fall asleep. and my aunt passed out as well and there was a weirdly un-public group effort to sober her up and to continue delaying and to not let them keep drinking. (She got in my face a lot, and i was either mildly sarcastic, or peaceable, or smiled and left the room; i did not fight. she is a belligerent drunk.) I felt like my parents were weirdly scared i would go "well how about you wait to sober up as no one wants to get in the car with you drunk" Her husband is a sheriff or something too. Which makes it worse... as if he is depending on that to protect him if he gets caught... and should know better and that it endangers other people on the road. Instead, the dinosaurish attitude that he knows how to hold his alcohol. Arrrrgh. I did not fulfill expectations and call anyone out in a blunt way and make any sort of scene. But, I conspired in the general delay. i might have lectured my mom a little bit, "Well would you 'let' me and Moomin get in that car right now... well then YOU DONT EITHER... you ass." I dealt well with my aunt's endless hero-worshipping anecdotes about her dad, pretty well i think... I am always interested to hear family stories...

i did kick her ass for dissing my brother in law though. my mom jumped in too to defend his honor. wtf... whatever... so unnecessary...

It was all somewhat perturbing. I am glad Minnie and I break the family pattern and go boldly off to stay in hotels, with rental cars or our own cars, and do not let people bully us with guilt about anything.

i would not mind being closer to my cousin. She said she envied me and Minnie that we will deal with our parents together when we all get old. But she will have to deal with her mom alone. I said that surely we would be around for her. i am also glad that her brother J. is so decent of a person. my aunt is not his mom but he is still pretty nice to her.

i had fun playing bocce.

heard a new story about how my great-grandfather, my grandma's dad, (who died before i knew him and who i have never heard a word about, and something was definitely wrong with something there) told my grandfather not to marry his daughter, because he had married a half italian half french girl and it did not work out. "You will never have a happy day the rest of your life." my grandfather grew up speaking italian and english and my grandma french and then she learned english when she went to school. So according to my aunt, her dad told her he did not listen to this advice not to repeat this mistake. "and he had never had a happy day since". i commented to my cousin that, i wonder that a grown person (our grandfather) should repeatedly complain about their unhappy marriage to their own child (my aunt), rather than do something to make their life better. It is not a good example. it is like the whole example of their bad marriage taught their children that life sucks and you are helpless to fight that suckiness. Therefore they all act helpless when they are in a situation where in reality, they could just open a door. Or rent a car, or leave a room, or say what they actually think. And they are all in the struggle to undo that damage. My mom has undone a lot of it I think. In her own way by leaving many unhappy relationships and maybe by being an alcoholic my aunt has too. It is not the best way to undo, right? But maybe I can think of it as her way out. I can think okay of her as long as she doesn't kill my parents in a car wreck.

Rook is at his friend the director's house, watching horror movies that I would not like. Zond-7 has re-stabilized my reality through exchanging odd links with me on epistemology and the roman senate and buckminst3r fuller. I am greatly relieved!

Here is the video. It will help all that ails you! It is Polish bhangra with some ska and rap thrown in!

The realm of goodness: Maureen Owen

Meanwhile I'm reading the good books too, and the great. Maureen Owen's Amelia Earheart! ZOMG! I would put it together with airplane and feminism poems that i know and have translated, in a big anthology. Here is some mad poet speak for the middle of the night for you all.

I get so mad at Maureen Owen.

The other day I was at hazelbroom's house while she was giving Zond-7 a massage and in between sitting at the sunny kitchen table with city backyard noises outside and her partner's paintings half finished through the doorway into the laundry room, I must have gone to pee about 6 times from all the coffee and chai and water and massage. And in the bathroom was one of my favorite poetry books, Living in the Open, and I thought about how many years it took me from high school onward... I read it in maybe 1986? 87? to get beyond writing under that shadow though often it was only a few lines or a feeling of stolidity and stompy earnestness and jangledy language-loving. I do still take many lines to heart, like "living open to love in the leafy flesh". Who couldn't like that! No matter if it and other great things are embedded in peanut butter and middle class hippie crystal garden mystique.

I only found Owen's poetry last year and had the deafening realization that I was writing in Owen's shadow and didn't know it. And I don't mind, really... While I minded horribly about not being able to get out from the echo of Piercy, which fascinated and yet often repulsed me -- unnatural to all that is rambling & inchoate. It is like the moments of greatness that Judy Grahn gets to. I love them so. I love them fiercely! But then I'm like NO FUCK NO don't take that wrong turn! Get outta proseville! Get your head out of your ass! The finality of my final lines were what people liked in their piercyishness and yet they were FALSE and I knew it. I know about 1993 I was working like mad to get out of that precious little box, but I got out.

Anyway, all hail the lovely lines of AE and the grandness, the rambling, her words float over the page and mind, the total unfalseness, fucking FREEDOM, and the deep engagement in imaginary spaces. Nothing namby pamby humdrum coffee table in THAT noise. No little wrapup hmmMMMmmm moment neatening that package with a tightass doubleknot of meaning nailed home to obviousoland. I wish I knew where she was.

I meant to say I get so mad at her for being so fucking awesome of a writer.

At best Wanda Coleman gets there but not the rambling - more with a laser-dense tapestry of confusion and noise. Diane Wakoski is awfully good but does not float free. I read her and go with it, and then want to pull out a bigass sword and cut her chains. I love poetry best that unanchors me, unanchors language. & most of all doesn't do what i expect it to and must hover on the edge of sense and jump like bounding on other planets, like low gravity.

Maureen is the best when she's at her best. I get high on that stuff.

Plus just hearing her on a recording going STAND UP! in a young-ish voice is another kind of high.

Poets that good fill me with hope and relief.

Technorati Tags: poetry

The beauty of badness: A Dialogue on Women

I love complicated badness, and this book I just came across while cleaning out the piles of books in my office wins the prize for insanely complicated awfulness on every level.

It's called Dialogue on Women. I know it's crazy, but I long to read it and analyze it.

It's a small, thin, paperback from 1967 -- 40 years ago -- and seems to be part of a series of books that try to present complicated ideas in non-specialized (yet pompous) language. It boasts that its format, newly invented and named the dialogue-focuser, will revolutionize thought! It presents disagreement! And you can write a letter to the editors, and suggest revisions! Man's release from rote learning will soon come, resulting in giving him the freedom to think. Knowledge cannot be contained in hierarchical disciplinary structures!

( Of course, I love all these ideas. The problem I have is that they use all my favorite core concepts and then don't actually present any diverging views or non-hierarchical thinking and especially they don't seem to care what women think in their dialogue on women. So the whole book is hilariously bad.)

Meanwhile, the cover of Dialogue on Women has a totally cheesy 60s mandala sort of thing made out of wavy lines and women's heads. The back cover lists the 9 authors - how many of them do you think are women? Two! Without even cracking the spine of the book, we know what we're in for.

Essay #1: Philip Harris. History of Christian and Western European philosophical thought. Women = inferior. Except Hobbes who is fairly decent (yay HObbes!) Women are all damaged and stuff by this societal brainwashing. Nowadays modern women are beginning to maybe sort of almost prove that marriage and a career can mix. Note all those domineering feminists in the workplace! The end.

What? Hahahaha.

Essay #2: A Dialogue. Transcript of a discussion between Janet Beers, Bob Gunn, Stephanie Oliver, and Gil Winter. Janet and Stephanie do not appear on the cover of the book or on its title page. An editorial notes says this transcript is the core of the dialogue-focuser! Zomg! Here is my rude summary.

Gil: Oh noes what about the menz? De Beauvoir suxxors.

Janet: Yes, we can't talk about ourselves as women without first talking about men. "Can I really participate meaningfully or fully or most creatively without a man integral to my living?" (No.)

Bob: So your man is more important than work?

Janet: Yup. Want a blow job?

Stephanie: WTF Janet! I was 24 when I got here and was not worried that I wasn't married. And that's okay! I want to teach history!

Bob: You were so married, cocksucker.

Stephanie: Wasn't. But now I am... my politics are fucked now. And I still don't agree with Janet that women need men.

Janet: But the dialogue-focuser says that... sexuality.. asexuality... Life is dialectical!

Stephanie: *tries to get to a place where one can have dialectics without sucking cock*

Bob: "It's the man who chooses what sort of job he will have and the woman follows after him." Also, politics and stuff. Women just do what men say. Otto Rank blah blah blah. Women want to be wanted.

Janet: women don't really know what they want because they just want husbands. They need men to be fulfilled.

Stephanie: Well, no. You can be married or whatever or not, and be well adjusted, and have a vocation. "It's not a negation of her womanhood."

Gil: Homosexuality suxxors!

Bob: Oh noes what about the mens!

Janet: Yes, what about masculinity!

(Jung. Blah blah. Empathy. City planning. The future. Culture. Science. Maybe our culture will become more feminine and then women will succeed. Will marriage endure past this century? (That was Janet!!) The pill. Fidelity. Licenses to have children. Technology! The end.)

Essay #3: David McClelland from HARVARD, "Wanted: A New Self-Image for Women". Starts out okay. Early feminists thought X. But no! Even infant boys are more aggressive and assertive and rough and tough! Little boys report that they feel entirely self-confident! Ian fleming uses scientifically established facts when he has James Bond say that women are bad drivers! (I'm so not making this up. It's on page 41. Harvard.) Spatial relations! Man the hunter! Virginia Woolf's room of one's own explained: women lack focus and thus, have this pathological need for privacy. Women need to fulfill their womanhood to be happy... Early feminists tried to be tough like men... today's modern feminists try to be ultra feminine... they are all Wrong. But the femininists at least get to be feminine and thus happy. Here's an assload of footnotes just to remind you I'm a sciiiiientist from Haaaarvard. The end.

4. Working for Death - Edward L. Flemming.
Oh noes what about the menz who die earlier than women?
Something Freudian and woman-blaming about men's passive acceptance of his role. He is not healthily mature and independent. Women are overbearing mothers, and men cannot truly be free if they are Dependent. Thus, they die faster. Feminists are like mentally ill mothers, who smother and kill their men with too much emasculating bitchiness. Women have an essential need for psychic interdependence. "How different is the male." Men must become more interdependent or die young. (What?)

5. Esther Milner - The Mother's Role
Uses "she" and "human" as the default rather than "he" and "man".
Analysis of middle class married women. Women under patriarchal systems, who don't have status other than being a mother, raise their sons in ways that create "continuing reactive ambivalence and/or hostility towards girls and women in general". Women who get to have lives and jobs and stuff, are all healthy. We put too much stress on motherhood as a role for cultural tranmission. The system is broken. The end.

Hey, that one wasn't so bad, despite the Freudy bits.

6. Allan J. Moore. The Cosmo Girl: A Playboy INversion

Helen Gurley Brown. Manhunters. Selling the image of the sexbot chick to other chicks. How weird is that. Subculture of unmarried women. OMG, Zomg, our Cities Have So Many Unmarried Young Women. The cult of self-grooming is very anti the protestant ethic. It's okay that these young women are sexual beings as long as they want to be married, really, eventually, and accept Jesus Christ. The End.

CAN I BEAR IT!!!???

7. Sexual Equality and Human Freedom, George C. Owen.

Oh noes what about the menz!!! "It never seems to occur to anybody that men are as subject to imprisoning sexual stereotypes as women..." Feminism discriminates! Waaaaah!

Women and men who are parents should both work less at their jobs, and participate equally in child raising and domestic labor. Communal child rearing would really help.

"The addition of women to the labor-force will clearly destroy our current economic structure." Doctors and nurses will become equal in status! Hierarchy destroyed! Screw petty conventions like marriage and opening doors for women and not swearing in front of ladies! It is women who perpetuate all the bad stereotypes of sexual inequality. The end.

8. Sexual Equality; Gene Hoffman

We should not try to pretend men and women are equal. I am human! Not woman! It's all our fault. We accept the goals society sets for us. Self actualization will fix everything! Harmony in the home! The United Nations! Quakers! "The other group to which I refer is a highly personal one. I am very tenative about it, because it is all so incipient. I refer to a small group of young people I know who have experimented with LSD."

(I hear that stuff makes you more human!)

"How exciting it would be to release our common genius to express our diversity, our variety, and ultimately, our long-awaited humanity!" The end.

Where are they now... I wonder! That dialogue-focuser idea really caught on... or did everyone just float off to San Francisco on a cloud of acid?

So next time you come across a dialogue like this in the trying-to-be-feminist blogosphere just recall 1967 and laugh... and go read some excellent books by Dale Spender to get the taste out of your mouth...

Hey you know what, let's fix up that lame Wikipedia page for Dale Spender. It needs serious help!

Technorati Tags: feminism, funny, history, women

Intermittent partial attention

I feel dorky that I just invited Jo Spanglemonkey over to hang out, and it was sort of meant to be a work/study date, but I could barely pay attention as work people kept IM-ing and calling and emailing and I was trying to write stuff and actually-work at the same time. While occasionally popping into Reality consciousness and brightly remarking on things in a probably bizarre manner to my friend who I barely get to see anymore. WELL... at least I know she understands. I feel like a caricature of modern person who is very annoyingly always texting while in real life conversations or who has a permanent brain input/output jack implanted and talks to themself a lot, inappropriately laughing during serious conversations. I like the moments of being on 10 channels with other people who are also on 10 channels, but oh, the moments when we shut the computers and just look at each other in the face and are completely present as much as we can be from our odd little skulls.

Now Jo is gone for the day and I wish I had shut the computer for real and wrenched my brain into the Now to be with her. It's a feeling I often have lately.

Technorati Tags: daily life

Not minding so much being pushed

Most of the day I worked from the couch, not quite getting as much done as I thought I would, as usual. Rook and I went out to lunch, and had more of the perfect sunny fall day. I have been a bit afraid to go into town in my chair, because there is a hill, or a dip where the road goes under the train tracks and then a hill back up. It turned out to be not as steep of a hill as it was in my imagination or memory. I must be a lot stronger. Still, I let Rook push me almost all the way to downtown. It was easier, and I was tired, and it felt good to sit back and even close my eyes a little in the sun. The hard bit about going that far is not the distance itself, it's the shifts of weight and the strain on my back because of all the uneven curbs. I have to adjust to deal with all the different slopes of driveways -- the sidewalk isn't even for most of the way.

Lunch was so nice... the platanos were perfectly fried and soft and caramelized, there were lots of black beans, the chips were fresh, and i had delicious horchata. We sat on the sidewalk and talked... Rook told me more details of his own trip to Beijing last year - he was there for maybe 2 days on the way to Manchuria. Our plan was then to wander around downtown, but we bought Moomin some vintage transformers in the tiny action-figure store across from Amelia's, and then had to go. Oh but on the way back i persuaded him to idly drift into the store of evil cheap clothing; I got a boys' long sleeve shirt with lightning bolts on it which is sort of silly and harry potterish; he bought ridiculous boxers with bats on them, and green polka dot ones. So maybe Squid will be regaled with extra glorious underwear next time she comes over and Rook answers the door.

The speed of things

Yesterday I went to the Wiki meetup & met a bunch of new people and talked a little bit with friends I already knew. I ended up at a long expensive dinnery thing but didn't mind.. and had more beer than I meant (ordered 3 oz. tasting glass; got giant glass instead, and it was tasty). I ended up staying at zond-7's and felt a bit guilty for not driving back to Rook and Moomin as I said I was going to... But I was so zonked. And then in the middle of the night had a classic OMG I SUCK anxiety moment which usually drives me to blog, but instead I merely babbled to Zond-7 who patted me and issued useful platitudes (as I explained would be useful) and he even more usefully pointed out that I was having a regular emotional reaction to being really tired and hurting, like "free floating anxiety" and was hunting for something to attach it to, some reason. That was so clearly true, and I think I've told him the same thing other nights but he says it better; and it worked to make me just sigh and wait and go to sleep. Sometimes when I'm that tired I am so sick of being in my own head.

This morning I felt awesome, my leg didn't hurt too much, sucked down some coffee, thought about poetry and computery things and politics and feminism and life in my usual vague mix. I ended up incoherently babbling to Zond-7 about the wonders of Monique Wittig and feminist plots that involve double consciousness and going insane and multiple universes, unreliable narrators, the Inferno, how it was all about valencia street, and I was beginning to branch out into Inanna's descent and Woman on the Edge of Time, etc. (Payback for the rather intense day-long lessons in the history of javascript.) But meanwhile was also absurdly happy to be driving, parking, walking, looking at buildings and the morning and people walking to places purposefully, holding hands, the automatic motions of locking my car, ordering juice at the sidewalk juice bar, and everything was full of sunlight. It all was very ordinary in the most beautiful way. But at the same time, that quality of things happening too fast, time going a bit too fast, when I want to savour it; a problem increasingly as I get older. He was eating bits off a giant hunk of bread from the valencia whole foods, and gave me a particular almost sly scruffy look as he told the story of ben franklin sleeping behind his printing press and eating a loaf of bread. I had read him a day or so aga a bit from Diane Wakoski about poets and integrity, that 100 dollars, a bit from Greed that I mean to write about on another blog. There we were in the car, looking at each other all oblique and telepathic, thinking about those things in the early morning light.

Technorati Tags: daily life

The nicest sort of day, with massage and relaxing

Lounging in bed all morning with books and computers and coffee and cookies and a person excellent to gaze at. I read a little poetry and finished Dishwasher Pete's book, which I highly recommend. Getting a fabulous hour and a half massage and then sitting in hazelbroom's sunny flowery kitchen with iced chai and fast wireless... Bagels in a relaxing way... a fabulous art gallery on the way back to the car (and managing to park within half a block of hazelbroom's house and the bagel place and the art gallery, and walking to everything). Then lounging the rest of the afternoon with a million screamy but basically peaceful kids in the yard, everyone coming over, everything very social: Rook, Moomin, Nukie, Hamster, Peanut, Hamster's parents, Zond-7, Minnie, her baby, and my uncle and his wife, and Peanut's parents dropping in and out as well. It was really nice. We ate stuff from the Hole and played some board games.

I'm still glowing from the massage. The difference between no massage and massage is hurting all over, vs. hurting just basically in one place and a bit down my leg.

I find that what I need for massage is deep tissue stuff with a lot of trigger point work and myofascial release. T.W. has pointed out the TFL and ITB (tensor fasciae latae and iliotibial band) is super nasty on my right leg. When people work on it it hurts like hell but helps the pain in my knees and my whole leg... The muscle around the front of my hip is also super messed up. I also go a bit crazy with pain at the point on my calf where that same muscle or fascia or whatever, ends, just below the knee on the outside.

So I need to do more swimming and strengthen my stomach muscles more, but I also really want more massage since it helps so much with pain. My leg all cramps and seizes up, all the way down to my smaller toes. uncramping the front of the hip muscle, whatever that one is called, helps me walk more normally, because i can bring my right leg further forward. Well, blah blah blah. More massages!

Access and wheelchairs in Beijing

Wow, this sort of article is exactly what I was looking for! And here it is! A personal story of what it is like to be a traveller using a wheelchair in Beijing. As long as I have a reasonably accessible hotel, I'll be fine. And, if I go into it with out a big agenda of seeing-many-tourist-things, that will also make it way more fun. I would probably try to go to the Summer Palace, but aside from that, will just go to the conference, and write, and talk with people, and I'm sure it will be fantastic. Thanks for the writeup, Rosemary!

Now, to write to everyone I know who might know interesting Chinese bloggers, or poetry translators, or science fiction writers... I met some really nice guys at the last translation conference. Ideally, I would find some poets and bloggers and translators! It's short notice, but through ALTA I am sure I can get some introductions... The other thing that occurs to me is that there are likely to be plenty of south american music industry people at this conference and it might be interesting to talk with them and to get their info since I could blog about their artists if they have an interesting online presence.

The advice about what kind of taxis have room for a folding wheelchair is perfect. This is far too pessimistic... I can handle uneven sidewalks, and just take taxis instead of trains, or mostly plan to not go a lot of places that need taxis. But, I am also pretty sure that this is too optimistic and that I will encounter the same sorts of things I normally do here, and that Rosemary mentions, i.e. buildings that are, in theory, accessible, but that in practice, have a lot of barriers like locked wheelchair lifts and no one who knows where they keep the key! So, I have low expectations, and anything that works out will be a bonus.

I see that Beijing is hosting the Paralympics, so, it occurs to me that I could get some sort of quick consultant work doing a report on accessibility for particular areas or destinations. Or I might pitch an article to disability sites or magazines on the experience, since there will be a lot of travellers with disabilities going to Beijing for the Paralympics.

Likely the flight will semi-destroy me, but my plan is to take a ton of muscle relaxants for it and sleep as much as I can manage. And to plan for a day afterwards to just lie around on painkillers in the hotel, if I need to. I would like to *not* come back with my leg and back worse off than before, but even if I do, I'm sure it will be okay and I will arrange it so that my being more crippled will not all fall on Rook...

Okay, I'm off to do more homework on this!

Technorati Tags: accessibility, conferences, travel

Flying dream

In the dream I just woke up from, I was flying around with Zond-7. We were sort of watching or experiencing this giant movie that his friend had made, a movie but also actual objects. It was a movie about the moon, and as we flew close ("watching the movie") it was an enormous spaceport, very complicated, a city of machinery, gleaming & beautiful, a night city.

Our ship, or viewing thing, or whatever it was, flew on a specially designed approach to the spaceport, speeding over the landscape towards it. Zond-7 began pointing out flaws in the science fiction logic of the movie, such as, why would we fly to the surface of the planet and then approach the giant spaceport sideways? Why wouldn't we conserve fuel and just land from the top? We spent some time giggling about the strange assumptions of the movie and enjoying how beautiful it was.

Then there was a terrible accident. A piece of the spaceport fell off to the actual (earth) ground, to a streetscape with trees and sidewalks; people were injured and then morphed hideously into giggling demonic creatures who came after us. We had just landed -- swerving to avoid the accident scene -- in the middle of a tangle of highways and parking garages. The horde of giggling mutants was sweeping towards us. Even the animals were affected, which made it particularly terrible, if you can imagine cats giggling in a horror movie way, in a human/cat swarm. On the moon, sort of. In a giant spaceage parking garage, coming up over the lip of the metallic concrete towards us, intending to infect us with their weird moon disease.

Then I realized I could fly if I just thought of myself as connected gravitationally to the planet and I thought in antigravity and mapped in my head how to repulse my body from the planet's surface. So I grabbed Zond-7 and took off in a superheroic way so that the moon virus wouldn't get us. I recall him sighing and saying, "I always have *such fun* on our dates..." as we zoomed into the air. We flew around (he could do it too once I explained the secret) inspecting the damage to the crumbling spaceport, enjoying the swooping antigravity flight, the lights and architecture, and our sense of freedom. I loved the thinky feeling of flying in relation to the planet; it was a new physical sense, one I'd never felt before. We talked and worried a bit over what to do next. Obviously, we had to find the antidote. But how?!

Snappy answers to stupid questions

Sometimes I can't resist...

Picture me, barrelling down the street in Palo Alto, arm muscles bulging out, and then me hopping my chair down a curb, very conspicuously and with unusual verve, to my car. I was feeling a little smug from getting the Apple store to replace my cable that caught on fire. I pop open the trunk of my car and swing my backpack off the back of the chair.

A very square jawed dude in a suit goes "Ahem. Need help?" and makes as if to get up from an outdoor cafe chair next to the sidewalk.

(mildly) "Do I look like I need help?"

"I - - - "

"Do YOU need help?"

"My aunt's in a wheelchair, so I'm unusually sensitive to these things."

"Huh. Wow. Well, I congratulate you on your sensitivity." *loud hysterical cackle*

I stuff my wheelchair in the trunk... lurch around the car with my cane ... and drive off.

Really I'm a nice person, but who could resist!

Technorati Tags: conversations, daily life, disability, funny

Back on crutches, with their glorious duct tape

From a pretty good place a couple of weeks ago of walking two blocks to the store and back, I'm now very uncertain of my abilty, and I'm back on crutches a lot of the time even in the house. The cane isn't enough to keep my leg from buckling or from serious pain. I'm dragging my right leg, and sometimes even dragging the other leg. I'm in a lot of pain.

That sucks!

But oh well!

My doctor is sending me to a different orthopedic clinic and a pain management clinic. I desperately need T.W. to come and massage me for hours.

I'm writing a lot of poetry this week in odd moments.

Work is going okay. I am thinking over a lot, what I've been doing and what I should do now.

Zond-7 and I watched the first two episodes of Rome and I liked it very much in the way that I like anything historical with a lot of battles and fancy sets and pretensions to some accuracy. Oh, it was good!

I tricked out one of my other blogs and felt guilty and sad over all the group blogs neglected. I should hand off the translation one to someone who will take better care of it. But, I made good plans to fix up some other things and to use my del.icio.us tagging in some more sensible way. Also, I was fairly happy with my regular column this week. It is still not what I would like it to be, and I need to put a lot more prep into the set up for my blog reading and research. I think I'll set up a del.icio.us tag structure specially for use for it, with good notes, and have a section in each post where I just import that link list. So I can do a topical focus, (which is still SO random feeling), but also have this link roundup based on my tags for the week.

My to-do list has grown massively. Will I ever feel like it's enough? Will I ever know enough? Will I ever have made enough, and done enough, written enough, and feel satisfied?

Do I want to feel satisfied? I think not.

Still, a little more peace of mind would be nice.

Kragen and Beatrice are coming over to stay the night, a bit later, which should be fun, especially if I go take a muscle relaxant...

...which I need to do, because my whole leg is one big horrible spasm, and every time I get up and down I nearly cry. It is to about a 7 or an 8; I definitely can't ignore it, I'm on a lot of celebrex to the point where my stomach isn't happy, I can't sit or lie still because of the pain... Distraction is the best thing at the moment. But, pain is causing me to fret massively.

I hate *not* getting up, so as long as I can, I will keep doing so. Also, I note that the more scared and neurotic and needy I feel, the more I try to do, in a sort of panic that very soon I won't be able to, and also, to prove to myself and everyone else that I can manage. It makes me feel better emotionally to get up and clear off the table and do the laundry. It is reassuring.

I know that sounds nuts, and therefore I'm writing it down...Maybe it will help me quit doing it!

Just like last week I realized that I had not been calling my doctor because I was embarrassed that I wasn't better yet, and I didn't want to deal with her reaction or disappointment! As soon as it came out of my mouth as I was talking with Rook, I knew it was bonkers, and I called my doctor the next morning!

At 9am I will be at Moomin's school being helpy-scary, I'm sure, on some kind of Committee, as a parent and as a neighbor living on the street, to Talk about traffic.

Then maybe I'll drop by BadAss Mamas hour, and then to the apple store because my power cord caught on fire and I left my other one at Zond-7's house.

Technorati Tags: daily life, pain

Meanwhile in more crucial news

Today I heard many people discuss Britney Spears and some kind of public TV performance. In the doctor's office and then in Radiology at the hospital, as well as on the street, and god help me, in my in box, people agreed that Britney looked like hell and was embarrassing and was wearing a skimpy outfit when she was too fat for it. "We can understand that, she just had 2 kids, but, cover it up," some old teased-hair biddy sniped in the radiology waiting room as CNN played scenes of the General talking about Iraq on the TV overhead. In each case I spoke up mildly and said that I had no idea, but, what is wrong with showing off your body and more power to her if she is not stick thin.

Soooo whatever the quality of her performance, I did look her up and... Actually she looks super hot. Even by patriarchal pornbot standards who the hell would object to this woman's cute as hell body in a sparkly bikini?

The other (milder) criticism was that she used to be a talented dancer and dynamic performer, but last night looked like she was high and needed to go back to rehab. And was lip synching badly. And that she was "wrong not get help from her mother".

Soooo I am breaking down and watching the video! And it's not bad either! It's not exactly snappy, but her part is to mostly wiggle a little and look sultry and glamorous and poised, and it didn't entirely work. But it wasn't awful either! I'm not getting where her performance is bad enough to warrant the amazing public outburst of hatred for her.

While I have never particularly cared about her as a performer, I thought she was just fine... and like I said, super cute. I really wish people would lay off on their criticisms.

Oh, I also did point out the news about the war to the gossiping crowd in the waiting room... they laughed nervously and went back to talking about whether they would take their daughters to a Hanna Montana (Banana??) show or not.

Riverbend has left Baghdad, still burning

I just noticed that last week Riverbend left Baghdad and left Iraq. After several years of blogging eloquently about the war, the political situation, and daily life, she and her immediate family are in Syria, maybe enroute to somewhere else. I hope she keeps blogging. And I can't help but wish her a kick ass job as well. She is a brilliant writer.... but also I keep in mind that she had to leave the tech industry when the war started. I think she was a database programmer or sys admin, but I've forgotten. Anyway, I read her faithfully and wish her well. And I wish I could thank her for all her work and dedication to journalism. I also remember writing her at the beginning of the war and of her blog, trying to beg her to leave.. and then I realized how wrong I was and how presumptious, and some of the complexities of exile and being an expatriate. Still, I'm glad she's out now and I wonder what she'll do. And I hope the world honors her properly for her excellent blog.

testing a nifty thing

Let's see how this does in the body of a post.

(Mystery thing moved down below the cut.)

Wow. It's unnerving! You can see up my nose!

You know the way that video games and stuff like nethack gives a sense of identity and geography, and makes a map in your head? And how blogs do the same thing? When I look at my different blogs I feel like I'm in different places. But it's a very private act to look at my own blog. I'm usually tinkering with the wording of posts, or musing about something that happened last week, or wanting to read comments there rather than in email notifications, so it's like reading a letter on my front porch. With video on it's a little bit creepy, and like a conversation while also looking at myself in a mirror. I had the feeling like I had just answered my front door in my underwear. But not in my house -- on my blog.

When it's ready for it sometime (tomorrow? this week?) I'll stick it in my sidebar and make everyone try it.

The weekend is fun again

I sat on the floor imprudently this morning, and fucked up whatever it is. That spine thing! Oh well. So, I could feel it stiffening up all day and I popped Celebrex like candy. By mid afternoon I was just kind of dragging my right leg and the left wasn't all that great either. So I had to go back on crutches.

(rant) Yeah sometimes it pisses me off and upsets me but obviously that is not my predominant emotion in life. So, it is not SAD... and my life is not "SO SAD". God... fuck that. I have such a good time and love my life. So what if I am in extra pain sometimes, it is dumb to focus on it. If I want to complain, believe me, you'll hear about it. If I'm not sad, don't project sadness and pathos onto me... don't tell me what my emotions should be about my life... (/end rant)

I had a super great time hanging out with Beatrice and Kragen. They came over for lunch. We sat outside in the shade devouring tomatoes with mozzerella and basil and just chilling out. I knew they would be great to relax with... we loafed on the ginormous SUV-sized brown couch, with computers, vaguely being social (as promised.) Moomin finished his homework quite peacefully, played outside, read, and was visibly desk-proud.

Then Moomin and I went off to Jed's yardwarming party. Chulita was there with a handful of comic books for Moomin, including the amazing DEVIL DINOSAUR. Tons of other people brought kids. I got to reconnect with Thida, whose writing I enjoy and who I always like talking with... Jed's books looked good and I will have to go back when I am walking better and cruise the shelves. Also, his yard did look super nice - with heat lamps and a table and patio & tiny lawn. He sent me the funniest party invitation ever, that was sort of an ADA compliance document and architectural diagram... It was awesome... Also... I love that whole crowd of nerds. The sort of over-precise baycon guys who like to Explain things. But better yet their earth mama geektastic girlfriends who knit things out of capacitors and who know every detail of Blake's 7 and have that ubercompetent air. Lyssa showed up, speaking of that kind of chick; she is also a ninja. We saw wild domestic rabbits... I played with Alice a bit and got to sit with Janet... Tiny muppety Alice likes a wheelchair ride, but only once. Twice in a row would be very dull. IT WOULD BE MUCH MORE FUN TO STICK HER FINGERS IN FIRE. No Alice no!!!! Candle flame is not for you!

I had a funny moment with Debbie which I might as well go ahead and tell. At some point I texted her and asked her if she could feed Moomin (he was inside, up the steps, and so was she). I didn't want to have to get up, and once I was up, was going to be horribly awkward getting food on a plate while on crutches. I had already asked other people for some things, and then asked Chulita to get me food and to do other stuff and I did not want any fuss, and I hate asking for help at all. I could only just manage to bear to ask C. to get me food. As I often say to over helpy people who are standing in the door holding it open, "I highly value my independence." It is true. I value my skills, things like knowing how to lift and balance and pivot my wheelchair into the trunk of my car without hurting my back. I can make it look effortless -- while if you try it, able bodied, you will flounder around. I value it so much, I do not mind enduring quite a bit of pain even for showing off, not just for survival things. Anyway, I could not face getting up or asking... Obviously if I went in, anyone I asked would get Moomin food. But also I figured Debbie could figure out what he liked, he'd talk to her, and etc. etc. So after a bit I just got up and went in and Debbie went really loud, "OMG i can't believe you just texted me from just outside, to get me to feed Moomin!" and then explained it to a whole other group of people. So I laughed a bit sheepishly and explained that I had been trying to ask her discreetly because of hating to ask for help and especially in public and hating any fussing. Then she was extremely sheepish. We both laughed at it...

There is nothing that gets me worse than being seen as not being able to take care of Moomin! Even though I *do*.

Thida had a funny-ass bitter story to tell (i am sure one of thousands) about paratransit telling her she has to install the car seats herself. Oh man! And then on the phone telling her that maybe they could do just ONE.. and she should leave the other kid at home. What?? Hahahah! Horrible. It makes the petty humiliations and battles a bit easier when I hear other people's.

At some point Chulita and I were making fun of the horrible statue at millbrae bart. The one that is titled something like "the working mother" and has this grotesque anatomically messed up woman who is sort of half evolving from mud, or hatching from an earthy cocoon, with a BART train on her head. And scenes from her life are floating around. There are scenes of colorful toys and colorful happy family and then there are grim horrible grey or mud-colored boardrooms and scenes of work. I would like to say that aside from being annoying and ugly... it is also very much bullshit. BUT the funny thing is, as I sat here googling it, I came across this OTHER amazingly fugly, unnatural mannequin-anatomy statue proposal from its sculptor... get this... a giant statue of liberty sort of thing in the SF Bay. OMFG it is nasty! I can't help but say so. The super bad photoshopping just screams to be farked.

Now I'll shut up on this channel and go write my weekly column thingie. Deadline!!!

Weekend "fun"

I have been cleaning and organizing all morning. I woke up walking really well so I figured I'd BLOW IT ON DOMESTIC LABOR.

I am still dealing with Rook's burning man stuff, and there is more to do. He is also dealing with it, but it's falling on me anyway.

So, my energy for the day has been spent in trudging from room to room and back again, picking up tiny objects and chucking them in the trash or in bins. I chivvied Moomin about in his room for over an hour, sorting game pieces, dinosaurs, legos, and robot bits. Clothes, dirty and clean, sorted and dealt with, and the "art table" which has been covered in utter crap for months is now clear. Underneath it were stacks of horrible dry markers, pipe cleaners, once-used foam stamp kits. Coloring books. All that junk! Holy shit. I'm so going to throw it all away without even sorting it. GONE.

Moomin's teachers gave me a stern talking to about setting him up a very organized spot for his schoolwork, with a desk and storage space for school supplies!!! Thus, my hamstery bustle!

Tonight I'm taking off to go to Writers With Drinks, so I'd better rest up in bed a while.

I'd also like to do just an hour or two of work... I want to finish a thing up that I meant to finish on Friday.

Tomorrow, perhaps I'll shop for that desk! I also need a better shelfy storage bin thing for Moomin's room.

Garnet Wolseley

I forgot to mention that the other day while reading Heaven's Command I came across a mention of Garnet Wolseley, in a single sentence:

Earlier generations of imperial soldiers and administrators had grown accustomed to immense journeys as important phases in a man's life, and sometimes indeed the journey lasted longer than its purpose: Ensign Garnet Wolseley took eight months to reach the second Burmese war, was wounded on his second day in action, and was immediately sent home again.

It's got to be my favorite dude from the Ashanti campaign! Sir Garnet, who had been wounded in all sorts of odd ways, including being stepped on by a pet giraffe! He was a weird, brutal, efficiency nut, and was in every war you can think of. And he wrote some awesome memoirs that are very boring, perfect to fall asleep to, in which he details all about sapping and artillery and how to place your gabions. It's really important, gabion placement. Anyway, I think he rode to the Ashanti Wars with a glass eye and a mechanical arm.

Or maybe I'm making that up. But the part about the giraffe and the brutality is true. No... wait... it's not. I am mixing him up with Evelyn Wood. Wood is the guy who had every possible injury, most of them ridiculous.

He began hunting before his arm healed and reopened the wound twice, and soon became known as the most accident-and illness-prone man in the army. He was sent back to the Crimea and there came down with illness and was sent home again.

After recovering, he was sent to India, just in time for the Mutiny, While there, in between fighting the sepoys, he suffered from, sunstroke, low fever, facial neuralgia, indigestion and face-ache. He then went on to be attacked by a tiger, fell off a giraffe, putting holes in both his cheeks and mashing his nose, then went on to burn a hole in a cheek with medicine for a toothache, and again suffering with face-ache and deafness. He also suffered from severe intestinal complaints and indigestion. He then galloped his horse into a tree, breaking his collarbone.

I thought you'd all like to know.

Cranky thought

"Municipalities violate title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act when they fail to install curb ramps during street and sidewalk construction and alteration."

My street is awfully new looking and in fact I think it was just resurfaced last year. So, if they try to make me pay half the costs of the curb ramps (as it looks like they might) I am going to kick their asses.

State of the legs and the soul underneath

My legs hurt. Both of them. It's not much fun. Also, allergies and cramps hit me at the same time. I can walk around, but the constant level of pain is disheartening today. It's a day where I just want to lie on my left side, waiting to sleep again, and maybe crying gently every once in a while while staring at the ceiling (or really, the bookshelf and wall to my left).

Instead, I got Moomin ready, fed him, made his lunch, took him to school, went back to bed a while to read work email and think, oversaw the (brief) moving of the piano by movers, went to Bad Moms Coffee which was very comforting and sanity-making in general (thanks homies!), came home hurtily (but nutritiously fed on plum pie and bacon) to collapse; did laundry and dishes instead, collapsed, cried a bit, got over it, worked, wrote, paid bills, talked with a contractor who I hope to poach from the Pilot and Acrobat to put screens on the windows which lack screens, (now it is 4pm in my account of the day) picked up Moomin which was more exhausting than I thought it would be (and he was screaming in pain as he had just ran neck first into a metal footrest on some kind of pole), chivvied him upstairs and to pack his homework up, yelled at some random male teacher that the door should be unlocked and had a giant argument with him; had a very polite spanglish conversation with the super nice custodian, Ishamel, who explained to me that a year and a half ago he filled out a work order to get the door repaired but no one has answered it or fixed the door; took Moomin home and sat up with him at the table while he did his homework, filled out forms and read all the handouts for school, took him to Squid's house where I tried to be vaguely social while lying on my left side in various places about the pool and house, and drove home ... I made him chicken nuggets but they turned out to be accidentally "meatless chicken nuggets" which he rejected. I am happy Rook is home now to deal with the rest of the homework and to cook mac and cheese... perchance to shop.

My day home to work from bed did not quite go as I thought it would.

I miss Zond-7 something fierce.

I tried to walk in to pick up Moomin, but the door was locked and I cried again and went back to my car and got the wheelchair and went around to the back of the building. I begged the after-care person to let me call them and they could send him down to me, though it is against their policy. They might. Or, the person who was there today might. But the other people who work there might not, so I will have to ask, explain, beg, and/or bully at least two more people and probably more.

The piano movers could not stop talking about my FMINIST license plate and I wanted to kill them. Dinosaurish old dudes with hernia belts in place, har-haring and asking what all this feminist stuff is or what, is it the same thing as it was 25 years ago or what? I asked what they thought it meant, and when I got more har-haring, mildly mentioned equal rights as being only fair and sensible. They also mentioned to me that I was too young to be walking with a stick. Thanks guys. I did not explain. I was not feeling very able to deal with hearty jocular people.

I also wrote my letter to the entire city council about the lack of curb ramps on my street and how I have to go in the street to take Moomin to school. It is scary and exhausting at best during the heavy traffic of morning drop-off. It's not going to be tolerable at all when it gets dark and rainy.

It is humiliating and wearing to have to explain over and over. I go into it feeling defensive and angry and ashamed, but usually am able to do some magic to replace those feelings with patient reasonableness. Today I could not for the life of me come up with any of my usual nice. Possibly the allergies and stuffy head on top of everything else... chain sneezing... unable to breathe out of my nose... logy...

So, it was a day like that.

Thank god for reading, the internet, and abstract thought, which distract me and fill me with happy enthusiasm as I escape this rotten rotten body and its very annoying lumbar vertebrae and the nerves that come thickly cording out of them, apparently "insulted" beyond bearing at the moment.

Also, I'm so happy I have milk and soda and a bunch of frozen dinners.

I am pinning my hopes on calling my friend T. who will come and give me a 2 hour butt-and-leg massage. (Not minding if I cry).

Or, maybe I will feel better in the morning and this is some sort of blip of pms-ing. The cramps could be messing with my muscles and setting off spasms, I guess. Oh why do I feel like such crap... I was fine yesterday...

It freaks me out when the other leg starts to hurt right down to my toes.

The good bits of a long difficult day

I was in a pretty ill temper yesterday and today. But the good bits, in a list:

* The drive was nice, not too trafficky, in fact beautiful, and I got into that driving mood where everything seems perfect and the music is perfect. My leg hurt but it was bearable.
* I was possibly a reasonably diplomatic person despite my bad temper.
* Zond-7's talk was great. Yeah I'm biased - but he is a brilliant speaker!
* A good talk on the way back about difficult things. He knows his way around an emotion or two or ten!
* And gave me a massage when I collapsed
* And I recovered from collapsing very well with a bath and an hour or two of lying down
* He got his plane even though I couldn't manage to wake up to do the drive
* Though I had to go to the DMV, I was out of there within 40 minutes
* Though I had to pay a bunch of parking tickets late fees and registration that I swear I paid already online, on time, thank god I have the money to do it without it being a catastrophe.
* Hanging out with cdent was nice, as always
* Frozen yogurt with blueberries
* chatted with y. about yesterday's heinosity
* D.g. gave an excellent talk; I love her calm authority and total braininess, and her methodical approach. she has pretty much thought of everything. I admire her...
* cdent said some cool speculationy ideas that pleasantly blew my mind
* though Moomin was in pain writhing around and moaning (gas?) I was able to calm him down and comfort him (again despite my own bad mood and considerable pain) and he fell asleep
* now I'm home and all cozy and about to have a lukewarm bubble bath to cool down from the evening heat
* Rook's lovely writeup of his time at burning man which is so characteristic of his approach to everything; he is so calm, where I would have been a giant high-frequency-radio receiver and broadcaster with a new complication every hour and many Impressions. the really interesting thing is that his Impressions are no less complicated but they go into rpg setups and characters.

I have nothing good to say about the horrible cramps.

Get Onit

This is great! We all know someone who we think should really get Onit, people who have longed for something like this for years and years. People who imagined and predicted it even before the Internet existed. The ultimate hands free device! Buy one for your boss today!

The dark side of looking on the bright side

I was thinking this morning about people I know who see beauty and interest and goodness in everything.

In particular, I was having a conversation in my head with a friend.

In our imaginary conversation, Y.T. was asking me my opinion of our mutual friend Chakra. Chakra appears to be having the suckiest life possible while making incredibly bad decisions that blow back on other people, so there is a trail of friends and family in her wake, blaming her and wondering wtf. "What did I even see in her?" imaginary-question-asky-Y.T.-construct asked imaginary-wise-Badger. "Yes. She sucks. And it sucks that it screwed you up for years. And yet she has so many good qualities." The main good quality I came up in the balance to defend Chakra was the ability to brave out anything awful with a good attitude. It makes her strong, and brave, and enduring, and cheerful, and fun in the midst of adversity.

But always looking on the bright side has negative effects in Chakra's case, and possibly in many others. It can be unreal, or unproductive, or keep her trapped in terrible situations. She could fall in love with Hitler while admiring the shape of his nose and his kindness to animals, or be in jail and write poems to the cold beauty of the iron bars of her cell. She can watch her toes rot off from diabetes and neglect and no medical care, and philosophize on the nature of aging and positive-body-image acceptance of disability. Meanwhile, people outside the cell are begging her to come out of it (and for example, to save her feet). She can hear them, but has no belief that anything is better anywhere else.

So while it is both a beautiful quality and a useful one that enabled to her to survive her difficult early life, it has some problems.

In my head, Y.T. agreed that Chakra's optimism and aesthetic sense and ability to live in her head are valuable to learn from. But I couldn't reqlly quell imaginary-Y.T.'s resentment. "What about me... and my trust of goodness, happiness, beauty -- all undermined and ruined by Chakra's jacking up of my reality."

BlogHer 2008 location poll!

San Francisco would be cheapest for me, but I voted Boston anyway. I agree we should lure in more East Coast people. Plus, some of my best friends live there...

What would you give up?

I was idly thinking over some other ideas in the car today while listening to Celina Gonzalez and Celia Cruz, thinking of all the Cuban bloggers I've read. Often missing the personal stories I love, but putting genuine passion into love of country and love of the revolution despite its flaws -- or love of the ideals of the revolution. Think of all the poor people, hungry, sick and dying without proper medical care, oppressed by police... what would you give up to level conditions here? What privilege or level of wealth? What if you and everyone you know had to live without a car and a refrigerator forever, in order for everyone to have decent lifelong preventative health care and housing? It's not that simple and in fact it seems that only a few super disgustingly wealthy people would have to give up much... though they would not... they'd just leave the country.

I bet a lot of us would, though, if we trusted it would help. But while we did all the capital would leave...

Simultaneous global revolution might help.

A morbid train of thought

A couple of books I was reading in the last few days mentioned impaling, and that set off a long unpleasant train of thought I've (unfortunately) had before.

If you are squeamish, don't keep reading, because I am about to talk about horrible methods of execution from days of yore.

There was some point in life where I realized that drawing (as in drawing and quartering) meant pulling a person's intestines out... and that it was meant to prolong your knowledge that you were dying. i.e. that it might not have been the most painful thing that executioners were able to devise, but that you got to see your own guts destroyed, burned, wrapped around a tree, eaten by dogs, or whatever, and no rescue or reprieve was possible. Quartering is sometimes described as being torn apart by 4 horses and sometimes just being cut in 4 pieces.

Impaling, also, I had pictured (as a kid, reading way too widely) as sort of just being stuck on a pole like a bug on a pin, as if there were a pole, post, or spear and then a person would be stuck onto it, stomach first. BUT NO - the reality of impaling seems much more horrible, and the point is to ensure slow agonizing death. Ugh. So the pole prevents the person from bleeding to death and also messes up their intestines, so, massive slow infection and death from septicemia. Well, it's horrible.

So now that I know these things I come across casual mention of some Zulu leader or Spanish conquistador sentencing people to impalement and it leaves me in a low-level state of freakout for days until mercifully I replace this image with something much nicer from a more benign book. Or... I accidentally read something else about the British retreat from Kabul and 26,000 people (most of them, of course, "camp followers") dying in the snow and freak myself out even worse. It certainly does fit with that guy's theory about how battles ending in retreats were usually very all or nothing catastrophic... so ancient battles where it's reported that 30K people die were not exaggerating.

Technorati Tags: history, violence, war

At the game con with tiny armies

At ConQuest we played many rounds of liar's dice with mostly-teenagers who all pleasantly understood the subtleties of bluffing and math; picked over the dice bins; talked about families; played a sort of truth/lies social card game with gambling; played hours and hours of Heroscape with a patient saintly dude, Erik, running the game; cranked our way through the flea market; talked over an rpg system and strategy game very intensely with the same teenagers; wrote up characters in a very fanfic way; listened to descriptions of their fanfic and their neopets world; Moomin played a Pokemon board game and something called Duck Hunt (not the video game of course!)

I confess I bought an enormous useless amazing army of tiny lizardmen riding tiger-striped dinosaurs. ("The scaly servants of the Slann Mage-Priests.") The Warhamster40000 artist who painted them said he got into it because he lacked patience and attention in his life, so to develop those qualities he began painting miniatures. "I figured that the big dinosaurs probably would occupy the same ecological niche as tigers -- so why not tiger stripes." He explained (a bit sheepishly, intending to be honest) that some recent changes in the W40K rules mean that the army is not so well balanced as it used to be and so if I wanted it for tournament play I might consult an expert for advice... I counterexplained that I really just wanted them because they were so damn cool and we would use them for D&D, Heroscape (making up our own cards) and stop motion animation projects. Also, I shall personally take them all out and gloat over them.

When Moomin is old enough... perhaps 9 or 10... I will ceremoniously hand them over. Until then, I'm custodian of the lizard-tiger-dino army. They will live in their elaborate carrying-case, coming out only on special occasions. Plans float round my head... plans to get a big round piece of heavy green felt for the kitchen table ... merely to set them up upon it for admiration.

Eliz. scored a FREE huge armload of unpainted miniatures and other stuff from a guy closing up his flea market booth. She had 15 dollars, but I bought her lunch and some fancy dice. She bought a necklace with a crystal. Today I would not mind buying her some paints and brushes for the miniatures, and maybe a small fishing tackle box, if she lets me and Moomin and her sister paint some too.

The heroscape-playing little boys looked on us with suspicion as we joined. "Have you ever played? Do you know the rules? We're playing the advanced rules." Eliz. backed right off and kept whispering to me that I should play and she would just watch, thanks, till next time. I forced her to play. Within about 10 minutes she got the rules (which are not hard, and are mostly just attack/defense/movement numbers and special powers printed on the cards for each group of miniature figures). I pointed out that the 9 and 7 and 11 year old boys who were there before us did not know the rules and in fact the two younger ones seemed to have difficulty reading (as well as in following the turn and round sequence, or remembering things like "your winged red demon thing does NOT have a ranged weapon".) But it is a point that I must hammer home with her. The little boys act like that, and yet they have their heads up their asses. Since we got there last, they had better armies with flying and ranged weapons. But our armies had staying power anyway. Brazen it out, and you will pwn them in no time at all.

Technorati Tags: conferences, gaming, geeks

Looting the mysterious drawers of dream mansions

Last night I missed kj's play in the South Bay because I couldn't face the drive to Burlingame and back to Shallow Alto and then south and then back to Shallow and my car and home to Deadwood. And sitting up during the play. Instead I dropped Moomin off at Hamster and SuperT's house. It was boiling hot. She came out of the shower in a towel and a towel turban to serve me fizzy italian lemonade.

We sat beside her fans - or I laid on her couch with my feet up -- and commented on the architecture of the ceiling molding and the state of our marriages and relationships as well as our friends', and the way our kids played, and all that. Talking about a marriage of a person we know. "It's not like she'd divorce him because he doesn't like to French kiss while it's one of her favorite things to do for hours and hours." "Yes but can she face the whole rest of her life without ever French kissing for hours and hours, ever again?"

She had empty boxes out for the kids to play with. they made "animal habitats" and i admired her new outside porch space -- she took the little concrete patio and made it a place a bit like Jo's monkey pit, with a scavenged persian rug and some cushions.

Then to Zond-7's where I lounged in bed all evening with fancy pizza and computers and an extremely entertaining visitor, Rain. Rain is hyper in mind and body in the way of people who might in the past have done a tad too many drugs and were left sane but more interesting and open to ideas than they might have become otherwise. We gossiped about multiple layers of things at a fair amount of depth - of recent history of the valley, of startups and web 2.0 culture and this time around's boom, and of specific personalities, then of people we knew, and nifty projects, and that's all I'll say because it was a gossip session of extreme and frightening and pleasant frankness because I felt like we clicked and also because Zond-7 seems to know her well. This, all from bed... with computers... the nicest way to have a conversation.

We ate pizza with corn, pineapple, black olives, green bell peppers, and grilled chicken and it was fanfuckingtastically delicious late at night... again the best way to eat anything... in bed. I played with Quicksilver and started exploring it. Zond-7 started teaching me some of his more useful keystroke commands to do things. We both tried working but fucked off a fair bit reading blogs and news and exclaiming at the world's fuckedupitude and marvels.

I read a bit of a Dover book about pirates, a sort of 1930s-ish feeling book or maybe 1890 and it is funny that I couldn't tell, because you should be able to tell that!!! Or, I should! It was timelessly Britishly imperialist in tone and I'm not sure if it's worth reading all of it. It was good enough for a long hot bath.

Then we stayed up super late talking over our relationship. What do we want it to be? How will we know if we're fucking it up? What about times like just now when we're stressed for time and can't balance life very well? What do the failure points in our previous relationships mean? How much were specific dysfunctions to those relationships and how much are our own individual failings we bring with us? How will whatever damages we carry forward affect us now? You know you aren't fucking it up when you end a conversation like that feeling very peaceful and content and comforted and good.

I woke this morning having had an intense dream. I was doing some sort of intense super technically giant work project with an event. (Ahoy B--C----Block, you haunt my dreams.) All sorts of things had to be coordinated and fancy tech totally new displayed involving odd internet holographic thingies. As I was walking past a grocery store in this dream, I noticed a bunch of tables in the parking lot, set up with obviously free food ! I mean, hot damn! I started stuffing things into my shoulder bag -- jars of peanut butter, 6 packs of fancy italian fizzy lemonade, loaves of bread -- thinking "hot damn! free!" but sheepishly realizing I didn't need to take the free peanut butter since I could afford to buy it.

Then in the dream I was inside the doors of an enormous mansion. The owners had died, or gone away, and there was something like an estate sale except more like it was free. Just go in and ... they had taken the things they wanted, so it was okay to rummage. In a far-away room in this labyrinth place I found an enormous antique cabinet going all the way up one wall. It has always been my fantasy to own a cabinet with a zillion tiny drawers -- a card catalog or chinese medicine cabinet -- and this fit the bill. Enormous, dark polished wood, with baroque carved embelleshments and drawers of all shapes and sizes. They were full of all different kinds of colored dice and game pieces.

I resolved to find out who had charge of the mansion and buy this cabinet for Rook. How surprised he would be! Then I realized he might just be indifferent and be fine with his different dice in little plastic baggies and would not greet the enormous cabinet with a sigh of joy, as I would. Plus, I thought maybe they wouldn't sell it to me at all. So I looted handfuls of each different drawer into my backpack, thinking I would sort them out again later to present to Rook in a way he would like better. (Yet still ask about the cabinet, or look for a similar one, less massive and imposing but still pleasing to me.)

Next to the cabinet of many drawers there was a low bureau or dressing table with a mirror on top. When I was little I liked to explore my grandmother's and mom's bureau drawers. My grandma had things like very old-seeming gold-backed hairbrush set and perfume bottles on a silver tray. The texture of pantyhose in the drawers and the sort of mysteriousness of girdles and bra straps... For me going through her bureau drawers was like trying to understand the weirdness of femininity or womanhood. I tried sometimes to duplicate or echo this feeling in my own rooms, with top-of-bureau setups that had a ritual feel, like little shrines.

This dream bureau was very similiar to my grandma's, but more mysterious and... oozing the feeling of wealth. (Rather than shabby overly-cared-for just-post-Depression-era lower middle class fanciness 30 years later.) Things that seemed like they must have cost hundreds or thousands of dollars in department stores, golden handbags with delicate clasps, hose and lingerie that was like thousand dollar tissue paper. Gold tubes of rose-smelling lipstick.

Then there were drawers and drawers, flat like map drawers, of makeup of different shades, with everything labelled, poetic names of dreams and dawn and twilight rose and masquerade, starlight disco, ocean midnight shimmer.

I could not decide what I wanted from this. It was all attractive and expensive and yet nothing was my style and makeup, while fun, feels like drag. Finally in one of the makeup drawers I found an array of tubes and pots of glitter, so I took the nicest one to decorate my hair for the big party at the techie event I was organizing in the dream.

Down deep in the back of one of the clothes drawers there was a strange designer-y outfit. It was like a tight bodysuit that had a cartoon landscape sewn into it, patchwork style, with a dinosaur, and was clearly meant to be worn with expensive femmy things as a weird designer outfit and would fall apart in about a month. I took it to use it for pajamas.

I'm awake late, and have had coffee with condensed milk, graham crackers in bed, and to be nice, washed Zond-7's dishes, as he has one million thousand work things and deadlines before he leaves for Yurp, next week. It is cheating to take the easiest task off his hands.

I'm off now to the game con! I will buy dice and celebrate the synchronicity of my dreams.

Technorati Tags: daily life, dreams

The state of my legs

On Monday or Tuesday I maybe did too much walking, and my legs are both affected. It wears me down emotionally do deal with the pain and the sudden shift in ability. Just when I felt I was able to rely on my body for some things, I'm sliding backwards. It is disturbing to feel the problems on the other side; this was also true in the past but I don't mention it a lot because it gets to me, and it makes other people worry.

So, I'm fine, but I'm not walking as well as I have been in the last few weeks, and I'm in pain again, and having that swarm of bees up and down the legs feeling. sometimes it turns to hot lava or electric fire. And sometimes it just aches. The leg-moving-forward part works, or doesn't, in varying degrees.