I hate sonicstage

(this was originally written back in the summer. my opinion of sonicstage has not improved since then)

I'm listening to The Ballet as I relax in the afternoon lull between setting out the gear and hauling in the catch. I'm listening to them now because I can't listen to them while I work, which at just this moment has me pissed off. Let me explain.

After my first trip, the one where I had no medicine, no extra food, and a bobo walkman that ate batteries like I would have eaten potato chips if I had been within five hundred miles of any, I went on a shopping spree to try to make life at sea livable so what had seemed like the best idea ever ("Why don't I quit my job and leave my life and friends and go be a biologist on fishing boats?") didn't prove itself to be the worst idea ever as I had been forced to contemplate the possibility of while puking repeatedly over the side of the boat. On the second boat, I wasn't reduced to hiding corndogs in the back of the freezer to keep from wasting away, so some of this spending spree went unneeded, like the innumerable packs of ramen and cans of soup, but the electronics portion of purchasing has brought nothing but joy. I got a laptop (which I am using at the moment) which has a thousand and one functions which prove handy when cut way off like I am most of the time now, and an Ipod.

I wasn't going to get an Ipod. I was going to get some other kind of mp3 player. I'd spent enough time in Brooklyn surrounded by those damn white earphones and self-absorbed hipstards comparing playlists to have a reflexive revulsion to this little electronic plague. Surely I could get something else that was just as good. Uh, not quite. The Zune seemed cool and almost made the cut, but the online reviews I read had the big complaint of the battery time not being near what was advertised. I needed the little beast to be able to keep up with at least 12 hour work shifts and often longer, so this, along with size ended up being the breaking point. I got the Ipod, and against all my instincts I loved it. I only ever used it on a boat in the middle of the ocean and even then it spent most of its time wrapped up in a zip-lock bag inside my useful (and hideous) fanny pack, underneath my foul-weather gear. I could love it and not think about the fashion ramifications; I'd put it inside a pink carrying case and kept it in a peach fanny pack, for heaven's sake!

Anyway, I loved it. Itunes is great and easy to use software, the ipod held 30gigs, cost way less than I expected and only once did its battery run out on me and that was a hell of a marathon stretch and I can't blame it. I went out and got Pimsleur language cds for French and Spanish (hello Montreal and Puerto Rico this fall) and was all set to go when tragedy hit. Packing for my last trip before this one, I couldn't find my little Ipod! It was nowhere. I'm still secretly hoping I just haven't asked the right person yet and it will rematerialize soon, but I did one trip with no music and my language disks taunting my and I wasn't going back out without a solution again. I was just going to get another Ipod and even flirted briefly with the idea of buying a fucking Iphone, but I, perhaps thankfully, lost my atm card. I was stuck with just a bit of cash for the next few days before going to sea again.

Enter the walkman (I know that should be capitalized, but I dont' feel like capitalizing it these days). I discovered a great store in Honolulu that sells all kinds of Japanese imports, including sony products. I normally love sony. Their computers are awesome, I had (currently missing just like the Ipod) a Cybershot digital camera which was spectactular. Now, in my time of need, here was a walkman mp3 player on sale! Just $99! I had seen a friend's walkman last year when she got it for her birthday and remember thinking it was a beautiful little piece of machinery. They are, as far as looks go. Hers was silver, but they naturally only had them in pink when I decided to grab one. It is shiny and pretty and pink; why am I griping?
Because I've used it.

The controls are ok and as a just a music playback device, I can dig it. The size is right, the audio playback is good. BUT.....

sony sonicstage is the biggest piece of crap fucking software I can remember being stuck with using. First it was a pain in the ass getting it to work with Windows vista, which I'll concede is because vista is new and sucks. But now that I have it working, I completely hate it. It took a couple of days and some finagling before it would recongnize the device it was designed to work with. It slows the whole computer down and balks if anything else is running. It doesn't seem to like letting me listen to music while managing the files in it. The interface is clunky and when you change anything it refreshes the library and plunks you back at the top of the list of your library's contents, not where you were before you deleted or moved a file. Making a playlist is obnoxious, as is managing files on the walkman.

I really, really hate it. And the walkman being an mp3 player, I thought surely I could get around having to use it and just drop mp3 files on it like moving them to a new hard drive and play them that way. you can drop them there, but it won't recognize them until sonicstage has junked them up into a new file type. And I don't have that much music on this computer, but somehow it just won't fit on this little device. According to Itunes I have 6.3GB of music here. This won't all fit on an 8GB device? Apparently, no. So I've been having to go through and figure out what is necessary and what I can cut. And I can't, no matter how I try, get it to play The Ballet. I'll blame this one on Itunes, since I downloaded the album and am sure that is why it won't work, but that does nothing to assuage my feelings of hate towards sonicstage and because of it towards the walkman. If it was compatible with other programs, like Itunes or even Windows Media, I might not hate it. As it is, I can't fit all of my music on it (which is less that the advertised limit), I can't listen to some of my favorite work music (Mattachine!, strangely enough, is the perfect album to listen to while trying to stay awake in the middle of the night counting fish while waves splash in your face), it won't recognize any of my old playlists and the program I am expected to recompile them on makes it a pain in the ass and the program is stupidly slow and slows down my whole computer as it sulks along.

Anyway, sony sonicstage can go straight to hell. If they hope that the re-envisioned walkman mp3 plays don't get dragged down with it, they need to unyoke them from that program or make the program so much better and less painful to use. Detached from sonicstage, at a reasonable cost (this one was just 99 bucks, though granted that was on sale at an importer and after using it I would consider that at the high end of what I would say it is worth), able to function with other programs, and available with more memory; I would then say they had an excellent product that could likely make a serious dent in the market. As it is, I'm not in the least surprised that I've only seen one in use prior to this.

Not Waving, But Drowning

go see:

Not Waving, But Drowning

Wednesday, 10/03/07
playing live at The Livingroom, on Ludlow between Stanton and Rivington in the Lower East Side

since Mason won't contribute the the written content of the blog anymore (and he was always the better writer anyway) I feel perhaps I should alert the world to what has him too distracted to write. He hasn't stopped writing, he's just focusing on music. His band, Not Waving, But Drowning, will be playing this week at the Livingroom in the LES. I want to go, but since I am only in town for a short time and asked nicely for he and his partners in musical evil to have a show while I am in town, Mason scheduled the show for the day after I leave for a wedding in Puerto Rico.

Despite his obvious bent toward evil, you should go and bask in the beautiful tunes he and Pinkie, etc. pull out of the air. I'm listening to them practice as I write this; this is not a show to miss.

Awareness is panic

If you know me in person, you know that I am not known for my fear of social situations. I find awkward situations exhilerating and strangers have never scared or intimidated me. I can normally handle crowds or being alone with easy and poise and roll with the punches without missing a beat.

Sometimes I can't.

Perhaps being too telling (but isn't that the point of having a blog?), in college I was wracked with pretty severe panic attacks. I was diagnosed as obsessive-compulsive (I refuse to tack the clinical "disorder" on the end) and told I was suffering from fairly severe anxiety and depression. I briefly tried the medicinal route with adderol and quickly decided it wasn't for me as it seemed to do nothing but obliterate my memory (I have had trouble remembering names ever since) and keep me awake and sort of numb. I saved the left-over pills for when I had to drive long distances as this was the only time that its affects seemed remotely helpful.

Therapy and supportive friends and changing attitude and world view ended up let me get a successful grip on it all and not drop out of school as I had almost done, and these days I sail on a pretty even keel. I have the occasional waves of anxiety, but I've learned to let them rush over me without hijacking my mind and the compulsions I can play with now instead of them being a terror or slowing me down.

But not last night.

I don't know what set it off, but I was having one of those nights where I felt like I couldn't find anywhere that I was supposed to be. I went to the Phoenix to meet some friends, but I was getting there late and they were on their way out as I got there. This is not a thing which bothers me: I know plenty of people in that bar and even if I didn't I don't mind meeting new people or just having a beer by myself and taking it all in. Normally this it true at least. The bar was packed and cute and had a fun vibe, but all of a sudden I felt like I was a thousand miles away and would never get back any closer to anything. At least when I'm on a boat a million mile away I can tell myself that when I get back to land my friends and familiar places will be there and it is just the solitude and distance getting me down, but when you feel this way with your friends around and in one of the most familiar comfortable places you know, there is nothing left to reassure you. Where do you go? Who can pull you back? There is no shore to shoot for or at least you end up filled with terror that upon heading for a different one that you would just find the crowded solitude there.

Of course panic attacks aren't so lucid. You are somewhere, the crowd is suddenly separated from you and any attempts to interact leave you feeling further separated and at the same time unable to escape as it smothers you and you feel like it has alway been smothering you and always will.

Which isn't true.

I haven't always been smothered. And I won't always be. I love and embrace the world and all the insanity within it.

Catcher In the Rye and Sartre's Nausea give perhaps the most vivid descriptions of panic attacks that I have read. Catcher's protagonist is unaware of what is happening to him other than the world around him being overwhelming while Nausea's is painfully lucid as he stares straight at the unravelling he is experiences. Both are finding themselves forced to deal with overwhelming awaress of being both intimately and inextricably interconnected to everything around them while at the same time feeling entirely disconnected as everything becomes pixelated and atomized. Finding the poles and opposites that let us navigate through the world and believe in direction suddenly smeared into one another and rendered useless for orientation leaves one feeling vertiginous but without even that reassuring knowledge that at least if you go over a ledge you will fall down. This is the attraction of heights and plunges, both literal and figurative: when you can't find any other direction, you can usually still find 'down' and if you hit bottom you know that the other way is up.

Sarte's titular nausea was that step beyond, where even falling loses its direction and it is all swirl and blur and tramatic lucidity at the same time. Such was my blur last night. All the directions disappeared and I had to follow exit signs out into the street and try to pull my mind back together so I could maintain some semblence of togetherness.

Partially because I lacked the coordination to follow through with it but mostly because of a fear that I might spread my void, I didn't let myself call Canada but called Mason, who has seen me at my worst and would know not to really worry if I call freaked out of my mind. So he was my sounding board as I learned to speak again, finding voice and reminding myself how to divide sounds out of the omnipresent roar and believe again that words can carry meaning. And I slowly regained my grip and was fine. And the night continued and friends showed up and I was festive again.

This all sounds more dramatic than it is and if you have never had panic attacks will likely make no sense at all, but this is what I have for therapy now and a desire to remember and record as I go. The upside of panic attacks is that they free you from some bonds and leave you feeling released and unassailable for a while.

And it is a beautiful day so I'll extract myself from this beastial computer and go enjoy the sun for a while.

when the shoe is on the other foot...

(note: started this as a draft a while back. Am going back through trying to clean out some old junk which got started and never finished so I can harass Mason and make him finish a couple of things which he has started and never finished. Written 1/31/06; published 9/25/07.)

Just came across this on craigslist missed connections:
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Stop Looking At Me!!! I'm NOT Gay!!! - m4m - 30
Reply to: pers-128881633@craigslist.org

Date: 2006-01-27, 2:19AM EST

Listen, I have nothing against gay guys, but you have a way of making a guy feel uncomfortable. I know I'm hot, but I like pussy. If you have a cock, you have no shot. Stop the cruising. Stop the ogling...unless you're looking for a beat down... What are you people trying to take over the fucking world??? Not every amazing looking guy is gay. Now you made me angry. Geez!
-----------------------------------------------

I'll skip over the most glaringly obvious problem with this post (that being that it is a rant not a missed connection and everone hates idiots who post things in the wrong catogories), and jump straight to the sexist assumptions and a few hints for straight men who are uncomfortable with the attention.

1) just because someone is looking at you on the train doesn't mean that they want to jump your bones.

2) just because a guy is gay and looking at you doesn't mean he wants to have sex with you. Dude, you are in New York City, and I don't care how pretty you are, you aren't the only pretty person and you can't go ten minutes without running into another gay man. This isn't a city of slim pickings. If you aren't giving off some serious signals, no gay man on the subway thinks you are going to have sex with him or gives one good goddamn either way.

3) having established that your sacred man-cherry is not in danger from the leering homo masses, maybe you should chill out about people looking at you. Maybe it is because you are attactive; take it as a completment. Men fucking stare at women like they are slabs of meat all the time and act like a woman is hysterical if they say anything about it, but look at a straight man's ass and he will freak out like you were trying to eat his soul. Yeah, staring can be taken too far either way, but stop being a whiney idiot and suck it up over the casual glances. Grow a thicker skin nancy boy.

4) threats to kick the ass of a gay man that stares at you may be fun to type but try it in real life. No, don't. Insecure bullies pick out the weakest folks to pick on and target them when there aren't other folks around to defend them so I will make no "bring it on" commentary based on the fact that more than a few of us would punch you back and that much as I can get sick of gym-bunny gay boys, they certainly shift the likelihood of the queer being smeared in a fag-bash scenario.

Actually my favorite gay bash story is of my friend R walking down King Street in Charleston, SC when some punk makes a comment along the lines of "Hey queer boy, are you gay? I'm going to kick your ass!" At which point a very large, muscle-bound man turns around and to says to the asshole, "I'm gay, and I'm going to kick YOUR ass." At which point the jerk turns and runs and R thanks the fellow and continues on his way.

The original point of this wasn't to comment on who could kick who's ass but rather on the way that straight mean often objectify women and are blind to how it feels to be on the recieving end of such things. I'm not the type to treat women as delicate flowers who men have to be fawning and protective of, but I am also keenly aware of how differently men in general treat women versus how they treat other men.

sugar, a brief personal history and an inquiry into the cult of exclusivity

(started 5/9/06; finished 9/25/07)

Somewhere along the way, I began calling damn near everyone "Sugar."

It wasn't an intentional thing, but it has seemed to have become an indelible part of how I interact with people. To the point that some folks call me, "Sug." So what? Really not exactly the most exciting thing in the world, but lately a couple of people have asked if I say it to everyone or just them, wondering if it was a special term or if it was generic. Well, as I just said, I use the term quite a bit these days (along with, "babe" "sweetheart" "cutie" etc.), but though I definitely don't mean it in the same intimate way to a drinking buddy at a bar as I do with someone I am dating, it doesn't mean I don't mean it.

I've never been a territorial person. Actually, that is perhaps not true. I've never minded sharing space, possessions, food, affection, time, you name it... so long as there is enough to be shared without me being edged out, treated as a non entity. When I feel someone is taking an advantage of my openness, I become the most territorial person I know. Normal brain function shuts off and all I can think about is expelling this intrusion, this invader. For some reason, everytime this happens lately I seem to be out with Christian and he ends up being witness to my Mr. Hyde ice-storms. But back to sugar...

Can you say the same thing to everyone and mean it differently and still samely (is that a word?) to all of them? Because if I call someone 'sugar', I mean it nice. It is meant to be the syrupy sweet it sounds or I wouldn't be pouring it out at all. But can you pour out your affection for all the world and still be able to get across just how much that one beautiful person makes your heart swell with the same terms of endearment? Can you let your heart swell for all the world contains and still know/believe and communicate that the way one person makes you feel is still special in all of this?

For me these things have to be true; I have to be able to embrace the whole shebang and still make that one small most special corner of existence know its worth and know that I know it too.

I call you 'sugar' because I mean it.

that fine line between acceptance and resignation

(again, this is a dredged up draft from sometime last year, which I think I didn't publish because I thought that the characters it was written about would read it and take it personally and if posted with the knowldge that it would likely be read by who it was about, then it would necessarily end up being a message to them. I didn't write it as a passive aggressive message to anyone; I wrote it to sort out bits of my mind. Now that time has passed and I can't remember who I was thinking about when I wrote it, here it is. Originally writen 7/7/06.)

We'll see if I can manage to curb my tendency to write too long-windedly, and just stir a little bit into the murky crud which has been swirling through my mind. The last little bit has been a bit crazy.

I've never been an expert on sane living and never will be. Which suits me fine as I don't think many of us find ourselves surrounded by a sane world, and playing at pretending it is just an invitation to the devil, as two friends of mine have recently found out while succumbing to his second favorite game, the-way-it-is-supposed-to-be. This is the trouble with the devil: he doesn't really make you do it, so fighting and hating him won't get you anywhere. He's never been the one who commits the crime, only reminds you that you could.

You can lose your temper. You can run from your actions consequences. You can leave the consequences for others. You can push loved ones away and snuggle up to ridiculous fictions and believe it is all true. But the devil didn't make you do it, he just doesn't pretend letting it all go is impossible.

Southerners tend to grow up fairly intimately aware of temptations and the general crudeness of the world. We also tend to play fast and loose with our interpretations of reality and how we care to look at the world. Read any Faulkner or Flannery O'Connor. Don't for a second think I am disparaging an imaginative outlook and interpretation of your surroundings. You can construct any fanciful kingdom you care to live in, just be sure to be careful not to build the foundation on shifting sand or put any of the struts and beams where inconvient bits of harder, more solid reality might come crashing through.

This is, as my convoluted ramblings often are, going to be taken wrongly by the folks it is obliquely about. It isn't so much meant to be just about either of them and their delightful jaunts away from sanity and responsibility, but settling myself down while watching things spiral out of control around me. Here is where I find myself in that slippery place, wanting to reach out and grab and steer and save the ones around me that I love. Grab and scream and tell them they are making mistakes and how they can fix it all and hold their hands while they do.

Which of course I can't do. I can't fix it all and have enough trouble holding it all together myself. And I've slowly accepted that. Watching friends over the years self-destruct here and there, slipping over brinks I couldn't pull them back from and trying to put myself between them and whatever pain was headed their way... and by and large it doesn't work, until they ask for it. It isn't some external devil which I could ever slay. Until "you could..." and "you'll just fuck up eventually, so why not now?" and "they/you deserve it" lose their siren pull, there is no mast stout enough to bind them to.

So again I'll wander along, try to keep up and tell them I love them and pray the next time they are looking over some more desperate precipice that they won't take that next leap.

The Hidden Cameras: Debbie Does the Bowery

(started 11/12/06; finished 9/25/07)

I often make little plans for entities which I have no control over. Like who I would cast in movies of books I like or crap like that, but music seems to draw my manipulative interest even more. Like songs that I want to hear covered by someone new (who doesn't want to hear George Jones cover "Ninety-nine Red Balloons"?) or duets or trios that I think would be great (Why haven't Tori Amos, Bjork, and P.J. Harvey teamed up for the super album that I dream of when I slip into rare nostalgia for quirky, angsty songbird combination?).

There are a few bands that are probably too different to work in any kind of real combination, but who always put on an amazing show and make me want to dance and seem to throw out the same hectic energy in their differently little ways. In the world in my mind where I run things, in some massive old warehouse with multiple stages set up surrounding a central dance area, these bands would play in close succession, each set up on a different stage so the action could shift from one band to another seemlessly. Instead of any one band playing an hour-long set, each would play multiple shorter sets, intermixed with one another for hours of dancing fun for our delirious crowd. The line up would include Islands, Gogol Bordello, the Hidden Cameras, Old Crow Medicine Show, and the Scissor Sisters. Actually scratch the warehouse, let's move the fantasy outdoors, though I feel like we Americans don't really do outdoor festivals all that well.

(I'm wandering back through posts that I started and never finished and posting the fragments for the hell of it if they aren't too wretched, so this one was written last year sometime and I have no idea why I originally titled the way I did, except I am fairly certain I wrote it after seeing the hidden cameras at Bowery Ballroom. Oh wait, yes I do! Now I can sort of finish this...)

So when I saw the show at the BB that got me started writing this, the girl who plays the xylophone in the band completely rocked my world that night. She bears a striking resemblance to Debi Mazar and looked so happy and danced and smiled in such a fun way that it made the whole show that much better and my friend and I couldn't stop talking about how much we loved her. And it takes some serious distraction to tear my eyes off Joel Gibb, who as long as I'm explaining my fantasy world, wants to be my boyfriend and writes songs for me, but even with this most beautiful of men singing every song straight to me and only me, Debbie (I don't know her real name so I still call her Debbie and I know I could just google and figure out who she really is but so could you so leave me alone) was still the star of the show. The whole band has that way on stage that makes you want to be in a band, makes you dream of being on stage, making wish you could make a room full of people feel like they are making you feel when you watch them but Debbie had this something extra that made you feel that if you were watching her make toast you would want to make toast too. In my mind she goes everywhere and does everything with that same little bop that rocked my world so hard that night at that show.

That is the kind of energy I want to project. I still smile thinking about basking in it at that show.

Retards make a list and some thoughts on disparate groups coopting the eagle as a symbol

(started 6/1/05; posted 9/25/07)

Pandagon pointed me to this list on HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE of the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries

Amanadagon does a fine job busting their chops for being transparently dumb and I have already called them 'retards' in the title of this post, so I don't think their idiocy really warrents a whole lot more attention. They included John Stuart Mill and Rachel Carson. mr. bush, this is your constituency, your nation of retards.

But I was looking through the list of folks who contributed and noticed this:

"Phyllis Schlafly
President
Eagle Forum"

Now, I am vaguely familiar with phyllis schlafly, enough to know that I generally end up annoyed and wanting to bite someone when I read something she has said or someone starts quoting her, but I don't really pay much attention to her. Not worth the time. But the name of her organization struck me: "Eagle Forum."

Yes, the bald eagle is a national symbol, but that aside, I find it interesting the groups which commonly use the eagle (not necessarily the bald eagle) as their symbol. Two groups stand out in my mind: nazi/fascists/white supremicists and masculine fetish oriented gay men. A few quick qualifications about this:

1) I am not trying to equate these two groups.

2) I am using the unwieldy term 'masculine fetish oriented gay men' intentionally, because if you see a gay club called the Eagle, anywhere in the world, if you are at all familiar with gay culture, you will instantly have an idea of the main clientel. Not necessarily bears, not necessarily leather daddies, not necessarily boot-and-levi types but the word 'eagle' in a gay context instantly brings to mind some amalgum of masculinity fetishizing identity.

That said, perhaps there is some mutual appeal in the symbol of the eagle, or at least a certain stylized version, to both disparate groups. Nazism and facism are in ways also a sort of fetishizing on a grand scale. There is a hyper-masculine, power/order worship that characterizes these groups which maybe accounts for the similarity. Maybe it is just favored by people who like playing dress-up with butch uniforms.

Maybe not.

I know that modern white supremacy groups most likely get their affection for this symbol straight from nazi germany: the big art deco eagles on flags and banners; hitler's mountain hide-away, 'the Eagle's Nest.' Is their some historical significance for the nazi's adoption of the eagle? Is it as simple as just picking the big strong predator bird or is there something else?

Maybe the same for the 'mo fetish boys. Big, strong, menacing bird for those big, strong, menacing men? Maybe simply its military connotations. Maybe some historical context which I don't have at my finger tips.

What makes an eagle more appealing than another top predator? The ability to fly? It just looks good when art-decoized? That it targets much smaller prey and acts independently?

Oh well. This isn't terribly coherent so I'll end it.

right now...

I am missing New York in a serious way. Just got back on land off the boat, but we offloaded in Hilo (on the Big Island), so I'm staying in a hotel til I fly back to Honolulu in the morning. The peaceful moment with a room to myself (you have no idea what kind of a luxury that is in my life now) is great, but I was just surfing around on the internet and saw a friend from the city in a magazine spread (he's not normally a model, so it was unexpected). The familiar face and all the time alone in my head conspired to send a fucking tidal wave of homesickness crashing over me.

I'm not the homesick type.

Right now though, I'd kill to be sitting at Nowhere at happy hour eating a chicken and cheese fajita from the Chinese/Mexican place next door or sitting in my underwear on tuesday night at Rbar watching cartoons while Carter makes flavored vodka or to be at one of the boys' apartments watching America's Next Top Model with the crew. Damn. I miss my friends, I miss my haunts, I miss my garden... easy tiger. Let's not get carried away.

This last trip I had my first get-me-the-hell-off-this-boat moment since taking the job. Don't worry, I still love it. I've got some awesome pictures of tapertail ribbon fish and cool critters puked up by lancetfish (which I'll share later). The job I love and I still like Hawaii, but I just had that moment when you know you need a break.

So I'm going to take one. One more trip this go round and I am taking a fucking break. Sort of, if traveling through San Francisco, New York (yay!), Seattle, Portland, Puerto Rico, Montreal, and D.C. in two months with two weddings in the mix is what you consider 'taking a break'.

This is something of the conundrum that my wanderlust has always faced: I really like settling to a place and getting in a routine. I'm a hell of a creature of habit. I like seeing the same folks again and again and doing the same things again and again. Really. But I just couldn't stay happy settled down in one spot, at least not so far. I've never actually really been able to envision myself in any kind of life work that lets me sit in one place. I really can't quite visualize it. That may sound kind of silly, but I mean it. I can imagine myself somewhere for a while, but only with an eye on the horizon. It has sort of always been that way.

Every career or lifestyle I've ever pictured myself in has been one of constant motion, do this here and move on there. As a kid I was always sort of inside my head and pretty awkward at interpersonal interactions. Really fucking awkward, and I seemed to have a knack for making friends with people who always moved away. I'd become best friends with a kid, and then realize that his parents were in the airforce and the next year he'd be gone off to Iceland or Germany or wherever. This isn't some lament about my childhood, because I totally had a great childhood and don't bum about any of that. Like I said, I was an oblivious kid who just kind of did his thing and changes like that didn't strike me as odd or tramatic, I'd just be friends with whoever else showed up. Even though I was staying in the same place, everyone around me seemed to be moving to and fro, and I always knew I wasn't staying there.

The point being, I'm suddenly wondering whether or not this combination of stable environment that I loved but always dreamed of leaving combined with the constant flux of friends and associates is a big part of why I feel the way I do. Maybe this is why keeping on moving feels so comfortable to me while plans for permanence send my circuitry haywire. I'll lay down roots and lay them down deep and fast at it, but I can pick up and move just as easy. It suits me and the way I seem inclined to live, but then I have moments like this where I am just missing my friends. I'm happier with my job and the trajectory it is pointing me on right now than I have ever been, and the what-are-you-doing-with-your-life? moments had been killing me before, but damn I'm miss my life in New York.

I guess it should tell me something that living in the city for not quite 5 years is the longest I've lived in one place since I was 17. Actually, come to think about it, that will probably be the longest I live in one place before I am at least 40 (which suddenly doesn't feel all that far off).

Anyway... enough of you silly homesickness. I'll sleep it off and wake up tomorrow and hit the ground running and smile about it all.

spider solitaire

Why is spider solitaire so addictive? I've played it more times in the last three weeks than you could possibly imagine. It is a long way to Christmas Island and back.

It is one of those games that sucks you in and drains your time, so I still instinctively feel guilty before I even start playing. If you win, you want to play again. If you lose, you want to play again just until you win. Which will make you want to play again. Suddenly hours have been wasted and you scratch your head and reflect that you don't remember the sun going down.

I didn't get to get the books I wanted to read for this trip and there was more than a week that I just had to fill with no work to do, no way of communicating with anyone off the boat and only one other person who I could sort of talk to, and no supplies for most of the projects I want to work on so spider solitaire helped chew through those long hours. At a certain point, even it can be too much so regular solitaire got a rehashed too, along with hearts and freecell. I used to love minesweeper but this time I just couldn't get into it. I didn't complete a single game of it the whole trip. Still, spider solitaire is totally my girl. The others just can't compete for pure fun and frustration factor.

Of course, I spent the whole time wishing Snood was loaded on my computer. When I get my hands on it, oh boy.

It was funny though still thinking of these time wasting computer games as detrimental. I'd be playing and suddenly have this pang of guilt and feel like I should be doing something else. I'd start to shut down the game so I could get back to what I should really be doing and then realize that, oh yeah, I'm on a boat and have nothing new to read, no work that I can do right now, no one that I can talk to, I've already photoshopped all the pictures in my computer, rearranged my playlists, watched all my movies, I slept ten hours last night... actually playing computer games is exactly what I'm supposed to be doing.

there is something strangely exhilarating about looking out at moonlight reflecting off the waves in the middle of the ocean at midnight...

...while shitting in a five-gallon bucket on the back deck of a moving boat.

Closing Time

I of course left almost all of my music in Alabama. I didn't have my computer yet or an mp3 player and traveling with a full cd collection isn't practical. It is amazing how many cd's you can accumulate without realizing it over the years. But I'm slowly rebuilding some music to listen to, which is as important as ever since about half of my job consists of staying awake and alert. Also being at sea and going weeks at a time with almost no conversation leaves your mind in need of something appropriating conversation even if it is only listening to the singing voices. I kind get obsessed with songs or albums or artists and can listen to the same things over and over again, so it isn't so bad having such a limited collection right now.

I'm listening to Tom Waits' "Closing Time" right now. He can be boring and a little annoying sometimes, but when he hits it right, damn he nails it. "I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You" has long been one of my favorite songs. I don't understand why everyone in the world hasn't covered that song. "Ol' 55" is great, but why is it the only one of these songs you ever hear anyone else sing? "I Hope..." and "Old Shoes (and Picture Postcards)" are just begging to be covered. What I wouldn't give to hear Willie Nelson sing either. Or maybe Shelby Lynn. Or one of these songs or "Lonely" on the next (please let there be a next) Trio album. When I listen to "Grapefruit Moon" I imagine I've heard Kiki and Herb do the song, but I don't think I have (actually, maybe they did do the song once at Joe's Pub. Anybody remember?). In my head (memory or fabrication), it sounds brilliant by them.

My favorite game to play with my friends is 'If we were, who would we be?' and I guess I do the same thing with songs sort of, always thinking about how they would sound sung by other people. Liz used to have a book Would You Rather...? which was just full of nonsensical scenarios to choose between. One question which I remember from it was, "Would you rather be in charge of who lives or dies, or who gets to star in what movies?" Almost all my friends excitedly chose the picking who is in what movie option. Idiot-neighbor Matt I think wanted to decide who lived and died for some lame reason like "Then I could let myself live forever..." But anyway, I want to be the guy who picks who gets to sing which songs.

The song which really grabbed me listening to this album this go round was "Martha". I'd never really paid it too much attention, but damn if it wasn't amazing to listen to at one in the morning, half out of my mind from counting hooks and floats and fish with the boat pounding through the waves and spray splashing against my raingear. In this monotonous but intensely visceral work environment, to listen in on this beautiful, intimate, desperately confessional conversation was tremendous. So beautifully constructed, a story sparsely told with this throbbing piano in the background. You can hear the trembling loss in his voice, which ceases to be Tom's voice but is taken over completely by the narrator of the song. The loss but no regret, even if after all these years he's never let go of that time and still has to reach out and try to make that connection with it again. I love something in that approach to life, the protagonist who is heroic not in completing some quest, but in having been there completely in something where time didn't matter, neither the amount of time that the connection lasted not the amount of time since it had ceased to be directly present. That is the only kind of love story which I like. The actual affair can last for a moment or for a lifetime, but afterwards it is so crystal clear and intense that it becomes almost subconscious. Everything else is outside of it and circumstantial.

Anyway, enough of love song analysis. At first I thought that I actually wouldn't want to hear "Martha" covered at all, but I think maybe that Lucinda Williams might have just the right pleading tremble in her voice to pull it off.

best movie ever!

Ok, two pretty different candidates for the best film of all time are currently neck and neck for my vote. This is of course based only on what I've enjoyed lately and absolutely no higher esoteric reasons. I'm not someone who likes to watch movies over and over. I normally just don't. If I've seen it, I've seen it and squirm like a worm if someone tries to get me to watch it again, but for some reason I just watched Shortbus again for maybe the 8th time.

I managed to miss it in theaters when I was still in New York. I don't know why, just kind of had been hearing about it for so long and folks there that were in the know and had been all about it through its creation were suddenly over it and kind of panned it, so even though I still wanted to see it, it wasn't at the top of my list and no one else was dragging me off to watch it. Maybe I wouldn't have fallen in love with it there, but my first viewing came in Alabama. Over New Year's Brian had it downloaded on his computer and there was something kind of perfect watching it on a laptop in my cramped room with a friend who I hadn't seen in forever who had also recently left the city and my brother who had moved up there with me. Home was getting on my nerves enough that I couldn't roll my eyes at any of the silliness and could just eat up the familiarity of it all.

Then it was showing at a movie theater when I was in San Francisco, so I finally got to see it on the big screen. It is one of those movies that is fun to see with a crowd so you can watch how people react to different parts. It was still good the second time.

In Hawaii, movie and book recommendations are a way of life for us boat people, so I found myself recommending it to my coworkers and thinking about it, so I got it. Originally I got it just to make them watch it, but then a little too much extra time and no desire to watch again any of the Van Damn movies that the crew has, I watched it again. And again. So now I've found myself sucked into the "Fifth Element trap": oh I love that scene, let's watch it real quick. Yeah right. You set out just to watch the blue chick sing and Mila Jovavich kick alien ass and suddenly watch the rest of the movie and start it over again and rewatch it from the beginning. Or you just want to the Asian chick beat up the arguing Jamie^2 acolytes then wig out and smash the egg vibrator with a manakin leg, but as the movie starts, you tell yourself you are just going to listen to the first song and... too late, you are watching the whole damn thing again.

I think it is the music which does it to you. If you have a semi-musical element to the movie then you can lie to yourself and say you are just going to watch that one, self-contained chunk and then be done with it. But as you learn from getting sucked into old MTV, small chunk just make it easier to dive in somewhere other than the official beginning; getting out is another matter. Perhaps getting out is then even more difficult because you tell yourself that you are going to watch just this one more scene/video/whatev and then be done, but of course it is one more after that and after that....

So now I watch Shortbus over and over again and am not feeling guilty about it. The second candidate for best movie ever is the aforementioned The Fifth Element. I'm really not joking. I don't know anyone who didn't like it and have yet to spot it without either 1) someone else suggesting that we watch the whole movie or just that scene with the blue chick or 2) me suggesting we watch just that scene with the whole movie, and in either scenario, I've yet to encounter anyone who doesn't want to. In the middle of a party, you can turn that on in a bedroom and before you know it, the whole party is in there watching it and won't let you turn it off until the end and then someone will put it in and start the whole damn thing over.

God was happy with me on my last trip and it was included amongst the inexplicable movie selection of the boat, so of course I ended up watching it again. And then I watched the scene with the blue chick which turned into watching the rest of the movie. And then i recognized extra supermodels amongst the cast members besides Mila, so i watched it again trying to recognize the supermodels. The sick part is I still want to see it again. I'm probably going to go out and buy to have on the boats with me.

Again, I think with it the music part helps with the repeatability of it. Ridiculous action and aliens helps too. What else could I watch over and over again?

I am so going home and buying a box set of old Benny Hill episodes and the Muppet Show.

boat stop...

We are sitting here in the middle of the ocean and something is wrong with the engine. It seems to be starting up again, but it has restarted a couple of times so far over the last couple of hours only to stop again. We are one day north of Christmas Island and have yet to fish even once. If something does go wrong, where the hell do we go? Back to Christmas Island? Surely it will work out, but at the moment I don't know what is wrong, so images of everything that could go wrong are dancing through my head at the moment. A few minutes ago it was just the realization that if we do go back without setting, then I'm condemned to go back on this boat again when it does go out next. Which actually wouldn't be so bad, but still...

Now that they are revving the engine and the boat is shaking I'm having flashes of the motor exploding beneath me sending me flying into the ocean.

further thoughts on jerry faldwell

Reflecting back on what I wrote about jerry falwell upon discovering that he had died while I was out at sea, the voice in the back of my head tells me that I should be nicer, that I should feel bad about speaking so harshly of someone who is dead. He never killed anyone in my family. I've never met him and now certainly never will. Nothing we know publicly suggests that he ever raped or murdered anyone or spent his free time molesting children, so maybe it is a bit overboard for me to feel such a lack of concern for this person and to reflect upon his passing with some sense of relief and perhaps even a little nya-nya-good-riddance.

But really, I don't think it is. I certainly think I've shown him more respect in his death than he showed most people in his life. He turned manipulating people's faith into a money making racket and peddled influence to hurt other people. He was a horrid bigot and a backwards asshole. I don't take joy in his dying and don't hope that it was painful, and I meant it when I said that I hope he finds a peace he does not deserve on the other side of the veil, but I did feel a certain sense of relief when I read that he had died, a sense of relief which I didn't expect. I had no idea he was even sick. He really isn't someone who I pay that much attention to or really follow that much, but his dying really struck me as a moment when someone ghastly and horrid, who will, if remembered at all, be one day remembered as a blight on this last century. I kind of think he will fade and whatever money grubbing 'christian leaders' are left in charge of his legacy will dismantle it with infighting and work their own names into whatever survives that struggle.

I don't know what really makes me so mad about him. It is mostly subconscious. He is one of the people who really turned American evangelical Christianity into the pathetic shell of a faith it is today, moving its emphasis towards manipulating the emotions of masses of people and using its members as the screaming sheep to shout down any reasoned debate about any emotional topic in the public sphere and who helped make these gut-wrench issues front and center in any political debate. Not that there haven't always been plenty of people who moronically yelped, "please, think of the children!" but mr. falwell managed to get on tv and say it loud and say it for millions (whether they knew he was speaking for them or not). This is not to say that all evangelical Christianity in America is of that brand sold by mr. falwell, but he and pat robertson and james dobson have come to be the public face of it.

And perhaps his brilliant move, was that when he turned all politics into emotions, he gave us enemies and made the enemies us. You no longer had to judge how schools performed based on straight academics or how the kids did when they got out. No, the schools academics where instead turned into an enemy and focus was turned towards a shorter stupider report card for judging them. Did have sex education? At what age, and what was taught to these poor innocent children? Did the discuss abortion? Did they teach about condoms? Did they talk about gay people? Did they teach evolution? Did they have prayer at football games or in homeroom?

Did he alone bring all this on? Of course not, but he stood as a figurehead for a movement which did. And it was a nasty little tar baby that he plopped down squarely in the path of anyone trying to do anything productive in public life. He armed millions with ignorant half-truths or even bald faced lies about any touchy subject and taught them to assume the worst and vilify our public services as opposed to their faith.

He had the good luck to come along at a time that our country was in upheaval and trying to get back on course, and he kindly took advantage of everyone's disorientation. We still don't really acknowledge how much we are still sputtering about and trying reorganize after the civil rights movement. When schools were desegregated, it wasn't as simple as just moving kids into schools together and letting it all sort out. Plenty of disorder and violence accompanied this shift and a good chunk of the well-to-do white folks fled altogether into 'academies' and with them took their concern for the public schools. Their civic energies shifted away from the public and towards the private and the public facilities were left for the blacks and poor white people. I really believe this more than anything else killed many a downtown and public park. As soon as black people were allowed free use of the facilities, they were either destroyed, like the public swimming pools which vanished from every town and many a high school, or abandoned. White people quit going to many public parks, and would quietly forget about them, saying things like, "Well, no one goes there any more." Maintenance budgets would then be cut and as the grass grew higher and ignored trash built up, it would be remarked about what a shame it was what 'they' had done to what used to be such a pretty park.

This unspeakable fear of intermingling in public with this 'other' on these new terms, without the old system in place to guide things, was harnessed effectively and directed towards public services in general. The government was out to get you, and what it did do it did poorly, so why not give this or that private enterprise less over-sight or cut funding for this or that. But people of course still want their public services in the end and still expect them to function even as they divert funds and quit focusing on them. And once we decide to go back to these abandoned things, who are we going to blame for what we find when we realize that we've allowed our communities to fracture? Nope, not our own bigotry and fears, not folks who opportunistically played on them for their own benefits, it was naturally the atheists and satanists and homosexuals and Mexicans and feminists and abortionists and evolutionists. Which is easier to swallow hook, line, and sinker than stepping back and taking a good look in the mirror and realizing that we've all come through a tough time and are going to have to reinvest and get back into the game together to get to where we want to be.

This is what jerry faldwell sold in his bastardized, plastic version of Christianity. He was huckster extroidenaire of the cry baby culture. He made his money and his name whining to high hell about how 'they' were destroying America and gave people someone else to mean besides what they meant, the truth that they weren't allowed to say out loud: that black people were ruining it. Not that he wasn't against women being treated as equal humans and didn't mean it from the start that he hated gay people and thought we deserved to die alone and unloved, but these groups hadn't just changed all that much in society and weren't the large organized elephant in the room that no one wanted to mention. Racism had been brought right out into the light and declared unacceptable, and no matter how much of it still existed (exists), people were aware of it as a negative and of how their comments would be labeled and judged. jerry gave the a channel for this frustration and new others to blame for those who cared only for licking their own wounds and avoiding thoughtful reflection.

I don't think racism is still right square in the middle of the evangelical movement that faldwell helped spearhead and politicize, but hatred and fear and blame of that dark other is still dead center. 'Those people' are still ruining the blushing virgin that is America.

Anyway, a hateful bigot died and though that death can't do anything to undo the pain which he inflicted on our country and our communities, as one of 'those people' I must confess a sense of relief and not the least bit of remorse for feeling it. In the end, he not only acted hatefully towards any marginalized group which he could kick with impunity, but by tying his venom to religion he and those like him have turned millions away from religion and for those who he to whom he reached with his message, he forever tied it with malignant hatred and blame.

Jerry Falwell is dead. "There goes the neighborhood" say the residents of Hell.

I would like to be a kind and wonderful person, and say that I hope that jerry falwell is finding redemption in the afterlife, having just gotten back on land and found out that the evil fucking bastard died while I was away at sea.

I can only imagine that if he inexplicably finds his way to heaven, then the only commentary you could expect from God or any prior resident could say is, "There goes the neighborhood."

But, of course, if jerry is in hell where he so rightfully belongs, I can only imagine that the devil and all the demons said the same thing.

May your rotten, nasty soul find peace mr. falwell, and know that if it does, it would be proof of God's great mercy because you are the last person who deserves it.

new favorite thing ever...

While I've been exploring the lovely city of San Francisco, I've been staying with a friend who lives close to Trader Joe's. We were only recently blessed with this lovely chain in New York fairly recently, so I hadn't really shopped there much.

First bought on a whim, I've become obsessed with their tapioca pudding. So good!

on the move...

I've not posted much the last few months and it may be pretty sporadic for the next little bit, but I'm trying to get back to writing more now that I have a little time on my hands. I'm about to head out to the west coast and try to survive a few months on a prayer and a song while trying to make the ever elusive 'next step' materialize.

In the name of getting back to writing regularly (and perhaps starting to share some photo's from time to time as well), I've shaken up the look of the page. Please bear with me as I try to play around with the look of it to hopefully get it the way I want it. You can only have a canned template for so long before it demands a little rigging.

peace.

I hate the andy griffith show.

Sure it is a great show. Funny enough, silly characters, whatever. But my entire life it has come on at least twice a day at my parents house on the only channel that consistantly comes in clearly, and something about it's cheerful homey joviality makes my hair stand on end.

Maybe I could stand the hokey sweetness of the show if... no, never mind. I can't take it. I can't watch it.

not dead, just slow moving...

Lauren recently chastized me for not having written anything about the recent election and I do have thoughts on all that, but having not written in a while, there are much more important things to write about that I have been neglecting. The brief flash synopsis of the recent political crap is that our country is slowly waking up from this stupid nightmare that is bush co. and sent the republican asshole closet-homotards packing. To that I say, "Nya nya!!!"

To the democrats I say, good show, now don't fuck it up and act just like those chumps. Disagreement is good; Nancy not getting her way is a good sign, not the beginning of the end. Could someone please tell the washington press corps to pull their collective head out of their collective ass?

Enough about politics for now...

bigotry: the malignment of the misunderstood or the vilification of the potentially competative other

I put "or" between my two thoughts about bigotry not to suggest that it could be one or another but rather that either path can be taken to arrive at the same place.

I like Steve Gilliard's blog, as anyone who reads this blog has to know. I probably refer to it more often than any single other site and it is generally the first blog I read when I find time to sift through them. The article that he linked to in this post is interesting, though it seems a little bit intentionally sensational. It seemed like he originally posted it up to somewhat dismiss that sensationalism by not commenting on it but instead titling it in a way to point out that the conflict isn't exceptional: "But I dated a woman."

Then Jen started commenting.

I'll spare you a detailed synopsis, but the bigoted mindset isn't terribly subtle. In the title I hinted at why I'll call what she had to say bigoted:

1)the malignment of the misunderstood- I don't fully understand transgender stuff and tranvestitism and a whole lot of stuff which goes along with the different ways in which people find themselves feeling compelled to identify one way or the other, but judging from Jen's comments, she really doesn't understand much about it and doesn't seem interested to learn or understand more. She communicates clear and ossified positions which she doesn't seem inclined to reexamine and these positions belie some gaping holes in her knowledge of the subject. An anecdote about a tranny friend and generalizations about how transfolk dress too much like charicatures doesn't really speak to an extensive knowledge of the community though how strongly her feelings about trans folk were stated suggested that she regarded her knowledge and experience as fairly comprehensive. The point being that she obviously doesn't understand the subject at hand but took tough positions none the less and lashed out to malign those falling outside her realm of experience by extrapolating from the nearest negative example within her realm. So she doesn't want her tranny friend in the ladies dressing room? From that she goes on to denigrate trans people in general and hops up on a you-could-never-understand-you're-not-a-real-woman high-horse? You have a limited realm of experience with members of a group and from your discomfort in that interaction you assume that everyone else acts like that too? Bigotry, very human, very common, but bigotted none the less.

And let me point out at this moment that I am saying all this not as an attack to label Jen a bigot. We've all got our bigotted ideas which we have to wrangle with and calling this spade a spade is where it starts. I don't think, from what I have read of her commentary on the blog or what Steve writes about her, that ignorant misjudgement of anything/anyone outside her comfort zone is a defining component of her personality, like say our president or pat roberston or james dobson. They start from that holier than though position and lash out at the dirty bits and pieces which don't fit in their utopian fiction of the way things are supposed to be. It defines their public persona and for this I can't stand them and lose respect for people who I hear lauding them, but we all have a little bit of this fear of the misunderstood in us and can easily find ourselves in positions where we are dealing with the ragged edges of our experience and make misinformed judgements based on the limits of our understanding. We don't fully understand, so it is easier to vilify and keep that distance open than trudge through the work that it takes to search out these furthest reaches.

...which somewhat ties into my second complaint:

2) the vilification of the potentially competative other- Again, I'll freely admit that this is a natural response. Biology folks are obviously intimately attuned to the concept of competition for limited resources. It is where we begin in our understanding of the world around us and how life finds and holds a place in it. So the idea that someone in one group might vilify someone who they see as a competative other who is edging into their established territory isn't shocking. In a way this side of things I'm more sympathetic. I'd rather deal with territoriality than ignorance anyday. Still, "This is mine, I won't share it with you!" has caused plenty of wreckage in its time. It is interesting the territory which Jen staked out in her commentary. Partially it seemed defensive simply of her own ideas in the thread which were being growled at, but it also seemed like she was using commenting on this article and situation as an opportunity to stake out territory which she had previously felt was threatened. She related the on-going disagreement with her tranny friend about men who dress like women entering women only zones like bathrooms and dressing rooms. Here is a physical territory and it is valuable by way of it being inaccessible to men. Her friend's insistance that he is a woman despite the fact that he is biologically a man doesn't lessen her feeling of infringement when he enters these zones. I'll concede the right of those interested in maintaining the value of a space to set up limitations on it, but how it was discussed in the comments went beyond simply staking out the limits. It was taken further into conflating the acceptance of transfolk into these spaces as an assault from that perpetual enemy, man. She clearly chopped the populace in two, 'men' and 'women,' each assigned there separate territory then conceded some sympathy that not everyone might fit into either camp and might constitute some third 'other,' who should go out on their own find some other place to plant their flag. Convenient advice from someone already in one of the two territoried-up camps. She recognizes shades of someone with whom she has felt it necessary to to stake out boundaries with in the past and extrapolates her feelings of intrusion and competition over her resources on to the broader range of people with non-traditional gender identifications.

This is something that I am again in some ways sympathetic and it isn't the desire to stake out boundaries which bothers me about this. It how they are being staked out and how these desired boundaries are then being as points for defining and dissing the potentially competative others. The right wing yahoos are screaming bloody murder about how gay people marrying will destroy marriage as we know it, and they stake this hard and fast boundary around ideas of what marriage is and isn't and they then work outward from this definition to define those who they are trying to exclude.

I want to sleep so I'll close this with a brief and limited commentary on gender/sex variation. As I have said before I'm no expert on such subjects, but again studying biology edged me towards a little understanding (or at least acknowledgement of the limits of my understanding). When taking a genetics class, sex and gender expression in animals came up and it blew my mind to consider how much everything in our bodies and systems ends up along a sliding scale. Even amongst organisms in which most individuals fall clearly into one sex or gender or the other, there are those who vary in each of the multiple ways which sex and gender are expressed. In my class we talked at length about chickens and how some chickens who were biologically roosters, testicles and all, none the less express hen behavior and/or plumage and vice versa. There are many more examples, but I'm tired and don't feel like being more exhaustive right now. So I'll leave it at the point being that while organizing the world according to our most frequently encountered types may be a useful starting point, we have to be able to recognize the limitations of our experience and understanding and acknowledge when met with these blessed and troubling outliers that it might be our organization of the world which is incomplete rather than assigning them straight away into dangerous enemies to be kept at arms length. This is where liberals have to differ from conservative assholes, in our willingness to adapt by always striving for further understanding rather than bunkering down and trying to just blow away anyone who is different or vunerable in an attempt to preserve their precious world order.

Who could it be?

I shouldn't have allowed myself to follow links emailed to me by a partner-in-crime who watches Project Runway with me, but I did and soon found myself clicking along until I was sucked into speculation about who gets dismissed this week for cheating or breach of contract or killing a kitten or something.

Everyone seems to pretty much agree it is Keith. All the other speculation seems strained at best, still somehow I have this feeling it isn't him. Don't know why, maybe just knowing that the producers on this show love setting someone up and then making inexplicable decisions just for effect I naturally assume it won't be the person who it appears most likely to be. Still, it stands to reason that the someone who played fast and loose with the terms "self-taught" and "34" on his application might assume he can get away with other shit as the show bops along and the judges can't stay gullible forever.

Still, I kind of hope Keith survives, though I don't know who I would want to kick off in his place.

I cringe at the stupidity...

Anyone who has ever read ann alhouse will not be suprised to find that it is on her website that I found the most cringeworthy idiocy I have seen in a long time. Not just selfishness, but real abject stupidity. So this is what they are talking about when they tell us that America's schools are failing? I spent a while a couple of weeks ago arguing with Aunt G (and by proxy Aunt S) about our educational competitiveness vs China's after Nicolas Kristof wrote his blushing op-ed about how rosy China's education system is. I'm not going to change my view that of all the things about China that I find troubling, the idea that the are superior educationally doesn't even begin to register, but I will perhaps now bow to the idea that the US seems to be producing numerous and voiciferous imbiciles by the truckload (not that I didn't already know it, but come on, sometimes you have to pretend for a while like they aren't all that delusional and ignorant).

Why am I so horrified? Ann gets all stupid herself indignantly sniping at this quote from T.C. Boyles"Do you really think anything is ever going to get better as long as there are 6.2 billion people?" Her attempt at snark is annoying enough, but her commenters are what really make you weep for our future:

"I haven't read Boyle, but that quote seems a tad simplistic. What resources are Hezbollah and Hamas fighting for? (I know, land, but it's really about religion, isn't it?) What about the Islamists in Somalia, what resources are they fighting for? And al-Qaeda? Do they really want our resources, or do they just want to see the West defeated for the sake of defeating the West? Seems like it's more about ideologies than resources."

More about ideologies that resources? WTF!?!?!? Do people get taught history anymore? It is just all these happy comfortable people living over there who just like totally hate each other because like they were taught that and aren't nice, you know? "For the sake of defeating the West," sounds like exactly the kind of thing people sign up for to sacrifice their life for and it couldn't have anything to do with the way the west has interacted with other parts of the world or colonialism or the living conditions under the regimes we have supported or anything like that. Between the racists pricks like this and the sci-fi(more fi than sci) polly annas who think our population can just grow unrestricted because we can go live on astroids and in space stations, it is kind of depressing. I hold dear to my heart the belief that her site doesn't represent anything close to an accurate cross-section of our populace, but after the last couple of elections, I have to acknowledge that these people are out there and in large and loud enough numbers to sometimes dominate the discourse.

As ANTM Danielle might say, "I think I just threw up a little in my mouth."

It's not easy being green.

In the past I've shied away from talking too much about my actual real life in this blog except in broad generalities, and I'll probably still be somewhat circumspect, but as more and more people who I actually know read it and tell me they are hoping for commentary on this or that, I find myself more inclined to be slightly more autobiographical. You may have noticed in the past that one of my more annoying quirks is sometimes contorting to avoid actually mentioning anyone I personally know by name (Mason being the notable exception) or to simply abbreviate their name as the first letter of their name. I've tired of this and am slowing moving towards actually referring to people by their name or handy nickname if they are so fortunate to have one, so if you find yourself mentioned as I write, feel free to contact me and tell me you don't want your name on here and you too can quickly be abbreviated back into anonymity.

If you know me personally and in real life away from this blog, then you probably know about the color parties, but I'll assume that not all of you do so bear with my short explanation. When I was in college in Charleston, my friends Eden and Noodle started throwing color parties: they deck out their house in said color, we all dress up and come have a fun time. Their parties were great and turned into competitive color challenges for those of us who took them seriously, leading to me responding to Leslie and Janan's green feather-duster feather covered shirt and lettuce (yes, real lettuce) skirt challenge by showing up to the silver party wrapped in a makeshift silver cape which gave way to reveal a loin-cloth covered in broken mirror pieces and wore a cast aluminum mohawk (yes, real aluminum). Our fate was sealed and the arms race continued until I left town and Eden and Noodle tired of the color party extravaganzas (though not before they did site specific pattern parties like polka dot put-put golf).

Once in New York, our ever growing group of former Chucktown kids decided we missed the color partying and that three of us were living under the same roof and had the space for occasional soirees, so (with Eden and Noodle's blessings, of course) we decided to dive in. The SC color parties had grown out of E&N loving the orange parties that friends of theirs had thrown in Portland, OR, and so had started with orange when they did their series, so we decided to honor the pedigree and start with orange the same. This was also made easier by the fact that several of our walls are orange and we had at the time a couple of orange chairs. Not being ones to slack off, we have in the course of the last year had orange, blue, pink, brown, white, and green parties.


Six blowouts in the course of a year (not counting the building-wide 4th of july party, our Thanksgiving get-together, our Christmas tree trimming party, and innumerable cookouts) can leave one fairly exhausted, but I still like throwing the shindigs and find myself always looking around for potential props for the next party. Already we are planning Red (no date set) and if I have my way, the music for the party will be nothing but Hawaiian music and jock jams.

I'm writing about all this (and probably boring the hell out of everyone who has heard me explain all this crap a thousand times before) because more than a couple of folks have asked me to write a little bit of a round-up about the most recent: the Green Party. I don't think I'm capable of doing a full run down, so I'll impart a few thoughts on the party and gripe about bad party etiquette and things that make me annoyed.

I'm pretty imperious about my get-togethers and have been pretty demanding that people dress in said color or go the hell somewhere else. And I mean it. Partially because if I (and my roommates) am(are) going to spend two weeks turning my apartment in to a full color environment, weaving a network of green dreamcatchers over my entire ceiling out of green clothesline string with real branches and faux seaweed hanging from it and cover my walls with astroturf and wrapping paper and blow up God-knows-how-many ballons then you can do better than blue jeans and a green t-shirt. But I don't really have that much against folks who are chickenshit about dressing up or are attending their first color party and are shy in their thematic pigmentation except for two things:

1)This is New York and their are always more people who will come to a party if there is any remote fun to be had and there is a limit on how many people an apartment can hold, no matter how big your loft is and the easiest way to draw a line with a theme party is to tell the folks who aren't going to get into the theme that it is pointless for them to be there and to go away.

2)people at theme parties who don't dress for it and invest in whatever silly idea you are working to immerse people in are the ones who are rude, make fun of people's costumes, drink all the booze but don't bring any and then complain, etc. Basically, those folks that know what the theme is and don't get into it are not fun to have at your party. As Christian told one obnoxious un-green girl who asked him where the beer was after people had resorted to hiding it from the non-green types, "It is at the corner store. You should go buy some."

Anyway, most people really go all out and the white party had almost completely everyone in all white and some insane costumes and for green we had some serious outfits that folks went all out for. Colin made a giant four-leaf clover outfit that kind of blew me away and then there was the dress made out of green tea bags and another made out of all green velcro and a fellow clad in Green Giant labels. Machine and the Dazzle contingent as always pleased and the mesh-fronted, assless, fuzzy caterpillar costume sported by Pretty Boy was certainly the most gawked at and show-stopping get-up of the evening. I unfortunately missed it when he did the caterpillar in said costume in the hallway.

The Ralph Nader Love Pit was done mostly as a joke but didn't go unused but I wasn't the among the tree-hugging folks down there so I'll leave it at that.

I was happy to hear that people have begun getting together and having pre-color party get-dressed parties, which we used to have in Charleston and are almost as fun as the main party itself.

All in all it was a fine night and one which I am getting bored of recounting. I got a long over-due review of Oh Death which I've promising a few folks so I'll save my limited bloggy attention up to hopefully attempt that tomorrow.

rollercoastering...

I'll not write much, because sitting at a computer for longer doesn't strike me as terribly appealing right now, but felt like I should perhaps squirrel through some of the dreck in my head while I have a few moments.

The last week has been a fairly ridiculous topsy-turvy experience, which I am going to laugh at one day and am walking away from feeling lucky to have such supportive and caring people around me. And this is being said with my ever-stalwart partner in crime, Mason, in another country playing at the Primavera Music Festival and touring about Spain/Portugal (he has been allowed to remain blissfully unaware of all the goings on, unless of course he chooses to read this while he should be cavorting with Spanish hotties and living a rock and roll lifestyle; it is all fine, I'll tell you all about it when you get home). It illuminated how closely nit my surrounding community is here in what is often unfairly portrayed as the impersonal big city. It is still interesting to watch how different folks respond to the emotionally jarring yank we have been on, alternately wondering where one of ours had been ushered off to, then whether or not he was alive, then how to get our hands on him so we could kill him (he is alive and getting help now, thank you for asking).

I'll get back in the swing of things and write about things promised in the past, movie reviews (X-III: would be fun if it wasn't so damn stupid and infuriating), about my glass fish spawning, and of course I'll reprise my role as pissed-off and over-it homo bitching about the idiocy of the revival of the gay bash amendment to drum up the bigot vote. Something for everyone, just let me get through this week as counselor, auctioneer, and real estate agent (speaking of which, know anyone -stable, sane and economically solvent- who is looking for a room in Brooklyn? Email me before I kick off a new craigslist pagent).

Burpee fails Heronswood

If you aren't a gardening junkie, the name "Heronswood" probably means nothing to you, but this Northwestern nursery is legendary and has probably done more to bring new species into popular cultivation than any other. The founders, Daniel J. Hinkley and Robert Jones started the nursury about twenty years ago and would travel the world collecting exotic plants to bring back and try out for gardening in the Northwest. The varieties they collected are amazing and their catalog was both beautiful and interesting, with their amusing descriptions of the different plants.

And now all that is shot to hell.

Thanks a lot, burpee. True, the burpee folks are being better than they could have been, but what did they do in this short time that took a successful company which they wanted to buy to turn it into a money drain? Don't suddenly say that it just won't make money. It did and now it is being uprooted and pulled apart. Just please, please let someone who can really take care of it buy those grounds and prevent further harm (Martha Stewart?).

I get annoyed with big companies that take over smaller successes and then take a successful formula and kill it by inflating it and then suddenly saying it couldn't work. No, it could have worked, it used to work, you just did it wrong and rather than try to adapt it, the movable stock is just swallowed into the larger company and the rest sort of cast off.

Whatever, I find this really depressing. Heronswood was this sort of mythical paradise kind of business. Its whole concept always appealed to me on so many levels and struck me as beautiful and inspirational that something like it could still exist in this crazy modern corporate world. Well, I guess it couldn't, but it was nice to believe in while it did. Thanks so much, Burpee. This is more than a business failure. I need to quit thinking about this.

Shut yo' mouth and say it ain't so!

So I'll try to lay off on the tv commentary for a little while, having watched an amazing final episode of America's Next Top Model last night. (spoiler alert for those of you in say, China, who download the show and watch it later).

Anyway, I'm not hating Tyra anymore, and though the producer influence and over editing for dramatic effect gets annoying, this one episode was finally cathartic and made up for all the hell that the other episodes were to watch. They crammed everything that we've been wanting to see all along: Jade getting ditched and Danielle winning. All is at peace with the world today.

A couple of final notes on these girls before we let them fade from our memory (which doesn't truely happen; I'll still get a text message from a friend if they see one of the girls from the second season walking down the street):

I may have hated Jade all along (it's easy to do, she's THAT girl), but last night my heart went out to her just a little bit. Why? The girl can't read. She couldn't learn her lines, she couldn't read the cue cards. She can't read. And all of a sudden, it all made sense. She was that kid from the very special episode of any given 80's sitcom who was new at the school and instantly popular because he acted over confident and cool and he teased and manipulated the dorky shy kid into writing his bookreport for him. And you hate him the whole show because he's taking advantage of this likable guy, until you learn that, you guessed it, he can't read and has always gotten by on his social skills and hidden this deep shame from everyone. Either he's undiagnosed dyslexic or a military kid who moved around so much he never really learned to read and then got good at faking it until it was too late to learn without being embarassed. So invariably the nice kid helps him learn to read, starting with _The little engine that could_.

anyways, point being, Jade can't read and her overcompensating attitude suddenly makes sense. Somebody get that girl in an adult education class and help her out. I hated her on the show, but I ain't no straight up hater. I wish her well.

And I've decided that perhaps the best reason for liking her is finally figuring out who she has really been all along: Lady Elaine Fairchild!

Which, of course, makes Joanie Ana Platypus and Danielle Henrietta Pussycat.

tiara girls vs. my super sweet sixteen: which one is the worst thing in the history of television?

I've been writing perhaps too much about tv, particularly since I sit in front of a tv all of once a week (not counting watching cartoon network at Rbar on tuesday nights; speaking of, who was the asshole who put saved by the bell in their adult swim line up? Love adult swim, hate saved by the bell. It isn't even a fucking cartoon!!! So what that it came on on saturday mornings? If you want a live-actor saturday morning show to feed us at midnight, go with Peewee's Playhouse.). But what the hell...

Anyway, I'm not currently hating Tyra as much. Still love the show, but can somebody tell her that being overly sincere comes across as fake and contrived. Still, I'm not going to hate on her talking about the tsunami damage that wracked Phuket. I'm always a fan of bearing witness, even when it comes across as a little made-for-tv. Who doesn't like a "very special" episode?

Danielle and Joanie are still rocking my world, jade is still annoying beyond belief. Joanie has been losing it and getting nervous and retarded just a little bit, but still like the girl.

Wait, I do want to bitch for a minute about Tyra. Danielle has rocked this whole competition. She checked out of a hospital early to go model on top of an elephant shortly after having her uterus smashed flat while upside down in a fishnet and still hasn't managed to take a bad photo. So what criticism do they come up with week after week? She can't talk well enough. Girl has a country southern accent and it is one of the things which makes her so likable. So it is great to offer the advice that being able to better turn off her accent might make her more marketable, but where the hell is she supposed to get a speech coach while in the competition? And honestly, if she didn't lose her accent and won, I would watch next season just to see her on those obnoxious CoverGirl commercials. She may have an accent, but she can speak better than Naima or Nicole. Or Eva for that matter. Naima was just annoying and ain't pretty to look at and watching Nicole is like watching a bad ventriloquism act. Danielle at least has a believable range of facial expressions other than big dumb fake smile and the fake wow look that those girls seem to be working with.

But perhaps I am not hating Tyra so much because for however self-important and annoying she can be, you can at least believe somewhere deep down that her heart is in the right place and the show isn't only a vanity project and I've had the unfortunate luck to contrast this with the horror that is _my super sweet sixteen_ and _tiara girls_. Thankfully last night, when Charlene stole the remote and turned it to sss, it was a rerun. I wasn't about to sit through another episode, but the danger having passed, I stuck around for the Chapelle Show (excellent) and South Park (also excellent). Were I a nicer person, I would just write about how much I love both of them and leave sss and tg along, but whatev'.

So anyway, those came and went, and to my horror our lovely host uttered the most dreaded words in the english language,"Hey, change the channel; there is a new episode of tiara girls at 10!" I begged and pleaded, but to no avail, so I made my exit to go drink with Matt at Rbar, but not before ingesting some of this crap. These shows are basically just documentation of spoiling or abusing children. Last night, the girl wasn't super great herself, but as I've said before, no matter how much I can hate a child, I can always hate their parents more. And boy could you hate these parents. Really, next to them, the girl was almost charming and nice (and she wasn't either). Both parents. The mom was an atrocious bitch who shoveled her insecurities on her daughter and attacked her daughter's appearance to build herself up. The dad wasn't much better. Total closet fag (feel free to stay there if that's how you treat your daughter) married to this ex-beauty queen and treating his daughter like some failure for not looking like a bean pole.

Note to parents everywhere: if your lazy ass went out and bought a pepperoni pizza to feed your family for dinner, don't look across that pile of grease you chose to feed your offspring with and belittle them for not being skinny enough. The kids generally don't go out and buy the groceries. Feeding your kids pizza and donuts then attacking them for their weight has to count as child abuse and I don't mean that rhetorically. Sombody call child services.

Anyway, i can't say a whole lot more about what happened on the show. After watching the reluctant girl get collagen injections at her monste...I mean mother's behest, I jetted. Having had my faith in humanity smashed flat as Danielle's uterus and knowing there was beer waiting for me a couple of blocks away, I said my good-byes and a little prayer that the show's creator would trip and be impaled on a tiara.

Kung Fu Monkey is my new best friend forever...

Taking a brief swing through Kung Fu Monkey's neighborhood, I looked at this post,
"For my Untergeek friends ...", and the quality of my life sailed through the ceiling. For a happy-go-lucky kid who spends much of his life chained to a computer, mindlessly pecking away and trying to make sense out of gibberish which may or may not be in English and as likely as not is in indeciferable chicken-scratch on rotten old paper, having a new wellspring of good music to guide me through my day and make my life better is the best gift imaginable.

This box of Pandora was meant to be opened. You give them a song or artist you like and they give you music that is similar. When I got from Magnetic Fields to the Pogues "tuesday morning," I knew I was in love. I feel better about the world than I did 15 minutes ago.

Back to work with a smile on my face...

"We're the decider."

just noticed over at Eschaton, Atrios has a post titled "We're the Decider." Now, I haven't read the whole post, don't have time at the moment, but the title caught my rapidly skimming eye.

Such a simple phrase and turn about of the preznit's idiot words could be an effective and fun ralling cry as we approach the coming election. Also, using it in the context of a congressional election would serve as a gentle reminder that no matter how the repubs try to distance themselves from the imperial monkey in charge, they have been his do-boys for the last few years with out the least little yelp. Just filing this away to remember as our turn as deciders comes closer.

laying low in a tropical hideout

Uh, holy shit is all I can say. I'm listening to Islands new cd, _Return to the Sea_. I liked the Unicorns and was sad to hear they weren't unicorning anymore, but damn if you are going to ditch a good band to work on a new band, this is how to do it.

Went with Mason and K to see them perform a couple of weeks ago and the show was out of control amazing. Really, really that whole other level of performance that you won't ever forget.

Today I've been listening to them on my headphones and over and over I keep feeling wowed by them. The way they build an atmosphere and take you all over the place with these crazy sounds.
If you have never heard them beforego to their myspace page and listen to their music. And if they are coming to your town anytime soon, get a friggin' ticket. Sell you body if you have to, but get that ticket. Islands, you can't come back to New York soon enough.

No matter how much I can hate a child...

...I can always hate their parents more.

This was an epiphany that came to me as this horrid group of families got on the subway one afternoon and these spoiled little shits kept whining incessantly and basically acting horrible. I found myself giving this child my meanest angry-school-marm look and wishing just for a second to catch one of the little brats' eyes so that the venomous glance would not be wasted on the back of his head. Then I remembered that he wasn't riding alone, not acting a fool in front of a bunch of strangers with no one there who knew him or could appropriately discipline him; he was with his parents. His lazy, obnoxious parents who were shaping this awful child to be an awful adult.

Now I take no crap off of kids and have no illusions about their naturally sweet angelic little souls. They are often wretched little beasts and are all chemically imbalanced ignoramouses who need boundaries and encouragement from adults in their life. But by and large, I like kids. I've spent a significant portion of my adult life working with kids and enjoy much of it, but man there are some awful parents out there and please don't get me started on the education department or foster care programs or juvenile detention stuff.

Anyway, I thought of this again when Coach Carter inexplicably picked up the bad habit of changing the channel after America's Next Top Model to MTV to watch Super Sweet Sixteen (sss). sss is horrible to watch and whoever created it should be ashamed of their life. If you haven't seen it, the concept is that you take nouveau rich trailer (not necessarily white) trash and film them throwing a sweet [sic] sixteen party for their wretched offspring so we can watch their spoiled kid act like an asshole on tv and all their friends act like desperate retards while all the adults run around with their heads up their asses.

This isn't some Southern coming-out ball, where a young lady is presented to society. Instead we get a few parents with money and no manners or class standing around in a sea of children who mistakenly think cleavage = maturity. It is a celebration of excess, pointless excess, trashy excess. It isn't that someone couldn't throw their daughter a sweet sixteen party that was the event fo the season and it could even be good television, but this show basically is just a prolonged episode of the jerry springer show, just without any life lesson at the end. How not to dress, how not to act, how not to treat others.

But again, through it all, I found myself being reminded that no matter how much you can hate the children (and believe me, you can), you can always hate the parents more. Anyparent who gives in to their children's whims and whining like that needs to be reminded and know that when they are dealing with those tantrums and fits and pulling their hair out: you made this little monster; you have the child you deserve.

Almost as bad, after it comes Tiara girls. Having begged for the channel to be changed through sss, I stayed for maybe ten minutes of tg and went in search of a drink. If I wanted to listen to evil, self-absorbed Southern women backstab each other and talk smack with their trailer-park sqwawks, I would have stayed in AL. There were plenty of that kind of beast down there and I avoid them like the plague. One thing that I did walk away from the shows feeling absolutely certain of was that going to a bar and drinking was a far healthier and more productive activity than watching either show. For a moment, the nagging voice in the back of my head that constantly reminds of future plans and possiblities and questions the productivity and usefulness of my every action shut up for the evening. Having seen what some other people do with their lives, what other people work to put on televisions, I could go sit and enjoy a beer, satisfied in my certitude that no matter what I do, what crimes I may commit in the future or have in the past, I'm never going to do that. I don't relish others falling short or the pain which some folks find themselves living in, but for a brief moment I let myself relax and be happy I was not like that, that my parents hadn't been like that, that if I ever have children they won't be like that.

back to imposing consequences...

Juan Cole has a lovely smackdown of christopher hitchens. I like a good smacking of smarmy asshole so the post is fun just in watching hitchens being spanked and sent to stand in the corner, but it also leaps into a declaration of how we ain't gonna go to war with Iran.

I agree, but how's we ain't gonna do it? The assertion that we'll have to have a draft to do it seems reasonable enough, but were reasonable assumptions enough to keep up from making military mistakes, we never would have gone into Iraq. There is much to be said for the tactic of provoke or fabricate a threat and then force the hand after you have already started the conflict. It works amazingly well with excitable siblings and it seems to amount to much of bush's foreign policy. You poke and poke and poke and threaten until you can get a reaction, then use that as an excuse to fight back (or with Iraq, having failed to get the necessary reaction, 'retaliate' anyway and pretend that it was self-defense all along, batting your doey eyes at your maleable parents/constiuents, harvesting their initial sympathy and later coaxing them to contort logic to defend their original endorsement). Having folks currently less enamoured with the idea of going and beating some new brown folks up ("what's wrong with the ones we're already knocking around?") is no guarantee that the pres and his won't squeeze out just enough support or leeway to do something which makes the conflict inevitable and not on our terms.

So you ask,"What can I do? What leverage do I have with the folks making decisions?" If you are an average person like me, only so much, but you can wield what little you do have like a petulant tyrant if you want, and in cases like this, I certainly do.

Now one can complain about Iran all they want and have most of the complaints be perfectly legitimate. Their government... not so pretty, but they aren't launching any strikes on American soil anytime soon. They currently aren't a direct threat and they won't be unless we send folks over there for them to kill and give them new reasons to be vindictive with the oil supply. This being said, there aren't good reasons for invading Iran that aren't also true of a dozen other coutries around the world (if one more person points out to me that they've been hanging gay people for being gay, i'm going to scream. What? They kill gay people just like republican leaders say they wish they could and I am supposed to find them a particularly new and dispicable threat? Honey, down in my beloved AL they set your faggot ass on fire.). The point being that taking the position that we shouldn't invade Iran can be made with strength and fortitude which one might not have on other subjects. Again, not because Iran is rosy and I necessarily believe that there aren't humanitarian reasons for military intervention in some situations, but we know 1)this administration can't do anything competently 2)invading Iran would only make us less secure 3)we don't have the resources to spare on such an undertaking right now.

So again I must what little influence I wield and say with absolute certainty, that I will argue with and call whomever an idiot who calls for an invasion in Iran up and to the inexplicable point that such a military interaction occurs. After that, anyone who supported it on the front end ceases to be a person I will speak to. Period. Such is the threat for aquaintances, which isn't much of a threat since I don't generally surround myself with small-dick hawkish assholes. But for public officials, I expand my scorn and ANY public official who promotes invading Iran will not get my vote in whatever election is next. I will aggressively campaign against them and promote their opponent. I don't care if they are democrat or what the hell, and I normally shy away from litmus voting but being sick of useless wars and such and dumb folks following and enabling the folly of morons, I think this is one I am fine being rigid about. So yeah, they are still in the fishing and groundwork building stage of demonizing Iran and making them scary and aren't at the overt attack stage yet, but we've seen this song and dance before and anyone who wants to dance along can say goodbye to my political support from now until eternity.

My consequences are limited to one person and my readership is small, so I have no delusions of granduer as a political mover and shaker, but I can do what I can do and I will.