Thursday, July 29, 2004

slooooow at the office.

the summer is almost over - just one more real month left and i didn't have as much fun this summer as past summers. the lack of fun in my life is starting to worry me. it's like i've turned into the most boring woman on earth.

this is my typical day:
6 am - alarm goes off
6.30 am - alarm goes off again; get up and dress for the gym
7-8 am - dress for work; watch the news, listen to npr; take a vitamin
8.45 am - at office...drink fruit smoothie, drink coffee, check email, read papers
9-5.30 pm - work (yawn)
6-10ish - meet A-- at local bar, toss back a few; catch cable; read; smoke; wonder why i'm not partying my ass off

(on weekends, i skip right to local bar, tossing the few and then add a few movies and shopping)

i'm turning into a girly hermit and i don't like it.
i've finished doing Madame's expenses for june and july.
and now i'm going to eat thai food in our lounge.
there are only two of us here today.

looks like i have time for The Worst Romance Novel Ever...

Wednesday, July 28, 2004

and another thing...

the desire to acquire barak obama as their ideological son also shows how incredibly ignorant conservatives are of african american intellectual history.

there isn't one thing obama said last night that wasn't said first by W.E.B. DuBois (or Ida B. Wells, Langston Hughes, or even Henry Louis Gates, Jr.).

obama

last night barak obama (illinois st. senator running for senate) gave the keynote at the dnc convention. i watched it at home with A-- on msnbc (my roommate loves chris matthews; i don't know why).

it was wonderful - that is, until the pundits got to it. their main complaint: that he gave a speech full of conservative ideas. that self-reliance, responsibility, a good work ethic, faith and hope are all conservative ideals.

i think republicans are out of step with democrats. the old picture they've painted of democrats is far more suitable for the 60s or 70s than now. in particular, i look at my peers and we've never quite fit with this old picture of 60s liberalism. we appreciate the theater of it (as theater), but the real power is in policy and who it affects. while we may be supportive of those conservative targets (affirmative action, welfare, multi-culturalism) we recognize the nuances and limitations of these ideas and practices.

for instance, wouldn't affirmative action achieve its goals better if it focused on class, rather than ethnicity? isn't educational access really about who can afford it? and if my african american community is afraid to release our grip on affirmative action because we're afraid of losing that privilege, i think we need to look beyond our skin color and realize that so many of our issues are at the intersection of race and class. we need to realize that our interests lie in the empowerment of our urban poor, our rural poor, our working brothers and sisters whatever their color.

the conservative insistence that only conservatives can talk about faith, equality, responsibility and hope exposes the conservative's inability to take on complexity, which is itself an inherent conservative characteristic. they are talented at narrowing a discourse to a few signifiers, but complicate them, add color to those floating signs, and they get lost in the tall grass. suddenly, their discourse becomes petulant - 'we said that first!'

actually, they haven't. progressives have always expressed deep faith - but they've also realized that government is not in the business of imposing it on the majority. progressives have always espoused self-reliance - but they've also realized that government is also responsible for the basic needs of its citizenry. progressives have always believed in responsibility - but they've also thought that responsibility belongs to everyone, especially those in power. progressives have always fought for equality - but equality in the interest of those on the margin, not those already enjoying the fruits of privilege.

obama's performance was thrilling, moving and strategic in laying out how this party is the embodiment of traditional american values. best of all it put conservatives on the defensive, forcing an attempt to co-opt our language (and even our candidate)in order to blur the real differences between democrats and republicans.

Tuesday, July 27, 2004

these are the new comics in my life:

The Losers
The Establishment

i've become disillusioned with my x-men, who all need to take a welbutrin and a vacation - or get laid. and while the green arrow makes me laugh, he only comes out every couple of months...it's too slow for my greedy little hands!! as for bendis' powers...well, i can't find #30 (the one where deena quits) and the new #1 (where powers are outlawed). i am despondent and tired of calling all the comic book shops in town like a junky, and all the comic book guys think i'm someone's mother.

grr.

the other day, A-- was looking for a place for us to put all our comic books; we decided to just keep them on the bookshelf, hidden away, for to display them in our princess turret would be to expose our total dorkiness.

it would be one short step to sealing them in plastic covers and developing an opaque filing system for their order.

shooting the b-b gun

after four years arguing with my dad about politics, it seems i can claim victory.

or, rather, bill clinton can. his speech, his tan and his suit absolutely wowed and seduced my dad.

hee. i win.
...

to M--. i'm sorry i've been so boring lately. i'll try and write more about exciting things happening to me...but it seems nothing exciting happens to me anymore.

i have to live vicariously through others now.

Monday, July 26, 2004

Claims vs. Facts Database - Center for American Progress

stumped for facts when debating a conservative?
here's where you can go.

poker, redux

some things we learned:

next time we're only inviting one guy. too many guys and suddenly they force you to use REAL money! um, $5 is too much for a card game with a bunch of women. we have other uses for our money: cigs, a cup of coffee, a candy bar, anything other than watching someone take it because of a flip of a card.

all we wanted was a nice girly game of poker learning. instead we got a baptism by fire lesson in How to Lose Your Hard-Earned New Economy Cash in 10 Minutes. bummer. what's the fun in that??

the fun appeared at the last round of Texas Hold 'Em. after a whole night of conservative play, H-- (a supermodel-tall redhead) pronounced 'Red nines are wild, 4's are 8's (if you so choose) and straights can pass the ace and go to 2.' the men tried to mount a complaint but if you say that dealer picks the game, then dealer picks the game.

every guy lost their pants that round (they forgot that 4s were 8s) and G-- cleaned up nicely for the evening, stuffing $26 in her pocket. heh.

poo and spelling

The New York Times > International > Sri Lanka Pushing Stationary Made of Dung

a few things:
1. spelling is important (stationary vs. stationery); the lede paragraph got it right, why couldn't the headline?
2. who knew? pres bush uses poo paper.
3. who knew, #2? you can make paper out of poo.

Thursday, July 22, 2004

it's not the heat...

my sister and her husband are in escrow on a house on the westside of l.a. i'm so excited for them; they will live a teeny walk away from the only dive bar in l.a. where you can smoke illegally. i know where i'm staying for thanksgiving.

we talked on the phone a couple of nights ago and she gushed about a vintage wedgewood stove that's included (for $1) in the asking price. my sister is the only woman i know who can ramble breathlessly about a cooking appliance.

(it is cute, however - very lucy ricardo.)
...
it's the heat AND humidity. ugh. humidity at 90% and it's 80 deg. yuck yuck yuck.

madame is back in the office having beat back the tears of grief and i have temporarily shelved the Worst Romance Novel (at least until she's caught up and i can sneak back to it again). besides, i seem to be stuck at why my heroine is being such a bitch. i think my inner life is seeping through. not that i'm feeling partici--whoops. hafta run.
pinoy correction:

The Spanish actually learned how to wave fans from pinoys, who learned it from the Chinese of course. We also gave them the parasol and the cockfight, among other things. I learned this in the museum at the Cortez Palace in Cuernavaca. The Mexicans have no reason to lie.

uh, thanks JP.

Wednesday, July 21, 2004

flashback

The Believer - In the Penthouse of the Ivory Tower

this is dedicated to those who fled the paranoid, clammy and infantilizing air of graduate lit programs everywhere.

an ode to the MLA.

homeless? go online.

U.S. Department of Labor -- Find It! By Audience -- Homeless & Homeless Providers

so...if you're homeless and need help, you can find help online.

i see.

Tuesday, July 20, 2004

leave the pinoys alone!

Saying 'Yes' To Terror

considering my ancestral brethren have been the colonial punching bag for the americans in the pacific for a hundred years (and let's not forget the previous 300 learning how to be spanish and wave a fan), i think my fellow filipinos have earned the right to do what they want with their teeny tiny military force...

(and don't you just love it when the west uses the word 'emasculated' to describe asian foreign policy?)
The New Yorker: Shouts and Murmurs

heh.

i have no life

sunday night i baked a cake.  my roommate A-- was out of town and i was so bored i had to bake something.  so i baked and frosted a cake.  but that's not the point of this story.
 
later that night i watched the sci-fi channel documentary about m. night shamalama...you know.  and it totally scared the crap out of me.  i had to turn on every light in the apartment.
 
they rebroadcast it last night and i taped it.  so very lame.
...
yesterday i put in a solid 7 hours of writing (another slow week at work, it seems) and the Worst Romance Novel Ever is rolling along steadily.
 

Friday, July 16, 2004

yay!

just had word that a poem of mine has been accepted into an anthology!  some pretty good university presses and independent presses are interested!
 
yay!

hair of the dog

it seemed tame enough:  treat a coworker to cocktails and celebrate her new career and acceptance into a fantastic grad program.  civilized, orderly, work-oriented.
 
then, 5 hours later and god knows how many glasses of jameson's, it turns into a karaoke free-for-all up north.  i'm singing bette midler's 'the rose' at the front of a dive bar and military guys on leave with their girlfriends and our guy receptionist is vowing to give his right nut to save country music.
 
1 a.m. - passed out on the couch.

Thursday, July 15, 2004

i have another blog called churchgal; it's where i put all the strange churchy stuff rolling around in my head.  lately, it houses my anti-christian right rants.  growing up in a fundamentalist house gives me a special weirded out insight into the mind of a fundie.
 
good people, most of them, just not the most complex.
 
i've been maintaining it for a little while, about 6 months, and just received my first comment.  it was typical:  a guy who threw loads of scripture at me as if that proved his point.
 
on the other hand, it was sort of exciting.

euww and outrage

there have been blogland rumors of this for a while; it's been reported in the european press (der spiegel) and the irc and unicef have released reports about children imprisoned in iraq without contact with family.

there was even a hint of this when the photos at abu ghraib first emerged and senators spoke of unmentionable crimes. well, now we know what these unmentionable crimes were.

there's nothing in our corporate press (other than hersh's reporting) to follow up on this story.

our silence is our shame.

Wednesday, July 14, 2004

A-- will be basking in the fruits of napa valley this weekend at a wedding while i languish here. oh, i suppose there are things to do (buy a level, clean out my closets, wash laundry) but they're all so...boring. oh, but there's my really bad romance novel. it's been a week and the writing goes apace. it's awful, truly awful (who knew plotting could be so difficult?), but the goal is to finish. i'll worry about quality later.

i've demanded the Librarian call me more often; he agreed he's been neglectful. (have not dropped the hammer because i decided...well, i decided not to.) we've both circled labor day weekend as a target for a visit, thus leaving me time to visit family in los angeles.

boss's father still dead; awaiting further instructions. office is horribly quiet and subdued. am carrying huge office secret and i can't say anything and the weight is killing me. i've told A-- because the pressure became too much.

birthday party for A-- upcoming in august. still have no clue how to celebrate it.

fighting huge urge to pull out the book in my purse and read it at my desk.

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

downer

my boss's father died this morning.
i'm all out of sorts. it's too close to the anniversary of my mom's death. the office is subdued and i'm just all weepy. crazy.

Monday, July 12, 2004

heat

at last, summer is here.

in chez ding, our dsl still hasn't gone on (thanks sbc, you suckholes) so A-- and i have been living in digital ignorance. i came to the office early, after working out for the first time in a month, to catch up on the news. ugh - mistake. kerry has a lead, bush's friends are busy rewriting history and guarding his flank (how convenient that the pertinent records of his national guard record were destroyed - mysteriously), and now the repubs want to explore the possibility of postponing elections - in case anything happens, of course.

if i was reading this in a novel, i'd be feeling something called 'foreboding' just about now.

there is a man who wears a sandwich board on michigan avenue. he thinks al gore is a british robot sent here to invade and signal the re-assimilation of the united states into britain. actually, i think his message has changed since shrub took office. i feel like joining him sometimes - i want to wear a sandwich board and tell strangers how bush has screwed this country.

my outrage has been at such a constant high, i feel like my brain is boiling.

Thursday, July 08, 2004

have just ordered pizza for the office and have spent the past three hours reading the newspaper. so depressing - even the edwards coverage isn't making me gleeful anymore. i think the light summer, the slow work day and the rather monastic lifestyle i've been maintaining these past 4 months have take a toll.

i'm writing a really bad romance novel. like, totally bad. horribly bad. but what else are you supposed to do with 8 hours just floatin' free? write!

all i know about what i'm writing so far is that it's about reality television - and feminism. (what ELSE am i supposed to watch on my new cable? it's sucking me in!)

what could be more romantic than reality tv and feminism?

winnebagos are relaxing

(snort)

if you look at this at work, turn down the volume - the rage is infectious.

Tuesday, July 06, 2004

this is why i don't introduce my family to anyone i date:

talking to my dad yesterday morning i mention the Librarian may visit in august, which could prevent a visit to los angeles.
dad says, "bring him to LA!"
i say, "while you're in new york??"
he says, "no, while i'm there!"

my family home is not large. think cute little bungalow. little. extrememly little.

"uh, that's weird. no way." i say.
then, clearly suffering from mild dementia, dad launches into a fantasy he has of marrying me and the Librarian over breakfast - he calls it the Pancake Wedding. and then we can honeymoon there! at the little house in south central! in my dad's house! euww!

freedom....blah

when did the 4th become such a crap holiday? i remember 4th of july weekends where i'd lay out on a blanket, my mouth smeared with barbecue sauce, my hands a little sticky from all the soda and sugar, my keds dusty from the volleyball game, and i'm on the blanket with my eyes closed, smelling the grill, hearing the water from the pool, the music (ok, christian music) from the cassette player someone brought and waiting for my belly to go down a little before getting up to play volleyball again. oh, the baked beans, the potato salad, the ribs, the chicken, the bread, the hot dogs, the hamburgers, the red kool aid, the fat church ladies, the skinny deacons, the los angeles sun above and the scratchy blanket below.

now? now it's driving an hour to find a hot dog, rained out baseball games (damn those Cubs) and cable tv. the ghetto fireworks were better than the show by the pier, the air conditioning was preferable to the humidity, the bucket of kfc was worth the slight tummy ache later and catching all the movies i wanted to see was luxurious - but the holiday sloth and gluttony was missing. maybe you need to have kids to have what it once was.
...

saw F9/11 yesterday in a packed theater in evanston. it was great. depressing, but great. and awful. yes, totally partisan, but a lot of stuff not covered by mainstream media (the film's biggest target, i think, rather than bush.) like, who knew it took special ops 2 months to get on the ground in afghanistan? i had the impression we were kicking ass from the get-go!

the movie made me cry and gave the woman sitting next to me a nervous breakdown. our news outlets should be ashamed of not showing us what we were/are doing over there. the film of our bombs, the old iraqi woman, the bodies (ours and theirs) burnt and blasted apart - it was only a tiny part of the film but it was almost too much. and our young young young soldiers, who have to cover the sound of what they're doing with music - it's all so sad. the sound of the planes hitting the towers (the screen was black - i couldn't have taken it if i had to see it again) made my skin pickle and my heart beat faster. and that woman, the secretary whose son died over there, bent over in front of the white house sobbing - god. it was awful.

bush is an asshat. if i was only a little bit angry at our administration, now i'm pissed. sad and pissed. our asshat of a president made us do things we never should have done.

also went to a cubs game at wrigley field. they played the sox (who, despite being #1, field balls like they were blind) and i wanted them to lose so badly. alas. the rain, the mud, the lightning, the sox sucky field talents all conspired to deprive me of my victory. i will NEVER go to a weekend cubs game again. i thought i merely disliked cubs fans and the people who live in near wrigley. no. i've decided that my dislike has hardened into an active low-level semi-hatred. no - that's too harsh. it's contempt. men who don't act their age - sitting in seats purchased by their companies, swilling beer, treating ballpark staff like crap - they're privileged, bloated asshats. (that's my new word of the day.)

eesh. i think i'm pms-ing.

Friday, July 02, 2004

my dad, a christian pastor, and i have been involved in a war of words over the past two years because of george w bush. we've exchanged emails on gay rights, the environment and the war. he's always been conservative and patriotic and extremely cynical about politics, which makes him the perfect sounding board for Fox News.

when he returned from a christian men's retreat last weekend, my dad went to see Fahrenheit 9/11. this is what he emailed me (edited for spelling - my dad's not the best speller...):

Good morning D--. I went to see the 10PM showing in a packed house. I enjoyed the film. It made me laugh and cry, especially the poor ladies who wept for their dead. The best parts were when Bush lost his mind in front of people. I would just hope that no one would ever film me in my more horrible hours of being alive. But I know, you want me to address the facts that the film represents; I can't.

After seeing the film, I do not like GWB. As a matter of fact I do not like Moore. The movie is tearing my world apart. It was a sick display of all that is bad in human beings. It will prompt me to not even look at Bush anymore. I am getting out of the political thing altogether. I feel so poorly for the American lady who lost her son. The faces of the young black males broke my heart, I do not want to see them die. My 'son' Timothy is in the Navy stationed with the Marines ready to be shipped out to that death land in August. I want no part of any of this shitty situation. Hey, I thought that I'd send you the so called Christian response to the film. I read this article on "beliefnet.com" and could not believe it. What do we do with the facts that faced us in the film?

Lord Jesus help us, did you remember the scene of the lady from Afghanistan was crying out to God for help? I feel that way right now. Lord help us, we are living in terrible times. I have mixed emotions about the film. It is good for a person like me, who was looking for something to totally get me out of the mix, and then it hinders the good people that believe in what this country ought to stand for, and then on the extreme end, it prompts violence in others; I did hear a few outbursts in the theater last night. [edited - what happened at the men's retreat and how crazy some men are, blah blah blah...]

Love you. . .Daddy


my father still has the ability to stun me.