a few months ago i blogged about the past coming back - old lovers and past objects of desire suddenly announced themselves again, throwing me into a slight disequilibrium. then i felt the past was a fruitless complication that either needed to be ignored or neutralized. and, for the most part, this happened. i ignored one and the other...well, relocating to korea has a way of neutralizing any need for immediate action.

but this past sunday at the bridal shower, ryan the astrologer looked at my chart and noted several events ripping the fabric i've worked really hard (like, with gritted teeth) to smooth out in my life. work: smooth. friends: smooth. lover: long-distance, but smooth. everything has its place and every place has its thing. nice. i fluttered my hand at ryan, positive that these little whatevers were insignificant.

i said to ryan, 'yes, i'm about to have a drink with an ex, but that means nothing. it's one drink; we don't even particularly like each other. and okay, i have a date with an older philosophy professor, but that doesn't mean it's going to go anywhere. he's old! like, really old! and yes, so the librarian may be visiting in august - he's a horrible trip planner, it might not even happen! these are not ominous events - they're coincidences that will simply disappear without much help from me.'

ryan just pursed his lips and moved on to the next chart. i am a firm believer that things are instrinsically simple; they have a way of working out without much input from anyone. they only get complicated when you make them so.

but then, last night on the el platform, the dry cool wind whipping at my dress, the trains clattering past full of Cubs fans, the Ex (el Equis) asking if we could start from scratch after two years, the afternoon's email from the Professor bright in my mind, the possibility of the Librarian visiting never far from my thoughts, everything got very very complicated and muddled.
...
oh, and my roommate seems to have relocated to an undisclosed location, sort of like dick cheney. from her undiscovered hamlet she sends out emails and requests, but her exact whereabouts remain a mystery.

ick

disclaimer: if girly topics make you squeamish, look away. it's a slow day at the office, i'm procrastinating about a conference in seattle, and i'm cramping. get over it.

i will be crabby and achy for 5-7 days. it's like the worst gas ever. like gas. it's not actually gas. and i just want to lean back in my chair, kick out my legs and put a hot water bottle on my belly and swivel back and forth. no midol. just hot water bottle and swiveling. (like being rocked to sleep.)

or, even better, stop holding in my stomach, let it all go and walk around chicago looking pregnant from all the water retention. yeah, waddle around chicago. niice.

hey, JP, my office phone just flashed spanish to me.
is 'explorando' a word?

The Gadflyer: Fly Trap

reaction from all over the place about the NYTime's lame-ass mea culpa. (the NYT reporter whose reporting was rather slipshod, Judith Miller's quote of the day in Salon is priceless. you'll need to get a free day pass.)

and now word the fbi is investigating a conservative think tank, making inquiries into who passed on classified info to chalabi.

those goopers and their willingness to traffic in top secret information...what do we call that? oh, yeah - espionage! ha ha ha!

dKos 8

Daily Kos :: Political Analysis and other daily rants on the state of the nation.

this is the blog that has given me most, if not all, of my ammunition in my political skirmishes with my father, much to his chagrin. the writers for it are all unapologetic democrats, determined to win back the Senate from the GOP--and the White House - so if you like your rhetoric more centrist, well, this probably ain't for you. but check it out anyway. his blogroll is one of the most complete for progressive sites on the web: check out atrios and talkingpointsmemo (my personal faves.)

and i think the fundraising drive is a good effort. yeah, i know, throwing money at the DNC isn't the perfect answer, but do we have time to dicker about theory when the elections are a summer away? i'm sacrificing my netflix for a reason, dammit!

hairy fairy and dork love

last night i sat in the basement room of garrett ripley's with 7 other presbyterian women who read the worst poetry known to man. sure, 'hairy fairy' by wolferama was my contribution, but that was meant to be funny!

a dying 12-yr old boy featured on oprah who writes about dandelions and being an autumn leaf? this ain't art. it took all of A--'s willpower to resist snatching that poem out of that woman's hand and making her eat it.
...
at the end of colonial house, A-- and i watched avidly for don wood, our favorite colonist. 3 months after the project, what was his life? where did he live? did he have a girlfriend? (a plane ticket is, what, $189??) and suddenly, there he was, wearing a parka and camo pants, walking his dog henry. in the background i spied an awning with a partial address - 55th 33--. in anguish i tried to remember what i saw of brooklyn when i was there years ago, but who am i kidding? i saw nothing except so&so's ceiling.

A-- said, the show's been over for ages. he has to have a girlfriend by now.
i said, we are the only single women watching this dorky show.
but the possibility of another dorky girl winning the love of the wood chopping/flea eating/profanity spewing/beer stealing colonist made me slightly sad.

then, a shot of don wood, sitting on a crate while petting his dog, in an apartment filled with other crates, bricks, a weird looking sofa and surrounded by paint-cracked walls. an old stereo tilted on a milk crate.

this man has no girlfriend, i said.

Effing Brilliant

Exit Strategy - How to leave Iraq in three simple steps. By George?Saunders

Just read it for the last paragraph. I want to put it on a t-shirt.

(also to go on a t-shirt: "Anyone who wants to give you anal when you're sober does not love you." - Washingtonienne)

why colonial house rocks

Dreams like this:

I'm a professor at the University of Texas and I have a crush on a tall guy with a beard (hello, Don Wood). He's a student or something and I'm totally stalking him. I cut classes early to watch him cut down trees in the middle of campus. I am whipping myself into a froth over him. When I get the nerve to ask him to lunch in the University of Texas cafeteria, I'm walking across the quad, mumbling to myself, ignoring the students running after me. He senses something is about to happen; he drops his axe and watches me as I walk toward him.

Just when I get a few feet away UP pops JAMES who's in a tizzy: "I'm totally nervous about moving to Albion, what am i gonna do, and you know what tomas says? blah blah blah blah!" The moment is past, Don goes back to his chopping, I have to console James--aggh! So we're in the cafeteria and I'm listening to James and I keep looking out the window at Don Wood. Sigh. Then here comes a tornado!! Trees uprooted, black skies, rain, tidal waves, the campus is flooding - oh, where is Don Wood?? James is sucked away by a funnel, the cafeteria is destroyed, but someone grabs me and we're running and running. Is it Don Wood? NO, it's Mr. VOORHEES! Even better!

We find a cave to protect us from the killer tornados. In his slow low voice he mourns the definite death of his wife and child; I mourn the definite end of my job and Don Wood (wrong time to wield an axe, dude) and in our mourning we turn to each other for some grief cuddling. (I must have been tired if cuddling was all that I could muster.)

The sounds of destruction fade away giving rise to hammering and sirens. The worst is over but we don't leave the cave - the death outside is too much! We're cuddling, we're cuddling, a shaft of light pierces the cave - it's not Mr. Voorhees - It's Mark - my boss's HUSBAND! Groosss! He's middle-aged and gray haired and pudgy and wearing pleated Dockers and he's kissing me with too much saliva and it's so horrific I can't stand it. I try and wake up but I CAN'T! He's whispering in my ear with that IT architect voice of his and my skin breaks out in skeevies.

I yank myself away and hurl myself out the cave, saying something about helping with the relief efforts. He takes my hand, helping me over all the debris. Oh, there's James on a stretcher. And there's DON WOOD! Apparently struck by flying pieces of statuary and masonry he was crushed. I am heartbroken. NOT-Voorhees tries to hug me and I run away, screaming.

This is how I wake up. (all that aside, PBS' Colonial House is fascinating. Dorky dorky fun.)

so i may have stepped over a line. i may have finally given my father an aneurism. but it's totally his fault. he asked me what i thought about mensnewsdaily.com (ugh.) and so i told him.

the site's not as bad as i thought it would be; it's not a slobbering at the mouth 'keep all women barefoot and pregnant' kind of thing. but it's ... weird. there's something about it that makes me go 'euww.'

it's sad. that's what it is. i can smirk at the blustery testosterone thing going on at Details, FHM and Maxim. Yeah, ok, they're gross but at least there's some humor there - sort of a broad wink. "Hey, look at me, I can grill, trade online, watch porn AND know the 5 Cs of diamond buying! Look - I shaved!"

but this site is just sad. and the fact my dad is reading it is even sadder! here is a group of guys looking at the world around them and they don't quite fit into it anymore- oh, they have some wacky idea that women are at fault at the new victimized status of men, but i'm not buying that. so it was the end of the day and i'm tired and cranky and suddenly some things come out about evolutionary changes and women adapting to cultural shifts better, blah blah blah, adapt or fall off, change or die, blah blah blah, pendulum swinging to the other side, human development, the New Man...public health policy, yak yak yada yada.

yeah. i totally pushed my dad over the edge.
feminism, evolution and the new man?? his head probably exploded.

my father and i have been exchanging long emails about the War. (if i was from the south, or in the cast of 'cold mountain', i'd say it like waw-uh.)

our epistolary discussion began (this time) because of a particularly insane screed he had posted on his own site. apparently, my fruit doesn't fall very far from the patriarchal tree--except my fruit is right and his is just insane.

so i wrote a rebuttal to the insane article - a rebuttal which needs much editing, but i'm essentially right, and which he ignored. being ignored angered me so i sent another billet-doux, listing all the ways he and his ilk have been mistaken about the war (there are statistics and i thought i'd bolster my argument with some of those.) but his next message said that since he was on his way to church, he'd have to get back to me - he only wants, however, an admission from me that it's important to be loyal to our country.

this morning, when i read that, i gulped, chomped down a multi-vitamin and began another long letter that began with a quote from tom paine. one screedy nutbag deserves another, i say! anyway, my letter is finished and rests in the inbox of my pater familias.

i fear he and i will never stand on common ground on this matter and it pains me to lump my dad with the millions of those ignoramuses who watch Fox news and listen to Michael Savage. i'm sure it pains him, too, to have a daughter who can't see the world through a calm, conservative lens that efficiently bifurcates the world in to Good and Evil.

it would be useless of me to give him a fast tutorial on saussure, derrida, foucault, binary oppositions, hidden ideological values in language, etc., but i wish i could. ah, ucla. professor pecora...you've ruined me for my father. i have been tainted with critical theory.

hmm.
i changed the template for screed and now some of the fonts are funny. of course, i don't know how to change it. looked at the tags in the template, tried to figure out how to change font size, but alas--incomprehensible.

a mild annoyance.

oh, and it's so hot and muggy today, my hair has its own gravitational pull.

hangin' with the boss

last night i had drinks after work with my boss.
the following are the insights culled from the middle-aged male mind:

-mid life crisis: all bullshit, made up by women to keep their husbands repressed. you get married early, have no money, have a family and so you sacrifice and know you can't have that fast car you want; then years go by and you're making money and suddenly you realize that you can have the car! so you get the car! and there are all these other things you've repressed and now you can have it because you have the money to have it and you want it! not when the kids graduate, now! [and you don't consider that a crisis?] it's not a crisis! it's a car and now you have it! big deal!

-taxes: there should be a flat tax. this is the floor of how much it costs to run the government; tax me on that amount! not a different tax for every little thing! just take it! one tax!

-why men watch sports: men like to solve problems, you know? and with sports, you have easy solutions to complex problems. who's good up against a left-handed pitcher? who's great on defense? who sucks and is paid too much? it's like being the coach, like having all the decisions to make of a phil jackson and none of the risk. you know why people don't vote? sports. it's easier.

my boss. he's like, uh, buddha.

deeply deeply mortifying

so. that party saturday night. 'flirted like a sailor' i posted.

on my way out, at the end of the party, i fell into light flirtatious conversation with a guy who, through my gin-soaked eye, was giving me an oracular once over of his own. yum, i thought and began to spin a web of sparkly chatter - all to invite this guy and his friend over to 'teach me and my friends poker', and perhaps not spend spring/summer sighing fitfully over my lack of company. ah, what well-laid plans.

i gave him my card; he gave me a compliment; i accepted the compliment and touched his arm; he made with the funny; i laughed with appreciation and tossed back my head, leaning in a bit more. we all said goodbye; perhaps i kissed his neck. (damn you, gin!) i warmed myself with thoughts of follow up emails and more flirting.

at work, i found myself replaying our brief conversation, convinced that True Animal Attraction had howled between us. i found myself wondering why i didn't go to friends' parties more often if this was how simple it was. i found myself on the original evite, cleverly stripping his email and tucking it away, just in case too many days passed without an email from my late night party swain.

today i emailed the host of the party, thanking him for a fabulous time, wishing him well in his new city, then slipped in an inocuous "So...about that RG...I think we had a moment; what's his story?"

i obssessively checked my email, waiting for the Host to come back with the skinny--just any kernel of information, anything that would allow me to unleash my earthquake of lust.

imagine my horror when the Host very gently said, "Um, sweetie, he's my brother in law. Are you sure you had a moment?"

aaagh! with a bad eye for detail like this, how can i be sure of anything anymore?? aagh! did i see his ring? aagh! i wasn't expecting a ring! he looked my age! only old people are married! gaah! yuck!

there's no graceful way to recover from something like that, you know?

haven't had a night like last night's in a while - small, neighborhood joint on the northside, drinking till 3, smoking till 3, flirting like a sailor on leave till 3. the upshot: must organize poker party for mid-june.

must learn poker.

van helsing: too much of a good thing

there's something wrong with a movie when you can't even enjoy hugh jackman half naked writhing on the floor.

there's something wrong with a movie when you spend most of your time wondering where they bought kate beckinsale's corset (it's totally hot, looked complicated, and i want one.) and her boots - love the heel.

there's something wrong with a movie when it fails to deliver what most movies exist to deliver: catharsis.

watching this movie was like...well, it was like sex on ecstasy - bright lights, big sound, felt sorta good, but never seemed to end. it just kept going until it ground all those good feelings into the mattress and then you were left with a stiff neck, gritted teeth and a tight pelvis.

tense, man, tense.
...
rant of the week:

you know those people who arrive late to a show and then, when the movie has already started, stand in the aisles talking about where to sit, and then ask you to move your seat so they can sit together?

yeah, they need to go away and here's why:

1. you're a dumbass for being late. i was not late. not being late gives me the privilege of sitting where i want-especially when there are other seats for you, the late person, to choose.

that's it - that's the only issue. there's no list.
you were late, i wasn't, leave me alone and sit in the front where all the rest of the late people sit.
don't ask me to move, because i won't. everytime i do, i get angry and it makes me feel like a sucker--a sucker to your poor planning and/or inability to manage your time.

Music for America

a totally cool site.
music, politics and a way to mobilize people who weren't born in time to see star wars in the theaters.

now i know why people register when they marry: shopping for dinnerware and silverware is a pain in the arse.

i'm at work (barely) and my thoughts are wandering...should i go after the kate spade pink plates or should i go for something less expensive and more...humble, like this?

and flatware...i thought i was being clever, ordering a nice set of flatware on sale online. on further investigation i only purchased one placesettng. my domestic ignorance is showing, i know, but when june leaves, i will be left with a spoon and a knife.

Librarian update: he found a job!

why am i happy about this? we will never suit! never!

Office Wench, pt 2

I wasn't always an Office Wench. Sure, I did office stuff to put myself through college and earn summer cash in grad school, but that was all to fund the brain trust. (Actually, it was to give me cash to buy books that weren't on the reading list and to indulge in my newfound love of alcohol.)

But when I left grad school being an assistant was the thing I fell into - I was good at it, the perks were better than those found in academic life and I didn't have to sweat, wear a hairnet or a uniform. But I also didn't realize that an academic or humanities background seriously hobbled one's ability to deal with the real world.

For instance, independent thinking, while an asset in grad school just makes you a target in corporate hell - unless you're above middle management.
Critical thinking? Well, you're just an arrogant snob with a disturbing air of condescension, who doesn't know how to be a team player. (hah, and if you're a person of color, well, then you're uppitty on top of that.)
Questioning sources (i.e., authority)? Yeah, good luck with that. Guys with less education than you, and just a few years older than you, want you to bend over and pucker on their sphincter.
Make a few references to literature written before 1995? You might as well stand up naked in a conference room and admit you fellate homeless men for recreation, for the good that'll do for your corporate social life.

Working at a Big 5 made me realize a Gen X-er working in a corporate death star is a person just seething with rage. We work hard to tamp it down (we like to use humor - or sarcasm, whatever) but it builds. Really, the only thing that compensates for it is a big paycheck-and our sense of cultural superiority. Once that goes, well, look out. Explosive rage. Anarchic tendencies forced into repression have a way of leaking out in all sorts of inappropriate manner.

Some days I wish there was one day for bosses to hear what their assistants really thought about them. Everyone remembers the kid who was smacked around by Martha Stewart but that was nothing.

I've worked with some women who are poisoned with their own hate. They smile, get coffee and schedule your conference calls (the ones you never remember how to dial into), and in strides Bob - King of his Corporate Domain - thinking his assistant Cathy is like family, Cathy has been with him for years, Cathy is like his wife, but quieter and less expensive. Meanwhile, Cathy dreams of the time she enters an intersection on a rainy night, sees Bob, and her foot slips off the brake.

I know. It seems petty. But imagine spending 8 hours a day with a human being who refuses to learn anything; who refuses to care for himself; who can't remember things you've told them yesterday, this morning or whenever; imagine a whole day spent with someone who has no sense of porportion. It's not like having a screamer for a boss or working for a Republican, but it's just those moments, the ones that collect in your gut, when you look across the desk and you realize that you have to *serve* this pathetic corporate dweeb - he's boring, uninteresting, dull, myopic and cares about...crap.

It's like taking care of a baby.

what's that burning feeling in your stomach, that acidy taste in the back of your throat?

ulcer? heartburn? precursor to heart attack or stroke?

gaah. it's just noon and already my innards are about to explode.

relationship retard

just left the eHarmony site; they sent me a message that i was about to be deactivated so i logged on - heaven forbid i should be deactivated!!

like little clams, two matches waited for me. poor things, they've been stewing for about a month. i had no idea they were there! one, clearly impatient with my lack of response, closed communication with me. the other was still open, waiting patiently for me to read about his willingness to share with his partner.

if you haven't been on eHarmony, i think you should. it doesn't give you the sweaty, panting breath thrill that Nerve gives ('ohh, baby, let's play...') and it's not the immediate horror of match.com ('i'm an IT adminitrator in Palatine and I just want to make you groove!'). eHarmony is like a soothing, brainy doctor in a white lab coat taking your hand and walking you through every step of mating like you're a retard.

(the dorky photo of amy and greg on the home page, engaged 2003, only reinforces your Rainman feeling.)

step one: take a personality quiz that will put the Meyers-Briggs to shame.
step two: take another test that will pinpoint your social skills and general likes/dislikes.
step three: fill out a profile
step four: launch your profile
step five: wait. and wait more.
(note: you can't browse for matches; they will bring matches to you, thus removing your habitual bad decision making skills from the equation.)
step six: if you have a match: read the profile and choose 5 ice-breaking questions. you have now entered the Guided Communication Process.
(note: you won't really be allowed to have Free/Open Communication until much further down the road.)

this is what's so weird about eHarmony. it doesn't trust you. it won't let you browse, it won't let you view photos, it won't let you make direct contact with a person because it doesn't trust you to behave like a rational adult.

and while it kills me to say this, they may have a point. i've done the online thing for about 3 years now and, i have to admit, my online dating ritual goes through a predictable lifecycle:

*find the profile that doesn't make me gag (preferably a guy with a snarky personality, who just wants to 'play' and lives several states away.)
*exchange steaming emails for a couple of months that would put the brownings to shame (not to mention anais nin)
*engage in some sweaty naughty talk, thus ramping up quickly to the inevitable online/face to face hook up (which usually entails someone buying a plane ticket)
*stop emailing, feel weird/disappointed/indifferent, move on to the next one.

eHarmony puts the kibosh on all that dead end-action. they run your meyers-briggs profile through some kind of scientific whammo and out of thousands of profiles, they match you with one. ONE. and they won't let you step out of line - no dirty talk, no phone sex, no lubricious emails, no running straight to bed before you discover that you're totally incompatible and will only make the other person vomit.

so there you are, a relationship retard, wearing a paper gown with your ass hanging out, led by the hand by a guy in a lab coat through the labyrinth of love - gently, scientifically, reasonably guided down a shiny white corridor.

sad that it's come to this.

phone bankin' & bush whackin'!

total success, thanks to the friends who came over to burn their weekend minutes and call apathetic voters across the nation. sigh. it really is depressing - out of 525 phone calls, i think we got 15 email addresses. of course, the majority of those on our list weren't home because we called in the afternoon, but still.

and lest i forget...

the morning after pill - not gonna be sold over the counter. grrr. what is the deal??

and here's a post on dailykos about it (which also has a link to original article).

it makes me wanna holler, you know?

'friends'...lame

what a waste.

i missed the fireman 'reveal' on extreme makeover - home ed. to watch the weak, lame, tired, used up, retread, sorry finale of 'friends.'

was it just me, or was it painfully unfunny?

rachel dumps her fab job in paris to stay with ross?? why not go on sabbatical for a year, ross, and go to paris with your girlfriend and child? after all, you *bought the ticket*!! i mean, wouldn't that just be a better ending - better than having one last coffee at the cafe?

working out

i now belong to a gym.
it's not one of those testosterone-laden Bally's sweat tanks or one of those uber-hip gyms like Crunch or Sweat or Grunt or whatever they're called now. and it's not the quiet chic sophisticated kind of gym like East Bank or Holmes Place.

no, it's Slim & Tone. it's a girly 'gym' for girlies who hate working out and don't want anyone to bother them. if those other gyms are for people with celebrity personalities, my gym is for people who feel like they're in the witness protection program. S&T is strictly no-nonsense: a circuit of machines, a treadmill, a shower, some fruit, a scale, and a perky girl who follows you around, working out with you so you won't feel lonely.

i like lonely, lady. that's why i'm here at 6.30 am. so i can be lonely while i figure out how to clench my ass and squeeze my thighs to the thumping house beats of madonna. when i took my workout personality test, i'm pretty sure Fuck Off was my key trait.

i hate working out and i do it furtively - it's not because i don't like showing my body while it's sweating and grunting (i'm consciously NOT going to make a sexual remark here.) it's not because i hate how i look in my yoga pants and red lycra tank (i also have the cutest polo footies ever!!).
i scuttle around the machines and watch the clock like a hawk because i HATE being in a gym. i hate thinking about form, reps, cooling down, over extending, whatever. it's the most boring thing on earth - next to golf and listening to a fundamentalist drone on about the proper role of women.
i also hate the people who talk about working out: the guys who drone on about the burn (whatever), the girls who chatter about their awesome spinning class (eat something) or the couples who drawl about their yoga (it's not attractive that you can now lick your own butthole.) they can all shut up and go away. i don't want to hear about how many inches you've lost or how many carbs you've dropped or how ripped your guns are.

it's boring. shut up.

i'd rather smoke an entire pack of cigarettes in a dark old guy bar while drinking rotgut than be in a gym. i'd rather sit through a derrida lecture than go to the gym. i'd rather hook up again with IncognitoLatino and have him bite my neck than go to the gym. and yet - here i am. sweating, grunting, lunging, bending, heaving, almost vomiting (too much cardio, too much cardio).

heh - but irony rears its head and forces me to admit that it feels really good. dammit.

last night, exhausted by my political fervor and the ankle-grabbing day i had at work, i sat on the couch and ate cereal while watching 'unbreakable.'
this was a faint mirror of saturday night when i sat on the couch in my underpants, ate cereal, and read comic books.

more and more, my girliness is fading away only to be replaced by a comic book reading dork who blogs.
i am becoming a guy.

Office Wench

holy crap.
ass-grabbingly busy today.

the fallout from the cbs airing of the iraq prison photos is immense - if we weren't hated before, we are now. i came across this essay in mother jones; totally depressing.

a friend responded to all my posts yesterday and if he's reading, i'll unpack it as soon as i can--and thanks for pointing out the trap in front of me.
...
in other news, more lighthearted news, i'm hosting my first phonebank party for moveon next weekend. who knows if tons of people will come? but a few will and that's all we need.

it'll be like GEO all over again. but less stinky.

euww.

(can you tell it's slow at the office?)

this is disturbing. it's a story of how some of our GIs are treating iraqi prisoners. it's gross and took me by surprise.

last night i had a drink at the duke of perth with J. we talked, like always, about politics and the state of the war. i admitted that my sympathy for the muslim world slipped a bit after seeing and reading about the carnage in fallujah and reading about militant muslims in britain who've called for jihad and declared they won't rest until their flag flies outside 10 Downing Street. i admitted that i think they're anarchists and foolish and unworthy of the name civilized (hey, i also admitted that was a totally visceral reaction to recent events!).

but now my feelings grow more complicated because of photos like this and the story that followed this image. (i'm still unsure if this photo was faked, but the investigation that follwed wasn't.)

it's shaming.

in case you were wondering what the national republican party does to jab home its message, here's a memo. (with a handy dandy email included.)

who knew may 1 was loyalty day??

know what a gaggle is?

it's when the press gets briefed by the white house press secretary and they get to ask all sorts of questions...

like these.

priceless. you can find a whole bunch of them here.

shut up, maureen dowd, pt. 2

...and amy sullivan agrees with me.

and so does the daily howler.

it's good to be right. [updated 3.22 pm]

maureen dowd - why won't you shut up?

where to start?

where to begin to unpack another lame column from sloppy Dowd this morning in the times?

i've read other liberal criticisms of kerry in other papers and, so far, they've managed not to piss me off with their opinions. what is it about this woman that makes her so slappingly annoying? could it be her ability to reduce real ideological differences between bush and kerry to matters of style and comportment?

despite her snarky tone, there is a real choice to be made in the upcoming election. we have a chance to get rid of an administration that's light on policy and heavy on ideology (an ideology that has failed in all ways) and right now our only hope for doing so is Kerry.

if her criticism said Kerry's goals are undefined right now, that's perfectly valid; to call him a weird, smarty pants, flip-flopper without conscience...well, you may as well be Karen Hughes! the ease with which she repeats GOP criticisms of Kerry's character, criticisms that have no substance, makes me cringe and, quite frankly, stirs my ire.

if indeed Kerry 'mimed' throwing away his medals/ribbons (whatever), how is that worse than a president who 'mimed' having intelligence of WMD in Iraq, who 'pretended' there was a connection between al-Qaeda and Hussein, who 'lied' about funding for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and who 'feigns' compassion when his public policies say otherwise?

her columns are coy, fey and only cocktail party clever - when will they reflect the seriousness of our political moment?

god, dowd, SHUT UP.

when are we going to get angry?

this is an article forwarded to me from Salon re: the scrubbing of important information for women from the federal website for the Women's Bureau. it's in its entirety so it's lengthy.

Making women's issues go away
A damning new report reveals that the Bush administration has quietly removed 25 reports from its Women's Bureau Web site, deleting or distorting crucial information on issues from pay equity to reproductive healthcare.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Rebecca Traister
April 28, 2004 | If you'd logged onto the Department of Labor's Women's Bureau Web site in 1999, you would have found a list of more than 25 fact sheets and statistical reports on topics ranging from "Earning Differences Between Men and Women" to "Facts About Asian American and Pacific Islander Women" to "Women's Earnings as Percent of Men's 1979-1997."
Not anymore. Those fact sheets no longer exist on the Women's Bureau Web site, and have instead been replaced with a handful of peppier titles, like "Hot Jobs for the 21st Century" and "20 Leading Occupations for Women." It's just one example of the ways in which the Bush administration is dismantling or distorting information on women's issues, from pay equity to reproductive healthcare, according to "Missing: Information About Women's Lives," a new report released Wednesday by the National Council for Research on Women.
You've probably heard about some of the other examples in "Missing" -- for instance, the time the Centers for Disease Control removed an online guide to condom use and changed the fact-sheet language to indicate that studies on condom use were inconclusive, focusing instead on abstinence. But the power of "Missing" comes not from its dozens of individual examples, but from the depth and breadth of its findings about the small ways in which the Bush administration is draining the well of dependable public scientific and sociological information.

"When these instances are taken individually, perhaps we don't see the cumulative pattern of what's happening," said Linda Basch, president of the 23-year-old NCRW, an alliance of 100 women's policy, research and education centers, including the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, Planned Parenthood, and the Girl Scouts. "But when we gather the information together, and see the distorted or disappearing information about the economic opportunities, the situation of violence against women, health and particularly reproductive health, it is a very distressing pattern."

Released just three days after an estimated 1 million people gathered in Washington for the March for Women's Lives, "Missing" exhaustively catalogs the ways in which government information about women's health, labor and education has been altered, removed or obfuscated during the Bush administration. "This is really undermining a nonpartisan legacy of government," said Basch, referring to a history of reliable dissemination of scientific data by the federal government. Of concern to NCRW researchers is the possibility that this morphed or absent information will hurt future researchers, policymakers and citizens who in the past would have relied on federal sources of information in their advocacy for women's equity and access.

In an e-mailed statement to Salon, New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney said, "I'm grateful to the National Council for Research on Women for confirming what many of us in Congress have insisted for years -- we can't continue to advance as women if the cold, hard facts of our status are unknown. We've seen a disturbing trend toward hiding the information that helps us improve women's lives. I hope that this is the beginning of a successful effort to uncover the missing data."

California Rep. Barbara Lee also sent a statement, saying, "This report outlines a disturbing pattern of decisions by federal agencies to close down, delay, alter, or spin data about what is happening to American women and girls. Science must not be sacrificed and silenced like this. We must take every opportunity to point out the Administration's attempts to twist, distort, and subvert science to advance its right-wing based political agenda."

Many of the shifts in federal agency information have been reported in the past, but, when seen together, look even more impressive -- or horrifying. Some individual examples -- like the observations about the DOL's Women's Bureau -- will look new.

The report notes that in 1999, the Women's Bureau mission statement, printed on its Web site, described its responsibilities "to advocate and inform women directly and the public as well, of women's rights and employment issues" and "to ensure that the voices of working women are heard, and their priorities represented in the public policy arena." Back then, the Women's Bureau claimed that it "Alerts women about their rights in the workplace, proposes policies and legislation that benefit working women, researches and analyzes information about women and work, [and] makes appropriate reports on its findings." The NCRW researchers noticed that by February 2002, the Bureau's mission statement looked very different. Its asserted goal was "To promote profitable employment opportunities for women, to empower them by enhancing their skills and improving their working conditions, and to provide employers with more alternatives to meet their labor needs." The 2002 "Vision Statement" reads: "We will empower women to enhance their potential for securing more satisfying employment as they seek to balance their work-life needs." In other words: less information about helpful policy and legislation, more potential-enhancing tips on balancing "work" and "life."

Then there are the missing fact sheets, and the popular handbook on the rights of women in the workplace, called "Don't Work in the Dark -- Know Your Rights," that's not to be found. The "1993 Handbook on Women Workers," which was available in 1999, is no longer. Though it is scheduled for rerelease sometime in the future, NCRW researchers who contacted the Women's Bureau learned that no publication date is set.

Irasema Garza, the director of the women's rights department for the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, and the former director of the Women's Bureau from 1999-2000, had seen parts of the "Missing" report that pertained to her former department. "As soon as I saw the report, I went to my old Web site and found that the majority of all of our fact sheets were gone," she said. "In my old job, I traveled all around the country giving speeches -- but all the women wanted were these fact sheets. Women really used this information to protect themselves in the workplace."

Contacted by Salon for a response to the report, a spokeswoman for the Department of Labor said that the Women's Bureau director was traveling, but e-mailed a response to the queries about the changing mission statement and publication list. That e-mail said, in part, "Congress created the Women's Bureau in 1920 to 'formulate standards and policies which shall promote the welfare of wage-earning women, improve their working conditions, increase their efficiency, and advance their opportunities for profitable employment.' Under that mandate, the Women's Bureau's focus, programs, publications and website are changed and updated periodically to reflect the priorities of the current Administration, the Secretary of Labor and the Director of the Women's Bureau. The Bureau continues to work with internal and external partners and stakeholders to develop programs to address the needs of 21st Century working women." The White House press office, contacted for comment, did not respond by press time.

"The fact that 25 reports on issues of equality and access have been removed from this website is enormously distressing," said Basch of the findings about the changes at the Women's Bureau. She pointed out that the public, as well as researchers, journalists and policymakers, turns to agency Web sites for information about rights and government policies. Basch claimed that last year there were over 250 million hits to government Web sites.

Those 250 million hits will have also turned up some changes in language at the Census Bureau, which reported on its Web site's "Facts for Features" page for 2003 Women's History Month that the earnings gap between women and men -- about 76 female cents to every male dollar -- means that women's salary are "at an all-time high." That's a considerably more cheerful outlook than the 2000 Census Bureau posting about an earnings gap figure that was only about 1 percent different than 2003's. According to "Missing," in 2000 the Web site told visitors that "Women have almost achieved parity in educational attainment ... but not earnings equality," and that "Men working fulltime, year round, consistently earned more than comparable women in each of the educational levels." According to researchers, the newer, more positive spin on issues like earnings figures is dangerous because it diminishes the notion that there are massive strides to be made before earnings parity is possible.

"Basically, the administration seems to have the assumption that there is a level playing field and that paying attention to a particular subgroup is divisive," said Martha Farnsworth Riche, a demographer in private practice and the Bill Clinton-appointed director of the Census Bureau from 1994-98. Basch noted the effect that changing information and modified spin could have on the future of advocacy for women. "When the information doesn't exist, when no one is there watching out for the interests of certain categories of populations, it's bad," she said. "There are still far too many gender-based inequalities for us to take our eyes off of what is happening to women."

Census Bureau Public Affairs specialist Robert Bernstein was unable to find the language quoted by "Missing" in the 2000 "Facts for Features" edition, though the page contains a link to a press release that is no longer available. Bernstein, who has been with the Census Bureau for 14 years, said that he doesn't believe there is any new spin on earnings information. "What we try to do is present data in a positive light about different groups. It was a fact that that ratio at the time did represent an all-time high." Bernstein also noted that the "all-time high" language would have come straight from the news release about the Bureau's annual Income and Poverty Report. And though he doesn't think that there's been a noticeable upturn in the language of the Bureau, Bernstein did confirm one of the fears of the NCRW. "The point of 'Facts for Features' is to give information to reporters, allowing them to do a particular feature story [pegged to] a particular holiday or observance," said Bernstein. "They're trying to do upbeat stories."

When it comes to issues of women's health, agencies like the CDC, FDA and the Health and Human Services Administration don't fare much better than the DOL or the Census Bureau with the NCRW researchers. One of their chief battle cries -- and arguments about why a study like "Missing" can be valuable in the future -- is over the changed language on a National Cancer Institute Web site. "Missing" cites the case of the 1997 New England Journal of Medicine study that conclusively proved that there was no link between breast cancer and abortion, a favorite claim of anti-abortion advocates. The NCI had a fact sheet with reference to the study posted on its Web site until November 2002, when the Web site was changed to indicate that studies about the link had been "inconclusive," an assertion that lent implied credence to the claims of the anti-abortion advocates. According to "Missing," members of Congress forced the convention of a panel of experts who reinforced the New England Journal's findings, and the NCI again posted information that there is no link between breast cancer and abortion.

Over at the Centers for Disease Control, the NCRW researchers claim, posted fact sheets were revised to suggest studies on the effectiveness of using condoms to prevent the spread of HIV and other STDs were "inconclusive." Instead, the revised fact sheet focused on abstinence -- a favorite of the family values crowd -- as the only effective path to sexual health. As was reported at the time, the CDC also removed an online guide to proper condom use (replacing it later with a revised edition) as well as a list of successful sex education programs and studies that showed no rise in sexual activity among teens taught about condoms. "These are debates that scientific research has closed," said Riche. "The people who provide the information are now reopening those debates, taking away the scientific certainty. It's more subtle than putting out wrong information or simply removing all the information -- and, frankly, more effective."

According to the researchers behind "Missing," the pressure of right-wing ideology has also led scientists to stop using words like "gay," "sex worker," and "transgender" in their grant applications. This comes in the wake of the Traditional Values Coalition's very long and damning list of 150 researchers and 200 grants in the field of high-risk sexual behavior. Then there's the case of the morning-after pill, which has yet to appear as an over-the-counter medication, despite the two scientific advisory committees that urged the FDA to make it one. According to "Missing," it was pressure from conservative groups that led FDA commissioner Mark McClellan to postpone his expected February 2004 decision on the matter by 90 days.

"Missing" doesn't concern itself only with absent online information. It also lists some of the actual governmental bodies that have disappeared or been threatened during the Bush administration. In 2001, George Bush disbanded the President's Interagency Council on Women, a group appointed in 1995 by Bill Clinton to implement strategies developed at the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, as part of the U.N. Platform for Action. The council was chaired by Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala and then by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. "One of the things the office did was make sure the president's policies reflected women's issues," said Garza. "That office is gone. It was one of the first things that was done away with under this administration."

Reversals are possible. When the Department of Health and Human Services' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality changed the wording in a mandated report on the disparities in healthcare along racial and socioeconomic lines, suggesting that "disparites" in the diagnosing and treatment of HIV, diabetes and hypertension among women of color were actually "differences," people noticed and complained. A spin like that could be very detrimental to attitudes and eventual action on behalf of women of color who are at a disadvantage. The document was restored to its original wording in February. "Missing" cites this example, and hopes that by getting people to pay attention to so many others, information will be restored.

"In my experience, I would say we are probably just seeing the tip of the iceberg with this report," said Riche. "If we know about all these examples, that means there are many, many more." To that end, the NCRW is establishing a Misinformation Clearinghouse Web site through which people can submit examples of information that is no longer available to them. The Clearinghouse will also collect and publish a list of sources for dependable information.

heh.

on why there's so much bullshit.

what do you call the thing you write at the end of a note, right before your name? the exit, the end?

the Librarian's notes are now full of quotidian details (i worked 60 hours this week, i'm about to start recording, i bought a book) and i've lost our ending. before, i could hug his 'ever' or 'yours' and get a little warm. now, it's just - the Librarian. plain, stolid. me.

not 'yours, me'.
just 'me'.

the roommate and i have seemingly solved all our issues - that is to say that we have gotten drunk together, avoided the sticky parts and pretended that all is well.

three bottles of champagne can smooth a long stretch of bumpy road.

am missing the company of The Librarian horribly would be loathe to admit it in any formal way since i've already decided that we wouldn't suit. this admission, of course, is the product of those three bottles of champagne.

implosion

so my roommate and I are breaking up. i think it was inevitable. i think i knew things would change the morning she woke me up at 6 am to show me the grout in the shower.

not even my mother (who grew up in a poor village in the philippines) did that.

so now we're caught in a weirdly tense, icy household. most of the furniture and dishware are hers, so when she leaves i will be left with my tv, books, cds, stereo, a multi pot, a knife, a painting, a wok, strainer, cheese grater, spatula, soup thing, can opener and everything in my bedroom.

another friend is moving in, one who will never show me grout (for god's sake, that's what the cleaning lady is for!). it may be too soon for optimism, but that's where i am for now.

of course, our habits being what they are, i'm sure she and i will turn into raging alcoholics and become a weird straight versiotn of toklas-stein.

huh.

look at this.

the other day, ali and i chased fog.

we came back from the burbs and saw a dark gray-orange, fast moving cloud of smoke moving through downtown chicago. it billowed, it rolled, it looked like something exploded on michigan avenue, off the lake or in the loop. hoping for news, we scanned the am stations; they only had news of the cubs game. we looked for panic in the populace; they shopped, clearly ignorant of the disaster engulphing the city. then, after chasing it for an hour, we asked a guy selling M&Ms on columbus drive if there was a fire.

he said, i wouldn't be here if there was!

as we headed north on lakeshore, i looked at the 'smoke' floating between the hotels on michigan avenue then i looked at the lake. i looked at the wall of fog rolling in off the lake. i said to ali, i think it's fog. look.

and we watched as a cloud of 'smoke' settled onto the drake hotel from the sky, shining with an orange glow because of the late afternoon sun.

we were silent for a while while we navigated lakeshore's traffic.
then i said, we chased fog.
ali said, we can't tell anyone this.
i said, we spent an hour chasing a weather pattern.
ali said, we cannot tell anyone this.

The Memo

wow.

oh, easter.

fourth pres was wonderful, if a bit...uh, white. i mean, it's handel's 'messiah' for chrissake! get happy! sing along! do something! don't just stand there and stare dumbly at the choir and breathe! sometimes i miss the sweat of gospel.

i miss the feeling that this is real, you know? not just a pretty show, but real. soul-shaking. not just intellectual.

anyway, easter services were followed with brunch at the four seasons. wow. talk about WASP. so glad i wore my hat. it was like eating with characters from a 30's novel. the american version of jeeves and wooster. cole porter? but drier. less gay. watching old money chicago eat eggs benedict and ham. fascinating. when you're with rich people you find yourself wondering what it is they do all day. do they worry about anything? i don't think so. they all had the sleepy eyed confidence of people whose money will never run out. they talked slowly, sauntered instead of walked, never made eye contact with anyone and ate methodically (if not thoroughly.) they were pink, wore blue blazers with striped pastel ties, and their loafers gleamed.

fascinating. bizarre.
but the food was fabulous.

*hic*

too much champagne. and wine. and cosmo.

my roommate and i, loathe to have a difficult domestic conversation, have blown each other off and are getting drunk in separate locations tonight.

update: the Librarian has not disappeared. he's just been depressed.

(oh, to find the guy whose first instinct isn't to scuttle sideways like a crab in the face of bad feelings...)

guess who hasn't done their taxes, yet?

of course, my ruminations about abortion and the bleak future for women if social conservatives win their arguments have depressed me.

i think i'm going to leave the apartment and catch 'hellboy.'

ass-kicking will always make me feel better.

the dangers of cold medicine

battling a cold (die, germs, die!) i'm sitting in my apartment on a dishwater afternoon, drinking tea and thinking about abortion.

maybe it's because of an editorial in the Times a couple of days ago that told the story of Portugal and its prosecution of a group of women, their family members and their doctors/nurses for getting/abetting an abortion (they even prosecuted the taxi driver.)

maybe it's because i just went to an anti-abortion site that said i can't 'have it both ways' and it made me angry. (and it didn't help they used abolitionist rhetoric as a parallel argument.)

in portugal, the prosecution lost their cases (except for the nurse whose 8-year sentence was commuted) and the trials so disgusted the public, opinion swayed against the law that has made abortions criminal. one woman interviewed said that when attention moved from the fetus to the women, the issue changed and the public became embarrassed and disgusted with itself.

the fight over abortion is so old hat the arguments are like a game of tennis: the egg at the moment of conception has a soul worthy of protection; the fertilized egg is a microscopic collection of cells; all life, born and unborn needs protection; all life, until it's expelled from my body, belongs to me and i can do with it what i want; this is against all moral law; this is my choice and leave my morality to me to deal with.

if it's about religion, not everyone shares the same religious standard; if it's about metaphysical arguments about what constitutes life, that differs, too, and can't ultimately be proven. viability, however, can be proven, and i'm comfortable with that standard.

chances are that i will never have a child-not that i was really looking forward to the event. i'm creeping up on 35 and i've toyed with the idea of permanent birth control, this medical procedure . it seems rather extreme to permanently destroy one's ability to have children, but one extreme deserves another, almost.

for i can almost forsee a nightmarish margaret atwood-like chain of events: eventually, abortion procedures are narrowed and limited so much they eventually topple and abortion becomes illegal; once abortion becomes illegal, the fight over birth control begins - who has access, how it can be practised, what types of birth control are appropriate and which are not; then, once a woman's ability to control her own cycle and fertility is taken away and given back to men, what then?

i sound like a paranoid feminazi freak but i think it's a valid question. let's give the right to lifers benefit of their vision: you eventually outlaw all abortion and put doctors and women in jail - what then? will you make birth control accessible to everyone in an effort to prevent the need for abortion? will creative methods of family planning, like essure, be included as part of a person's health insurance benefit? will health policy adopt ways of educating, and enabling, the public toward better family planning? will adolescents be taught proper sexual health so that one will never be in the position of needing an abortion?

or, more likely, will all control of a woman's body be channeled into one tiny little pre-approved patriarchal funnel? (yeah, i said patriarchy, so what?)

bachelor time

the best bachelor. ever. sort of. maybe.

but only if seeing 25 certifiably stupid women beg for attention from a 3rd-string quarterback qualifies as 'best.' (although the vomiting, crying, bitch-slapping and stalking pretty much guarantee i will watch this show to the very end, thus proving american culture has taken another step into the sinkhole.)

why do i watch this show? it could be boredom. it could be my secret passion for all things trash. i prefer to call it my deep devotion to the human condition. or just the icky thrill of seeing women do things i'd have to be drunk and/or high to do. guys have x-treme sportz; i have the 8 weeks of Bachelor-hell.

my predictions:

i bet the woman of color celeste goes only as far as the second round after getting stuck with only group dates. (they should name the second round Melanin Elimination; is it too much to ask that a brown girl/boy make it at least halfway?? come on, people! interracial dating is great! people do it all the time!!)
i bet he picks a blonde.
i bet they all lie about not having a one night stand. (no one's standards are that high - except, well, you know who you are.)
i bet the words 'awesome,' 'journey,' 'connection,' and the non-phrase 'as to what' get used waay too often and incorrectly.

i bet all their conversations are about nothing - don't these people talk about 'real' things? how about iraq? i'd flash my naked chest to my boss if, for once, the Bachelor asked one of those women what she thought about books, politics, culture or anything not pertaining to her psycho thirst for a rose.

i think i may have reached an all-time social low: i've wandered onto the eharmony site and taken their personality quiz.

apparently fire safety means a lot to me in a partner.

grr.

Like a dieter on a binge, I'm sneaking away from my work to blog a little. The air is too warm and the sun too bright to be concerned with expenses, presentations and keeping Madame on a tight administrative leash.

The news is, as always, depressing: more deaths in Iraq, the 10-year anniversary of the genocidal massacre in Rwanda, more weird economic news (less manufacturing jobs but corporate America is booming!) and David Brooks fails to be funny.

But there have been some bright spots:
1. Comic books: I've been reading these for the past four months and I can't tell you how wonderful they are (though E-treme X-Men really have to lighten up a bit. Too much chatting and not enough ass-kicking.) They give me the best dreams and satisfy my increasing desire to kick someone's ass. Anyone's. Doesn't really matter.

2. The Prince & Me: Yes, it's a film marketed for the pre-teen. Yes, no one is naked. Yes, it bears as much similarity to reality as The Bachelor. But, for some reason, I loved it. I loved it and so did the other 30-something single women and 13-yr old girls in the theater with me. Needless to say, when 13 Going on 30 comes out, I'll be there, too. (This may be a sign my brain is slowly melting.)

3. It seems the Librarian is ... gone. Or, if not gone, then rudely incommunicado. This is a dubiously bright spot (I can sense a stultifyingly LONG dry spell coming along) but at least now -- actually, there's no good way to end that sentence. It's over and that's that.

So. Two bright spots and a spot I'll just have to put on a good face for. Nice.

Femme-ing the Vote

i think i mentioned this before: unmarried women are a huge source of political power for progressives.

In 2000, there were 16 million unmarried unregistered women and 21,725,000 unmarried women who were eligible to vote who did not. These women, with their vote, could dramatically change the political landscape in America.

we won the vote only in 1920 - we shouldn't take it for granted.

so this is to remedy that.

it's easy and online.

winning

thoughts are generally muddled this morning (whoops - overslept) but just to hold my place, there's this from a friedman column today:

If Mr. Zapatero goes through with his troop withdrawal from Iraq, Islamist terrorists will attribute it to the Madrid bombing. This big picture will absolutely encourage them to try this tactic, perfected in Israel and now imported to Spain, in other European or U.S. elections — to tilt the vote one way or another.

"The Spanish Civil War tested only weapons," said the Israeli political theorist Yaron Ezrahi. "The terrorism we have seen in Israel, and may soon see more of in Europe, is testing the fabric of democratic societies. What is being tested in Spain is this question: Does it pay for terrorists to try to hijack democratic elections? We have a clear-cut challenge here, and it must be met with an equally clear-cut response. Are leaders of Western nations going to reward the terrorists in their attempt to hijack democratic elections in a major European state or make them fail?"

still trying to figure out where my thinking is on this...

the news is depressing.

south texas town loses last factory jobs...shrub administration tries to rewrite history...us forest service discards public accountability for the sake of, um, streamlining - and hires a swank PR firm to spin itself in the process...stupid court case about 'in God we trust'...

and only 8 more months to go of ugly campaigning.

ASS.

it was a lovely morning - woke up early, dressed in a cute outfit, actually
combed my hair, felt all perky and happy (can't you tell something is
about to change this?) when i read an email from online museum guy who said he thought i was great, but wasn't expecting me to be so ... curvy.

he felt duped. (despite my ad and photos describing me as 'zaftig' . who the hell doesn't know what this means??)

you punk-rock posing-foucault reading-sawdust smelling-breadstick-bike riding arsehole.

mood is now murderous and dangerous.

reading of his weird offended feelings was like reading the sex & the city equivalent to the iraq WMD scandal: why was the intel so bad during the run up to their date with destiny??

because who knew that one's porportions would have to be disclosed like the warning label on a side view mirror: "Beware: Ass may be bigger than previously thought."

a new internet mag debuts this week: the gadflyer. progressives kicking ass without sounding lame and pretentious. (though i've never had a problem with the whole 'snob' label, myself.) already it's a fave. check it out.
...

oh, god, this week. so long. so lengthy. so interminable. so unending. so bleahhh. not even a pile of comic books could revive my ennui. yes, i've turned to comics, those crinkly leaves leftover from adolescence. no, they aren't preserved in plastic or arranged chronologically on a special shelf all their own. they're jumbled next to the latest phil rickman, trashy romance novel, victorian erotica and stanley elkin on my night table. that table is a symbol of my brain.

the elkin is taking some time to wade through - it's fun, but it's a hard-won fun. it's like the fun of drinking a bottle of whiskey on an empty stomach and then eating warm sushi. the drunken reeling is thrilling at first, but then the wet gurgle starts and, well, you know the rest.
...
life coach update:
i can't meditate for more than 5 minutes without falling asleep on the toilet.

another discovery - i'm too hung up on page count (thanks, grad school) and should really throw that over and just achieve getting some good words on the page. even if it's just five. it seems when i started treating writing like a job, i wanted to control it, instead of just letting it strike; i've been trying to apply the model from grad school and it doesn't fit my current schedule or temperament anymore, and so i've been stuck. and since i don't like my real life feeling like work, i'm avoiding writing because i've turned it into work.

thank god this is all free.

the coach said to me, "What's more important: writing or being a writer?"
and i didn't really have an answer to that.

(edited 3.23.04)

they always come back

when your past comes back it's a bit of a kick in the pants - one of those kicks that miss the meaty part of your ass and gets you right on the tailbone. and then the pain goes straight up and down your spine making your knees buckle. that kind of kick.

and when people talk about their past, it's always an ex-someone they're talking about, really. ex-lover, ex-fling, ex-boyfriend, ex-drunken reason why you don't go to a certain bar anymore. you think you know how to deal with it, even when you tell yourself they were inconsequential, but you don't really. how does one prepare themselves for a hard boot to the tailbone?

blah-di-blah-di-blah: yeah, a couple of old ones came back, fingering me over email, leaving voicemail messages that make my hands shake or rear back from the computer screen in horror - no!! i thought you were gone, buried in a cask behind a brick wall, chained and dumped in the north branch of the river! incognito latino found me on nerve again, despite my blocks, my deletions and refusals to be drawn back in to his lonely intensity. i immediately deleted his message without reading it; his is a place i don't want to revisit. i didn't behave particularly well and i regret that slightly.

i don't get particularly mushy-hearted over exes. they become such for a reason, and those reasons are usually good ones: boredom, sudden dislike, boredom, or the gradual dawning realization that this person will never be as fun as your girlfriends. and once you realize any or all of these things, you make a decision as soon as you can and extricate yourself as humanely as possible. (everyone has every right to leave everyone else, but it's not cool to be deliberately cruel.) once extrication has been achieved, whether neatly or sloppily, i don't think one should look back. the loop has been closed, the circle completed.

one girlfriend of mine was dumped years ago by a small-souled man named michael. it cracked her core and she took 2 years to recover. during those two years, she constantly asked, Why? i refrained from answering, Because. and during those 2 years she badgered him for an answer she could accept, tearing at him like a thistle. she said she was doing this in the service of some future closure but i disagreed: closure had already been achieved when he said those two words, 'it's over.' one might take issue with his timing and tact, but i'm pretty sure michael thought the door of that relationship firmly closed.

and even when those magical words aren't spoken, but acted, it's the same thing: someone suddenly disappears, drops from sight so quickly and thoroughly, you expect to see his face on a carton of milk. and so it was with MR. he's not technically an ex, but he is a past...someone. one day we looked around and we each weren't there. the loss was so clean, so fast, i barely registered it.

but now...he's back, even if it's just for a 3 hour stopover on his way to Korea in two weeks. this reappearance is more ... i don't know. bittersweet? no, not bitter.

it's more like...reading a novel, turning the last page and seeing a little epilogue where you find out what happened after all the main action's done. you see it, exclaim 'yay!' and when you're finished taking everything in, sighing, you put the book on the shelf until you need to read your favorite bits all over again.

life coach session coming up...the goal this week: defining my values.
that should be fun.

it took me a week to finish my 'homework.' either i'm as shallow as a cake pan or my subjectivity holds untold depth.

stupidity

after reading this about abstinence-only sex ed from the Administration, i'm completely enraged. but i have no TIME for rage since i'm at work!!

grrrr....

Well. The wheels will start turning on writing discrimination into the Constitution for the first time. Nice, Shrub.

Good display of compassion there.

I have yet to read a coherent argument how allowing homosexuals to marry and enjoy the legal rights everyone else gets to have will endanger straights' access to marriage.

Noooo!

Nader is running again.

No. Way.

Well, I guess this was too late to stop him...

trolling the blogs tonight...

i love the blogs, i really do. some are more rigorous than others, but there's always a fact or a question that makes me pause for a moment and actually cogitate (unlike this little thing which is merely another stalling tactic...damn you, little unfinished poem, i am ignoring you!)

however, the overwhelming testosterone-laden pontificating and the 'i was a philosophy, greek history and poli sci triple threat in college' posturing of most of them makes me wonder what they're really like away from the blue fizzing glare of their laptops. like, tacitus, for instance. fabulous, you're incredibly intelligent. wonderful, you're a conservative who doesn't make most progressives vomit. huzzah, you have fantastic critical thinking skills and wield a knowledge of the ancient world like a truncheon.

but, darling tacitus (or eschaton, orcinus, talking points guy or any of the mysterious guys who blog like fiends and make me wonder what they do to pay their rent), for the love of god -- grow a sense of humor.

blather, blather, drone drone, zzz zzzz zzz.

yearrg!

so this is what it's like to have a life coach: for the next two months we shall delve into my ... whatever... bullshit to discover why i'm not writing and what exactly i can do to change that. apparently, this will happen through 'active journaling', self-assessments, practices (??) and lots and lots of talking. so much talking i anticipate my vocal chords spasming.

the Coach is a very sweet woman. she's small and blond, with quick blue eyes, sensible shoes and a kind of nordic steeliness that i find a little intimidating. she's in her late 40's or early 50's, so i'm expecting a LOT of wisdom here. she's already suggested that in order to affect change i may have to change some of my habits; i've warned her i don't own athletic gear and hate sweating.

we talked for over two hours last week in our first intake session and i was alarmed at her page of notes. so far we have discussed my family (love them, had to move 2000 miles away from them), my faith (got it, but please don't be a bible-banger), my friends (no comment) and my ... indiscretions (no comment.) while others pay thousands of dollars to be this self-indulgent, i get to explore and expose my inner recesses for free.
...
valentine's day was a non-event. friday night, spent all night drinking champagne, smoking and playing scrabble with the girls. i lost steadily the entire evening, even after throwing down words like 'nexus' (ok, i only used it once and every other word was something like 'fob' or 'gob' or 'mucal'.) is mucal a word? who knows? i bluffed and it landed me 18 points.

yes--i cheat at scrabble.

saturday was spent helping a. with her new coffee table and watching 'american splendor'--the most genius movie i've seen this year. yes, even more genius than LOTR.
...
i go to new haven in 3 weeks. the librarian awaits. yearrg, indeed.

Will the snow EVER melt? Chicago is in the grip of the yuckiet weather I can remember in a long time and I'm ready for some warmth. Any kind - body, sun, a hot brick ... anything.

A friend passed this on, a plea to Ralph Nader not to run. Weird to see how the 2000 election came down to a few electoral votes.
...
Complaining about corporate wenchdom is so boring, but I can't help it. The week has been ass-clenchingly busy and it's only Tuesday; Madame has been tapped to be acting VP for our client and while that's great, that's insane--for me (since everything has to circle back to me). So this means that I'm onsite for half the week and this could kill my already reed-thin social life. Friday I found myself catching a cab to pick up our client's birthday gift for her daughter at American Girl Place; I rewarded myself with a sweater, a new purse and a box of bao buns. Anything for the client...and now the Firm has been voted Best Corporate Skinner Box to Work For 2004.

I blather. All this to say I need to get out of town for a weekend to see my librarian. Soon.

i went out saturday with a friend and he asked if i was doing much writing. i dropped my gaze to my sushi and hemmed and hawed.

busy...undisciplined...daunting pile of paper...some thoughts kicking around...blah blah.

then i looked up and said, 'let's face it. i'm lazy. it's too hard and i don't know what i'm doing.'

so this week, i'm meeting with a LIFE COACH. so bourgeois. so oprah.

pathetic.

A very cool breakdown of Shrub's appearance on Meet the Press yesterday.

(I should feel guilty over the glee I feel, but I don't...)

Travelling soon to New Haven...giddy, giddy, giddy.

pocketbook activism

call it an emotional imbalance or just knee-jerk reactionary liberalism, but reading the papers tends to make my blood pressure shoot out the roof and my jaw ache from all my teeth-gritting.

the office was a little slow, i hadn't taken my vitamin, so i was desultorily scrolling through my morning editions - talkingpointsmemo, nytimes, atrios, salon, tompaine.com. you know, the usual. then one link led to another and i found myself at opensecrets.org, a non-profit that researches connections between money and politics--basically, who gives it and who gets it.

reading how private industry, through PACs and trade associations, lobby the political parties shamelessly and pour millions into their coffers made me take out my checkbook for the first time ever and write a series of checks: to NARAL, Planned Parenthood, the DNC, and an obscure congressional race in Kentucky that could be the first step in taking back the House from the RePoobs. they weren't large checks, because i don't have large pockets, but that was unimportant.

if our political process is important to us, then it is equally important for us ordinary citizens to participate through volunteering, through injecting our voices into public debate (yes, write that nutbag letter to the editor), and through our paltry dollars. on opensecrets, i read that out of all the dollars contributed to various politicians, organizations or issues, only a teeny-tiny-teeny come from individuals like you and me. the rest, the vast majority of buying power comes from special interest groups. aren't we an interest group?

the checks i wrote yesterday were the equivalent of two really great dinners (with wine) in chicago or one hormonal shopping trip on a weekend at nordstrom's.

i think our political future is worth a pair of shoes.

it's been a while (thanks, corporate wenchdom) but i'm back. reading the morning papers and all the feisty bloggers out there i'm convinced that if i ran my personal finances the way this administration is proposing to run our nation's, i'd be living in a cardboard box under the train tracks on racine.

where is the outrage? where is the anger over this administration's mendacity?

it makes me wanna holler.

Selective Blindnesses

Have been stupidly busy at corporate wenchdom, but here's an interesting blog about a pro-democracy demonstration in Iraq that took place in December but didn't get a lot of press here in the West.

It's amazing how selective our eye is.

I'll post more later when Madame isn't making me re-hang the moon. ("A little more to the left, dear!")

huzzah!

it has only taken me 4 months to figure out how to link my email address. my technical dimness knows no bounds.

MoDo

yet another inane, dumb, and useless column from maureen dowd in this morning's nytimes.

So...after all this time, a woman is *still* required to be the reflection, and magnification, of her husband's ambitions. (No matter her own professional obligations, of course.) I'm an intelligent woman whose responses are a bit more articulate than this, but what utter crap.

And even worse is how otiose this column has become: first she subjects us to the semiotics of Clark's sweater and now this toothless column about Dean's wife avoiding the stump (which only shows her good sense.)

Brooks may infuriate me with his intellectual disingenuity, but at least he doesn't give smart women everywhere a bad name.

mars

just heard on NPR from a little kid interviewed at the smithsonian:

"i've never been to mars but if i went by myself i'd always be with someone."

heh.
kid's like a little president shrub savant.

...and another thing--

about the dec 29 post re: cold mountain--

i was wrong. apparently, there weren't a lot of black people in that region of wherever because of the particular type of farming/agricultural lifestyle structure they had up there in those cold mountains.

However--renee zellweger's character, Ruby, was apparently, in the original NOVEL, a black woman. huh. and somehow, that's transformed into white in the movie.

huh.

not that zellweger was awful--no--she was the best thing in the movie. and even watching ruby's relationship to ada was interesting: i thought it was a good way of exploring class relationships. but what a cop out since it wasn't even part of the original story!! ruby's race puts a whole other layer to her relationship with ada and the transformational power of that farm takes on another level of potency. ada doesn't merely become self-sufficient because of ruby's help; she transcends her station and gender classifications. the scenes of literacy between her and ruby take on another level of significance; the inversion of power and privilege and knowledge is more significant because of ruby's race.

but no. instead of that (which would have been a white woman's version of 'color purple'--not a bad thing in itself) we get a watered down, lame-ass love story between inman and ada. and it's not even an interesting epistolary love affair--there's only one letter of significance plus we're subjected to a totally gratuitous shot of nicole kidman's pubic hair. (who needs that?!)

and, yes, i was glad when he died--the romance should have ended with their knee-buckling kiss just before he leaves for the 'waw-uh.'

there. i spoiled it.

and you know what else is bugging me about the article thing? the fact that i have this great idea and am completely paralyzed about how to publish it. i'll do all of this work, and for what? it seems pointless, yet i have to do it.

hm. yes. i didn't do any of what i said i was going to do this weekend--didn't do any of the prep work for the interviews, didn't set up the chat structure, didn't even think about this new article.

oh, i'm still interested in the topic, but it's the work that's stopping me. yes, i'm lazy. i'm undisciplined. i have great ideas and potential but the thought of this independent study/article of mine makes me sweat and i hate sweating.

so, instead, i helped ali paint her apartment.
it's lovely.

procrastination, thy name is ding.

(and is it just me or are shrub's approval ratings creeping up again?)

whoops.

may have bitten off more than can safely be chewed...new 'article' has now expanded into a focus group in california, chat board and exploratory discussions of women, our stories and choices. ugh. why am i doing this?

when will i have the time to do this?

have started writing a thing about women's choices...the tone has been really harsh. a-- told me that if she had written it she'd have been called a total elitist racist. hm. of course, i think i'm totally right, but the tone is a bit much. whatever.

The Miller's Tale

from Roomie's email this morning to me:

I have blown out three ribs, 2 spinal discs, the equivalent of eight drinks, 4 potatoes, 6 haystacks, 2 cows, a cornfield and a Buick into the toilet since I saw you last.

Holding oneself in the Iron Cross position, and LITERALLY blowing yourself into the air for a few seconds is neither liberating nor cleansing. It hurts.

And I think that the clams have finally left the building.

Random things...

It's like we're in a movie. We all know who the bad guy is but he seems to be getting away with everything--he tied up the heroine on the railroad tracks, he shot the sheriff, he intimidated the town council, he stole the land from the homesteader (who probably displaced a native brown person.) But there's only a quarter of the movie left and it looks like he'll win: he'll get the town, the land, the sassy saloon broad and your little dog, too.

In a couple of days, 2003 will be over and the election year will ramp up with the grinding force of a military column moving through a town. On the surface, it looks like our economy is picking up; it looks like our Iraq adventure could maybe, sorta, probably end soon? maybe? It looks like domestic life is settling down and we're successfully keeping our borders safe. It looks like this because the news is so quiet lately, huh? We keep being told everything's better, but is it really?

The economy: Paul Krugman's column today nicely sums up the fissure that lies between our 'booming' economy and our reality. Think about it: how many of our laid off friends have found jobs equal to or better than the one they had to leave? how long have our friends been laid off? How many of our families that we visited over the holidays are showing signs that they're working harder for less?

Iraq: what is there to say? it was done badly, wrongly; i used to think "I totally disagreed with going in but now that we're there, we might as well stay and finish what we started" but it's almost like finding yourself in the middle of a clusterfuck without your realizing and thinking, "Well, this is really gross, but now that I'm here I might as well stay and get off." And whatever happened to our embedded reporters? Now that things are really difficult, we can't see what our soldiers see?

All the ire from the other 8 candidates focused on Dean amazes me, too; come on, guys, quit whining, grow a set and run your own race.

cold mountain...

it had the picaresque quality of The Odyssey, the mind-numbing pace of Snow Falling on Cedars, the sacrificial romance of The English Patient and 'the Civil War is all about white people' of Somersby all rolled into one.

if it wins an oscar, i'll puke.

at work...sleepy...reading the paper online...
last week was a full one, current event-ly. but being in LA meant i was essentially quarantined from the rest of the world.

almost end of year resolution: wear jeans to work every day this week.

lost and found

(ok, a weird technical blip happened, so this may actually double post)

take-aways from the final days of Holiday Hell:
1. crying at the airport while saying good bye to your daddy is not very pretty.
2. if you're in la you must go to the lost and found on national and overland. it's the kind of dive bar in a strip mall where the bartendress has a voice like 40 miles of bad road and the customers bring their own food. there's wood paneling, a christmas tree, tinsel and you can smoke there.
3. the smoking garden/oasis at LAX is genius. where else can you suck nicotine into your system and simultaneously inhale jet fuel?

African American Vernacular Phrase of the Day: "losing my religion" [as in "ATA fucking lost my luggage on the direct flight from LAX and I was so pissed I damn well lost my religion in front of that stupid baggage claim guy. I couldn't see straight for 15 minutes."]

brilliant...

dynamite hacks' cover of nwa's 'boyz-N-the-hood'.
my sister and i blew snot we laughed so hard, listening to kroq, driving from the westside pavillion.

it's almost over. i will be sad when i leave, but i will also be glad to sleep in my own bed and eat my own doritos.

christmas was stormy--flash floods, winds, mudslides. an earthquake. heightened security at lax. i'll have to be at the airport 5 hours ahead of time to make a noon flight. my niece and nephew have had more tantrums i can shake my ass at, and my sister and brother-in-law need to get out more. i feel so bad when i see how tired they get and how their time really isn't their own.

but it's almost over. next week, i'll be back in chicago, back at my office, back in my life. missing them while i'm back in my life.

have also had inordinate conversations about anal sex while here and it's unnerving. who knew evangelical christians were so into it?

i don't have much time.

the children are up and leslie is looking efficient.

quickly, my holiday so far, bridget jones style:

3 cigarettes, 2 cocktails, 4 toddler sized tantrums, 1 time-out, 1 bad santa, 3
adult tantrums over not getting my way, 1 sales clerk yelled at when i couldn't find gift boxes, 1 whispering niece who says i
smell like smoke, 1 hobbit movie i haven't seen yet (dammit), 1 christmas dinner
yet to be cooked, 3 nights on my sister's couch, and 1 hugely round nephew who
makes me laugh.

oh, and one hysterical phone call to ali from sav-on about how much my holiday
is sucking right now.  i am NEVER having children.  NEVER.

merry hell

i'm hiding in my father's study, quickly checking email messages and scribbling this blog. my holiday thus far in los angeles:
1. my sister's kids are driving me insane. ok, they're adorable, but fighting with a 4-year old over my walkman and arguing why the shins are better than 'jingle bell rock' is, frankly, undignified.

2. haven't had a serious cocktail since i landed. i'm shaking from the lack of scotch, gin or vodka in this god-forsaken land.

3. neither have i had a cigarette. still shaking.

4. it's 74 degrees here.

5. we had a 6.5 earthquake yesterday.

i'll stop there before i burst into tears. what next?? mudslides? brush fires? the pacific ocean turning to blood?

Us Girls

Forget about sex and the single girl, what about politics? It turns out that we're more important than we think. Here's a short article taken from Diversity Inc:

Are Single Women the New 'Soccer Moms'?
Forget about soccer moms. The prized voter of next year's presidential election could be single women, according to a new study. But they need to get to the polls. Using census and other voting data analyzed by two Democratic polling firms, the study released Tuesday found there would have been 6 million more ballots to count in 2000 if single women had voted at the same rate as their married counterparts.
The study, the first phase of a project designed to help get single women to the polls, showed that they are the largest nonvoting group and also one of the most dissatisfied with the country's direction. Study authors Christina Desser and Page Gardner, who received funding from some nonpartisan sources for their broader project, "Women's Voices. Women Vote.," said one reason single women stay home on Election Day is because they think their concerns about education, jobs and health care are routinely ignored.
Exit poll data from the 2000 election indicates that more single women voting next November could help the Democratic presidential nominee. George W. Bush slightly edged out Al Gore among married women, while married women preferred Gore by more than 30 percentage points. (AP)

I find that stunning--single women not participating in our political process. Too busy? Indifferent? Apathetic? I think it's time for us to be a bit more visible.

i haven't really given a lot of time to write about politics (other than my angry screeds against the Opt Out women and marriage) but here is a link to a Washington Post article about Dean and the Dem's outsider status.

it just made me go 'hm.' haven't quite decided who i'm for, yet.

at work: huge team party last night, there are only 4 of us here. i have $10 to my name until monday (grr). i have to write holiday cards for Madame.

(btw, i'm proud of the fact i just figured out how to do the link thing...)

a full day of divorce proceedings by proxy. two grownups fighting over breast implants, art, books, computers, contents of security deposit boxes, horse boarding, and phone bills--oh, and children.

and gay couples make a mockery of marriage?

(snort)

tannenbaum

i have a tree.

(well, *we* have a tree.) there it is--square in the middle of the princess turret, naked, waiting for a bulb or two. years into adulthood and this is my first tree. i know, big deal. it's not like owning a home, or having a kid, or whatever the proper marker of adulthood is.

but it's ours--mine and my roommate's. we bought it; her boyfriend strapped it onto his truck and i watched him carry it up three flights of stairs.

now it feels like christmas.

(yes, i'm totally PMSing and...cue mood swing)
...

the new issue of W has a remarkably disgusting article about how much money it takes to be rich.

i had just finished saying to my roomie, 'you know, this magazine doesn't annoy me the way it used to...' when i turned the page and saw the article.

if i didn't have *work* tomorrow morning, i'd vent.

when did this become my job?

this is my life right now: helping my boss' brother pore through domestic detritus as his wife divorces him. for the rest of the week i have to help him as he narrows his marriage to assets, property and valuations. then, i'll make folders for him, create tables and graphs, and watch as we figure out where his wife's breast implants go.

my boss says to me, 'i'd really appreciate if you could work with him and just try and get him organized.'
i say, 'sure, no problem.'
she says, 'if you could sit with him...'
i say, 'uh, sure. no problem.'
and then she says, 'we can't really leave him alone...'
i think, jesus. i'm babysitting.
but i just say, 'i understand. it'll be no problem.'

i was feeling full of holiday cheer (i'll be in l.a. next weekend!) but now all i wanna do is find a dark bar and drink.

merry merry...whatever

the holiday season is here.
i'm already too tired to deal with it.

but there's a party tonight and i should go...even though i really just want to throw on a turtleneck sweater, jeans, boots and go to the movies for a few hours. last year, at this same party, i abandoned my friend A. as she was accosted by a bisexual short order cook going through a rough divorce. when he wagged his tongue at her and suggested a threesome i ran for the buffet.

let's hope tonight provides more entertainment than that.

doot-do-do...

it's a slow day. i've managed to get my boss out the office for the next two days and the silence is heaven sent. i've skimmed the papers, predictably gritting my teeth at various bits: bush's turkey was fake, the 'healthy forest' thing passed, his poll numbers have stopped their spiral downward, and the goopers have decided to abandon their ship...

but nothing is grabbing me by the hips and making me jiggle. it's hard being politically feisty all the time, you know? and then, when your sap is running high and all that, the concentration starts to wander.

it sort of saunters over to sunday night and that guilt-inducing cocktail (then dinner, then nightcap) shared with the Older Guy. the concentration lollygags in front of that memory and waves at it, fluttering its fingers at it, trying to catch its attention again...and fiercely ignores guilt's hand tugging on her faux fur collar.

what are the obligations to someone with whom you've been intimate, exchanged the L-word (albeit drunkenly) and who lives several states away? how far does one's (gulp) commitment go?

guilt guilt guilt....

if temptation was a pint of ice cream, i'd be sitting in a barco-lounger wearing a muu-muu, stuffing my face with it.

mercury is in retrograde (not that i'm totally into this) but word has it that things from our past will make sudden and alarming appearances in the next few days.

the thought of my 'past' stumbling into the light makes my ass clench.