is he kidding? jonah goldberg can kiss my minority ass.

so here's his piece: Racism by another name is `diversity' | Chicago Tribune

and here's mine (perhaps to appear in a newspaper near you sometime soon):

Mr. Goldberg is probably correct; if all children, across all economic and racial strata, had access to the basic building blocks for stability - adequate housing, nutrition, health care, family support and quality early childhood education from the start - then perhaps affirmative action would be moot. But we all know that hasn’t happened, yet, and perhaps Mr. Goldberg should look outside his own privileged background and take a reality check.

While we work towards a level playing field – and to date, other than to suggest black people should be happy with less challenging schools, Mr. Goldberg hasn’t offered a single recommendation how to make that happen – let’s ask ourselves what our universities and colleges would look like without affirmative action now?

To answer that question let's look at California; ten years since affirmative action was banned in California minority enrollment at the state’s best schools has plummeted. In 2000, nine African American first year law students enrolled at UC Berkely; in 1996, that number was twenty. University-wide numbers show that since 1995, African-American undergraduate enrollment dropped to 4,780 from 5,016 while white enrollment remained steady, hovering in the 50-55,000 area; in 2005 at UC Berkely alone, there were only 829 African-American students enrolled compared to the 1,200 back in 1995. In contrast, during that same period, White student enrollment remained steady.

If the white student population has not been significantly affected, why call for less opportunity for students of color? (It's not true that if you make room for Black Joe you take away from White Tom. In fact, what you've just done is make White Tom the default.)

There was a hope that eliminating affirmative action would force us to change the way we pipeline underrepresented students into higher education – we hoped that improved K-12 education would eliminate the need for so-called racial preferences. But that hasn’t happened, either. Disadvantaged school districts still lack the AP classes and counseling necessary to boost even their top students’ GPAs to the level of a student from a more privileged school district. In addition, recruiting students of color is now illegal under the California law, making it even harder to put students of color in the pipeline for higher education. And so, ten years after the California Prop 209 initiative, we can see that the desired affect has been reached; there are practically no students of color on any UC campus and Michigan wants to do the same thing in their state.

(Of course, Michigan also has a long tradition of being a racially segregated state so perhaps they're just going back to their roots. After all, it is one of the remaining states with bunches of sunset towns still operating in them.)

The privileges of the upper/middle class should be enjoyed by everyone. While affirmative action is an effective tool to give access to opportunity to students who need it, it's important to continue to ensure historically underrepresented populations have those basic building blocks necessary for a full and autonomous life – economic stability, family stability, physical and educational stability.

Maybe those who don’t like affirmative action can work on that.

the universe hates me

at first, today was normal: morning meeting (cancelled), busy work at the desk, pressing list of things to do and figure out, work work work, lunch, more work.

then comes the afternoon planning meeting for one of our major events next spring and i look down at the tentative schedule of events and see something that makes me sit up, squeak and loudly say, Holy shit.

remember last night? i'm cruising around B-'s archive of writing; i'm thinking that it's sad i didn't get to know him that well; i vaguely register a photo of him and his heretofore unknown well-known sister on his website.

why is this significant?

because she's going to be performing at my organization's event next spring with her nationally recognized spoken word troupe. that's why.

things i never knew about the man i knew

B- sent me an email today. it was a link to his newest article, a review of nbc's 'earl'. i don't think it was sent to me, personally, as some kind of sign or anything. it was probably just a mass email to folks he has in his address book.

but i'd never really read his writing in any close way. since the link was there, what harm would there be? what could i discover about B- since we'd stopped sleeping together?

you know how you read certain authors and you instantly have a sense of where they come from - they're authors of a Place and you'll always associate them with that? like, flannery o'connor is a southern writer; edith wharton is new york; steinbeck is california. well, B- is san antonio. you read him and you can taste the tecate, you feel the dry heat, you smell the dirt. his writing about his hometown should have been all the conversations we never had. the holes in his biography were filled: his sister is a well-known poet and spoken work performer and activist; his father was not just a crazy vietnam vet; he was raised by his staunch baptist grandparents; he may have been well-educated at stanford but he was in contempt of it all. he has a soft imaginative spot for petty criminals, con men, hustlers and winos.

there's nothing about me - and there shouldn't be. but there is a short piece called 'hello, walls,' roughly around the time we stopped seeing each other, and i can't help but remember this day we spent together.

anyway. i thought that was interesting.

brill-yunt: bush years as hook up

yes, i'm still riding the high of seeing the dems actually win something (see what message discipline can do??) so here's an apt metaphor for the past 6 years:

Listen, we've all had the questionable hook-up. We get it. Bush didn't seem at all crazy when you met him at the club. And sure you dabbled in faith-based stuff, and maybe his foreign policy was a little naive, but come on -- sexy, sexy tax cuts.

But then things got out of control, and kinkier and kinkier and next thing you know you're in a war with no occupation planning and no exit strategy and being told that's okay and back off; and people are being tortured, and then not allowed to talk to their lawyers because they might reveal the secrets of their torture; and the one dude who had oversight on the corruption in the war is fired in secret; and you have record deficits and record spending and Congress meeting over Terry Schiavo and warrantless wiretaps and faith-based anti-science and the end of separation of Church and State and troop families in food banks and the most venal Congress in history and Abramoff and K Street and Young Republican college students in charge of Iraqui reconstruction and fucking HORSE LAWYERS IN CHARGE OF FEMA and bing bang boom you got a whole American city, just lying there dead, no explanations, no excuses, just stunned at how the hell you got here. Exactly like our questionable hook-ups, just substitute "waitress in Provost" for "New Orleans" and "all that vodka and blow" for "Hurricane Katrina" --

But let's not get distracted. Point is -- questionable hook-ups. We, as ordinary citizens, all know how we get out of this: you stop returning the crazy person's calls. We promise never to bring it up when drinking. Several years from now, when everything's scabbed over the two of us can joke about our mutual lapses in judgement while sharing a fine Rolling Rock beverage.

if any metaphor for our political process is going to sink in, it's the metaphor of the inappropriate one-nighter.

h/t: wasp jerky

post-election fallout

what an amazing day so far.
the senate is still up in the air, with montana and virginia the deciding factors.
the house is ours.

and donald rumsfeld is stepping down.

i'm sorry. was that a pig flying overhead?

i couldn't do it

Eric Zorn, loathe as i am to admit it, expresses what happened to me in the voting booth this mornng.

though i liked rich whitney a lot (flaming ex-socialist that he is), i just couldn't do it. i couldn't vote for him. i actually stood in that steaming hot polling room and felt my hair curl as i debated with myself to vote for rod (gag) or vote for whitney, thereby putting topinka (gag) one step closer to the governor's mansion. and so i couldn't do it.

these days, voting is like a scene in sophie's choice, you know?

roomie and i are silently counting down until we can pack up our passports and get on that plane to montreal for thanksgiving. we're both sorta tired and being in another place for the beginning of the family holiday season makes us really really happy.

really happy.
it has given us a reason (uh, excuse) to shop like we're crazy women.

two pairs of black pumps, a black/white chain print wrap dress, and a bottle of marc jacobs body lotion (YUM) later, i can say that shopping is the *perfect* antidote for not having a boy around.

counting down to another nervous breakdown: politics

Green Party vs. the goliaths | Chicago Tribune

the blagojevich/topinka ads are turning my stomach. can't a girl watch 'dancing with the stars' in peace? apparently not.

so my gaze turns toward a candidate who's been running so far under the radar, when i mentioned him at a work meeting, my very politically astute coworkers went, 'Err?' ralph nader pissed me off but i think i could probably go for a Green governor. and if you check out his profile, rich whitney doesn't sound totally crazy. ok, his gun policy is weird, but i can overlook that. i'm from los angeles.

(my rubric for political candidates is quite simple - don't sound like a nutbag.)

change has to start somewhere, right?
...
speaking of commercials, why don't the GOP just come out and call poor tammy duckworth a 'legless satan worshipper'? it'd cut through all the crap and make their ads so much more interesting.
...
talking to roomie on the phone yesterday, i realized that approximately 2 years ago, bush won his second election, i had a political nervous breakdown and began the shaky process of giving my boss the finger. it's an anniversary of sorts.

so maybe it's rather apropos that senator john kerry (hereafter known as The Supreme Dumbass) says something just ONE frakking week before elections that seemed almost calculated to make the Dems lose any chance of winning back the House, thus leading to another second political nervous breakdown.

so, uh, john. when i quit my job while in the throes of a massive depression and end up living on the streets, shall i blame you?

our fearless leaders

Rolling Stone : COVER STORY: Time to Go! Inside the Worst Congress Ever

a few things:
where is our national media? shouldn't THEY be digging around, telling us how much our leaders suck?
and, why do we to reward the most stupid among us so richly? the letter from randy (duke) cunningham will make you laugh your pants off.
and where are the moderates? where's their spine, their conviction?

and, lastly, i have to wonder, why is it a chronic habit of our macho progressive muckrakers to be sexist and homophobic when 'sticking it to' the GOP?

awesome!!

jet blue finally gets here!

it's about time, people! no more icky southwest! no more midway! yay!

blogging confessions

i'm at a crossroads, folks.

it's been fun having Screed, but what now? i've had these blogs for the past 4-5 years and it's time to move on, i feel. change things up a bit - get either more introspective or pack it in. but introspective about what? i started this blog because i needed a place to put all my ire. but ire ain't enough, is it?

and having a blog isn't the fun paradise it's cracked up to be: it's strangers stopping by calling you names (bastids), it's feeling the unconscious urge to be current, be funny, be snide, be snarky, be more ironically distant than the next - not to mention the unspoken urge to get to a certain level of production so that you become an even bigger blog. but it all becomes a bunch of noise after a while.

i want to cut through the noise.

and i miss my journals; i miss the physicality, the privacy and the intimacy of them. there's something about blogging that hints at intimacy - an anonymous kind of intimacy, like a really great one night stand - but because i know there's a reading public (albeit a small one), and i know some of that public, there's a veil over everything i write. i never wanted to write things that were veiled. i wanted it to be my truth. but that's not what blogging has given me: instead of truth, i have versions of truth. hints at truth. and trying to decipher which truth to use is a constraint.

i feel trapped by blogging sometimes. i'm trapped by the need to engage a vague public and the opposing need to say to that public 'i actually don't give a frak what you think. this isn't for you.'

my life coach and i talked about this once. she wanted to know what i loved most about journaling and i said the ability to capture and cultivate a moment that was as real as possible. not all moments are nice. they can be mean and hard and awful. but they can also be beautiful and difficult and funny and true. and we're not at our best all the time in those moments. but the best thing of all was that whatever public eye i was writing for was distant; it was an 'eye' i used to shape my voice. and it was comforting to know there was never going to be a response from that distant critic or audience unless i made a conscious effort to get one. here, there is and that's a big variable.

anyway, blather blather blather.

this is all to say that changes are coming and i have no idea what they are.

while watching PR...

you wanna know another reason to hate macy's?
their commercials.

i mean, my gawd.
how many un-rhythmic people can you have cavorting awkwardly to a lame cover of martha and the vandellas?

it's some serious ugly.

fascinating: black suppression of white votes?

U.S. Says Blacks in Mississippi Suppress White Vote - New York Times

totally fascinating.

my stars and garters!: BG night

Television Without Pity » Battlestar Galactica » Precipice

holy crap. who else was totally stressed out last night watching the double episode of Battlestar? it made me constipated. is starbuck really going to embrace her psychotic cylon lover of death? and who else was screaming at the screen, "kill the child! kill the child!"? oh, you weren't? well, we were. (what else to do? commit suicide? no! kill the half-cylon baby! push leoben over the edge!) and, come on, Chief! who *else* would be your cylon-colonial contact except gaeta?! get your head out of your frakkin' ass! and who in their right mind would sign the cylon order?? gaius, gaius, gaius! you could have been a hero after the fact *and* you would have been put out of your misery! so short-sighted. and is anyone else giggling over the fact that they made apollo look like the dead engineer who briefly commanded the pegasus? (poor john hurt.)

i like fat apollo; his waddle makes him interesting.

lock it down, folks.

i think i just got heartburn.

no longer just a hidden paranoia amongst the pro-choice, the new evangelicals' 'war' on contraception has finally broken the surface. i hate being right!

i love all the space given to the anti-family planning side while the pro-family planning side is given just a few inches toward the end, legitimizing the idea that people (mostly women) shouldn't have the right to use contraception.

Abortion foes' new rallying point | Chicago Tribune

so.
all those married ladies on the pill or using the sponge, diaphragm or IUD? forget it.
all those married guys who don't want to get a vasectomy and so use condoms? too bad.
everyone else who doesn't want to get pregnant (for various reasons) and who don't believe the same as others about the place of sex in a relationship (or out of one)? yeah, too bad.

sex is only for married folks, people. the fundies have said so.
and now they're going to FORCE you to be celibate.

whether you like it or not.

adulthood checklist

1. realize that in your new job you are fracking responsible for shit. realize that this is slightly different from just 'doing' shit. you're responsible for what gets done. you have a fracking budget, for frack's sake!
2. pay off that student loan, once and for all. they're getting impatient.
3. do something with that stagnating 401k. roll it over, cash it out - something.
4. plan now for whatever tax hell you're going to find yourself in next year.
5. get someone to prepare your taxes.
6. write your will.
7. decide who your medical proxy is (or whatever that's called - who will tell the doctors to shut off the machine?)
8. make a decision *now* about the whole essure thing. or the long-term, 'could possibly poke through my uterus' IUD thing.
9. get a check up and get those boobs checked, see if you have diabetes or any other family-inherited disease and get a whole STD/HIV screen. (drive up those insurance premiums for everyone! bwah ha ha ha ha! sigh. you have to read the whole comment string to get the joke.)
10. buy renter's insurance. (yeah, for *one* painting, the books and the old laptop...)
11. write your friends more letters.

Guy Gone Wild Gets Fined: heh.

remember the reporter who nailed the skeeviness of joe francis for all to see back in august?

she's back and this time, no complaints about 'objectivity'. joe gets nailed (sorta) by the justice department for violating federal laws protecting minors from sexual exploitation:

Maker of 'Girls Gone Wild' Runs Afoul of Law on Minors | Chicago Tribune

dammit! i'm a girl!

i'm in the middle of hastily cobbling together a GOTV project for NonProfit but i still have a few minutes to wonder about fashion...

what shall my new fall look be?
i've tried sexy librarian and failed...
what should my new staples be?

what are the rest of you wearing/shopping?

over in churchgal land, i'm losing my temper over the mommy wars.

i shouldn't have called Happy Mom bitchy.
but she pissed me off.

i'll be the first to admit that i'm not a child-friendly person. i was with old friends this weekend, and they have kids; we were looking for a place to eat and i suggested the food court. i said, 'it has wide aisles for the stroller, it has something for everyone and it's kid-friendly. affordable.' and my friend's husband said, 'wow, totally not like you at all. affordable, kid-friendly and accessible.' fucker.

but thanks to folks like bitch ph.d and orange (and the kick ass women they have at their own communities) and to my gig working to 'empower women and eliminate racisim' i've learned more about the connections between us single/childless women and women who care for kids. big epiphany: mommy issues *are* feminist issues and vice versa. i've learned a lot about the burdens that working mothers bear, the pressures on stay at home moms to be everything to everyone, the judgments that land on single gals like me who just may be indifferent to child rearing and create our worlds to make sure we remain childless. i've learned about these things and about how all our disparate issues aren't so disparate after all. again, mommy issues *are* feminist issues, even though i won't ever be a mommy.

(psst. it's all about the patriarchy.)

but i got a little frustrated over at churchgal with the whole 'bad mommy' blame game going on and i'm tired of churchy housewives stepping over who don't know how to look at things critically as a 'system' and instead take criticism of the system as some fracking personal assault. they ask the wrong questions, they jump to conclusions and they don't know how to stay on point. i hate it.

(yeah, i know. i may have learned a lot but didn't seem to learn humility. frack humility. where's that gotten us except where we are?)

the good thing, though, is that i found a cool website for mommies and social change. they write intelligently about mommy issues and sometimes they come down a little conservative and sometimes they're unexpectedly radical. it's a good read and a good resource.

(and for those critical thinking/social change writer-mommies out there, they want to publish your stuff.)

the times has an essay on interracial dating.
read on; i'll probably have more to say about it later.

(shh. i'm at work!)

Race Wasn�t an Issue to Him, Which Was an Issue to Me - New York Times

trickle down theory: breast feeding for the haves and have not so muchs

this is fascinating.

so what trickles down?
from the article:

For those with autonomy in their jobs — generally, well-paid professionals — breast-feeding, and the pumping it requires, is a matter of choice. It is usually an inconvenience, and it may be an embarrassing comedy of manners, involving leaky bottles tucked into briefcases and brown paper bags in the office refrigerator. But for lower-income mothers — including many who work in restaurants, factories, call centers and the military — pumping at work is close to impossible, causing many women to decline to breast-feed at all, and others to quit after a short time.

It is a particularly literal case of how well-being tends to beget further well-being, and disadvantage tends to create disadvantage — passed down in a mother’s milk, or lack thereof.

On the Job, Nursing Mothers Find a 2-Class System - New York Times

before i begin i must make a very strong suggestion.
you must watch bbc america's ShakespeaRE: Told's 'Taming of the Shrew' with shirley henderson and rufus sewell. it's brilliant, it's funny and now it's made rufus a lot more interesting than i would have guessed. i loves me some big, loud, bad, drunk, cross-dressing petruchio.

but now that the brutal summer weather has broken and fall really feels like it's breathing down my neck, i've been giving thought to, of course, boys. not crazy boys, like B- (whom i totally can't handle and who drives me nuts), but perhaps some friendly, fun boys like S-, whom i might visit very soon. you know, for the -uh - art museums. in boston. yeah.

i'm getting my hair done tomorrow (hello, mysterious egyptians who know how to do a blowout), i'm looking at airfare to boston, and i'm also talking to a guy who lives in michigan and, apparently, our paths have crossed without us knowing.

we were both on nerve and we're emailing; he's brown, i'm brown; he's slightly older, i'm slightly older; he likes camping and making furniture, i'm a die-hard city girl who likes sitting in furniture; we apparently lived in the same neighborhood at the same time in michigan, we hung out at the same places, used the same butcher - but we had never ever met one another. then he starts talking about a well-known music camp.

i chime in:
'yeah! i have friends who have family places up there! and a friend of a friend - her family is really involved on their board and she worked at [boop] then moved to new york where she's working for [beep]!'

he writes:
'yeah, E-! i know her - and i know her brother and i see her uncle around town all the time and i've known her dad and she and i used to date for a while!'

i respond:
'get OUT! you know E-?! i just saw her this weekend. how is this possible you know people i know? how could we live around the corner from each other and not ever meet and 10 years later we start talking on nerve?? you used to date??'

i recovered from the shock that sometimes this world is too freaking small and tonight he called. will he come out to chicago? perhaps. it's too soon to tell. but i like the timing. fall, cooler weather, no big hair, new clothes (which i have to plan out.)

hello, boys.

no wonder the good die young

while we were waiting for our flight to minneapolis, me and the girls caught up. it was my turn and i sighed over my snack wrap and said, 'being good is boring.'

and it's true. i've had about the goodest summer EVER and i'm libidinally bored out of my mind.
nothing has happened this entire summer and i'm pissed.

the highlight of my day saturday was the church garden picnic, which was really good, and then the walk i took down to the dvd store. lame.

(though not as lame as 'matchpoint'. watching rhys-davies and scarlett johannsen pretend to be thinking, scheming adults was so painful i had to do laundry to distract myself.)

why can't being good have the same frisson as being slightly naughty?

about 5 years ago i lost my mother. it was devastating.

and now, my best friend/roomie has lost hers. it's also devastating.
i'll be taking the next few days off to be with her and some of our friends who are flying out to join A- and her family for the services.

each parental loss i and my friends experience tells us how finite family is; our friends become our family.

look out iron john: the Brawny Academy

what. the. hell.
maybe i was tired, or bored, but i watched all 4 episodes and laughed my ass off.

Brawny Academy

(who cares that it's a total marketing ploy? it's men in the woods with the Brawny Man, learning to be 'sensitive'! snort.)

How To Become An Ally (Part 1)

i wanted to keep the joe francis link up at the top for a while but when i read this post from changeseeker i had to give it up.

THIS is the one post everyone should read about 'race', the construction of 'race', privilege and how a little hard work needs to be done. she breaks down the system of race in a way that a sociologist can - and that it comes from a white woman is doubly powerful to me.

but her post also prompts something for brown folk to consider. when we look at race, whiteness and blackness as a system and not as a personal thing, then i think that frees us. because 'blackness' is a construct, too. we are caught up in this system of racial oppression - not just as victims but also as people who have internalized these lessons. it's what makes it easy for us to call another brown person the n-word; it's what makes it easy for us to erect even taller walls of us/them within our own community.

what kind of liberation could we face if we, too, vowed to not participate in the maintenance of a racist system of oppression?

anyway, you must read it. she's working on a second part and i can't wait.

Why Am I Not Surprised?: For White Folks: How To Become An Ally (Part 1)

rather proud of this one

it's my alter-ego, ChurchGal, on joe francis, those soldiers accused of raping/killing a 14 yr old girl in iraq and what they have in common.

the guy behind 'girls gone wild': nutbag freak

the la times piece on joe francis is great.

talk about holding up a skeevy mirror to a guy who has a lot of influence in shaping young male sexual identity:

In short, Francis wants to insinuate himself and his view of the world into the food you eat, the clothes you wear, the vacations you take and the entertainment—filmed and glossy—that you consume. He sees "Girls Gone Wild" as the ultimate lifestyle brand. "Sex sells everything," he says. "It drives every buying decision . . . I hate to get too deep and philosophical here, but only the guys with the greatest sexual appetites are the ones who are the most driven and most successful."

if that's the case, and after reading this profile, you'll hope a flaming meteorite lands on joe and all that's left is a crater. his vision of the world is one that turns every woman into a pink hole.

why is it always women pointing out the total scary inappropriateness of guys like this? why aren't men the first to hold up the mirror and say, Dude - you're fucked in the head and have a serious problem with women.

follow the links in the feministing piece for more discussion and analysis.

[update: here is another really fascinating take on the times piece which says that hoffman is a bad reporter for doing it. read to the end when he wonders what kind of world we live in that a pig like francis won't get clocked by a woman he's just assaulted? i say that it's a world where women are afraid of the bastards who hurt them. the same kind of world where we force a rape victim to watch a videotape of her own gangbang and the kind of world that allows a man to make money coercing barely legal drunk girls to have sex with him and his crew.]

dude, wake the fuck up.

(note: let's not forget this is also the joe francis who was in court last year because some guy broke in his house and made him say/do something 'sexually humiliating' with a dildo. i remember writing that if anyone deserved a big bite of karma it was him. let's hope this expose is just the beginning.)

making it work - your way

it's sunday afternoon, a rare day that i've been able to enjoy without 'running errands' or otherwise being outside in some heatwave.

i've stumbled across two articles today in the 'paper' that are sort of like bookends to one another; one looks at the declining number of men without college educations marrying and the other looks at women, with educations, entering financial services and what they encounter - as well as the adjustments some firms are having to make because of them:

Facing Middle Age With No Degree, and No Wife - New York Times

Wall Street's Women Face A Fork in the Road - New York Times

what's interesting to me about both these articles is how they avoid the tone of a fake 'crisis' (unlike the Times' previous shoddy Opt Out articles, which one of these is a tonic for) and they show how the idea of what's 'traditional' is changing because people (men and women alike) are saying up front 'this isn't working for me.' and their rejection is saying something about the way our worlds, social and corporate worlds, are organized.

when looking at the low trends of young women entering financial services it's offered that 'Generation Y cares less about money if it comes at too high a price, ...throwing a wrench into Wall Street’s past assurance that it could demand cultlike devotion from employees in return for fatter paychecks than any other profession.' instead, younger men and women (even those who'd like to return) are demanding something less insane than working around the clock to the detriment of their personal/family lives.

and the guys featured in the marriage piece - they seem ok with their status, whatever their reasons for remaining single (financial stbility, fear of divorce, can't commit.) to the pressure of marriage, the effort and expense of it - they're saying no. while the article makes a lot of the stats showing how the pool of available women has shrunk for these men, their own personal stories tell a different story - they just don't want to marry. it's working for them.

of course it makes me think what things will look like down the line when most folk in my generation will be living as roommates, unmarried and pretty happy about it. it'll be unlike life as we've known it (or heard about from our parents and grandparents).

that'll be sort of interesting.

i had lunch with an intern and two other brown girls yesterday from my office. the poor little intern had no clue how to go about grad school, finding a job - totally lost.

we were talking about how she needs to create a network for herself and i found myself saying, 'you need to widen your circle of friends. and it wouldn't be a bad idea to make sure one of them is white. some white folk can be very helpful.'

'i don't know any white people.'
'you need to. at least one.'
'really?'
'really. but find a good brown mentor, too. you'll need both. cover all your bases.'
'really?'

the other two women nodded. 'we didn't think this was important when we graduated college, but after working for a while, yes. ding is right. you need a white friend. at least one.'
'but why?'

i said, 'first, it's always good to be friends with everyone, but it's especially good to have a bridge to white folk. it's about strategy. i've grown up around white people; i've always had white friends. but it was still an eye-opener to see how white guys i worked with made connections, met one another, promoted one another, got up that ladder. they're bold, assertive, they do their homework and they think ahead. i learned a lot observing them and my roommate's way of thinking about work and management has actually helped me. our friends and family back in the neighborhood - they're about safety. as long as you find a good job, baby, you'll do ok. nice advice, but not really gonna help you be anything more than safe. you need someone to show you how to get your foot in the door and keep it there until you get what you need. white folk know how to do that.'

(the white guys at the table next to us fell silent.)

the other two brown girls nodded.
one of them said, ' my dad worked his way up the ladder to a senior executive position at the post office. he has a great job but all he wanted was for me to get a good job at the post office. i didn't want to work for the post office.'

i said, 'and my mom wanted me to get my teacher's certification and be a high school teacher back in california. she thought grad school was risky.'

the intern asked, 'does everyone know about this?'
'well, you won't find it in a black MBA book, but we think it's useful.'

from television without pity 'project runway' forum:

I'm listening to my boyfriend right now talking to one of his co-workers on the
phone about how horrible Angela's skirt was and what he would have done with
Keith's dog instead of that lame-ass bracelet. This, from a guy going on a
camping trip this weekend to shoot guns in the country with some friends.

love. this. show.

i'm going to stagger home now from the office. i wore white pants today and i've been a nervous wreck because Hugo is still visiting. Hugo has been visiting for months. in any other situation, any other woman, three months of Hugomenses would be a cause for alarm; alas, for me, it's merely an emphatic sign that i'm totally effing stressed out. i've killed my uterus.

and i have about 10 phone calls i have to return, that i haven't had a single chance to get to.
once i get my sister's visit out the way, i'll concentrate on roomie's birthday, next month's trip to new york (STILL have to buy the ticket and talk to my friend L- about it), my birthday and perhaps a visit from a boy.

where has the summer gone?

bush to everyone else: what civil rights?

so...you have a department charged with enforcing civil rights laws on our books. who'd you rather want enforcing it: someone who agrees with the law or someone who thinks the law is crap?

my favorite, totally insane, 'up is down' quote from the conservatives who think this makes total sense:

But Roger Clegg , who was a deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights during the Reagan administration, said that the change in career hiring is appropriate to bring some ``balance" to what he described as an overly liberal agency.

``I don't think there is anything sinister about any of this. . . . You are not morally required to support racial preferences just because you are working for the Civil Rights Division," Clegg said.

no, roger, you're right. you're not morally required to agree with civil rights legislation. you're just legally required to adhere to it.

since when does enforcing the law need balance? since when does making sure there is non-discrimination need balance? let's think about what 'balance' means in this context.

what balances enforcement? non-enforcement!
what balances non-discrimination? discrimination!
what balances civil rights? fuck your civil rights!

Civil rights hiring shifted in Bush era - The Boston Globe

oh, the internets.
always a good source of weird myspace pickups:

"nice pictures. what do you do for a living? how tall are you? what do you do for fun?" - F.
(hi, random.)

"I read your profile and would be very glad to talk with you in real time, to start our relationship.I'm gentle and passionate man with a velvet sight and tender hands, kind heart and purposeful, resolute character. I can be soft and gentle as a cat, and I can be a passionate lioness with my unique lion. I very romantic and very much love a life! In fact in it so a lot of interesting! Very much I like to travel, meet interesting an pls if u wanna get to contact me real fast i mean to know each other better u can IM me on this yahoo ID [boop] u can as the same drop urs too thank u." - D.
(he's my favorite; notice how his language deteriorates as his message continues.)

"when i move to chicago u gona be my friend?" - G.
(um, no.)

"you like to be entertain me to were do you like to go?" - Godly
(the irony.)
...
the flaming bag of poo called work is finally over this week. and - i was dinged yesterday for wearing jeans - despite my wonderful new jacket and 'denim trousers.' (they're trousers! not jeans!) i was told i now have to be 'an example.' dude. after years of giving management the finger, i'm about to be coopted!

but thank you, S-, for your unique relaxation technique this afternoon. worked a charm. (hee!)

squee!

i've always written.
in 2nd grade i wrote stories about smart, nosy girls solving mysteries like What Was in the Janitor's Bucket.
in 5th grade i wrote a sci-fi story about an invasion from mars and how a ship of women saved the world while their boyfriends got shot. (i also bound and made the cover for it.)
in junior high i wrote gothic stories of victiorian ladies who were locked in rooms, broke out and shot their captors. (sensing a theme?)
in high school, i wrote plain stories about people living in los angeles in an existential torpor.
in college and grad school, fiction died and then i started to write self-aware, dry, academic things - conference papers, research papers, drafts for articles, book reviews.

and during all of this i scribbled in my journal - drew maps, made lists, sketched folks i saw on the bus. i traced my sexual (non)development, bitterly chafed against my baptist bonds, wrote more fragments of stories about being religious, funny stories about the latest boy i was stalking (oh, Knightley). so i've always written. and written. and written.

but today was the first day i actually got a check for it.

(the current issue of geez, kids! i'm in it!)

our president: man with a slow hand

nevermind she's the leader of all of germany.
she's a soft, warm woman and like all soft, warm women, she craves the touch of...our President.

dude. cussing on mic, blathering about pigs - is our president off the wagon or does he always give leaders of the free world back rubs?

the video of bush's 'love attack' is here.

in the world away from crisis communications and appts with community leaders, people are having much more interesting conversations than the ones i'm foisting on you all over here.

like, this conversation over at Bitch Ph.D. about the head butt heard 'round the world. JP has a response of sorts over here.

ok, back to crisis communications.

shopping

i have had to patch my favorite pair of jeans. the cuffs are frayed and the pants have that worn in look that impressionable young fashionistas pay scads of cash to get. after years of faithful service, they have become my new weekend jeans. long live the weekend jean.

and long live the jeans i replaced them with from forth & towne. roomie and i trekked in the blazing heat to old orchard and, there, i immersed myself in the really great sale they were having.

(where else can you get a cropped poppy jacket for $30 when it was once over $100? or a green straw handbag for $20, marked down from $98? or a couple of soft as silk t-shirts that drape just the right way for under $10? get thee to this sale!)

these jeans...i thought they weren't going to fit, that they were going to make me look like a big muffin top, but once again forth & towne totally surprised me: dark wash, straight through the thigh and hip, very slight bootcut at the bottom. it makes me look tall-ish. and it rests at just the right spot at my 'waist.' whoever is making their pants, and whoever their fit model is, it is working for me.

we did other shopping at pottery barn (paisely plates for just $13!!), stopped into nordstrom for their anniversary sale, but it was a bloodbath.

(and word to the head honchos at macy's: the field's out at old orchard is already suffering from the macy's malady - over-stuffed floors and racks, poor merchandising and tacky, undistinguished clothes. what used to be a store with at least attractive merchandise, with some really great surprisingly quality lines, is now a jc penney. and MOVE the big soft girl section from the FURNITURE department. not a good way to create a loyal customer.

thanks for that. can't wait until you finally ruin the store downtown.)

then, we came back into the city and stopped at vive la femme, a cute boutique in bucktown for big soft girls, something that's rare for this part of town. bucktown likes to act like everyone is hip, rich and the size of fiona apple. VLF is normally very very pricey (sometimes, prohibitively) so i was cautious when the really aggressive owner made me try on a very disco black/white sweater with kimono sleeves and a wide waist band. what a surprise that it rocked! i never would have picked it but now i'm wearing it to new york. and it only cost the equivalent of a cheap pair of steve madden shoes! add to that a black party frock with a disturbing band of silver under the ruched bodice (hm, must be removed) and this was a surprisingly productive shopping day - all this for just under $200!

see what happens when you wake up in the morning and do your yoga? you turn into a freaking capitalist, shopping pig!
...
and i know i said the door was closed on this topic, but he keeps emailing me.
it turns out B- really wants to date seriously and wants to correct any misapprehension i may have had about him 'bowing out.'

i give up. i really do.

my own personal west wing

boy situation aside (which actually isn't that big a deal since expectations were so low), this week is going to give me a stroke.

work has, to put a fine point on it, exploded all over me like a flaming bag of poo. i stepped into my new position officially last week and, man, is the learning curve fast and steep. our government affairs contact said to me, as she handed me her copy of the IL general assembly directory, 'don't worry. in a year, you'll be great. flashcards are useful.'

holy crap. flashcards. and - a year?!

i have to learn names, committees, titles, interest areas - for city, county, state, and federal level officials (elected and appointed).

what the hell. those 7 years of frolicking were nice. who needs friends, family and boys? not me.

i have the illinois general assemby and the cook county board to keep me warm.

(of course you know i'm secretly thrilled. i love this stuff.)

the last word on B-

in the twisted opera that is my non-relationship with B-, i think we have approached the final aria. the hero (that would be me) comes onstage too late to save poor butterfly (that would be B-), in his death throes, having chopped up his own guts after deciding, 'i can't meet your friends.'

the past few weeks have seen poor B- calling while i stalled, trying to figure out just what it is i wanted to do with him. i didn't want things to be the way they were. but i didn't know, couldn't see, how things were going to be different. so i stalled.

but still he called.
he called while i was at roomie's corporate event at navy pier.
he called when i was at a party for pride weekend.
he called when i was in michigan.
he called when i was at work.

(were his calls about getting together for the future? no, they were about getting together that night. please.)

so yesterday, when i call him (i have a 25% return rate with him) from the office i still have no idea, really, why i'm doing so. we chat awkwardly. i invite him to catch the world cup final with me and some friends on sunday afternoon. he says, 'right, that friendship thing.' and then says no - he's not into it, he leaves his sundays to prep for work the next day. ok. i can understand that. so i leave it. i offer to call later, but i'm still stumped what i'm going to be calling for.

the curtain is just hovering over the stage, folks.

i wake up this morning (er, afternoon) to an email from B- that says 'it seems you want me to perform certain social feats before we can hang out together alone. it feels like penalty kicks before the end of a game. good thing i'm bowing out before you make me go shoe shopping with you.'

butterfly has just inserted the knife and has hit the boards. bastard! i KNEW he'd do this!

my return email said 'i don't want you to perform anything. it would have been nice if we could have existed outside the bedroom. take care.'

enjoy all that alone time, dude.

(and note to self: when a guy gets dumped, he stays dumped. erase his phone number, block his email. waste of my fucking time.
yes, those three minutes i actually gave some thought to B- - i can't get those back now, can i? bastard!)

i have returned!
rejuvenated and refreshed from 5 days out of town.

did you know there are vineyards in michigan? had no idea!!
the northern part of michigan is so pretty.

but god i'm glad to be home.
i'd forgotten how totally scary silence can be.

i finally had to do it.
i had to cancel the mysterious US magazine i've been receiving over the past 5 months. at first i thought one of my friends signed me up as a joke. then i thought i got automatically signed up when we bought something at best buy.

who fracking cares now? thumbing through this crap has made my brain shrink!

so i wrote them a strongly worded email asking them to STOP DELIVERING IT, for the love of god, or my head would pop off.

they're so incredibly gross, you know what they give you when you click on FAQ, on their subscriber services page, wanting to know how to cancel your effing magazine? this crap.

What Happens When There Is No Plan B?

did anybody see this??
where was i when this came out?

below is a story about real-life consequences when Plan B isn't available to normal, everyday women. unbelievable.

who is still thinking that women shouldn't be able to retain *full* control of their reproductive lives??

Dana L. What Happens When There Is No Plan B?

senate to telecom: do me, baby.

more news on how big business wants to screw the little guy and our government says 'sounds fine to me!'

Senate Panel Defeats Net Neutrality - 6/28/2006 4:29:00 PM - Multichannel News - CA6348259

the very long 4th of july weekend is almost here and, thankfully, i will be with girlfriends on a road trip to michigan to invade a parental home and sit by the lake. my goals will be to sleep in the sun, not catch west nile, and read serial killer novels, comics and such while getting so brown i will eventually resemble a jimmy dean sausage patty.

i emailed B- to say hi (can't think of anything else to say over the phone...) and to tell him i'm out of town this weekend, though (in our past) this would have been the perfect weekend to Get it On. it's at these crucial boy-junctures in my life that i wish my life coaching sessions about intimacy hadn't ended quite so abruptly when i got this job.

oh, well. must muddle through somehow.
...
in other news, over on my churchgal blog, i've been asked to be the new thursday blogger for a coalition of progressive church folk on their site. when the post is up, i'll point y'all to it. apparently, my technical lack-wittedness is slowing down the process...

i'm sorry, but i don't know what you mean when you say 'post it on Movable Type'! how? where? why? just post it randomly? somewhere specific? huh?

if anyone knows how these weekly contributor things usually work, please clue me in.

and i have other technical questions: how does that whole blogrolling thing work when you sign up with blogroller - so i don't have to keep futzing and endangering my template when i wanna add something? and how can i set up a site meter thing? and how can i put a hyperlink in comments that actually works when you click on it? again, please clue me in.

jp's already making fun of me down below.
...
and has anyone read the new linda hirshman book? i've been getting questions about it and i'm curious.

this 'n that

here's a cranky tip to the bands and djs on myspace music: please leave me alone. i don't know you, i don't want to be your 'friend.' if i wanted your friendship, i'd already be listening to you.
thanks.
...
this was a very good pride weekend.
saturday evening my friends and i went to a pride-warming up in boystown and we had a marvelous time. there is something to be said, once again, for adult parties: parties where there's plenty of seating (absolutely necessary when you're in party shoes), plenty of drink that doesn't come out of a keg or bottles that have the word -meister in it, wonderful food made by actual human hands and laid out beautifully on a well-appointed table, and plenty of interesting, funny, regular people who just want to make funny conversations and have a good time, even if it's just for the night.

no drunk girls crying in the bathroom, no couples fighting in the hallway and no one calling the police. (or having the police called on them.) and not a single drug in sight!

toward the end of the night, i checked my mobile to see if anyone had called and who do i see but B-. it was his second message that day, gamefully trying out that 'friendship' thing i demanded. i wonder if he realizes that 'friendship' at this juncture means 'no sex.' hm. probably not.
...
it's weird, this no sex feeling i'm having. it sort of snuck up on me. i don't mean that i'm not feeling the Urge. oh, the Urge is there. the Urge to snuggle up to someone and feel desired and desiring - that's all there. i'm not saying that, if offered an appropriate opportunity, i wouldn't immediately jump on a boy for a really great makeout session. (kissing is the BEST.)

but the sex. meh. not so much.

this isn't the same as restlessness when no one is paying attention to me. this isn't the same as the cagey feeling i have when i just want to get laid and no one's around. this isn't that. this feels like the pause that exists between exhale and inhale.
...
speaking of which, did you know tomorrow is HIV Testing Day? you should do that. i should do that.

the best bj in town: a follow up and summary

over here you'll find a handy wrap up to all the hullaballoo started by the I Hate the Patriarchy post about giving head i mentioned below. i have no particular thoughts on the inherent politics of giving head.

i do have some thoughts about the phallocentric chauvinism shown in the partners i've had when they effing *expect* it. now, whether their expectation is a sign of the patriarchy, i have nary a clue (though i have suspicions) but it's of our continued acquiescence to that expectation that perhaps Twisty is speaking. nothing turns me off more than some guy who leans back and tries to force my head down into his lap. i remember the incident with 5-Fingered Tom who, while we were in the middle of a very nice snog session on his lumpy couch, whispered raggedly in my ear, 'Can I ask you something?'

and i whispered back, just as raggedly, 'The answer is No, I will not suck your dick.'

(in vain, he tried to change my mind. he said, pointing to his lap, 'But I need to take care of this.'
'So you take care of it,' i said, getting up and taking a chair in the corner across the room.
so i smoked a cigarette and watched poor 5-Fingered Tom wank off awkwardly on the couch and when he finished into a crumpled paper towel, he had a funny look on his face, like 'euww'.

i said, 'not exactly what you had in mind, huh? do not blame me for whatever feelings you might be having right now. that was all you. now take me home.')

and perhaps it's correct to protest the primacy of the blow job in our sexual narratives. though we may feel pleasure in giving them (i have) to the people we care for, there's no doubt that the blow job exists as a sign of masculine privilege and sexual dominance. (don't get me started on the fucking asshats who demand we swallow and the dumb girls who actually do it.)

if you don't like spitting out short and curlies or that slightly musky bj breath afterward, then avoid it. but for those of us who give them, there's nothing wrong with a little bit more introspection to examine why we seem to be getting really defensive about this when the questions about sexual politics should be directed at the guy who's getting blown.

now, i have more thoughts on this but i'm now officially late for work.

noooooo!

to my fellow battlestar galactickers (galacticians?):
the 2nd half of season two won't be released until fracking september 19!

give Big Business the finger: net neutrality now

over near the bottom of my sidebar you'll notice that little Save the Internet thing.

if the scenario below pisses you off, then click on that button and keep abreast of what's going on with net neutrality. i hate it when people tell me what i can or can't do (unreasonably):
...

Take Action Before Your Internet Sucks!

Ok, it's March, 2008.
You go to your computer and open your Verizon-supertier browser, and everything comes at you with blazing speed. You access your bank, NBC news, Andrew Sullivan's blog through Time.com, and check your email. You watch the last five minutes of Scary Movie 7, which you fell asleep watching the night before. Pretty cool.

Then you remember your best friend set up a new blog about her band and asked you to check it out. It's kind of irritating, because she set it up on the slow tier. You minimize the Verizon browser, open up Firefox, and type in the web address. It takes thirty seconds to load. Ugh. The site's fine, and there are some cute pictures of her band performing in a dive bar. You click on a song, and the browser begins loading the first minute of the song. After twenty seconds, you curse the fact that she didn't pay to be on Verizon's internet, and you close the browser.

You're even thinking of canceling your slow-tier internet account, since shelling out the $45/month for that plus the $29/month for Verizon super-tier isn't worth it. Welcome to a non-neutral internet.

The net neutrality fight is coming to the Senate this week, with the Commerce Committee set to mark up the bill on Thursday.

click on that button and see what can be done.

because of something i read over at I Blame the Patriarchy, i'm now in the process of reevaluating my talent for and, heretofore-thought, pleasure at giving oral.

not quite apathetic. yet.

y'all may have noticed that it's been a while since i've gotten all riled up about anything i've read in the papers or heard on the news. it's been months since i've parsed an op-ed column, longer since i've quoted anything from president 'numbers in the toilet' bush.

some possible reasons for this political lack:
my job is taking up alot of my time, only leaving me enough time to grab a few cocktails with girl friends when i get home
i'm distracted by the FIFA World Cup
i've forgotten how to read
or...

i just don't give a rat's ass what our president does anymore.

i find myself utterly indifferent to the rest of his term and the destruction he and his people are still wreaking on this country and every oil-rich nation within reach. the news coming from the white house becomes ever more absurd. the news from elsewhere is just exhausting. i think my brain switched off when that guy said the suicides at Gitmo were an act of warfare against america.

it's wrong and dangerous to feel this indifference toward my country and government. when a person no longer feels anything, when the mind and the heart retreats, it permits the outside world to do all sorts of things a person never thought the world could do. then we become the bystander, purposefully blind while a mugging takes place right in front of them.

misc.

i'm listening to The Roots (ha! gonna get that black card back, yet!) and reading stuff on the internets. thanks to Bitch, who points to Rootless Cosmopolitan, the personal blog from a south african journalist/editor from Time. check it out.
...
speaking of music, i just have to hand it to dave chappelle's Block Party for getting me curious enough to go to virgin and actually go into the rap/hip hop section - for the very first time ever. i am now the proud owner of Homegrown! The Beginner's Guide to Understanding The Roots Volume One and Blackstar's first cd.

what's next?

things i did today:

read a couple green arrow comic books; ollie is mayor of star city!
saw 'nacho libre' because jack black is adorable and makes me laugh till i fart; best line - 'i ate bugs, i ate grass/With my hands i wiped my tears.' heh.
walked to the taste of randolph where i ate 4 tacos, drank 2 beers, met our friend T-, and saw The Bellrays (who did a kickass set and will be at the Empty Bottle on the 22nd.)
got a tan
got a little sticky and stinky
walked back home with roomie and T- for recuperative drinks at our local until, 5 hours later, we left.

summer is the best.
(oh, and B- called while i was out. have yet to decide if i'll check his message.)

sister 'neath the skin: new blog found!

while frustratedly trying to fix the effing template of our new work blog (heh - i convinced them that blogging at work is a good thing!) i took a break and stumbled across this blog.

she's cute, she's in la and she's recording her internet dating. already, i'm hooked.

ok, so now i go back to the Effing Work Blog Template.

maawidge

i was busy last week so didn't have a chance to say Yay over the Senate giving the House the finger over the Marriage Protection Act. So i'm doing it now. yay!

dare we hope the senate is beginning to jerk that leash a little? perhaps, when the house is finished trying to paint the sky purple, our government can actually try passing some laws that mean something.

madigan's 'modest proposal' approach is rather obvious but effective. and while he says that marriage is the 'best way' to raise a family and nourish values, i like seeing it as the 'most efficient.'

And now, FEMA fixes marriage Chicago Tribune

back when tv was good

my roomie is sometimes amazed at the tv that i know. in our apartment, i have the uncanny ability to stumble upon some gem of 1970s or 80s schlock that she has never seen before but i remember from my childhood and can't shake.

like, The Fury, with Kirk Douglas and Andrew Stevens. so good. or, Baron Blood with Elke Sommer. or either of those Hell House movies (the one with Roddy MacDowall is my favorite). or even that movie with bette davis about the house that was alive. (the scene where it starts replacing its own wood framing scared my hair straight.)

well, roomie will be glad to know that i'm not the only one! author scott heim's list of what scared the crap out of him is a list that could have been written by my own hand. i remember every single one of these shows. (and, yeah, that Trilogy of Terror? that's nothing compared to The Manitou.)

Scott Heim's Noise: Scary, Part II: Television

working backwards

my mild freak out over my father has run its course; i should just cop to the fact that i love my dad madly but he drives me nuts, all at the same time. there will always be anxiety and frustration and cross-purposed communication between us.

the Mild Freak Out (MFO) being over, i just feel drained. last week was mentally exhausting, physically draining and just a pile of poo. love my job. love. it. but i snapped at a coworker and i never do that. i never lose my temper. (ok, once i lost my temper.) and i did. i got snippy. thankfully the object of my ire has skin thicker than calloused feet so my bad manners bounced off him like a toothpick off a tank. but work and no vacation, plus having a bedroom that makes me want to crawl into a pit and die, AND not having practiced yoga for months (and now my knees are acting up again) - all this makes me want to rent a dumpster, put it under a window and throw everything out so i can start all over with nothing.

how totally cool that would be. to start over. clean slate. scratch.
...
my roomie's family was in town over the weekend and i realized that my apartment is not child friendly. it is a death trap of exposed outlets, wires, open cupboards, chairs leading to wide windows, barware, sharp edges, carpentry and adult comic books with images far too disturbing for youthful eyes. i found myself 'reading' a catwoman comic book to roomie's niece, turning a violent bank heist into a rather mundane day at the office where selena has to put up with some mild harrassment and i actually ended with a tidy little moral about the need for unions in the workplace.

we felt some mild anxiety about the absolute Adult-ness of our home, but whatever. when we were kids we didn't have baby seats and we survived just fine. on the edge, baby!
...
sunday i finished reading a thriller (must start going back to the library) and spent 3 hours at the church, setting up the dining hall for the supper we feed the homeless. (or is the new social agency term 'under-domiciled'?) People of the Bag, i'll call them. it...wasn't so bad. everyone was sorta cool; there were even a few, if they were totally cleaned up and didn't have meth mouth, would be kinda hot.

(cough)
...
the night is cool. it's the kind of night i sleep under a sheet, my windows are wide open and the little breeze floating in, making the curtains bell out, makes me feel like i'm somewhere where my language isn't spoken. i'm so going to sleep through my alarm.

traveling with dad: the boomers suck

lately, my friends and i have noticed how much our parents' baby boomer late-life crises make us want to slap them. we're not talking health matters or anything like that - just your run of the mill 'why can't you behave like a normal person?' thing.

so my dad and i are going to new york in august and he and i have been exchanging emails about it in preparation. this is what i pictured: jazz, dinner, great views, lots of walking around, harlem - really kicked back. some urbanity, some coffee shops and bookstores, some music and a little bit of night life (while assiduously ignoring the fact that three of the best nights i've had have ocurred in this city.) the plan was to travel together. as father and daughter. to share experiences and bond as adult parent/child.

well, it was a good dream but all dreams eventually die.

this woman he's meeting, well, she's not divorced or nigerian. actually, she seems like a very nice young woman from a really great, large, extremely friendly barbadian/haitian family. a christian barbadian/haitian family. they loove dad. all of them - the woman's mom, dad, brothers and even a cousin or two. (personally, i think they want to convince my dad to move to new jersey to start a church.) they want to pick me up from the airport and drive me and dad all around new york; they want to be our tour guides, have dinner with us, take us to listen to music. they want dad 24/7.

all of this would have been easier to handle if dad's meeting this woman had been a date. a date ends after a few hours. but no. this is a freaking family reunion.

does this bother my dad, that these people are going to monopolize all of our time? no. his attention-whore tendencies (which i share) blind him to one simple fact: i don't know these people and i don't care.

i don't want to hang out with people who are strangers. i want to hang out with my friends. and my dad. i want to walk through central park and washington square with my dad; i want to sit on the Met steps with my dad; i want to hear wynton marsalis with my dad. i want to eat cake in harlem with my dad. i want to smell the icky hot garbage smell the city has and watch my dad freak out at all the people and the subway. i want to finally meet Sid! and i desperately want to introduce my dad to a good friend and his family. (the friend who has generously offered to put us up!)

friends + dad. dad + friends. no strangers.

i want to slap my dad.

perhaps it's selfish of me to whine that i don't want to hang out with my dad's new faith friends while forcing him to spend time with mine, but i'll accept that. i think my selfishness should trump his. he's staying with my friends! how does that make me look - my dad not even acting like a guest, just a random lodger?

so you know what i think will happen? i think my dad will end up staying with this extended barbadian family (or a hotel) and i will stay with L- and C- (with little e-) and my dad and i will have parallel weekends in new york and perhaps our paths will intersect and we'll have dinner one night while i'm there.

have i mentioned i want to slap my dad? cuz i do.

i've just gotten out of the shower and i can just remember the faint outlines of a dream about the weirdest company picnic ever - it had inter-employee toplessness, football, sausage eating and behavior that, if it actually ocurred in the real world, would border on sexual harrassment.

and we're a women's organization!

Why Can’t They Get Storm Right??

Last weekend, while memorializing those who served our country in the military (including my dad – hi, dad!), and trying to escape the stupendous heat over the weekend, I met some girlfriends up in Evanston for X-Men 3. Two hours later I left the theater with a palpable feeling of dissatisfaction in my gut. No, it was more than dissatisfaction; it was a low burn of disgruntlement.

That’s right. I was disgruntled.

How is it possible for them to get Storm wrong consistently?? I can accept (but only a little!) that, in movies, some things get lost in translation. But this…this…fundamental misreading of Storm’s character!! I am boggled!

And I think I’m going to blame the patriarchy for ruining Storm for millions of little girls all over the world.

The Storm I loved when I was in junior high sported a mohawk, wore leather, kicked ass and was a militant fighter for her rights. She never kowtowed to Charles, thought Cyclops was lame (which he was) and was basically the fiercest friend a crazy, mixed up mutant (ugh, Jean) could ever have. She was scary, wonderful, elemental, angry, gentle, violent, funny, stylish, and could hang with Wolverine – she could hang with the psychotic ninja-trained loner! And she led the Morlocks! She was so cool.

Why do I blame patriarchy? Because it’s typical of a system in which a woman’s unique complexity and potential power gets reduced to something non-threatening, nice and serviceable to the status-quo. Who do they give us? They give us teeny tiny Halley Berry, with her kittenish voice and all the fierceness of a pout.

So thanks, Hollywood. Thanks for sucking the life from one of the strongest female characters in the comic book world and turning her into a lame after-thought. Way to go.

(And don’t even get me started on what they did to Calysto.)

updates:
no, B- did not hit my 'booty potato'. (thanks, jp.) some things are left better to die.
yes, i will be going to new york with my dad at the end of the summer. (and new jersey!)
yes, i've been working my arse off.
no, i don't think i'll ever have fun again.

and my sister, cruel cruel wench that she is, said to me recently, "You might as well get used to saying you're 37 now. It's right around the corner." Thus plunging me into a startling and deep pit of anger. bitch!

off for drinks at NoMi with some presbyterians.

he's back. and this time...

no. way.

i open my email and who do i see?

(wait for it.)

B-!

he wants to have a drink. ('drink'=sex)

i can't believe he wants to do all this again!

How Pregnancy Happens: educational video of the week

how can we go whole days without saying 'vagina cam'?

it's great and, uh, disturbing all at the same time.
send it to your nieces and nephews; your sibling will really appreciate it.

How Pregnancy Happens (thanks to feministing.com)

squeaked under the deadline

just finished my piece for Geez.
another all nighter.

when will i learn? when?

on the other hand: YAY! another piece for Geez!

a blessed day off

and what am i doing with it?

well so far, i showered and washed my hair and used my new ginger scented body lotion from roger & gallet. love it. (though i kind of have that tangy ginger thing going on now.)

then i put on my big girl panties and a t-shirt and began to email, filled out a questionnaire from my church, compiled a luncheon list for an organization i volunteer for (trying to decide which of my acquaintances to hit up for money is hard) and called an old friend i hadn't heard from in a while.

i have more phone calls to make (to dad, to Professor L-, to my sis) but i think i want to go outside. i can see the cafe from my window and i need to say hi.
...
so i went to the cafe and hung out for a couple hours while taking the X-Man quiz in my roomie's Time Out and realized something:

my neighborhood needs a bookstore. even if it's a chain. a mini-borders. a tiny b. dalton's. there is nothing here to stimulate the brain, even if you wanted it stimulated. this is what you can do on my street: drink, eat, get spanked. we need a bookstore or we're all going to end up heart attack- stricken alcoholics. (i think it's already too late for some of the guys who hang out across the street at S-'s.)

with all the disillusioned Gen X-ers, boomers and the hipsters moving in, you'd think there'd be some enterprising young thing who decided, 'hey, let's sell comic books!' god, how cool would that be? a comic book store within walking distance. or some retired professor who decided, 'hm, i want to sell all my old books.' that would be great. my landlord even has a couple of neat store fronts available for just the thing - solid wood floors and moldings! i mean, over on craptastic , ugly ashland they have a communist book store - in the middle of Latin King gang territory!

who is reading all the greatest hits of communism on ashland, huh?

so, really. if there's some retail-minded person out there who wants to get in on a fast growing neighborhood, drop me a line. we're dyin' over here. we need a bookstore.

you know you're old when...

i was having a really great, disturbing dream about hugh laurie last night when, around 3 am, voices woke me up. deep in loud, enthusiastic conversation, the 4 people on the rooftop deck across the street from my open bedroom windows laughed, opened beer bottles, smoked, told jokes, related stories about someone's crazy uncle and a drunk girl screeched like she'd never had fun before.

their voices boomed across the empty, quiet, sleepy street. i knew my roomie was useless in joining me in exasperation - she sleeps like a hibernating bear. there would be no support from her room. so i laid there, listening to them for 15 minutes, hoping one of them would realize that their noise was bouncing off my apartment building like great big bowling balls. but, no. they got louder. their stories became more exciting. and the drunk screechy girl wouldn't shut up.

so i had no choice.

'911 emergency.'
'hi. i have a noise complaint.'
'where are you, maam?'
'i'm at [boop], on the corner of [boop] and [beep]. they're across the street from me on the [beep] side and they're having some kind of party and they're loud and it's 3 am. i'm sorry.'
'no problem. we'll send a unit to check it out.'
'thank you.'

and so i snuggled back into my bed and listened to more of their stories. soon, a unit pulled up and a cop-like voice called out 'hey, your neighbors are complaining. keep the noise down.'

one of them said, 'will do.'

and it was quiet for a while, like 10 minutes. i was drifting back to sleep when the stories started again. i waited for 45 minutes. they were still going at it! i shut my windows, but i could still hear them, they were that loud.

all i could think was, 'maybe they're speed freaks. maybe that's why, on a school day, they're on their roof chatting like it's an italian cafe. or maybe they're all waitstaff and this is their after hours gabfest. or maybe they're just inconsiderate art institute students who are pissing me off!'

i called 911 again.
'i'm sorry. i'm calling for a noise complaint.' i repeated my information. 'if this was the weekend, i wouldn't care, but i have to get up in three hours and they aren't stopping.'
'we'll send someone.'
'thanks.'

15 minutes later, a cop car rumbled up. 'hey! pack it in - your neighbors have called about the noise!' there was the slam of a screen door and then blessed silence.

and then the trucks started to come off the highway.
i almost cried.

STILL AT THE OFFICE

there once was a worker named ding-er
whose job once made her sing-er.
then along came the Model,
her brain went to lard...el
-and to the PM? hey, look! here's my finger.


(not one of my best but it's how i feel.)

a writing gig!

so my favorite canadian post modern faith-based-like mag has given me an assignment - a piece on 'shelter porn'.
i'm excited.

fork and spoon! fork and spoon!

pinays of the world unite - a little canadian boy is being persecuted because he used a fork and spoon at the lunch table!

down with single utensil hegemony! down with it, i say!

you don't have to read: Luc Cagadoc: The DoubleSpeak (jp is all over this like a fork over a spoon)

why fork/spoon eating is good:
it is more efficient
you don't have to chase your food around your plate
you don't have to switch hands
it's perfect for scooping the meat with the rice
my mommy taught me to eat like this

AKBAYAN!

afternoon at the movies

i love scary movies. love them. haunted houses, creepy japanese ghosts, serial killers on the loose, children who give you the heebie-jeebies - i love all the old chestnuts, some better than others . (zombies? not so much.)

today i went to see silent hill and while i was generally pleased, i have one complaint: i kept wanting to yell, 'shut the frack up!' everytime rose ran off in search of her daughter, sharon. god, was she annoying. AND she ran like phoebe. but overall, i liked the movie - the ending was a little phooey and sean bean was totally wasted (when will he have his OWN movie, please??) but it was creepy and satisfyingly resolved. i guess since it's based on a game, there was symmetry to the story, to the scary parts. it had religious cults, murder, madness, witch-burning and even a little roasted child. (excellent). i even liked the little story of 'truth' the dangerous little witch girl gave rose after rose followed all the clues to the bottom of the hospital. a happy $7 spent.

then, i snuck into MI3. i excused this little bit of sneakery by saying to myself that at least i wasn't contributing to the cruise box office. it was...feh. i mean, it's saying something that you never know whatever the Object is that everyone is running after. we don't even see ethan hawke steal it!! it all happens off-screen. it's meaningless. instead, we get the reconstitution of the cruise Crate & Barrell relationship (oh, how i wished they'd shot her, sending ethan hawke into trauma forever.) no pattern, just random running around.

so that was my afternoon.

the hypocrite as housewife

i read this essay in the back of my roomie's latest Time mag while taking a morning constitutional and i had a suspicion that something was wrong.

1. the whiny victim tone. sweetie, you're not a victim. the image of ms. flanagan, homey homemaker, being marched back to the protective arms of the GOP while the mean girls of the Dem party hoot bad names and vulgar gestures because ms. flanagan is a nice girl who'd rather stay home than hold a picket sign is ridiculous. from all reports, ms. flanagan is just as privileged as her husband; she is an accomplished writer who earns money with her writing, and has a staff to help her do it. how many traditional housewives get that? (and, frankly, the notion that only SHE gets to have a dead mother whom she misses desperately is sickening and offensive.)

2. the sticking up for the white male. does the White Male (as signifier) really need another apologist? really? is it stigmatizing the WM to reveal the existence of those on the outside, rather than to always cater to those on the inside with ultimate cultural privilege? (like any other upper middle class white woman, she's uncomfortable with having privilege revealed and being called out on it.) i think it's interesting that she chooses to frame her argument like this, rather than say that the Dem party has abandoned the working man - which it hasn't and she'd be hard pressed to show that it has.

or perhaps her allegation would ring truer if she wrote that the 'beer-guzzling, union-dues paying' white guy got the shit scared out of him by the GOP when 9/11 hit. rather, flanagan makes the WM a victim like herself and we all know how much they suffer, don't we?

3. she's wrong. perhaps i'm watching the wrong Democratic party but i've always felt that the party has been abject in its pursuit of the Housewife. it's women like me the party's abandoned - single women, single women of color, single working men and women. in my particular case, the post-election backpedaling on the choice issue is one such example; discussion abounded that perhaps the language of reproductive choice was too scary for those housewives living in places like naperville; it was too angry. and where are the policies that look out for the interests of the people like me in the party - people who don't live in a subdivision, people without children, but still people who work hard and believe heartily in progressive causes? instead we watch as the party fumbles for its nerve and makes concessions to those easily upset.

so if anyone is being alienated by the Dems, it's not a housewife. and it's certainly not because of contempt. to muster contempt, a party must have vast stores of anger and the GOP spits it continuously while we swallow ours and hope no one notices.

TIME.com: We're Here, We're Square, Get Used to It -- May. 08, 2006 -- Page 1
Joan Walsh about Flanagan on the Huffington Post

cheesy confession as i lounge on the couch while the roomie is away:

the end of 'music of the heart' always gets me.
it never fails.

of course, it would be harder to get me if i wasn't also menstrual.

what game? the game of 'crazy'?? (and other matters)

the briskly acerbic manola says tom 'alien' cruise "turns a perfectly good franchise into a seriously strange vanity project, as the simpering brunette is swept into a new world by a dashing operative for a clandestine organization." i only wish i could be sure said brunette wasn't tom.
Mission: Impossible III - Review - Movies - New York Times
...

so my father sends me an email of all the shows on broadway the other day: "help me pick a play! what should i go see??"

i call him immediately. 'you're going to new york? and since when do you like theater??'
perhaps my father's new, mid-life crisis convertible lexus is only the beginning of my father's incipient slide into metrosexuality.

'yeah, girl,' he says. 'new york! whoo!'
'uh, when? and why?'

my father has been talking about visiting new york for years. he's never been and, until now, never had a chance to go. but, you see, my dad has the travel skills of mr. magoo; when he took a cruise to alaska, my sister and i worried he'd get stuck in vancouver or fall overboard. we worry that being a widower for the past 5 years has rendered him incapable of dealing with the big, bad world. and what is new york other than the biggest and the baddest the world has to offer?

my dad says, 'oh, somewhere during the summer. i'm going to the monterrey jazz fest in september so maybe august.'

'who are you going with?' a suspicion has begun to niggle.
'well, i was thinking of seeing [a family friend] while i was here. i thought he and i could go together. maybe catch some jazz.'
'uh-huh. so, you like musicals?' my father wouldn't know the difference between 'bali hai' or a mai tai.
'well, no, but see - this woman...'
'i knew it! you are going to new york for a date!'

let's break for a moment. technically, i am not against traveling to meet an online, uh, fling. my entire dating history between 2001 and 2004 was all about nerve.com-inspired travel. but my 62-year old father last had a date in 1967 - with my mom.

i say, 'dad, you are in NO shape to fend off the advances of an aggressive, older, divorced jamaican woman.' for some reason, jamaican and african women looove my dad.
and my father just laughs which forces me to say, 'she IS older, right?'
he just laughs again.

eventually, my father confesses: an older, divorced african (ha!) woman contacted him over email; a friend of hers had told her about my father's website (don't ask) and she thought his posted photo was attractive. so, they begin an email correspondence and then she offers to pay for a couple of broadway tickets if he comes to visit. he says she offered to buy a pair of tickets for my dad and 'a friend' and then suggested that perhaps the two of them could have dinner - at the ritz, maybe.

all the alarms in my head are sounding. no woman offers to pay for theater tickets for two without imagining herself as one of the two. i was totally right: a woman on the make for my dad! and my father has no idea where he's going to stay, how he's going to get around. i'm worried. my dad - wandering around new york, like a west coast country mouse, chased by a hungry cat!

so long story short: i'm planning a father/daughter trip to new york in the fall. i know. it's weird. i'm sacrificing a really good time in new york to make sure my dad doesn't get roofied, mugged, or married.

who's traveled with their parents before? and where should we stay? i was thinking about a few B&B's in harlem.

missing the good stuff

this is what happens when you spend the whole weekend catching up on season 1 of Battlestar Galactica - you miss stephen colbert ripping the president a new one. to his face.

the transcript of his speech is at the end. it rocks.

The Blog Chris Durang: Ignoring Colbert, Part Two The Huffington Post

ok, i probably shouldn't have called him an idiot

but i couldn't help it. over on my other blog, i've been driven slowly insane by one of the most crazy, mysoginistic commenters EVER. it's strange. i can't even say that i'm angry. i'm not angry at him. he's just nuts. he actually asks to be called Patriarch Verlch.

think i'm exaggerating? read him here:

ChurchGal: Ask your rep to Vote no on S.1955: why? because it's not 1955

or read him here.

and if your head doesn't pop off, i envy you.

alert!

this planned parenthood alert could be important to you if:
you have a uterus
you enjoy having a uterus
you enjoy knowing your health care covers anything/everything uterus related

...
Women in every state will lose benefits. It sounds like a bad joke, but it couldn't be more serious. S. 1955 would allow insurance plans to ignore important state laws that protect patients, directly affecting more than 90 million Americans.

Chances are you're one of them. That's why I'm asking you to write to your senator today anddemand that the federal government protect your health coverage:http://www.ppaction.org/campaign/benefits

You may have heard about this "Lose Your Benefits Bill" before,but now it has passed out of committee and the full Senate willvote on it. It's an insidious attempt by hardline senators to chip away at our basic rights. These lawmakers have tried before to restrict access to birth control and other health care you need.

Their latest strategy? Force women to pay for these benefits out of pocket. We've worked for decades to pass state laws that require insurance companies to cover birth control just like other medicines. This bill would trample those laws, but it doesn't stop there. Besides fair coverage for contraception, here are some of the other benefits that women could lose:

• cancer screenings
• mammograms
• maternity care
• the ability to go straight to your OB/GYN when you have aproblem
• the ability to stay with the same doctor throughout apregnancy
• infertility treatment
• osteoporosis screenings

And it's not just women who will be affected - the bill guts state protections for coverage for prostate cancer screenings, ambulatory surgery, emergency services, and more.

To makematters worse, it will likely also increase the costs of health insurance for older and sicker people who need health insurance most. Please take two minutes to speak out against this dangerous bill- the Senate could vote as early as next week. Contact your senator now:http://www.ppaction.org/campaign/benefits

Think of it as an investment - two minutes of activism now vs. hundreds or thousands of dollars in extra health costs for you and your family.